The Hopeful Existentialist: Vi
​My Background and Parts of My Journey: ​
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Education: I have a Masters of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Tarleton State University and a Bachelors Degree in Psychology, with a minor in Sociology, from the University of Texas at Austin. ​
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Over the years, I acquired areas of knowledge in different multidisciplinary fields, which helped me to understand complex issues on a societal, human, and scientific level. I had the opportunity to learn at the educational, scientific, and academic models of psychology, neuroscience and sociology while understanding the reality in my own personal life, my communities and while interacting with and helping people from other communities.
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My fieldwork, experiences, coursework, and trainings were helpful in deeply understanding and connecting issues across different fields of research and frames of thought, especially around the history of issues such as racism, classism, sexism, sexuality, spirituality, social justice, and on.
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Some examples of my coursework includes subjects such as: psychology, sociology, human development, behavioral neuroscience; memory, perception, and cognition; child development; social psychology; nonverbal communication; government; history; anthropology; culture, minority and gender issues; criminal justice; psychopathology; criminology; and on.
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Connecting Issues Across Intersections and Fields of Thought:​
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There are countless factors that impact each person's situation, life circumstances, personality, and lived experiences. Some of these factors include dynamics such as:
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personal strengths that helped people survive difficult situations; individual personality traits and differences; economic issues like poverty or wealth; communities; relationships and social support; negative (adverse) and positive life experiences; traumatic experiences; intergenerational trauma, systemic issues, family environment, family backgrounds and upbringing; genetics and epigenetics; and on.
The Personal and Professional Journey
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I have worked as a therapeutic-foster-parent to adolescents and as a research assistant in academia. I have also worked as a counseling intern in mental health hospital settings, such as at a substance treatment detox unit (The Billy Gregory Detox), in inpatient treatment (Pine Street), intensive outpatient program treatment, and in general public outpatient settings.
Additionally, as an adolescent and young adult, I worked many different jobs in the customer service, childcare, and retail fields, which helped me to understand the differences in diverse work environments.
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I was given the opportunity throughout my life to see, experience, and understand how many of these systemic issues impact individuals, peers, at times myself, and different communities directly, indirectly, and insidiously in many different ways.​
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I have worked with individuals from many different backgrounds with different types of trauma histories and symptoms. My professional experiences in the mental health field, in addition to my own experiences of being a cycle breaker and working through my own healing in therapy, helped me to understand the experiential and existential complexity of trauma, healing, personal growth, and post traumatic growth. ​
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I was able to form and apply a holistic and multifaceted perspective, in my attitude, values, and beliefs as to how I live my life as a person, in addition to how I perceive the world, how I show up in and understand different communities, and in how I work with others professionally as a therapist. ​
​​A Window into Different Social, Class, and Professional Settings:
I am a survivor of adverse experiences, while being fortunate to transcend into the realm of post traumatic growth.
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Different time-periods of life have helped me to expand on my knowledge and understanding of the complex nature of many issues: at the individual level, the societal level, and the world level. We are all interconnected.
During young adulthood, adolescence and childhood, I experienced positive, negative, traumatic, and mixed personal, academic and professional experiences. My views on the world, life, people, and therapy and my experiences shaped my professional framework into what it is today.
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An existential, intersectional feminist, holistic, trauma informed, and somatic informed therapist.
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​​​Bio: About Vi
The Person & The Therapist
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As an existential, intersectional feminist, decolonizing, somatic and trauma informed therapist, I believe that you have a right to know some things about me as a human being and as a therapist:​​
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I am half British and half American, although I was raised in Texas. I advocate for social justice and I believe in community-based healing. I am spiritual but not religious however, I ascribe to a Buddhist, agnostic, humanistic, and existential oriented philosophy personally. I am neurodivergent and on the left politically. I am queer, White, and Euro-American. I often use genderless, non-binary, and cis-woman interchangeably to express my gender identity, as I do not ascribe to the gender binary nor gender norms.
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I am a single mom to an amazing human. I love nature, cats, writing, reading, self-expression, creating different types of art, and many other things. I also enjoy hobbies that involve movement and mindfulness that help the mind-body-nature connection, such as running, taking walks in nature, dance, yoga, martial arts, and on.
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As a survivor of different types of trauma and adverse experiences*, I believe that this helped me to understand the complex and systemic related factors that impact mental, emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual levels of harm, trauma, and healing.
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*i.e. intergenerational trauma, familial addiction related dynamics, betrayal trauma, sexual violence and trafficking related dynamics, post-traumatic-stress-disorder and post-traumatic growth, living as a single mother in poverty, and other adverse experiences. As an individual who has navigated both sides of the therapy world, I am extremely passionate about trauma informed care, neurodiversity, post traumatic growth, and social justice.​
"I often work with people on journeys of individual growth. Many of these people have been impacted by negative experiences, trauma, problematic relationship and family dynamics, and other complex experiences."
- Vi
"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." - Desmond Tutu
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." - Helen Keller
"Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change" - bell hooks
"Life is a continual emerging, a becoming of one's true self."Â
-Â Existential Theory, Derek Truscott
