We were lucky to catch up with Carla Calderas, MA, LPC, NCC recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carla, appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

Definitely! For college I moved to North Carolina to study International Business but after taking some of the business courses I realized that I was not passionate about it. Business classes felt cold and disengaging. Against family opinions, I decided to take a semester off from school. I took time to engage in things I enjoyed like singing, modeling, and developing myself. This is when I started developing my morning routine of meditation and reading inspirational books. During this time, I realized that I was passionate about helping people and emotionally healing myself and others. After much self-reflection, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I could see myself as a psychotherapist helping people through their emotional healing journey, I could see myself being a great therapist involved in her community and having a great group of therapists as colleagues. I knew that I needed at least a Master Degree to be able to accomplish that so I decided to go back to college to study education because being a teacher allowed me to help kids and their parents, and allowed me the flexibility to get a Master Degree in Professional Counseling by attending evening and summer classes. Many years have passed but I am certain that this was a defining moment where I had to be assertive, listen to myself, and look within to find what I wanted for my professional career.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Hi, my name is Carla and my goal is to live a peaceful and healthy life and help others do the same. My background is in education and metal health. I own Calderas Counseling, a successful Mental Health Counseling practice in Spring, Texas. Our mission is to provide quality mental health therapy services for a world where we help each other and are at peace with ourselves. We specialize in helping teenagers, couples, and people who struggle with depression and anxiety. I love learning new ways for healing myself and helping my clients. I am constantly attending trainings and reading on a daily basis to continue my learning. This is something that we at Calderas Counseling focus on; educating ourselves and leading by example.

Our values are Balance, Respect, and Love:

•  We aim to have a balanced life.
• We respect ourselves and the people around us.
• We love ourselves and show kindness and compassion to others.
• We work with clients to empower them and give them the tools to be their best self. We believe that when we look inward, practice self-care, and work together it becomes easier to express our true self.

Our philosophy may influence our counseling sessions in the following ways:

• During therapy sessions, we can create a plan to find balance in your life: work-life balance, setting boundaries, and looking at balance in five different areas (emotional, physical, social, spiritual, and professional).
• In therapy sessions, we can explore self-esteem, assertive communication, and other areas of self-respect.
• In therapy sessions, we can explore self-love by using mindfulness and self-compassion.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Love! Love for serving others, love for ourselves, love for the professional relationships we have with colleagues and clients, and love for our community. When we are in a state of love, we can be more patient, understanding, and empathetic with others. This helps with being able to understand our clients and help them in the best way possible. I believe that people feel and know when someone truly cares about them. We are in the mental health field because we love helping others and I think this is the most important factor that makes us successful.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Like many, I have encountered others who doubted me or my goals. It is very important to keep faith in yourself and to not listen to people who don’t support you. When I was doing my student-teaching, the teacher I was working with told me “I don’t know if you have what it takes to be a teacher”. I was hurt and disappointed when I heard her say that because I was working hard, connecting with students and their parents, and reading classroom management and positive culture books during my spare time. When I got home, I cried, called my mom, and decided not to believe in the words she said because I knew I got into teaching for the right reason of helping others and making a difference in children’s lives. I went on to having a successful teaching career where I had great relationships with my students and their parents, my students were performing above grade level, and I was determined to be the best role model I could be for my students. It is important to process our feelings, release them in a healthy way, and focus on what we can control. That’s exactly what I did by calling my mom to process the pain, crying, and focusing on myself and my perspective moving forward. I want to leave you with this: Have your eyes on the goal and work towards it, do not allow anything or anyone to deter you from what you want to accomplish. You got this!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.calderascounseling.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calderascounseling/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/calderascounseling/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/calderas-counseling/?viewAsMember=true
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRiuh_8pHbd8u_nuMdQlpfQ
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/calderas-counseling-spring