Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rebekah Lipsky. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Rebekah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?
As a clinical mental health therapist who loves the work that I do, I am fortunate enough to experience many emotionally rewarding moments in my career. It is truly an honor to have a front row view to people doing the difficult, yet beneficial work to make their lives better and I wish I could share every heartwarming story I have in my memory. I would be writing for months if that were the case. One that stands out to me, though, is actually when I terminated with a past client. To provide a little backstory, for six years, I worked at the Adult Autism and Developmental Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. This is an outpatient clinic that treats adults with co-occurring neurodivergence and mental illness. For five of those years, I worked with a client who experienced significant losses in their life. This client had trouble establishing relationships, struggles with feeling abandoned, and behavioral issues. It was typical for clients to seek very long-term treatment from this clinic because of how specialized and uncommon it was, and this particular client had already had a few therapists before me. The initial phases of developing rapport and setting boundaries were difficult, especially as I struggled with the imposter syndrome of being a new clinician when we started working together. But over time, we developed a really beautiful therapeutic relationship. I watched this client grow tremendously. They became much better at relating to others, regulating their emotions and behaviors, making sense of their grief, and gaining confidence. Eventually, I decided to leave this job so that I could start my own private practice. I was incredibly anxious to notify this client of my departure. I felt guilty and sad for leaving and was worried about how they were going to take this news. I feared that my leaving would undo so much of the work we had done together. Out of all the clients I had on my caseload (which was a very high number), I told this client last. When I finally told them, they responded in a way that I could have never imagined. The first thing they said was, “I’m proud of you.” The client was calm, expressed how much I have helped them in those five years, and with a smile expressed, “all this time, you have been helping me be successful in my life, so of course I want you to be successful in yours.” They shared that they were very happy for me and that they knew I was “going on to do great things.” They understood that if our paths are meant to cross again, they will, and that they were thankful for the time that our paths did merge. They also shared that while they will miss me, they now feel confident in their ability to handle difficult moments given all the skills we worked on, whether I remain their therapist or not. The way this client responded and reacted to my departure was the most indicative of how far they had come. I felt so proud of the client in that moment, and quite frankly, myself, for being able to provide a space and relationship that felt safe, trusting, caring, encouraging, and empowering. I have always known the power of the therapeutic relationship as a major factor for client success, and this moment really cemented that importance. Working with this client had a major, positive impact on me and I carry many lessons I took away from our time together into my work today.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
One of my biggest values in life is helping others. This has guided how I show up in my relationships with friends, family, and others in need, as well as professional work I’ve done as a volunteer, employee, and business owner. I am also a very empathetic person. Funny enough, my first thought of becoming a therapist started at age nine. A friend at the time told me that when I grow up, I should be a therapist because I give great advice. While I don’t know what I could have possibly been helping 4th graders with, I stored that suggestion. In my senior year of high school, I took my first psychology class and was fascinated by it. In college at the University of Rochester, I majored in psychology and fell in love with the subject matter I learned from every course. Becoming a mental health therapist really seemed like a viable career path for me given my academic interests and personal attributes that seemed to make up important qualities for a therapist. I went to straight to graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University right after graduating from college to get my Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
For the past eight years, I have worked as a therapist in an outpatient clinic part of a hospital, a group practice, and now, my own private practice. I first started my private practice, Rebekah Lipsky Mental Health Counseling, PLLC, in the Fall of 2021 and have built it up gradually, where for the past year and a half, I have been running it full-time. My specialties include working individually with adults who are going through major life transitions, neurodivergent, and struggle with anxiety and depression. The latter two specialties have come out of the clients I have loved working with as a therapist, and the former comes out of my own personal experience.
A few years ago, I went through three big life changes at one time. I called off an engagement, left my first job to start my private practice, and as a result of those two things, moved to a new city. This was all so difficult to deal with. I’m pretty sure I experienced every painful emotion possible, and was often unsure when I’d see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, through a lot of hard work to heal, rediscover myself, and build a new, meaningful version of life, I found it. This has led me to become so passionate about helping other adults going through their toughest transitions because I can attest to both the challenges AND triumphs of the journey. I am so proud of all that I overcame and want others to experience pride in their own resilience.
