Dr. Nicole Walton

Find the pattern underneath the thing that actually brought you in, and then build something that holds up on a hard week rather than only in the room. I ask a lot of questions. I will gently help you identify the things everyone around you has been carefully stepping around. You do not need the right words to start, or a tidy version of the story.

Warm, and a great deal more accepting and harder to shock than they expected. I will laugh at your awkward jokes. People tell me I am honest in a way that feels kind and understanding, rather than blunt, and that I'm able to connect the small things at the exact moments they turn out to matter. That is most of the job.

Cannot get their brain to stop. Worry that runs all night, rituals that eat the morning, attention that will not land where it is needed, a mood that flattens everything. Also parents in a hard season, couples stuck inside one argument, people carrying a loss they cannot set down, and anyone whose harshest critic lives in their own head.

I started in crisis work and children's hospitals, and I helped open an inpatient unit from nothing. What I learned there is that people are far less fragile than they have been led to fear. I wanted the slower version of that work: the same person, across enough time to watch something change and then keep on holding.

I own NGU Wellness, with offices in Dayton and Rocky River and telehealth throughout Ohio. I hold both a social work and a counseling license, which few clinicians in this state do, plus a doctorate in counselor education and supervision. I also supervise and teach, so I spend my week arguing about this work in the best ways.