Today’s Faculty Friday is an introduction to Dr. Doug Shirley, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology.
Doug previously worked as adjunct faculty at The Seattle School, having taught Practicum I and II, Interpersonal Foundations, and History and Therapeutic Perspectives before becoming core faculty in the Counseling Psychology program in 2016. Doug now serves as Listening Lab and Pre-internship director. Content courses he is currently teaching include History & Systems (CSL 502), Family Systems (CSL 517), Group Therapy (CSL 518) and Professional Ethics & Law (CSL 503).
After earning a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Temple University in Philadelphia, Doug moved west to attend Mars Hill Graduate School (now The Seattle School), where he met his wife, Laura Wade Shirley. Laura Wade earned her MA in Counseling Psychology from Western Seminary (through Mars Hill Graduate School) in 2002. Doug earned a Master of Divinity from Mars Hill Graduate School in 2006. Doug and Laura Wade are both therapists in private practice, and together they are working to be raised by their three boys: Noah, Luke, and Eli. They live in Woodinville, WA, surrounded by bidden and unbidden messengers from the more than human world.
What are you currently reading?
I am a member of Division 51 of the American Psychological Association: the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities. I have been actively researching and practicing clinically in the arena(s) of the lived experience(s) of men for over two decades. But I haven’t been taken by a text bell hook’s The Will to Change (audiobook, 2020) in quite some time. hooks talks very pointedly about how patriarchy has plagued all genders, including those that identify as male or masculine. Much has been said about what patriarchy has done to those who identify as female. More needs to follow there. And, there is also an anti-male bias in the field of counseling, which can be difficult to navigate at times. I’m deeply appreciative of hook’s window into how this bias could be addressed by movements towards the “mutuality of interbeings.” To create a society of loving men, hooks argues we must love men. This includes the men that show up to counseling, on both sides of the proverbial couch. May it be so!
I am also currently reading Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus (2023), which is helping to put words to my lived experiences as an educator (and a learner) in relation to how and why academic/educational/learning spaces are so difficult to navigate these days. We’re all being taught (by the business that drives the internet and social media platforms) to distract ourselves and to disengage from what’s (and who’s) in front of and before us. Our attention is drawn to somewhere we are not, and we’re being primed to not register (or even to mistrust) our own lived experience. My mind is quite active with imagination for how my reading here might shape my teaching in the coming academic year(s).
What have you been listening to lately?
“Dear Evan Hansen” is a soundtrack from a Broadway musical I often turn to when I’m driving or working out. So, too, are Celtic ballads or instrumentals, or some form of drum circle movement. Much of the time what I’m listening to are audiobooks. Recent favorites there include Come Together (Nagoski, 2024), Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents (Gibson, 2016), What My Bones Know (Foo, 2022), Gathering Moss (Kimmerer, 2018), and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Safran Foer, 2005).
What research do you find yourself drawn to at the moment?
My research team has an open study paying attention to the impacts of the structural changes associated with the counseling field’s movement(s) towards telehealth on counselor’s own sense of wellness. Our study is picking up traction. As a team we have presented at the American Mental Health Counseling Association’s (AMHCA) annual conference (2023), and at a workshop for the Washington Mental Health Counseling Association in Spring 0f 2024. We were then asked to write a follow-up article for The Advocate (AMHCA’s trade publication) which should come out in Summer 2024. We’re currently coding our data, and we look forward to continuing the conversation in the days ahead.
Any exciting summer plans?
I am typing up this blog post on the day my family and I will head east to spend time with family. Both my wife and I are East Coast transplants, so we’re going back east to spend time with loved ones and also to find time together on a warm, sandy beach with waves that we can bodysurf. After that, most of our travel will be soccer tournament related. Two of our three sons play competitive soccer, and summer is a time when we travel for such tournaments.
If you could have dinner with any person, dead or alive, who would they be?
I’m partial to dinner at home with my family. I like to cook, and to hear complaints from my kids about the “fancy stuff” I put on their plates. I recently turned 50, and my family’s gift to me was a Traegar smoker. It’s been oh-so-fun to engage the steep learning curve I face there by way of flavor profiles, wood types, and such.
If you weren’t in your current profession, you’d be…
Our counseling office in Woodinville is right next door to a 7-11 convenience store. Sometimes during or after difficult days of counseling, I fantasize about walking next door and asking for a job serving Slurpees.
Who is your literary or living hero?
Per the above, bell hooks is speaking to and healing some deep places in me these days.