Articles

About Guy W. Shilts, Jr.

All of my life experiences have contributed to my work as a therapist. They’ve enhanced my formal education, intuition, worldview, spirituality and they’ve also given me clues about how to conquer my personal challenges. All of the people I have met have also helped me become a better therapist — including my wife and children.

The work of a psychotherapist is unlike other professions. Surgeons, CPAs, architects and others can create a life compartment for their career and keep it separate from their personal life. In contrast, a psychotherapist needs to draw on every life experience and totally integrate every lesson throughout life. I’ve tried to include many of the lessons I learned that helped shape who I am as a therapist. I hope that my story will not only help you learn about me — but also about the people who helped me along the way.

Education

I never liked school until I got to college. I am dyslexic (probably because I had to switch from left-handedness to right after I had polio) and had trouble reading. I had a great auditory memory that helped me get through the lower grades. An eighth grade teacher told my parents I was retarded, so I was put in a slower track. All my school years were kind of an uphill battle, but this was probably the lowest point!

Later on I took the Stanford Benet IQ test, and scored much higher than average, so I set my sights on college where I was encouraged by my parents to get a business degree and managed to earn my BBA in four and a half years. I went right on to graduate school in business, but I wasn’t very happy and felt out of sync with my fellow business students. I started seeing a college counselor and it was during one of my sessions that I realized I wanted to make a career change. I said to my therapist “I’d be great at what you do.” She agreed, and two weeks later I transferred to the college’s new counseling department, and got a graduate assistantship with one of the professors. I had found my calling. I got my Masters in Counseling in less than 1 1/2 years, graduating in the midst of the country’s recession in the early 70’s.

Experience

When I left school, I couldn’t find a job so I spent time volunteering at the college’s counseling center. The rebel in me came to the rescue—I decided if no one wanted to hire me, I’d just start something myself!

I joined up with one of the professors from school, Dick Wagner, and my wife’s best friend’s husband, Bob Long, and we opened up a small counseling center. We had visions of doing this for about five years and then moving on. Dick and Bob both did move on, but here I am 30+ years later, doing business just a few blocks from where we started. Crossroads Counseling Center has grown from three people providing 250 hours of therapy per year to 40 people providing 32,000 hours of therapy each year.

I met my wife, Bev, in college and we’ve been together for more than thirty years. We were married in 1970 and we have three wonderful children. My family has taught me more about love, life, triumph and tragedy that I could ever have imagined. The trials, tribulations and joys that we have experience together has had a profound effect on my ability to help other people and I am eternally grateful for all that I have learned.

My point in telling you that I have experienced both triumphs and tragedies is so that you understand that I certainly don’t have all the answers, I am not immune to difficulties that life presents. I will experience pain and joy in my life just as you will. But if I can help you navigate through some of the psychological land mines that are out there, I think I’ve done my job.