greg@gregwarburton.com (541) 971-9810

About Greg Warburton

Greg Warburton

After 20 years as a successful mental health counselor for kids, teens and parents, Greg founded INNER LIBERTY, INC. in January,2006 to be free to provide innovative and leading edge counseling and consulting services. His overarching focus is on assisting youth with achieving the inner-freedom confidence that goes with becoming a self-reliant person; to teach young people how to build the confidence to handle life on their own.

The primary focus is on mental and emotional self-management skills that aren’t taught in school, and are rarely taught at home. Greg is weaving curriculum content from many years of teaching his college course, Eliminate Self-Defeating Behavior into his teaching and his writing. The core content and practices that he is teaching to assist youth with becoming skilled mental/emotional self-managers are quick, practical and effective. Greg is providing the “how to” component for all who have been advised to learn to be mentally and emotionally strong if they want to be successful in life.

Regarding my sense of Greg as a professional, I see him as a dedicated innovator. Not content to simply sit back and take the easy route, Greg is always looking for more effective tools and techniques, to empower those he works with to be the instrument of their own healing and change. At the same time, he ‘does his homework.’ He is well aware of the research base behind the techniques he employs and is well-versed in the theoretical underpinnings of counseling, family systems and the change process.

In regard to my sense of Greg’s ethical awareness and ability to integrate ethical principles into his practice, I would have to say that this is perhaps the most striking feature of his work. Most counseling professionals seem to view ‘ethical principle’ as simply a set of rules they follow to ‘keep out of trouble.’ For Greg, it is clear that ethical principles are what drive, inform and motivate what he does and how he does it. More than any other professional I have encountered in the past 30 years, Greg’s ethical principles are ‘instantly obvious up front.’ They guide not only what he does but even the language he uses in talking to people.
Michael L. Myers, PhD, Clinical Psychology

Greg wants it known he is a practitioner who has direct, real-life experience with the material and methods he teaches. Greg has been a very successful innovator in his mental health work. He is known for taking complex issues and teaching simple, practical and effective methods to address the issues. Greg knows, throughout his career, that his successful introduction of innovative methods has been rooted in quick and positive results. Greg holds an unshakable belief that the young people he works with are the experts in their lives; he simply effectively “sets the stage” for them to become self-motivated about taking charge of their own lives—ultimately building the inner confidence of self-reliance.

After college graduation in 1974, during the next 5 years, Greg experienced the deaths of two grandmothers and both of his parents. Then in 1979, Greg experienced a life-threatening and life-altering moment when he was in a motorcycle-car wreck where he was riding the motorcycle and did lose his right leg below the knee. As with all positive and determined people, of which Greg is one, he never looked back. He remembers, though at age 27 is uncertain how he knew, asking one critical question, “What do I have to do now to live a productive life?” He began his recuperation, following the motorcycle-car wreck in 1979, by volunteering at a boy’s ranch for teens in trouble. He came to be viewed as a “natural” with kids and went on to get his master’s degree in Counseling at Oregon State University in 1984. He has been working as an innovative, on-the-leading-edge mental health practitioner ever since.