As a multicultural clinician, I do take a perspective that supports people who have all types of life experience. In life, we can experience challenges that can lead to difficulties with mental health. My role as a mental health professional is to cultivate a space where people feel authentic to themselves and understand how they can take control of their life using what's important to them. Therapy can help determine ways to unlock potential and make meaningful change. Every moment and every situations opens for many people after they start therapy with me, as with my support, many break-free from the struggles of their past to accomplish the needs and wants of their present and future lives.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
In our first session, we will get to know each other and identify goals for therapy. Whether it's your first time in therapy or you are returning to accomplish new goal, we can work together to lay a foundation for growth. Clients can also expect by the first session with a sense of understanding they are not alone.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
I do not apply a cookie-cutter approach with clients. Our work is authentic and individualized in a way to promote change. Adapting therapy is important to me and I take a collaborative approach to understand each client and their life experiences. I help identify sources of distress and help identify ways to get though tough times.
About Donovan Richardson, M.Ed.
Appointments
Free consults, virtual
My treatment methods
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Beck Institute CBT trained and certified. My use of CBT helps understand the relationship of how situations trigger our thoughts, feelings, and actions. CBT is a framework that can be tailored to anyone and it's designed with collaboration, support, mindfulness, and creating goals that can improve mental health and wellness.
Cognitive Processing (CPT)
This is a form of cognitive therapy to help those how identify with significant trauma experiences. In this treatment, I help those with this experience identify trauma experiences and identify effective coping skills to aid with living beyond a trauma experience.
Multicultural
As a multicultural clinician and mental health profession, it's important to understand the experiences of those that exist in multiple spaces and identities. I operate from an ecological framework that incorporates all experiences of an individual and how their cultural experiences impact them similarly and differently in the spaces they occupy.
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
In conjunction with my cognitive framework of interventions, I use DBT to help those to work in radical acceptance and manifest change as they pursue and exist. With DBT, I help teach mindfulness techniques, distress tolerance skills, interpersonal skills, emotional regulation skills, and exploring ways changes to unwanted behaviors in situations that can be fueled by the emotional mind or reasonable mind. Understanding this, I help inform of the Wise Mind concept that can support consistent use of desirable behaviors and building awareness of how they can improve a situation, even for a moment.
Motivational Interviewing
I use this cognitive framework to aid with understanding the stages of change as related to thinking patterns and behavioral changes (modification). Exploration and identification are part of how I support those who strive to change unwanted thinking patterns and unwanted behaviors by exploring their values as related to the change they want to achieve.
