Randy Stueve, LPC

About Randy

I loved the sciences for a long time before I loved this. As a pharmacist, everything added up. There was an answer at the end of everything, and that made sense to me. What was going on in my own mind never added up the same way, and that bothered me enough to get curious about it.

Life ran me into some difficulties in my late thirties, the kind that come from coping skills that once helped and then quietly started causing problems. I ended up in a counselor’s office, and over about eight to ten years that turned into something bigger than getting myself sorted out. Eventually I spent time at Betty Ford, and I noticed that nearly every counselor and staff member there was in recovery themselves, and doing well with their lives. I thought there had to be something to this line of work. I couldn’t have done it at twenty five, or even thirty, but by then my life had prepared me for it in the right way. About nine or ten years ago I went back for my master’s in counseling, and I’m still learning from every client I sit with.

Outside the office, my main pursuit is still kind of therapeutic. I love golf, love competing, and love the pursuit of mastering an impossible sport. It gets me outside, gets me around people, and it led me to work as the head golf coach for the Fort Lewis College men’s golf team, which I find genuinely rewarding, teaching those young men some life lessons without them quite noticing. And to the man reading this who’d never actually book: a lot of us carry a built-in set of rules about handling everything stoically, no weakness. Looking back, whatever problems I’ve hit, I found a way through, and a lot of the time that meant asking for help.

Randy’s Approach to Care

I like to work on concrete issues rather than generalities. Someone can come in and say they have terrible anxiety, and we can talk about that, but I’d rather look at something actually happening in your life, especially something recent. We can look at that more objectively, figure out how you’re viewing it, and find the hidden rules and motives underneath. Once you can see that clearly in one situation, it usually applies to the others too, and it gives you a pattern you can use on your own.

My main talk-therapy approach is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. Most people haven’t heard of it. It’s a descendant of cognitive behavioral therapy, and it happened to be what the first counselor I ever saw used, which is why I use it now: it made sense to me. It was like an owner’s manual for being me. It helped me build a different relationship with my own inner experience, so I could respond according to my values instead of reacting from whatever emotion happened to come up. When I respond from values rather than react from emotion, things tend to work out, or at least I’m not making them worse.

I’ll be straight with you about fit. I’m a pretty cognitive person, which is good and bad. If you come see me, don’t expect a real touchy-feely, let’s-get-into-our-emotions kind of session. I honor emotions and I have them like anyone else, but my job isn’t to make your emotions go away, because you’re supposed to have them. It’s to help you learn how to respond to the ones that show up. I also work with neurofeedback, which is like biofeedback for the brain: small electrodes listen to how strong certain brainwaves are, the feedback comes through a movie you’re watching, and over time the brain learns to bring itself back into range. I describe it like catching your reflection in a store mirror and fixing your posture without thinking. I’ve seen it work well for anxiety and for people stuck ruminating, unable to let go. And I’m certified in hypnotherapy , which I use to get you into a deep, calm state where solutions and possibilities are easier to see, often for anxiety, fears, and performance anxiety.

Randy’s education and experience

I earned my Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Adams State University, roughly nine to ten years ago. Before counseling I worked as a hospital pharmacist for over twenty years, and I moved to Durango from the Midwest in 2005. I’m trained in EMDR and certified in hypnotherapy, and I provide neurofeedback. I don’t hide that I came to this as a client first; that stretch of my life, and my time at Betty Ford, is a real part of why I do this and how I understand it.

Randy’s license information

Credential: Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)
State: Colorado