Timothy Naus
he/him
Therapy should be honest, alive, and transformative.
What therapy is not: sterile, performative, or overly clinical. It is is a space where you can be deeply seen and deeply challenged at the same time; where compassion and clarity coexist; and where real change becomes possible.
Specialties:
- Anxiety
- Religion and Faith
- Trauma and PTSD
- LGBTQ+ and Queer Issues
- Men's Issues
- Grief
- College and Life Transitions
- Substance Abuse
- Family-of-Origin Concerns
- Relationship Patterns
I work with adults of all ages and backgrounds — including LGBTQ+ individuals, people navigating religious trauma or identity conflict, those recovering from trauma or addiction, and people who have spent their lives feeling like “too much,” “not enough,” or simply out of place. If you’ve felt that way in your family, your community, or more conventional therapeutic spaces, you may feel at home here. I also offer a queer-, poly-, and kink-affirming environment.
My approach is depth-oriented and ecological. I’m interested not only in what’s happening on the surface, but in the larger emotional, relational, historical, and cultural context in which your struggles are taking shape. Symptoms and repeated patterns rarely appear out of nowhere — they usually belong to a larger story: family roles, inherited beliefs, protective strategies, wounds, and loyalties that shaped how you learned to survive. Strategies that once kept you safe can become identities; old adaptations can harden into “truth.”
In our work together, we might ask: What story are you living inside, and who taught it to you? What part of you had to adapt in order to stay safe, loved, accepted, or in control? Much of human suffering comes from meanings that were inherited rather than chosen — and can be examined, grieved, and changed.
My style is both gentle and direct. I am deeply compassionate, but I won’t collude with the idea that you are broken. I respect your intelligence, and I believe insight without courage is incomplete. Therapy is not about fixing you. It is about freeing you.
I bring a creative sensibility shaped by a lifetime in the arts. Music, metaphor, dreams, and image can open doors that logic alone cannot — some truths are felt before they are spoken, and that kind of knowing is welcome here.
I hold a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from The Chicago School and also have a professional background in high-end interior design. In my previous work as a therapist, I have developed psychoeducational therapy groups on topics ranging from architecture and immigration in Chicago to masculinity through mythology.