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ELIZABETH RICKS
CMHC PORTFOLIO
About Me
I am a recent graduate with a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Grand Canyon University.
I completed my required practicum and internship hours working at Second Story Counseling in Mesa, AZ where I was able to build and retain my client base from zero to fifteen clients (and still growing) in just a few months.
I know what it means to have and show empathy and unconditional positive regard for my clients. I provide them a safe and non-judgmental place to explore their inner worlds and help them to identify how they can best achieve their goals and find more peace and satisfaction with their lives.
Philosophy of Counseling
My philosophy of counseling and my job as a counselor is to first, create a non-judgmental, empathetic, and safe environment where individuals, couples, and families can be vulnerable and lean into the challenges, and uncertainties of life.
Establishing a rapport and continually building the therapeutic alliance, with clients, through showing relentless empathy, unconditional positive regard, and genuineness, while actively listening, reflecting, and validating clients’ experiences, so they feel seen, heard, understood, and safe to express their innermost thoughts and feelings.
The counseling process can support and help clients to sort out and then help bring clarity to the confusion going on in their minds, as well as to identify and recognize unhealthy coping strategies and behaviors, to then learn and incorporate more positive and healthy ones as they relate to the specific issue(s).
As the counseling process progresses, a deeper analysis is involved and necessary to identify root causes of the various symptoms’ clients experience and behaviors clients exhibit, potential triggers that cause their maladaptive and/or unhealthy behaviors, and/or blind spots hindering their overall progress and/or life satisfaction.
Dr. Ralph G. Nichols, a professor of communication at the University of Minnesota and author of the best-selling book, Are You Listening? Said, “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen.”
I will always listen.