Jonathan Merker began his career in counseling as a volunteer peer counselor  in 2010 for LGBTQ individuals with terminal illnesses. This experience ignited and shaped his passion for helping others in his community. He graduated from The Seattle School in 2013 with a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. Jonathan is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in New York,

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Jonathan’s counseling style is called relational psychoanalytic psychodynamic therapy, which means that he uses the present moment and the relationship between counselor & client as the avenue for personal transformation. This style of counseling is especially helpful when working with developmental experiences like religious or sexual abuse where beliefs were formed early in one's life. The analytic process allows you to discover aspects of your unconscious that affect your ways of being in the world, and through a relational psychodynamic framework those unconscious aspects get to shift in ways that make you feel more like yourself.

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Jonathan studied under a sexual abuse expert in graduate school and has been working with trauma and abuse survivors throughout his career. Jonathan discovered that there are particular considerations for gay men who experience childhood sexual abuse and religious abuse, since the intersection of developmental homophobia and childhood sexual activation creates a unique stress response. Working with this stress response in session can greatly reduce the symptoms these traumas cause in our adult lives. Jonathan takes great joy in seeing how his clients lives become more stable, fulfilling, and authentic through the psychotherapeutic process. Most patients engage in psychotherapy at GMCA for 6 months to 3 years to achieve the full benefits of the process. ​

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NY Licensed Mental Health Counselor: 011143

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