Coming Home to Spokane: Building Catalyst’s Next Community

When my phone started giving off alarms, I was standing in my brand-new home in Spokane, surrounded by boxes.

We had just moved. I was still figuring out where things belonged, learning my new neighborhood, and beginning the strange process of turning an unfamiliar house into home. And suddenly, my phone was sounding alerts.

My family and I were not directly impacted. We were safe. But many people in the Spokane community were not, and I know this community is hurting.

It was a sobering way to arrive in a new city—and a reminder that becoming part of a community means more than simply having an address there.

Why Spokane?

I’m Katherine Walter, the founder and Clinical Director of Catalyst Counseling. I founded Catalyst more than a decade ago in the Woodinville area, and in January 2027, we will be opening our second location here in Spokane.

On a personal level, this move brings me closer to family. Professionally, it gives us an opportunity to bring something we care deeply about to Eastern Washington: accessible, culturally responsive mental health care alongside thoughtful training for the next generation of therapists.

Catalyst is built around what we sometimes call a teaching hospital model for therapy. We are a working counseling practice, but we are also a place where interns and newly graduated therapists learn their craft. Experienced clinicians teach, supervise, mentor, demonstrate, observe, and sometimes work alongside developing therapists as they learn how to do this extraordinarily complex work well.

We believe our profession gets stronger when experienced therapists invest deeply in the people coming behind them.

The Community We’re Bringing With Us

Although our Spokane office is new, Catalyst is not.

Our therapists bring a wide range of clinical specialties, lived experiences, cultures, languages, and therapeutic perspectives to our work. Our staff come from many countries of origin and collectively speak eight languages fluently.

We work with teens, adults, seniors, couples, and families, with particular depth in areas including neurodivergence and ADHD/Autism, trauma, anxiety, identity development, grief and loss, chronic illness, relationships, LGBTQIA+ affirming care, immigrant and multicultural experiences, and executive functioning.

We also work with many major insurance plans, including Medicare and select Medicaid plans, because we believe excellent therapy should not be reserved only for people who can afford to pay privately.

But the thing I most want to bring to Spokane isn't a list of specialties or services. It's an approach to the work.

At Catalyst, our ethics are grounded in the belief that the client gets to be the author of their own life. Our job as therapists is not to impose our values, beliefs, culture, or definition of a good life onto someone else. It is to learn how to meet each person within their own cultural framework and help them understand themselves, explore what matters to them, and work toward goals that are meaningful within the context of their own lives.

Therapy can be an unusual and powerful space: a place where someone can examine their beliefs, relationships, identities, fears, hopes, and values without having to arrive at someone else's predetermined answer.

We take the responsibility of creating that space very seriously.

Becoming Part of Spokane

I don't want Catalyst to simply open an office in Spokane. I want us to become part of the mental health community here.

That means listening first.

Over the coming months, I hope to meet therapists, physicians, educators, graduate programs, social workers, community organizations, and others who already understand this community far better than I do. I want to learn where there are gaps, where resources already exist, what Spokane clinicians are seeing in their practices, and where Catalyst might genuinely be useful.

And as this community responds to pain and disruption, we want to be thoughtful about how our therapists and our training program can contribute—not by arriving with assumptions about what Spokane needs, but by listening to the people who are already here.

Our permanent Spokane clinical and training space will be ready in January 2027, and we are currently accepting applications for both 12-month internships and 18-month practicum + internship placements in Spokane and Woodinville.

But right now, my first goal is simpler.

I'm here. I'm unpacking boxes. I'm learning my new community.

And I'd very much like to meet my new neighbors.

If you're a Spokane-area therapist, healthcare professional, educator, community leader, or someone else working to support the wellbeing of this community, I'd love to hear from you. Coffee is on me.

Katherine Walter

Founder & Clinical Director

Catalyst Counseling

katherine@catalystcounseling.net