Dr. Charles Hoy-Ellis, LICSW

Dr. Charles Hoy-Ellis is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, known by the credential LICSW, who practices in the Puget Sound region of Washington. He brings 21 years of experience offering psychotherapy across community and private practice settings, and he holds additional specialization as a Certified Sexual Minority Specialist, indicating focused training in working with sexual and gender diverse populations.

His primary clinical focus is with sexual and gender diverse communities, often identified with LGBTQ2SIA+ language, and he addresses concerns such as stress, anxiety, trauma and abuse, depression, and issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity. He also attends to related themes like forgiveness, guilt and shame, isolation and loneliness, and questions of life purpose, as well as relationship structures such as kink and polyamory and challenges associated with aging.

Dr. Hoy-Ellis grounds his work in psychodynamic and phenomenological perspectives, emphasizing how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be adaptive responses shaped by past experiences and unconscious motives. He explains psychological difficulty as often linked to the meanings people create about their lives and relationships, and he pays attention to how social forces like heterosexism influence mental and physical health over time. His master s training in clinical and contextual practice further shapes his view that emotional struggles are frequently connected to social environments - past, present, and anticipated futures.

While psychodynamic understanding is foundational, Dr. Hoy-Ellis integrates a range of therapeutic tools to fit individual needs, including cognitive behavioral, narrative, and rational-emotive-behavioral techniques. He approaches therapy as a collaborative exploration, viewing each person as the expert on their own life and offering professional knowledge about patterns of human behavior in social contexts. He frames his role as walking alongside people as they examine not what is wrong with them but what happened to them.