Hochgesang Modern Therapy: Devoted to helping anyone with mental health struggles

Jasper native Luke Hochgesang recently opened Hochgesang Modern Therapy, a new practice devoted to helping individuals and their mental health needs.

The new practice is a big step for Hochgesang, a licensed mental health counselor who has worked in the field for several years.

Growing up in Dubois County, Hochgesang knew his career would be about helping people. It was as he recognized the impact mental health struggles have on all aspects of a person’s life that he realized how he wanted to help others.

“When I began to struggle with my own mental health in middle school, I really began to appreciate the weight that mental health had on our wellbeing,” he explained. “I began to notice my knack for counseling when I was in high school and my friends would start to come to me to talk about everything from feelings of depression to how to get a car unstuck from the snow and ice.”

After graduating from Jasper High School, Hochgesang took a circuitous route through his training, which included spending a year locally working in physically demanding jobs while attending VUJ to help clarify his vision.

“I have to give the highest amount of respect to those working physically demanding jobs because I couldn’t do it for more than a year,” he said.

But it also helped him understand he wanted to focus on helping people with mental struggles.

“I knew my purpose was to help people with their mental struggles, and the breadth of the positivity I have been able to have on people is a really good feeling,” Hochgesang said. “After that year, I returned to IU Bloomington, where I finished my remaining years giving the efforts I always knew I could.”

He then attended Indiana State University from 2019 to 2021 and graduated with a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. “COVID-19 wasn’t the only thing that made my time there challenging. I believe that the challenges I faced there–many of them crucial to growing up to be the person I still aspire to be–were some of the hardest in my life,” Hochgesang added.

He began his career as a traveling home-based therapist visiting clients in rural communities. He enjoyed the work and its flexibility but worked alone in areas with high mental health service demands. It was a heavy burden to bear. When an opportunity to return to Jasper and help in the school system he grew up in came available, he saw it as a great fit.

“When the opportunity arose for me to leave the traveling, home-based therapy to work in the public schools here in Jasper–the same schools with many of the same teachers that I had as a child–I felt it was the right time to make that switch,” Hochgesang said. “I began working as a school-based therapist for a local Jasper office, meaning I was employed by an organization, but my offices (four of them, in fact) were at Ireland, JES, JMS, and JHS.”

He enjoyed walking in the halls of his former schools, meeting students, and working with the teachers who helped form him as he grew up.

Unfortunately, that position ended after about a semester, and Hochgesang began working in a practice with clients of all ages. Though he missed the interactions with the students and staff at the school, the transition also allowed him to work with client populations and diagnoses that he wasn’t used to.

It also began to help him formulate a transition to his practice.

“I always knew I wanted to start my own private practice, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to do so before I turned 30,” he explained. “I felt that since the reasons that originally brought me back to Jasper were no longer present, it was an opportunity for me to jump on those ambitions and place myself in a position to continue to grow and challenge myself.“

Hochgesang Modern Therapy opened in December as a virtual office. Hochgesang meets with clients 13 years and older over video and offers 30- and 60-minute consultations for a myriad of issues, including anxiety, depression, trauma, anger management, substance abuse, obsessions/compulsions and relationship issues. Hochgesang also considers himself an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.

Opening as a virtual office involves plans to have a brick-and-mortar in Southern Indiana eventually. For now, the virtual aspect of the business allows him some flexibility as he grows his client base. Once a physical location becomes available to help clients who prefer person-to-person therapy, he expects to continue offering virtual sessions.

Hochgesang views his career as the perfect balance between consistency and deviation. “Our battles are all unique, but it amazes me how often I find the ideas and examples I discuss one day being just as relevant with a different client soon after,” Hochgesang explained.

In a profession that has evolved in theory and practice, he wants the public to understand that seeking therapeutic help no longer carries the stigmas it has in the past. And it isn’t about mahogany desks, leather couches and silent judgment (if it ever was).

“It has modernized to be a partnership between client and therapist that uses each person’s experiences and talents to create self-understanding and a pathway to inner peace rather than inner struggle,” he said

And, Hochgesang enjoys helping all his clients work through those inner struggles.

“I love seeing the efforts that people give in sessions; that dedication to better themself is an inspiration for me to make sure I am using all my tools to help them become the person they believe they can be,” Hochgesang said. “And I love the changes that I see in people in my time working with them; the growth in their self-worth and confidence and the impact that those have.”

He aims to help his clients address any hardships and traumas influencing their lives. Therapy may be the solution to overcoming those painful moments that still affect you today.

Hochgesang Modern Therapy can be found online at Hochgesangmoderntherapy.com, on Facebook here, or by phone at 812-260-1952.

“I consider myself lucky beyond measure to say that I have a career that I am extremely passionate about and am also quite good at; not everyone gets to work a job where both are true,” Hochgesang said. “Mental health struggles have left a permanent impact on my family, and I consider it my purpose to help as many people as I can address their own battles.”