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About Dr. Robin Barre

I've spent my life learning what helps people understand each other.

I'm Dr. Robin Barre, a depth psychotherapist, IFS consultant, and lifelong teacher. For almost 30 years I've worked with teenagers, families, and the people who care for them, learning what helps us understand one another and stay in relationship when it gets hard. Today that work reaches parents, therapists, educators, and organizations, and anyone ready to do their own inner work.

I've also learned this work from the inside. Like anyone, I've had relationships in my own life that needed repair, including with my own adult son, and I've had to practice what I teach. It is never too late, and no one is too far gone.

My story

I started as a teacher. I earned my teaching degree at Antioch University Seattle and taught middle school, alternative high school for unhoused youth, homeschoolers, and university students. I loved it. But it was my middle school students who changed the course of my life. One student in particular, whose circumstances broke my heart wide open, showed me that the young people in front of me needed more than a good lesson plan. They needed to be understood. That set me on the path to becoming a trauma therapist.

I became the education director and teacher for street-involved youth in downtown Seattle, work that deepened my devotion to adolescents. I served as a school-based mental health counselor for Island County, supporting students from kindergarten through twelfth grade and coordinating care across families, schools, the courts, child protective services, and community agencies. Along the way I saw, up close, how hard it is for parents, caregivers, and organizations to show up well for the teenagers they love and serve. So I began building the tools I wished we all had. That work became The Shiftless Wanderer.

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Open Notebook Outdoors

What I believe

It is the most transformative crossing we make, along with  birth and death, and it deserves our respect, not our fear.

Adolescence is sacred.

Being seen, heard, and accepted is where real change begins.

Everyone deserves to feel validated.

I meet each person and each of their inner parts with curiosity and compassion.

People are not problems to fix.

Healthy communication ripples out from one person to a family, a classroom, and a whole community.

Change happens in relationship.

The adolescent in each of us still has something to teach. I honor mine as much as yours.

We never stop becoming.

I work to build validating ecologies: families, classrooms, teams, and organizations.

We grow inside healthy systems, not in isolation.

How I work

My work is grounded in Internal Family Systems (IFS), where I hold Level 3 certification and serve as an IFS-Institute approved consultant, alongside depth and archetypal psychology. Beneath the methods are four tools I return to in everything I teach:
 

  • The process and practice of validation

  • Compassionate curiosity

  • Love and courage as antidotes to fear

  • Understanding the essential nature of adolescence
     

What makes my approach different is that I treat adolescence as a mystery to enter, not a problem to solve. I bring an educator's practicality and a depth psychologist's reverence, because each profession keeps informing the other.

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Background and credentials

  • PhD, Depth Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute (2015)

  • MA, Depth Psychology

  • MA, Counseling Psychology

  • Teaching degree, Antioch University Seattle

  • Level 3 certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist

  • IFS-Institute approved clinical consultant

  • Nearly 30 years with adolescents across classrooms, schools, agencies, and private practice

  • Private psychotherapy practice specializing in adolescent issues and complex trauma

  • Has presented at conferences internationally

Wherever you are in this work, there's a place to begin.
 

  • Parents and families — coaching and courses for the relationships closest to home

  • Therapists and practitioners — IFS consultation and clinical supervision

  • Educators and youth workers — practical courses and free tools

  • Schools and organizations — training and consultation for the teams who serve teens

  • Anyone doing their own inner work — start with the blog or a validation course

Who I work with

Succulent Leaves

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