More on Rachel
“I intimately understand what it’s like to walk into a room and be faced with the challenge of being vulnerable to others who I don’t quite know. My priority in sessions is to build a sense of safety and openness with my clients, to let them know that I get it, and I’m here for them. ” - Rachel
The story.
Like so many of us, my story is a bit of a complicated one, and it took me quite a bit of time to realize that my calling is in the helping profession, to see and be seen by others. I was born in Houston and Houston is still my favorite place to call home, but I spent quite a bit of my childhood moving around and adjusting to different environments (I would need both hands to count all of the moves!). The good news is this made me pretty extroverted and comfortable with almost any person I could possibly meet. As a therapist, it means I intimately understand what it’s like to walk into a room and be faced with the challenge of being vulnerable to others who I don’t quite know. My priority in sessions is to build a sense of safety and openness with my clients, to let them know that I get it, and I’m here for them.
With all of the moving and trying new things, it does mean that I have tried on a lot of different hats before finding therapy as my calling. My bachelor’s degree is actually in civil engineering, and I spent much of my twenties in jobs outside of the realm of psychotherapy! I know what it’s like to have a job that just doesn’t feel quite right, to know that I was meant for something more, and to, frankly, have no idea how to get there. I have been on both sides of the couch in a therapy room, and I have worked on deeply exploring all parts of me and taking risks to find out what makes me feel like the best version of myself. My job now is to help my clients like you find that same good stuff. We all deserve to feel a sense of safety as we pursue our highest selves, and I am so honored that I can help others along their journey.
My training.
I received my Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and after a few directional changes, I then received my Master’s in Counseling from Houston Baptist University. During my time in my graduate program, I received training in both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a focus on behavioral changes and cognitive restructuring, meaning I have a lot of training in helping you make change in the way you think, relate to your thoughts, and engage in behaviors that help you move forward in a way that feels grounded in logic and aligned with your values.
Within both my graduate training background and field work as a therapist, I have worked extensively with helping people manage and navigate big, overwhelming feelings with backgrounds from a variety of cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Much of my clinical training has been in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). In fact, I worked for the Houston DBT Center in a variety of settings, including their Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), outpatient groups for both adults and teens, and individual DBT therapy. I have received additional clinical training from Dr. Thomas Lynch in Radically Open DBT, which focuses on clients struggling with overcontrolled personalities with rigid and perfectionist tendencies. I have a strong background in working with clients struggling with mood disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders, and OCD.
While I have a strong theoretical background in behavioral therapy, I also love to incorporate humanistic and person-centered theory in my work. Much of my work comes from the basis that each of my client’s has their own set of values and beliefs that they structure their life around, and my goal is to help clients live value-aligned lifestyles that play to their strengths and fully reflect their own inner-selves. I love to do therapy that incorporates mental, emotional, and physical work and celebrates the mind-body-soul connection.
My commitment.
The most important part of my work is the understanding that I am 100% committed to my clients, full stop. Being in a therapy room takes a lot of courage, and I want to honor the bravery my clients show by being fully present with whatever they bring to the table. At heart, therapy is about connection, and I am here to connect with you, to see you, to hear you. Life is a wonderful, messy, sometimes painful, always changing thing, and I am here to sit with you through both the beautiful and the ugly parts of it.