Services
About My Clients
Exploring how certain issues have formed can help you work through feeling stuck. We all find ways to cope with or adjust to difficult life transitions. Yet, these ways that helped us at one point, also keep us stuck in misery and dysfunctional patterns. Gaining insight into the roots of your struggle, helps anyone having difficulty adjusting. I help young adults change cycles of dissatisfaction to gain fulfillment in their lives, by providing a judgement free and supportive experience.
My Background and Approach
Raquel’s experience includes working with diverse populations such as children, adolescents, and adults in both school-based and community clinic settings. Her background treating young adults experiencing their first episode of psychosis (FEP) sparked the development of her empathic stance and insight into a wide range of challenges, from severe mental illness to the hazards in life transitions. She no longer works with FEP, but prioritizes improving the quality of treatment offered to individuals coming to her practice and invests in ongoing professional development to better train new therapists entering the field. She currently supervises counselors in training and Howard University Psychiatry Residents’ looking to gain more skills in psychotherapy. She teaches at the Washington Baltimore Institute’s Psychoanalytic Studies Program.
My Personal Beliefs and Interests
While her approach emphasizes exploring one’s inner self and mind, Raquel does not ignore the influence systems of oppression have, nor the interplay of culture/race in shaping your identity, experiences, and relationships.Her practice is founded on the values of community, inclusivity and transparency. She invests in her professional development beyond what is required by licensing boards, to increase effectiveness of treatment, and better the quality of work her practice offers to the public. Her practice is open to a spectrum of LGBTQIA+ and multicultural identities. She is transparent about how she practices and what to expect in your treatment. Raquel values diversity in all forms. She volunteers much of her time outside of clinical work to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives at a local psychoanalytic organization in DC.