Additionally, I have started a therapy group for women going through a called off engagement. This is an experience that is way more common than people realize, but unfortunately, is not talked about enough. When I went through this unique life event, I felt very isolated because at that time, I didn’t know anyone else who’d gone through this. It means so much to me to provide a safe and supportive space for people going through the same experience so that they can feel understood and less alone.
No matter the speciality, every client is going to get my warmth, authenticity, relatability, compassion, and when appropriate, my sense of humor in session. I am integrative in my approach, which means I pull from a variety of therapeutic interventions as they best fit what each individual client might benefit from. I also strike a balance of active listening, processing, and validating, with providing clients with action-oriented tools and psychoeducation on different therapeutic theories to help them live in the better way they want, need, and deserve. I think something that also sets my approach apart from others is the way I invite creative expressions, such as using music, tv and film, literature, and visual art to help clients convey their experiences when it is otherwise difficult to articulate them in words. I can see clients virtually in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida, and I offer in-person session in Manhattan, where I now live.
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
I really think that the way I’ve used my personal experiences as a vehicle for shaping the type of therapist I am has been instrumental to my success as a clinician. This doesn’t mean that I turn the therapy session on its head and make it all about me. It means that my experiences have allowed me to better understand and relate to my clients. One difficulty with mental health struggles and mental illnesses is that they’re covert. It can be hard to know what is really going on internally with someone if they are not talking about it or displaying any external behavior that indicates an internal struggle. It is an unfortunate truth that it is part of the human condition to go through hardships and experience emotional pain and discomfort. Going through my own adversities (and therapy) gives me a strong prescription lens for truly seeing my clients. I can empathetically know what it’s like to experience various kinds of painful feelings and thoughts they’ve had, even if I’ve never gone through the exact same situation as them. I can also empathize with the challenging nature of doing the work, which further helps them trust me when I guide them through the various interventions that truly help people live a healthier, more effective life. Clients have reported being drawn to me due to the ways I humanize myself and “get it.”
Therapy is a very unique relationship between two humans. It is so brave for someone to reach out for help and show up in a space at a consistent frequency to be vulnerable and explore the deepest parts of themselves in an effort to heal and grow. A client could have chosen another route for addressing their struggles and decided to take this hard step and work with another person. I believe a primary part of this is because choosing this path fosters connection. The knowledge learned from school and trainings is paramount for practicing in a skilled, ethical, and evidence-based way to move clients forward. The knowledge learned from personal experiences and willingness for both the client and therapist to show up authentically builds a bond. That bond is what opens the door to clients feeling safe. And when clients have been living in such an unsafe place in their mind for so long, often brought on by unsafe external experiences, their feeling of safety in the therapy space is everything.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In this past year, I have had the opportunity to speak about parts of my story with my life transitions and how they relate to my therapeutic work on larger media platforms including one talk show and two podcasts. When I say there once was a time when I felt like I was going to die given the heartbreak, grief, anxiety, depression, doubt, stress, imposter-syndrome, and hopelessness I felt when I started going through all my big changes, I am not exaggerating. I was constantly amazed that I still had any tears left to cry after crying so much for so long. Now being able to not only speak about my experiences, but to also do so to much wider audiences in a calm, peaceful, easy, happy, and confident way provides visual and audio proof of my resilience. Watching and listening to the interviews allow me to see and hear how far I’ve come and healed. I feel very strong taking the pain that once felt like it could kill me to using it in a way that empowers other people to initiate, navigate, or adjust to major life changes, and that they, too, can come to know a better and more fulfilling life after an upheaval.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rebekahlipskycounseling.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reflectwithrebekah
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebekah-p-lipsky-ms-lmhc-lcpc-lpc-40a711a4/
- Other: Psychology Today Blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/rebekah-lipsky-ms-lmhc-lpc-lcpc
Seeing Other People Podcast Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0zzmQ2EHgk
Image Credits
Mike Monti Photography