Dan Schaefer, Ph.D.
Dr. Dan Schaefer has offered counseling/psychotherapy services to families in the Toledo area for over 30 years. He mostly works with adolescents and adults, occasionally seeing younger children as a part of family therapy.
Dan works extensively with couples of all ages who wish to connect with each other more deeply. Teaching couples how to work through conflict respectfully, no matter how intense, is one of his areas of expertise. He also helps men who wrestle with pornography, extra-marital affairs, shame, parenting difficulties, substance abuse and anger issues. Dan is familiar with the complexities of domestic violence and led batterers’ groups for men for over a decade. He has lectured on domestic violence at national conferences and authored a chapter entitled "Offering Violent Men Help" in the book Beyond Abuse in the Christian Home: Raising Voices for Change (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008).
If a person expresses religious commitments or beliefs, Dan will look for ways to bring those strengths to bear on the person’s difficulties. Dan is trained in EMDR; a method for dealing with troubling, symptom-producing memories, and routinely attends continuing education seminars in this area. (Read more about EMDR on our Homepage under “Services”).
Dan’s doctoral dissertation explored the subjects of shame and guilt and their connection with mental health difficulties. Dan found that feelings of shame were strongly connected to a host of mental health problems, whereas guilt feelings were associated with confession, apology, empathy and restitution.