Hypolite Edition

Counseling & Consulting LLC

Counseling for Introvert Attorney & Professional Women in Florida, Georgia, & Utah

Counseling for the skeptic: Tired of looking at yourself in the mirror?

You manage lots of conflict at work, except the tension in your soul remains unseen and betrayed.

Every. Morning. It’s. Total. Dread.

Looking pleasant, social, and smart is exhausting. You posture yourself to impress people. Hoping they will care about who you are and why you're not an idiot.

You can’t tell who’s your friend or who’s your enemy.

It all depends on what they want from you. You’re incredibly unhappy. You’ve spent your money on drinks and dating no one who sticks beyond three months.

You signed up for a monthly spa experience promising relaxation and improved mental health. Eight unused treatments later your money is wasted.

You’re in the same place with ten hour days as far as the eye can see.

Work takes over your life. Life. The thing that was supposed to be filled with joy and happiness has you navigating pain.

You’ve tried dating apps for casual dating, because frankly that’s all you have the mental energy for. You figured it would teach you what you like.

The weight of trying to figure it all out isn’t something you wanted to do on your own.

You’ve gone on girls trips to Aruba and Venice thinking ‘it’s cheaper than therapy.’

Yet, after seeing the cave drawings and colosseum the weight of your checked bag is lightweight compared to what you’re going home to.

Money is something your family wanted you to have because they thought it would make your life easier.

You wouldn’t have to suffer or work all the time the way your parents did.

Now you have it, yet you’re unhappy.

Let’s talk about faking status.

You overspend on upscale restaurants, drinks, and Tory Burch tote bags to look like you’re doing well. Trying to look like you know more than you do.

You live in an affluent area and often compare yourself to who’s getting married or is pregnant again to make sure you don’t fall behind.

The pressure not to fail or look weak is front and center in your mind. Taking on the problems of your girlfriends keeps you [and them] thinking you're competent.

‘What do you have to complain about?’ was the response you got from your family when you accounted for the pressure weighing you down.

You want to stop.

You need to show up for yourself.

Do you see it? The new vision of you. ‘It’s not bad to be myself around other people. Trusting my gut is easier.

I give myself grace for my shortcomings with no judgment. I know who I am when I look in the mirror.’

Your ambition and loneliness both walk a tightrope.

Sitting in the presence of your achievements is like a meal wrapped up in the fridge that you no longer have an appetite for.

You had one goal, to have JD behind your name, and you feel like a fraud because it may all just fall apart.

You’ve been thinking about therapy for a while now, but never went through with it.

Therapy With Me Is A Place Where You...

Therapy With Me Is Not A Place Where You...

• Learn to have hard conversations
  

• Focus on everyone else
  

• Strengthen your voice
  

• Grow your internal sense of calm
  

• Improve your self-confidence
  

• Vent about everything going wrong
  

• Try to impress me
  

• Avoid discomfort
  

Before therapy you’re all over the place.

Your black hazel pointed toe pumps from Nordstrom you place at the door. You grab your black Louis Vuitton OnTHeGo MM handbag.

The message? You’re just as good. Equal even. You’ve worked twice as hard, while everyone else has it easy and seems to know their stuff.

On your drive to work you smile to yourself. Organized and in control. You check yourself in the visor mirror.

Sculpted, filled in brows with a matte complexion equals polished, all to distract looks from the lines under your eyes. [Monday is a source of pride for you in an odd way because you're a professional and you look good.]

The work you planned to do on the weekend you try not to think about because you didn’t get it done. Sigh. Working through the weekends, again.

Your parents are proud and your friends are envious. You’re around smart and competitive folks.

Yet, you’re slowly unraveling from the inside. Achieving and achieving to get the life you were sold.

Resigned hopefulness.

Your place is neat and it looks great, however, chaos outside of you would be too much.

You like the prestige of seemingly having it all, yet in the words of India Arie ‘you’d be starving if you ate all the lies they fed’ and here you are. Starving.

Therapy be like.

It’s hard to make eye contact, so you look away at your bonnet, out the window, anything to create further distance from looking at your life with the magnifying glass of another person and therapy.

You were programmed to think you’re an ‘other.’

You say, “I’m busy with work. On my days off, I run errands. I know. I should be doing more self-care. I’m going and going, which is why I’m here.

I just need better organization and time management skills.”

“I’m not supposed to feel stressed. I’ve thought about going to therapy for a year now and things always got better —until they got worse.”

“Therapy is not about me asking questions, it’s about you determining whether you’re living the life you want to live and being the person you want to be.”

[Lost in thought, you think about how you’re used to knowing all the answers. You research often for work. You’re not the type to mess things up or appear like a mess.]

“I thought you’d just give me a tool and then everything in my life would make sense and fall into place.”

Silence.

Therapy with me is a collaborative effort. The issue isn’t you; the issue rests in the patterns of behavior you’ve developed and the styles of thinking that have made the patterns helpful to you.

“I am here to be in the unknown with you. You might call it fun. You’ll find yourself wanting to take notes and look at yourself in the mirror.” You look at me quizzically.

You’re relieved, yet your heart beats faster. You're not in this alone. You want to keep coming, that part is clear.

The difference. Counseling with me.

You smile widely and pull out the black dress that flatters your body just right..

You imagine wearing it with your collarless blazer in ivory whisper and try it on to gaze at yourself in the mirror.

Your interaction with the mirror is now one of curiosity.

The meal [life before counseling] prepared for you before was more of a palette teaser. The preservative, syrupy feel on your tongue, although flavorful, confused you.

It doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Before, you showed up apart from your emotional experience, because it felt safer. Now, you show up with your feels and you don’t fall apart.

You accept your feelings understanding that they were there all along to stimulate your palate and are no longer like the onions you despised.

Counseling was a table set for a greater understanding of you. You learned to practice being a more refined you.

Sophisticated. Classic even.

You respect the outlier in you.

You’re more present. You no longer salivate when looking at other people’s plates.

Focusing on others, carrying tension, while the essence of life is drained in silent suffering is no longer your truth.

This is one relationship where you don’t have to be the strong one.

Before Counseling

• You were afraid of being rejected.
  

• You were empty and felt like a fraud.
  

• You disregard your wants and needs.
  

• You were afraid of not being good enough.
  

• You struggle when others don't understand you.
  

• You invested so much time doing what others wanted of you.
  

• You second guess yourself and look for approval from others.
  

• You dreamed of being yourself and having hobbies you have time for.
  

After Counseling

• You realize you are not second hand and neither is your past.
  

• You stop downplaying who you are to make others comfortable.
  

• You commit to yourself and grow stronger in the unfamiliar.
  

• You are curious about what your body is saying and how to respond.
  

• You are clear about your values and know how to restore your thoughts.
  

• You grow in gentle love of how your body has protected and supported you.
  

• You are no longer at war with yourself and are the master of your wardrobe.
  

I’m Rachel, licensed mental health counselor, thinker, researcher of people, and writer at heart.

Relationally you will experience me as a brown skinned woman who is calm and insightful.

I teach how to look at your body with appreciation and genuine care.

I provide underlying context to your physical experience to bring understanding. I untangle the differences between your heavy obligations and desires.

My training is trauma-informed, which means I hold the unspoken along with the seen.

I rock with the random curiosities of your mind in addition to the structure that comes with your internal genius.

People relate to you as they think you are instead of who you are.

For me, it felt as if the work would never end.

My choices revolved around 'do I eat, sleep, or work?' I worked on the weekends with tears coming down my face because it's what I thought I had to do.

Working after dinner when I wished I could crawl into bed and be hugged by the cool darkness.

If only you knew that you could eat, sleep, and work without one interfering with the other.

I worked for years as if in a striped oversized long blazer from Ann Taylor. I know what it feels like to be swallowed up in clothes that don't fit, yet wear them because other people said it looked nice.

The truth was that when I looked at myself in the mirror, I could barely see myself.

My work had me feeling matte, paralyzed, and willfully ignorant at what me, a brown skinned woman was capable of.

I said good-bye to the hidden tears making themselves known between periods in my story.

I've been there. I am with you in the suspension between your past and your future as one sentence ends and the other has yet to begin.

I was tired all the time. I didn't have the energy to play with my nieces who needed me to show up for them.

My young nieces would grab their toy computers just to sit next to me and play as if they were working. That's when it hit me. What I was doing to them. What I was doing to myself.

I needed a practical and fresh approach to take care of my needs while being enough.

I wasn't satisfied with the life I had. It felt as if the stories I was told about being successful were all a lie.

As much as I worked hard my life didn't show it. It felt like a carrot being dangled in front of me, yet placed far enough to where I can't reach it.

Every must-have I did not have. I was dissatisfied.

The structure of my life like a Jenga tower was coming down. I had to change the meaning and assembly of my life.

I discovered the basics and embraced the daydream I really wanted. I gave myself points for every difficult step I took reminding myself that to heal inwardly is to progress outwardly.

I see you. Yearning in unmatched potential.

You too, are brilliant.

I work from a trauma and parts informed adlerian view.

You can continue to drown out your needs and desires, lie to yourself about why you stay busy doing things for others, and live in internal disarray at the brink of falling apart. It's up to you.

Who Is Ready

• You plan to commit to weekly therapy.
  

• You want to make a financial investment in yourself and create budget for it.
  

• Your ready to take action and make change happen.
  

• You want to work through when things get uncomfortably hard.
  

Who Isn't Ready

• You prefer sessons every other week/once a month whenever you feel like it.
  

• You make financial investments in everything else, but yourself.
  

• You are waiting for deliverence from someone other than yourself.
  

• You are ready to ghost, run, or split when things get uncomfortably hard.
  

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you accept health insurance? I am considered an out of network provider. Your mental health is your own, not a part of you that your insurance company regulates.

What is the investment? $300 for 50 minutes. A credit/debit card stays on file and is charged at the beginning of each session.

Do you offer superbills? Superbills require a diagnosis and every concern will not qualify for a diagnosis, so I do not provide superbills. I see every individual is a whole whether or not there is an appropriate diagnosis and not as a issue to be fixed.

How long will I need to be in counseling? As long as you want to be. Our bodies are pretty cool. As you learn about yourself other things are revealed as you're ready.

What is your cancellation policy? You have a time dedicated just for you every week and you are charged for that time whether you choose to attend or not. If you need to reschedule your session, you must give 48-hours notice, otherwise, you are responsible for your full session fee.

What if I’m not hurting that much/don’t have a diagnosis/haven’t experienced anything huge, do I still need counseling? If it’s on your mind, then it’s worth creating space for. It’s a misconception that you must be ‘down and out’ to make counseling a consistent part of your life. Growth happens when you decide to stop dismissing what’s inside of you. So yes. If it matters to you, then it matters to me.

Counseling for Introvert Attorney & Professional Women in Florida, Georgia, & Utah

Hypolite Edition

Counseling & Consulting LLC

This website is for educational and/or informational purposes only and is not intended to provide or be a substitute for professional services. Use of this website does not constitute a therapeutic relationship.

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