Welcome to
Andrew J. Bell Counseling
I'm so glad you're here.
My name is Andrew, and I'm a male counselor in Kansas City, MO who specializes in Christian Faith & Ministry, Anxiety, Emotion Regulation, & Pornography Addiction.
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I help my clients cultivate deep, lasting change––from the ground up.
Here's where I can help
Spiritual Abuse & Religious Trauma
When you've been used, abused, wounded, or betrayed by spiritual authorities, communities, and ideas to which you've entrusted the care of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. These experiences create fragmentation in the places that promised wholeness. Together, we'll process trauma, undo fragmentation, and walk the path of flourishing.
Pornography Addiction
Porn found you when you were just a child, and it has never let you go. It's time to break free and discover true beauty, comfort, peace, & love.
Attachment Issues
Attachment Theory––the science of our most important relationships––is one of the most rock-solid constructs in the realm of psychology. Starting with your first caregivers and continuing throughout your lifespan, attachment shapes how you relate with yourself, others, & God. If you adapted to sub-optimal caregiving when you were young by anxiously clinging to others or dismissively avoiding connection, let's develop new ways of relating that feel both secure and genuinely satisfying.
Aspiring Fathers
You're aching to be a dad, but things aren't coming together. Infertility & miscarriage are outside of your control, and you feel helpless, bereft of what––of who––could be, or maybe even ashamed of a perceived inadequacy. My path to fatherhood wasn't as hard as it could have been, but it certainly wasn't straightforward. I'd be honored to join you on this path.
Fathers of Young Children
You're a father to one or more little ones, and the fit has hit the shan. It keeps hitting the shan. It never stops hitting the shan, and now there's fit everywhere (switch the 'f' and 'sh' in 'fit' and 'shan' if you haven't already). Being a dad can be overwhelming at times, and it doesn't let up. You're stressed, tired, angry, depressed, and drinking more than you should. You don't have an instruction manual or even a good example for how to do this. You find yourself parenting out of the same playbook that your parents used––and you're not sure this is the way you want to go. No one is at their best when they're stressed and tired. I'd love to give you a landing place where you can unload some of that stress and work on being the best dad you can be.
Emotional Regulation
Emotions are powerful forces of nature. They move us, inform us, and connect us. Emotions can feel chaotic when we haven't learned to channel them or contain them. They feel robotic when we've habitually avoided, dismissed, or compartmentalized them. Chaotic & robotic emotions are usually a byproduct of early learning within our families. Let's update those early lessons and open up to the vitality, grounding, and connection that emotions offer when they are sufficiently regulated.
Body + Mind
Our biography becomes our biology. Our Western culture encourages us to live in our heads, to elevate cognition above all else. These ideas have something in common with trauma: they divorce us from our bodies. Estranged from our bodies, we lose touch with our vitality, our sense of grounding, our sensuality, and our felt sense of locatedness. This is not wholeness. Our bodies speak to us through sensation and affect. Drawing from training in somatic therapy, I help my clients learn to listen.
Anxiety
Anxiety is your nervous system's response to threat. When a threat is present, anxiety is the healthy response: it gives you the boost to deal with the problem. But it feels like your system gets stuck there. A body-focused therapeutic approach gets to the root of anxiety, enables us to discharge the excess energy that's all dressed up with no place to go, and develop new patterns characterized by groundedness, safety, curiosity, and connection.
Childhood Trauma & Sexual Abuse
The physician & trauma expert, Gabor Maté, says, "Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness." When we experience something overwhelming, the response of those closest to us is the primary factor in determining whether we will be traumatized. Too many of us have had overwhelming experiences followed by dismissal, punishment, shame, anger, or abandonment. Having nowhere to turn with our overwhelm, we store it in our bodies. Trauma therapy involves renegotiating these experiences, processing overwhelming feelings, and––crucially––providing the compassionate response that was missing when it was needed most. It's hard work, but you don't have to do it alone.
Shame is the collapse of selfhood for the sake of relationships and community. It protects you from others' hostile attention by making you smaller or keeping you inside the lines. Shame can be adaptive when it is time-limited and quickly repaired, but children should never have to sacrifice their selfhood to stay in relationship with a parent or caregiver. You can endure shame when you have a sufficient supply of unconditional love in the bank. Counseling will empower you to maintain your selfhood and your relationships at the same time.
Shame
Anger
In some ways, anger can be the inverse of shame: it can be the assertion of selfhood at the risk of relationships or community. While shame is about inhibition, anger moves you to take on a challenge or stand your ground. Under the superintendence of love, anger has the power to speak truth, set healthy boundaries, and establish justice. Hear me on this: anger and love can happen at the same time! But many of us haven't experienced anger this way. You've seen anger's dark side in others and in yourself. You may have been punished, rejected, dismissed, or shamed for being angry as a child. You may have feared the anger of your parents. I would love to help you experience the constructive power of your anger by employing it in the service of goodness and love.