The Story
The decision to name a private practice is a process that reflects the individual therapist and their values and therapeutic approach.
Cultivating Connected Living represents the therapist’s focus on communal healing with an emphasis on interpersonal relationships that impact the way we experience ourselves and the world around us. During the licensing process, Rachel experienced multiple isolating traumatizing events that reinforced isolation and disconnection despite claiming to focus on helping others heal. This isolation and disconnection are what inspired her to initially become a therapist. Watching this dynamic play out in the therapy field reminded her that many of us seek support to alleviate these feelings. In sitting with what this experience offered as a teacher about healing, it revealed that helping others find an innate sense of worth allows us to come home to ourselves and reconnect with self, others, our environment, and life overall. This is the meaning of Cultivating Connected Living, this is the hope for all of us who work toward deeper understanding of ourselves in the journey of therapy.
Who is Rachel Johnson, LCSW?
Cultivating Connected Living is a reflection of what I hope the therapeutic journey brings us back to, connection with self, others, our environment, and life overall. Throughout the process of becoming a therapist, I learned that many of the individuals I worked with, myself included, felt isolated and disconnected as part of what inspired them to seek mental health support. In sitting with how I wanted to take what I had learned about healing and apply it to my career, it allowed me to see what I wanted therapy with me to feel like. The result was helping others find their innate sense of worth through sharing wisdom, experience, and language that empowers personal growth in the therapy room.
The hope I have for others that work with me is that when they leave, they feel more supported, capable, and empowered to trust themselves in loving and accepting ways. In our work together, I hope this accomplished through exploring the ways that traditional methods of therapy interact with the wisdom we inherit to help us make sense of the experiences that have brought us to where we are in life. I also understand that this requires a multidimensional approach of advocacy in the broader society that impacts these experiences. I hope to be accountable to the communities I interact with and am apart of through advocacy, accessibility through mutual aid, and community support.