Q and A with Rashelle Reynolds, AMFT
Rashelle Reynolds is a pre-licensed marriage and family therapist with a bachelor's in psychology and a master's in marriage and family therapy. With over 10 years of experience, she specializes in anxiety, trauma, stress, grief, and relationships. She uses her skills and tools to assist clients seeking peace and internal joy, providing a warm, safe space for clients to be themselves. She believes in the importance of peace and security for everyone.
Let us delve deeper for an exclusive Q&A session into what Rashelle has to offer her clients.
1. What are the top benefits of seeing a therapist?
The top benefit of seeing a therapist is having a safe space with no judgment that allows you to be vulnerable with a professional who can help heal traumas or the struggles you’re currently facing. Having a therapist is not only good for mental and emotional health but also for physical and spiritual health. We often don’t allow ourselves the space to connect with our inner selves, and having a therapist allows us to do that and work out our issues.
2. What made you choose to work in the mental health field?
I chose to work in the mental health field because I believe that we were not placed on this earth to suffer. There is so much joy, love, and peace around us; unfortunately, different circumstances place us in a space where we forget those things. I have a passion for showing people ways to create or get back to a place of internal peace.
3. What inspired you to pursue a career in marriage and family therapy, particularly focusing on anxiety, trauma, stress, grief, and relationships?
Driven by my desire to make a positive impact on people's lives, I chose to specialize in marriage and family therapy. Understanding the family is the essence of everyone’s life, and many of the issues we struggle with are rooted in aspects of our families. Marriages are a representation of love and great dedication. Assisting couples and families with identifying the roots of their issues and collaborating on solutions to break those negative and unhealthy patterns is a service to the healing journey and gives individuals the ability to grow together with the people they cherish most.
When it comes to stress, anxiety, trauma, and depression, all those are rooted in relationships. Whether it is a relationship with oneself or other people, When we focus on healing our inner selves, we open the pathway to healing our relationships. Stress and anxiety are the two most common struggles for every human. I pursue knowledge and guidance on ways to introduce people to resources and tools that will allow them to begin to identify ways they can control how stress and anxiety manifest in their lives. We are not here to suffer, and I have a passion to help heal those who want to heal.
Grief is a topic that doesn’t get spoken about as much as it should. The COVID-19 pandemic shook the world, and everyone was immensely affected by grief since most people lost their loved ones in 2020. I lost my father during that time period and understood for the first time what grief really felt like. That experience allowed me to connect more with my clients in my therapeutic practice and open a pathway to begin to talk more openly and more vulnerably about grief. Grief is a healing journey on its own, and walking along with my clients on their healing journeys is honorable.
4. How has your experience working in various settings, such as residential facilities, outpatient clinics, and private practice, shaped your approach to therapy?
Working in these facilities allowed me to see the common pattern that I experienced people struggling with: negative perceptions. These settings allowed me to work with various types of people with different sets of struggles, including sexual abuse, trafficking, domestic violence, child abuse, mental health disorders, homelessness, violent offenders, families, traumas, and others. My approach to therapy is: perception is your reality; think positively; there is power in the tongue and breathing. These settings shaped my approach to beginning to use interventions such as deep breathing, mindfulness, and positive self-talk to create positive self-habits that will decrease the negative self-talk or pressures one puts on themselves.
5. Could you share some insights into your therapeutic philosophy and the tools and techniques you use to help clients on their healing journeys?
In my 10 years of practice, my therapeutic philosophy has been that your perception is your reality. Essentially, how you think will be the foundation of how you perceive reality. As a therapist, I collaborate with and challenge clients negative thoughts and perceptions of themselves or their circumstances and identify perceptions that either cause less stressful reactions or create a more positive outlook.
The tool I use to help clients on their healing journey is the practice of breathing. Breathing is a source of grounding. Increasing intentional awareness continues to feed that pathway to being more aware of our triggers and emotions, where we will be able to regulate in a healthier way. Breathing is the source of life, and practicing intentional deep breathing is a great way to reduce stress and anxiety.
Along with deep breathing, I use guided meditations in sessions where I lead clients in a deep breathing session, either guided by my voice or a recording. These guided meditations are used to introduce ways to begin to step out of anxiety-producing thoughts and into more pleasant and relaxing-producing thoughts.
In this therapeutic space, we also challenge negative self-perceptions. Negativity feeds depression and anxiety. Working on finding ways to allow oneself to feel and see the positives are ways to combat negativity.
6. Can you elaborate on how you integrate these values into your work with clients through valuing healing and internal joy?
We are all on a journey to heal. Healing is beautiful. Joy is the essence of life. It is something we all strive to feel. However, some things in our lives make us feel defeated and unworthy of feeling and experiencing joy. We are not here to suffer. We are here to experience all the good things of love, joy, and peace. If I have ways to let people experience those things, I am not a gatekeeper to peace; I am an embracer. When you begin to heal, you begin to love yourself more, and love is the key to healing all things.
7. In your experience, what are some common challenges clients face when dealing with anxiety, trauma, and relationship issues, and how do you guide them through these challenges?
The common challenges people face when dealing with anxiety, trauma, and relationship issues are mainly the internal blame they place on themselves for what they are going through. With a negative perception and constant negative self-talk, one is bound to continue experiencing negativity in everything. Shift your focus. Shift yourself. As a therapist, I guide clients to talk through what is causing them stress and anxiety. We talk about how it works and what it does to your mind and body. Once we understand the root, we do breathing exercises and other things to bring more intentional awareness to ourselves and be more aware of emotions and our reactions to them.
8. Creating a warm and safe space is important in therapy; could you explain how you cultivate this environment for your clients to feel comfortable and open?
Creating a warm and safe space is at the forefront of therapy. I provide this by being open and honest with my clients about the process. I bring my authentic self as a therapist, which helps clients connect more and feel safer being themselves and vulnerable. I use a soft and humorous approach in the therapy space. Humor is a great tool to help reduce stress and anxiety. Bringing humor into the therapy space creates that pathway to allowing joy in distressing situations. Laughing and breathing.
9. With over 10 years of experience, you've likely encountered a variety of client situations. Could you share a success story where a client overcame obstacles and achieved their most genuine potential with your guidance?
I had a client I worked with in the residential facilities who suffered from sexual abuse, self-harm, and suicidal ideations. As a counselor, it was my job to monitor the safety of the clients. Through my guidance and my approaches to healing—breathing and positive thinking—the client was able to use breathing during times of anxiety-inducing thoughts and thoughts where they desired to self-harm. Having positive thoughts allowed the client to be able to focus more on positive aspects of herself and her situations that did not validate the negative perception they had of themselves. They were able to have more confidence and cultivate a more positive perception of themselves and their lives. This client was more successful in her school work, so she applied to college and got in. Walking with clients on their healing journey and witnessing them achieve things they never thought they could serves its own reward.
10. What message or advice would you like to convey to individuals who may be struggling with anxiety, trauma, grief, or relationships and are considering seeking therapeutic support, especially this Suicide Prevention and Recovery Month?
A message I have for those struggling: You are not alone in your struggle. It is okay to not be okay; it is also okay to tell someone when you are not okay. In order to see the blessings of joy, you have to keep breathing and resist the temptation of depression. Fight for your peace and breathe it into your reality. Relax and release. Reveal the parts of you that oppress you from your truth and talk with a professional to help you recover from those hurts and pains. We are not here to suffer, but to live in abundant peace and security. Allow yourself to love yourself.