counseling
Life in this world, and in this country right now, can be very intense, very stressful. Under stress, we often experience some of our oldest, hardest patterns of thinking, feeling and doing - the ones we developed long ago as a way to cope with what was hard then. But what works in childhood rarely works the same way in adulthood. We benefit by becoming gently aware of our stress-induced reactions to life, making conscious choices about how to navigate or respond in a moment, and charting a course toward our own well-being and our own well-lived life.
I work with a few essential ideas in mind. First, that there’s a lot that can shift when we begin a practice of mindfulness. It is simple, grounding, clarifying but not easy, so takes practice. But the practice itself increases the felt sense of ease in both the mind and body. So the practice itself is valuable.
Second, that our bodies talk to us constantly but we’re habituated to only listen to thoughts. Thoughts are elusive and under the influence of so many forces, some quite questionable. We learn to notice thinking but really listen to the body. That’s where your most trusted advisor has been all along.
Third, that we are deserving of compassion. That our own compassion can be directed inward and that act, while often quite novel and even awkward at first, is profoundly healing. In fact, we learn to extend this practice inward toward our whole life story.
Last, practice, practice practice, practice. Everything is practice. So extend some grace and welcome your whole experience as if you’d invited it. Everything, everything, no matter how challenging, is an opportunity to practice being with ourselves in a gentler, more workable way. You may think that being gentle with yourself is the last thing you need, but I ask: has being hard on yourself brought you closer to a life of joy and meaning?
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I work with individuals, couples, families and groups employing the same basic principles but responsive to the needs in front of me. The vast majority of my clients have been in the span between and including late adolescents to older adults. When working with children younger than 13, I require the work be with the whole family.
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On non-discrimination: Each of us is equally worthy of all available compassion. I do not discriminate based on any possible intersection of identity or ability or belief. I am made richer by coming to know and care for all sorts of people and endeavor for a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment in each encounter. I believe this work makes the heart bigger and more open, not just for me but for clients as well. And since this world needs big, open hearts, I will work for free with anyone who comes to heal themselves of their own racism, hatred, prejudice or bias.
Photo by Richard Lee on Unsplash
healing in community
In these last years we’ve shared a tumultuous and sometimes traumatic experience. Life has become systemically harder in so many ways but we’re still led to believe that it is our individual responsibility to be OK. That isn’t actually consistent with the millenia of being human. We aren’t individualists by nature. We are beings who need other beings; we are communal and that’s how we’ve always survived.
The traditional models of counseling and psychotherapy may not suffice to serve the needs of this time, but that’s OK. Since we’ve suffered together, we can heal together. We can light up the healing presence within each of us to share with others. We need others and others need us. We are not alone and each of us has a role to play for others in this world. I have a strong feeling that we will heal from this collectively or not at all.
For this reason, I am offering events and classes to reawaken the ability to really be there for ourselves and take great care of ourselves but also really be there for others and help them take great care, too. It’s through caring for others and being cared about by others that we heal. Not in isolation, not in an office alone with a stranger, or worse, alone on a screen, but with community. My new friend, Jill Clause shared the elements of a talking circle used in her Native Tuscarora community. Our Haudenosaunee neighbors come from a very long tradition of healing in community and community healing and I feel great appreciation for the conversation in which she shared some wisdom with me. As a Saltwater person, I am not entitled to that. A hundred thousand thanks to her. May this work heal and liberate all beings everywhere.
Look at the community healing events tab for current offerings.
offerings and events
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well-being workshop for girls+
After these two long hard years, it is clear that many of our kids are not OK. This workshop takes some of the fundamentals of good therapy and offers them as seeds planted and skills practiced in a shared experience among peers. Each session teaches skills in grounding, centering, mindfulness, self care, self compassion and deep listening to empower participants to be OK, to take good care of themselves and really be there for the important others in their lives. These skills, once acquired, tend to increase the buoyancy with which one lives. And once someone has these skills they don’t tend to lose them. So the potential benefits of early exposure to mindfulness and compassion are life-long.
This workshop is for any girl bodied, girl identifying, or girl leaning teen, age 14-17.
If you’re interested in this offering, please email me. hhenryrawlins@gmail.com
Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash
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fostering a healing presence
I once met a client who came to address her grief after the death of a parent. Her friends had suggested she see a counselor. I asked her how long since the loss and she told me, two weeks. I was happy to work with her but something struck me quite deeply. Grief is not a mental health problem, especially not new grief. And newly experienced loss, whether through death or divorce or a transition to a new chapter of life, is ideally the most important province of close friends and family. It is in these times that we need our dearest people to be near, to circle the wagons around us so we can be held in our vulnerable time. All of us will go through loss. All of us will love people who will go through loss. It is part of our shared humanity. After seeing several clients to help them process grief, I began to wonder whether many of us, in this emotionally challenged culture, have lost the ability to hold that space for others; to participate in the healing of loved ones the way our ancestors always did.
