(she/her)
New to Grow
Hello! I’m Rachel, and I’m so glad you’re here! As a Licensed Independent Social Worker (LISW) in Perrysburg, Ohio, I really enjoy helping people work through various life challenges. Whether you're facing big life changes, dealing with trauma, or navigating relationships, I'd love to help. I use a combination of different approaches, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and mindfulness techniques, but I believe the most important part of therapy is the connection we build together. If you’re looking for a supportive partner to help you find the right tools and strategies to reach your goals, we might be a good fit!
In our first session, we spend most of our time laying the groundwork for our work together. We discuss relevant background information, past experiences, what brings you to therapy, and what you would like to accomplish in/through therapy. For couples counseling, we meet together to discuss the relationship and where you both want things to go, then meet individually to discuss personal background information that may be affecting the relationship. With this information, we can make a plan for what to work on and how we might best achieve your goals.
I strive to create a calm, safe space for us to explore and problem-solve, while still leaving plenty of room for humor!
My ideal clients are adolescents and adults ages 12 and older navigating life transitions, healing from trauma, or experiencing relationship challenges. They may feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or uncertain about their next steps and seek a safe, supportive space to explore their emotions, strengthen relationships, build resilience, and develop healthier coping strategies. Together, we work toward greater self-awareness, emotional well-being, and meaningful, lasting change.
Attachment-based therapy can help you understand and change patterns that may be keeping you stuck in cycles of distress. With attachment-based therapy, we explore important relationships and how they may have shaped how you see yourself, others, and the world. With this understanding, we can create healthier thought and behavior patterns that help you build the relationships you want.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) uses tools and skills to change how you think and act, which changes how you feel. Thoughts (cognitions), behaviors, and feelings all impact one another. CBT uses this interconnection to help you feel better, manage negative thoughts and beliefs, and do more of what helps you feel good. For adolescents, I am also trained in Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT), which can be used to address traumatic or distressing experiences. TF-CBT teaches skills to identify and manage emotions and helps clients change how they think about their experiences. This process can help clients replace negative thoughts and beliefs as well as decrease the distress related to the traumatic experiences.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) can be a helpful tool for treating trauma and distressing experiences. When something traumatic happens, the experience can overwhelm our ability to process it, and the memory can get "stuck." EMDR involves recalling the difficult experience, noticing what comes up as a result, and doing this during alternating left-right stimulation (e.g., back-and-forth eye movements or tapping). This combination helps move the memory from feeling stuck to feeling over by allowing your nervous system to digest something it was too overwhelmed by, too shut down to process, or didn't have the information to process at the time. Using EMDR in your therapy is not all or nothing. We can take breaks and have "regular" talk therapy sessions on days/weeks when you don't feel up to reprocessing or want to discuss other things.
I have experience incorporating a variety of faith backgrounds and beliefs, including Catholicism, non-Catholic Christianity, and Islam, into clients' therapeutic work. If you practice a religion or align with a spiritual or faith tradition and would like to incorporate it into our work together, I'd love to talk about your beliefs and how they align with your therapeutic goals.
This is the foundation for how I apply the evidence-based interventions I'm trained to use. The person-centered, or humanistic, approach views clients as experts in their own lives and experiences. I can help facilitate insight and suggest skills or strategies that might be beneficial, but you choose what we work on, when, and how fast. We work as a team to reach the goals you set in ways that feel right for you.