You do not have to translate the class you came from for the person across from you.

A lot of first-gen students and class-straddling adults will not walk into a general therapy office. They have seen what happens when a clinician treats class like a paycheck, needs a lecture on what “first in the family” actually means, or hears direct talk and calls it resistance. Blue Collar Shrink is the other door — same clinician, built for people with blue-collar roots in a white-collar world.

I am David Glick, a licensed clinical social worker in Georgia and North Carolina. Therapy with me is an action-oriented process. The ideal client is someone who is ready for something to actually change and willing to do the work between sessions. I am here to help you do it — not to keep you comfortable in the same place for years.

I also offer coaching nationwide for people who want practical, class-aware work without a clinical frame, and I speak at campuses, workplaces, and conferences on first-gen identity and class mobility. Coaching is not a substitute for licensed therapy when clinical care is what you need.

Over nearly three decades I have worked with first-generation college students, working-class families, and adults who made it into professional rooms and still do not feel at home in them. I teach other clinicians how social class shows up in therapy — the codes, the shame, the impostor feeling, the family loyalty that does not clock out when you get the degree. The work is confidential.

What I want is straightforward: you leave with a clearer head, language for the split you have been living, and a life that is not only performing belonging. The room is a safe place to be honest. Once trust is there, the therapy is adaptable — whatever the situation turns into.