Jason Buening, PsyD

Therapist/Founder

Jason was trained to be a therapist in Northern California. He has a background in art, earning an MFA in Painting from American University in Rome. He has worked on a lobster boat in the Long Island Sound, a farm in Vermont, a Montessori School in Boston, as well as taught painting and art history at several universities and colleges in Connecticut. Working with 108 Monkeys in New Haven, teaching yoga to foster children, set in motion a career in psychology and move to California.

As a grad student Jason’s research focused on the impact of social media use among mental health workers. Over the years in California, he worked for the City of San Francisco Department of Public Health, at the San Mateo Juvenile Court, and the California Superior Court of Alameda County. Jason specialized in crisis assessment as well as individual and family therapy, with an emphasis on trauma treatment of children and adolescents. His clinical training was focused on the integration of evidence-based treatments such as Trauma-Focused CBT and dynamic therapy.

Dr. Buening earned his PsyD from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. While in school he worked as a Guardian Ad Litem for youth with disabilities, a substance counselor for the San Francisco County Jail, interned at a community clinic in Oakland, as well as for the San Francisco Mobile Crisis Team and in psychological assessment for San Francisco County Foster Care. He moved back east to complete an APA accredited clinical internship at the New York City Children’s Center, Queens, then served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stony Brook University’s Krasner Psychological Center-Mind Body Clinic Research Center Consortium Program. In New York, he treated children and adolescents both at the state hospital in-patient unit and later in a Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP). During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a milieu counselor for hospital staff at Stony Brook University Hospital in Long Island.

Reflecting on this journey, Jason has seen that as circumstances reach a critical point, they often simultaneously reach a turning point where genuine healing and insight occur. In crisis people regularly summon remarkable resilience and poise, similar to the strength demonstrated by the most inspiring trees and natural formations comprising the National Parks.