About Chaz Ripley
a licensed counselor in Athens, GA
I'm an Athenian - born and raised here, and still here by choice. I got my undergraduate degree in marketing from the University of Georgia, a path I never really ended up using. Before I was a counselor, I had a background in education, along with years working in the nonprofit sector. Both of those chapters taught me something that still shapes how I work today: real change rarely comes from telling someone what to do. It comes from showing up consistently, meeting people where they actually are, and believing they're capable of more than the moment they're in might suggest. That belief is what eventually led me to counseling — and it's still the thing underneath everything I do in the room.
My Approach
At the core, I'm a person-centered therapist. I believe you already have what you need inside you to figure out the change that's right for you — and to make it. My job isn't to hand you an answer from outside; it's to help create the kind of space where that capacity can actually show up.
That said, there are a handful of other frameworks I find myself returning to, when they help a client find their next step:
Narrative Therapy - For when a problem has started to feel like your whole identity. This lens helps separate you from the problem, so you can find the story underneath the one you've been telling yourself.
IFS (Internal Family Systems) - For when part of you wants one thing and another part wants something else entirely. This gives us a way to make sense of that tug-of-war instead of fighting it.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) - For when a specific pattern of thought is feeding the problem. Naming it clearly is often the first step toward changing it.
Existential Thinking - I enjoy sitting with the bigger questions life brings up - meaning, freedom, mortality - as things worth exploring together, not problems to be solved.
ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy) - For building the room to hold hard feelings without needing to get rid of them first, so you can keep moving toward what actually matters to you.
Logotherapy - Developed by Viktor Frankl, logotherapy holds that our deepest drive is the search for meaning - and that meaning can be found even in the middle of suffering. When the question isn't "how do I fix this" but "what does this mean, and where do I go from here," this is often where we land.
How This Actually Works
I think of the beginning of therapy like dumping out a puzzle box and starting to piece the picture together — with you, not for you. Before we try anything else, we need a shared, accurate picture of what's actually going on. Once you feel like we've gotten that picture right, we start pulling levers: trying different approaches to see what actually helps.
This is a collaboration, start to finish. We're working together to figure out what's actually helping — you're not just receiving treatment, you're an active partner in evaluating it. We try something, and together we notice what shifts and what doesn't. If it isn't working, that's not a failure, it's information — and it means we work together to find what will.
That's really the honest reason I lean on several theoretical models instead of just one. I'm deeply curious about my clients, and different people connect with different ways of understanding their own experience — some people click with narrative language, some with IFS's language of internal "parts," some just want something concrete like CBT. My job isn't to apply my favorite model to everyone who walks in. It's to stay curious enough about you specifically to find the lever that actually moves something.
Credentials & Training
Licensed Counselor in Athens, GA
I'm a licensed counselor in Athens, GA, practicing as an Associate Professional Counselor (APC010056) under the supervision of Joseph Bucha, as required by Georgia licensure. I hold a Master's in Mental Health Counseling from the University of the Cumberlands.