Get To Know Our Therapist: Matty Phelps

Matty began work with Between in 2024.

We wanted you to have an opportunity to get to know him a little bit.  We sat down with Matty to ask him some questions about his life and work…

Tell us a little about yourself.

I grew up in Northern California in a big family. We were a family of swimmers and we were outside a lot. My parents insisted on eating dinner outside even when it was drizzling and cold. I was in water from the time I was a little boy and soon after, was also playing and listening to music constantly. These two things – water and music – are still a big part of my life and help me get grounded and in my body.

What brought you into the field of psychotherapy? How did you decide which population you wanted to serve?

I was always watching and taking in information as the youngest of six people in my house. There was so much to overhear, observe, make sense of, mimic, and learn from. I was also a deeply sensitive boy, something that often felt hard to reckon with in a world where sensitive boys grew up to become hardened men. I received a lot of indirect input that my sensitivity was an inconvenience but it also felt unavoidable and the only way I knew how to make sense of being a living person in the world. I remember being scared a lot as a little boy, thinking about death and life and if my parents would always be around.

The first therapist that really made my brain and heart light up was Esther Perel. She spoke to this thing that I intuitively felt but had never put into words, which is that we don’t live in a vacuum. We are a product of our surroundings, our family of origin, key figures, our chosen family, and the countless other people who cross our paths. My experience as a therapist so far has been in a sex therapy practice, where I learned a lot about how people’s past experiences of attachment and connection inform how they are able to be intimate with others in the present. Working with people through an attachment lens and with their greater system in mind makes a lot of sense to me. We are more than just our individual psyches and isolated experiences.

What do you like to do for fun?

Something I’m trying to get back into is my love of gathering people and community. It is intimate to be in a group and to invite people into your space. I love throwing parties, making dinner for the people I love, and making a space feel warm and welcoming. I love to swim, camp in the desert and by lakes, see live jazz, and visit New York City. Yoga! Eating fancy food, too! Decorating my home!

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A teacher! And maybe Zac Efron after I saw High School Musical.

Why do you work from EFT?

I imagine my answer to this will probably develop and deepen over time. I have found EFT (Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy) to be the most effective way to create opportunities for connection and emotional responsiveness between partners. EFT helps a couple become awake to their patterns of communication and conflict, build awareness around these patterns, and eventually replace them with new patterns that are more adaptive and actually allow each partner to see one another. It is also evidence-based; a lot of researchers have studied EFT from different perspectives, such as mixed race relationships, queer relationships, and neurodiverse relationships. It’s important to know that what you’re putting into action has been proven to work and work well, both for the therapist and the client.

How do you conceptualize healing in therapy? Is healing primarily what happens there?

I think there are multiple experiences of healing that happen in therapy. The first can happen early on in therapy and can provide a lot of immediate relief, sometimes within the first few sessions. There is something that happens when we let someone in. The belief that ‘I am alone and will never be understood’ feels less rock solid and letting this go can be deeply emotional and healing. It is important to work with a therapist who creates a safe enough space that makes this ‘letting go’ feel possible.

Healing from there happens in layers and much of it comes back to this idea that when we are witnessed, exactly as the person we are, for all of who we are, healing happens and there is space for a new kind of living. Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” These words (to me) get pretty close to describing the place where healing can happen. And healing continues as we bravely peel back the layers, new sometimes even to ourselves, of who we are and are witnessed in this process. Sometimes we just need someone to give us permission to go there.

If there was one thing you wish you could spread to the world about emotional health, what would it be?

That at its core, emotional health is accessible and it can be cultivated right now, today, in this moment – in ways that are not cost prohibitive or require a certain level of training or education. A friend recently told me that checking in with your surroundings and environment for 10-20 seconds, 10-20 times a day can have meaningful effects on your parasympathetic nervous system and your adaptability to stress. Your parasympathetic is the rest-and-digest part of your nervous system and you can activate it through diaphragmatic breathing (breathing deep into your belly and slowing your exhale), activating your senses (feeling your feet on the ground, noticing 5 things you can see, hear, feel), and connecting to any bodily sensations that arise. Meaningful presence and awareness of what is happening right now, around you, in your body – no one can take that from you.