This workshop will help participants find their inner resources to really be with our loved ones who are struggling. To listen with a steady, open heart and side-step the impulse to fix, explain or solve. To regain the innate capacity to hold sacred space for others so they may heal.
This offering will include mindfulness, self-compassion and compassion for others as well as how to listen deeply and how to notice the habitual patterns of reacting to others’ pain. How to notice the impulses that might get in the way of our own healing presence. How to stay.
If you are interested in this offering, please email me, hhenryrawlins@gmail.com
Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash
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bring healing to your community
the art of being ok, and being there for others
I have given talks and led practice-based workshops on self-compassion, mindfulness and the counter-intuitive superpower of acceptance. These offer groups of people the opportunity to cultivate transformative skills in relating to the self and to others. If you would like your group - whether a collection of colleagues, friends or family members - to learn to soften the edges and make a gentler and more spacious environment within you and among you, please email me. I have years of practice teaching folks how to live with more intention and ease and love to bring these insights and practices to groups.
hhenryrawlins@gmail.com
about heather
I became a counselor because, in the span of a year (1999-2000), a few different people told me I should. I was floating through life well into my twenties with no idea of what I’d want to do. I’d always thought, in some way, I wanted to work for world peace but the world is so big and I get overwhelmed by too many things. Not to mention I’m kind of quiet. The only thing I really knew was that I wanted a life where I could just be very very good to people. There was a school down the street from my apartment at the time, Lesley University, which had a Master’s program in Counseling Psychology. I thought, why not? And the minute I sat down to my first class, I knew I was in the right place. That was 2001.
Over the last couple decades, I’ve continuously cultivated a personal and professional practice rooted in certainty that we have innate strengths as humans, such as compassion and humor, and innate needs, such as creativity and connection with self, other humans and the world around us. Our Western culture makes it hard to access and attend to what’s innate and what could bring us to meaningful peace and joy. Our culture also leads us away from the understanding that others - all others, really - are capable of great amounts of good and have the same strengths, needs and vulnerabilities we have. Part of the work, as I see it, is awakening a sense of basic goodness in ourselves that we share with all others around us.
The work we do in counseling serves the whole fabric of humanity. It offers rest to ancestors who’ve passed along their traumas (perhaps hoping we will heal it) and plants seeds for a better future for all our descendants. In each effort we make to live outside the lines of anxiety, depression and trauma, to cultivate a bigger, gentler inner space, we alter the whole trajectory of our life, and the lives of all those we encounter. I see the work you’ll do to heal as directly tied to world peace.
I work with individuals, families, couples and groups using mindfulness, compassion, somatic awareness and narrative therapy techniques so we become wise about what works, what doesn’t, what’s missing and what’s too much. We pursue being OK, taking good care of our selves and being there for the important others in our lives.
I’m currently in a doctoral program at the University of Rochester where I’m studying community healing modalities. I will be holding classes and talking circles as an offering of community healing. After all we’ve been through as a community, we should heal in community, too. I believe this is what will be needed going forward.
Apart from counseling, I have three children, I read, cook, walk a dog, try to run and make art when I can. I have daily practices of yoga and meditation or I’d never be able to encourage others in these pursuits. I strive to bring about the greatest good I possibly can and beyond that, to live an ordinary life. Nothing sounds better to me.
(About the groundedinbirdsong name - I suggest you step outside and listen with an open heart to the birdsong available to you at almost any moment of a day. This is what grounds me. The birdsong and the trees that host them, all show up equally for everyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. This is proof of the innate goodness of this beautiful world. And if this world is good, so am I. So are you. This, just listening and noticing, is a mindfulness practice for body, mind and spirit.)
Book an appointment.
To schedule with me, we have three options.
Email me hhenryrawlins@gmail.com or call, 716-218-8255
If you know you’d like to use your insurance (see insurances accepted below), go to this site to enter insurance, determine your copay and find an appointment on my calendar.
If you do not plan to use insurance, you can schedule a consultation or appointment directly through the button marked “schedule/sign up”.
Hours available
Monday 10-3
Tuesday 10-3
Wednesday 9:30-10:30 and 1-3
Thursday 9:30-10:30 and 1-3
Saturday by request
Insurances accepted
Aetna
Cigna
Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield
Oscar
Oxford
United Healthcare
Session Fees
My typical session fee is $100 or best offer. I believe this work should be widely available and affordable. I have clients who pay 20, 40, 50, 60 and 100. I ask that you pay an amount that reflects something valued but is also sustainable for the length of time and frequency of meetings that will be in best service to you.
Coming soon will be an option to pay through a donation made to a local Buffalo non-profit, an effort to create a virtuous triangle, an anti-capitalist guerilla gesture introvert-style.
Peace.
Contact
hhenryrawlins@gmail.com716-218-8255371 Delaware AveBuffalo, NY 14202 (U.H.L.)