After neurological injury
Stroke, TBI, changed abilities, uncertain recovery, and the question of who you are now.
Counseling through illness, injury, identity, and change
When life changes, your sense of self can change with it.
Sandhi Counseling supports people and their caregivers navigating life after stroke, traumatic brain injury, chronic or life-limiting illness, and other health-related transitions.
sandhi
A junction. A transition. A place where different parts of a life meet.
You may recognize this place
Life can feel divided into before and after.
A changing body or ability can unsettle identity and relationships.
Grief and gratitude can exist at the same time.
Caregivers and loved ones are also changed by what happened.
How I help
Room for the emotional work of living through change.
Health changes can reshape identity, relationships, work, independence, and expectations for the future. Counseling offers a place to understand what has changed without reducing you to a diagnosis.
Living with illness or disability
Chronic or life-limiting illness, acquired disability, grief, changing roles, and mortality.
Caregiving and relationship change
Caregiver strain, ambiguous loss, shifting responsibilities, and changed relationships.
Approach
A steady relationship that can hold complexity.
My approach is warm, collaborative, experiential, and trauma-informed. We can make room for difficult thoughts and emotions, notice how experience shows up in the body, and clarify the values that can guide your next steps.
I draw from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Existential and Gestalt therapies, and Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy. With these approaches, we can support exploration together rather than imposing a single definition of progress or reduction to a set of symptoms.
Counseling can complement medical care and rehabilitation. It does not replace them.
Andrew Nelson
Counseling Intern
About Andrew
Personal understanding, without assumptions.
I work with people experiencing life and identity changes related to stroke and traumatic brain injury, as well as those navigating chronic or life-limiting illness and other major health-related transitions. Together, we can make room for what has changed while exploring what remains meaningful and possible.
As a young stroke survivor, I bring personal understanding of the disorientation, grief, and identity change that can accompany neurological recovery, while respecting that every person's experience is their own. My hospice experience has also shaped how I accompany people living with uncertainty, caregiving, loss, and mortality.
I am completing my Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology at Bastyr University, expected in 2027, and provide counseling as an intern under clinical supervision at Inside Health Institute.
View my Inside Health Institute profileThe meaning of Sandhi
A meeting point between what was and what comes next.
Sandhi is a Sanskrit word associated with joining, connection, intersection, and transition. It can name a threshold between parts of a cycle: an area where one influence meets another without either disappearing immediately.
This sense of meeting and transition offers a helpful way to understand counseling through health-related change. Therapy can offer space for the past and present to remain in relationship while you discover what still matters.
For healthcare and community professionals
Emotional care alongside rehabilitation and medicine.
Sandhi's focus is the emotional, relational, and identity dimension of neurological injury, chronic and life-limiting illness, disability, and caregiving. Referrals and clinical coordination are handled through Inside Health Institute and follow its current consent and care processes.
Visit the IHI referrals pageWork with me
You can begin with a question.
If you are wondering whether we may be a good fit, Inside Health Institute's counseling team can help route your inquiry and explain current availability, rates, and next steps.
Counseling services are currently provided through Inside Health Institute under clinical supervision.