About
I'm Richie,
a therapist who's been on both sides of the chair.
I know what it feels like to be on both sides of that chair — not as a concept, but as lived experience. I know what it's like to finally step into emotions and thoughts that have been buried for years. I know what it's like to be in crisis, and to sit with someone else who is. I've had my own trauma, and I've walked alongside others through theirs.
My mom passed away when I was seven years old. She took her own life. As a kid, I somehow knew I needed help with that — I didn't have the word “therapy” for it, but something in me recognized the weight. I never got it. Life kept moving forward, whether I was ready or not.
As I got older, I found my own ways to cope. Drugs. Alcohol. A life that looked like a good time from the outside but felt hollow underneath. I was surviving. I wasn't living.
Then I found God — or maybe more accurately, He found me. It felt radical, like being called home. Things changed: I stopped drinking, stopped using, and started chasing something that actually felt real. Something with meaning.
But here's what I didn't expect: I still wasn't okay.
Even with faith, I found myself overthinking the future to the point of paralysis. Feeling completely alone in a room full of people I loved. Sabotaging relationships before they could get close enough to hurt me. Convinced no one truly saw me — and terrified they might.
What actually changed me wasn't willpower or a prayer — it was sitting 1:1 with a mentor at a ministry school who asked me very specific questions built around the actual details of my story. Something about that process reached places nothing else had. It changed me from the inside out.
From there: more counselors, more mentors. EMDR. Brainspotting. The deep work — the kind that's uncomfortable, slow, and more worth it than I can adequately put into words.
Healing became a superpower. You see the world differently. You see the people around you differently. And you see yourself differently.
My faith is central to who I am. I'm a Christian, and I find that men of faith often carry a particular kind of weight — the gap between who they believe they should be and who they actually feel like inside. I understand that tension from the inside. If that resonates, you'll find a safe place here. That said, my practice is open to anyone ready to do the work, regardless of belief.
Credentials & Education
- Licensed Professional Counselor — Temporary (LPC-T), Tennessee
- Trained in Brainspotting
- EMDR Training — In Progress
- M.A. Counseling — Liberty University
- B.S. Christian Ministries — Southeastern University
My Approach
Look under the hood.
Don't hurry past what matters.
My approach is trauma and attachment-based at its core — practical in its tools, and always honest about what's actually happening underneath the surface.
I want to look at the past to help understand the present. Not to get stuck there — but so that with real insight, you can begin to walk out the future you actually want. Therapy isn't about being fixed. It's about being able to breathe, and step into becoming.
“There is a difference between excuse and explanation. When we own our story, our story has less power to own us.”
I believe this deeply: we are not our emotions, and we are not our thoughts — those are things we have. “I am depressed” and “I feel depressed” are different statements. They land differently in the body. That distinction matters more than it sounds.
And on trauma: trauma is not what happened to you. It's what happened within you as a result. A hundred people can walk through the same event and come out completely differently. That 's why this work is personal — and why it works.