Have a seat; there's time.
Let's think together.
I'm Morgan Kautz, LPCC, a queer-affirming professional counselor providing individual and couples therapy in Westminster, Colorado, the Denver Metro, and online throughout Colorado.
Psychotherapist. Existential Ally.
Long before I became a therapist, I was interested in the questions people have been arguing about for thousands of years.
What makes us who we are? How much freedom do we actually have to become someone different? What makes a life meaningful?
This tendency apparently started incredibly early. I was the kid who responded to an answer with another “Why?” and then another one after that. My parents can confirm that my curiosity was not always experienced by others as an endearing quality.
Yet I never really grew out of it.
I studied philosophy because I loved questions that became more complicated the longer you thought about them. I wanted to understand what remained true when I turned the microscope of reason on it.
Psychology brought those questions closer to the person actually living them. It brought me from the intellectual into the emotional world, and to the vast intelligence I didn't initially realize lived there.
I became fascinated by the strange contradictions we carry as human beings.
We can understand ourselves remarkably well and still repeat the same patterns. We can desperately want intimacy and pull away the moment someone gets close. We can know something isn't true and still feel, somewhere much deeper, as though it is.
Psychotherapy gave me a place where those contradictions didn't have to be solved in logical formulas on whiteboards; it was something that could actually be encountered, together, in the space between us. That's still what draws me to this work.
A Little About Me Outside The Therapy Room
My curiosity about people doesn't really switch off when I leave the office. I've always been drawn to philosophy and stories that ask difficult questions without rushing to solve them. I love books with complicated characters and moral problems that don't have clean answers. Apparently, even in my free time, I like sitting with ambiguity.
I also have a side of me that needs to get completely out of my head. I've practiced Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for years, and I love snowboarding and adventuring on dirt bikes. There's something grounding about doing something that requires your full attention. You can't spend much time analyzing the meaning of existence when you're trying not to fall over.
I'm happiest when there's some balance between those two parts of my life: having something interesting to think deeply about and something that makes me stop thinking altogether.
And when I'm home, slowing down, I'm usually reading, playing a video game, spending time outside in the garden, or simply just being with my wife and our animals. We have a teenage dog and two Bengal cats, so “slowing down” is sometimes more of an aspiration than a reality.
Education & Training
Regis University
Northern Illinois University
Gottman Institute
Master of Arts in Clinical Counseling Psychology
Chi Sigma Iota Secretary
Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology
Gottman Method Levels I and II Trained
What it feels like to sit with me.
Therapy with me is collaborative & grounded.
I'm paying attention to what you're saying, and also to what's happening as you say it; a shift in tone, some hesitation... even a moment of charged familiarity.
Those moments tend to matter more than they seem.
I'm not a blank slate therapist; I'll ask questions, offer observations, tell you when I'm noticing a pattern, and sometimes I'll invite us to stay with something when your instinct is to move away from it. These moments are especially important, and I also know how they are especially difficult as well. You see, I've been in the other chair as well, and I understand how trust and respect are key to your ability to sit with the difficult emotions.
Therapy doesn't have to feel relentlessly intense. There is room for humor in my office; to be human. My office is a place where you can swear, laugh, disagree with me, change your mind, or tell me that something I've said doesn't fit.
I don't need you to perform therapy correctly.
I want for us to be able to think honestly together. While I won't push you somewhere you're not ready to go, I also wont be complicit in joining a pattern of endlessly standing at the doorway of something you're ready to confront.
We'll find that edge together. I'm here to walk alongside you; not ahead of you or behind you. Though I reserve the right to point out when we've walked past the same tree three times.
How I Think About Theory
No single theory can adequately explain a human being.
Different therapeutic approaches help me see different parts of what is happening. Perhaps Psychodynamic may help us understand how an old relationship continues to shape the way you respond to people in the present day, while Gestalt and Parts Work might help us notice what happens inside you when that pattern gets activated.
At some point, understanding may give way to experimenting with something different, and another therapeutic approach may give us a better way to work with what we've uncovered.
This is why I choose an integrative approach rather than asking every person to fit neatly into one particular pet model. Psychology is a science, and it is also an art. The way we weave together theory is a significant part of the healing art.
I'm looking for what will help us understand what's happening, and then what might actually help it shift.
Each person who steps into my office is a unique universe unto themselves. Believing that one size fits all is a little like trying to build a house with just a hammer.
