(she/her)
New to Grow
My name is LaToya and I am a Licensed Professional Counselor based in Houston, TX . I work with adults who are ready to do the deep, honest work of healing, people who have spent years feeling like they were not enough, shrinking themselves to keep the peace, and carrying wounds from childhood that were never theirs to carry in the first place. I also work with parents who are ready to break generational patterns. Not because they were bad parents, but because they are brave enough to become better than their own. My approach is warm, direct, and deeply collaborative. I will meet you with compassion and zero judgment, and I will also gently challenge you when the work calls for it. I believe healing is not something I do to you, but it is something we build together, at a pace that honors both your courage and your complexity. I am trained in ACT, CBT, CPT, DBT, EMDR, Nurturing Parenting, and Prepare/Enrich. Each allows me to tailor my approach to the unique person sitting in front of me. What drives me to this work is both personal and professional. I understand, from the inside out, what it means to carry more than you should and to wonder if things can ever really change. They can. I have seen it and I am honored every time someone trusts me to be part of their journey. If you are tired of surviving and ready to start living as your most worthy self, I would be honored to walk that path with you.
Starting therapy for the first time or with a new therapist takes real courage. You may feel nervous, unsure of what to say, or worried about being judged. I want you to know that whatever you bring into that first session is exactly right. There is no wrong way to begin. Before we dive into your story, I will take a few minutes to make sure you feel oriented and comfortable. I will explain how our sessions work, talk through confidentiality and its limits, and answer any questions you have about the process. My goal is for you to feel informed and at ease. From there, I will invite you to share what brought you in today. You do not need to have a perfectly organized explanation. You can start anywhere. You may choose what is happening right now, with something from your past, or simply with the feeling that brought you to this moment. I will listen carefully, ask questions that help us both understand the fuller picture, and reflect back what I am hearing so you feel truly seen. I am paying attention to how you carry your story and the words you use. The things you say quickly versus the things you hesitate around. What lights you up and what quietly dims you. All of that matters. We will begin to explore what you are hoping from therapy to identify what life can look like when things feel better? What would it mean to wake up and not feel the weight you have been carrying? What have you tried before and what has or has not worked? Your answers shape everything about how we move forward together. By the end of our second session, you will have a beginning sense of what our work together might look like, the areas we will explore, the approaches I may draw from, and the pace that feels right for you. I will share my initial thoughts openly, because I believe you deserve to understand the process you are stepping into. Sessions are typically 50 to 60 minutes. I offer both in-person and telehealth options, so we can find what works best for your life and schedule. No preparation is needed to get started. Your authentic self is what I need. Please come willing to believe in change and honest about our process. Therapy is not a quick fix and I will never promise you one. But it is one of the most powerful investments you can make in yourself, your relationships, and the life you want to live. I am glad you are here.
To be honest, there are many skilled therapists in Texas, let alone Houston. What I want you to understand is not just what I do, but how I do it and why that difference matters for the people I work with. I work at the intersection of two truths that most people in my client population carry simultaneously; you are deeply capable of change and you have been shaped by experiences that made change feel impossible. My entire approach is built to honor both of those truths at once. I treat the root, not just the symptoms. Many people come to therapy after years of managing their anxiety, pushing through depression, cycling through the same relationship patterns, and wondering why nothing changes. I do not just help you manage what is on the surface. We go to where it started. The childhood home. The parent who was absent, critical, unpredictable, or simply too consumed by their own pain to see yours. The messages you absorbed before you had the language to question them. That is where real healing lives. I blend evidence-based methods with deep human attunement. I am trained in ACT, CBT, CPT, DBT, and EMDR. These are not used as a checklist, but as a living toolkit I draw from based on what you need in any given moment. Some sessions will be structured and skill-focused. Others will be slower, more exploratory, more about sitting with something difficult long enough to understand it. I read the room, and I read you. The method always serves the person and never the other way around. I hold both warmth and directness. I will sit with you in your pain without trying to rush you through it. And when you are ready or when I sense you are holding yourself back from being ready, I will gently and honestly name what I am seeing. My clients often tell me that feeling both deeply heard and respectfully challenged in the same session is what makes the work feel different from anything they have experienced before. I understand the particular weight of being a high-functioning person in pain. Many of my adult clients look fine from the outside. They hold down jobs, maintain relationships, show up for everyone around them, but inside, they feel like they are failing at being themselves and are exhausted by the performance of wearing multiple masks. I specialize in working with people who have become very good at surviving and who are now ready to learn what it means to actually thrive. I take a generational view of healing. The wounds my clients carry rarely started with them. They were inherited. Passed down through parents who were also hurting, also unequipped, also doing the best they could with what they had. Understanding that context does not excuse harm. But it transforms the work from blame to liberation. When my clients begin to see the full picture of where their beliefs about themselves came from, something powerful shifts. They start being the person who ends the cycle. I meet you where you are and I believe in where you are going. I will never pathologize your coping strategies or make you feel broken for the ways you learned to survive. Everything you did to get here made sense at the time. Our work is simply about building new options that serve the life you are trying to live now, not the one you were trying to survive in then. The results my clients experience include quieting the inner critic that has narrated their life for decades, setting boundaries without guilt or collapse, building relationships that feel safe and reciprocal, parenting from a place of intention rather than repetition, and waking up with a sense of self that feels grounded, worthy, and genuinely their own. That is what this work can do. This is what I show up every session to help make possible.
I am best positioned to serve adults who are done pretending they are fine. My ideal clients are people who have spent years being the strong one, the peacekeeper, the people-pleaser, the one who holds everything together while quietly falling apart inside. They are high-functioning on the outside and exhausted on the inside. They do not always know exactly what happened to them, but they know that something in their childhood shaped them in ways they are still living with today. They may struggle with chronic self-doubt, an inner critic that never quiets, difficulty trusting others, relationships that follow the same painful patterns, or a persistent feeling that they are not quite enough, no matter how much they achieve or give. They are ready and willing. Willing to be honest about what is not working. Willing to look at where it came from. Willing to feel uncomfortable in the service of something better. I also serve parents who recognize themselves in this description and want to break the cycle, not because they have been bad parents, but because they love their children enough to do their own work first. If you are someone who has always known something needed to change but never quite believed you deserved the space to change it, this is your space. You deserve it. And I would be honored to do this work with you.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
CBT helps clients identify the thought patterns that fuel their emotional struggles. For adults carrying childhood wounds, those patterns often include deeply ingrained beliefs like “I am not enough,” “I have to earn love,” or “If I speak up, something bad will happen.” I use CBT to help clients catch these automatic thoughts, examine the evidence for and against them, and begin replacing them with more accurate, compassionate narratives. It is practical, structured, and gives clients concrete tools they can use between sessions.
EMDR
EMDR is one of the most powerful tools I use for processing trauma that is stored in the body and nervous system, not just in the conscious memory. Many of my clients have experiences that words alone cannot fully reach. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess distressing memories so they lose their emotional charge. Clients often describe EMDR as the moment something that has haunted them for years finally begins to feel like the past instead of the present. I approach EMDR with care, pacing, and deep attunement to each client’s readiness.
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
ACT invites clients to stop fighting their internal experience and start moving toward what truly matters to them. I use ACT when clients are stuck in cycles of avoidance, pushing away painful thoughts and feelings in ways that are keeping them small. Together we work on psychological flexibility to learn to hold difficult emotions without being controlled by them, clarifying personal values, and taking committed action toward the life they actually want. ACT is particularly powerful for my clients who have spent years trying to think or willpower their way out of pain.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
DBT is built on the foundational idea that two seemingly opposite things can both be true; you are doing the best you can, and you can do better. I draw from DBT’s four core skill areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness to help clients heal. DBT is especially helpful for clients who experience intense emotional responses, struggle with people-pleasing and boundary-setting, or find themselves in relational patterns that feel impossible to break. The skills are practical, teachable, and life-changing when practiced consistently.
Cognitive Processing (CPT)
CPT was originally developed for trauma and is particularly effective for clients whose past experiences have left them with distorted beliefs about safety, trust, power, esteem, and intimacy. I use CPT to help clients identify “stuck points” (the beliefs that trauma locked into place) and systematically challenge and reframe them. For adults who experienced childhood emotional wounds, CPT can be transformative in helping them separate who they were told they were, from who they actually are.