We recently connected with Sandtrice Russell and have shared our conversation below.

Sandtrice, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your professional career?

The most important lesson that I ever learned on a job was the importance of building rapport with your clients and any individuals that you are tasked with managing on any job that you enter. I learned this very important lesson when I was fresh out of undergrad. During college, I completed an internship at an outpatient mental health program and shortly after college I began working at an inpatient mental health facility with adolescents with several mental health conditions. I worked the overnight shift for the first couple of months of employment, so most of my interactions with the kids were when they were getting ready for bed or if they woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I later transitioned to an evening shift Child Care Counselor position and because I already had rapport with most of the girls on the unit, it was easy to get them to follow the rules because they already respected me because of the rapport that we built during those brief interactions when I was working overnight.

The lesson that I learned actually occurred once I left this particular facility and began working with a new group of teenage clients at another facility. I entered this job thinking that the clients would automatically listen to me and respect me, but I failed to take the time to build rapport with them which resulted in me being ineffective in my role. The girls at this facility gave me a run for my money and refused to do anything that I asked them to do as a part of my job. One of them mentioned that I didn’t take the time to get to know them and that I just came in as a new person and started telling them what to do. I can’t remember the clients name and if they were walking down the street I wouldn’t know a thing, but the lesson they taught me that day has stuck with me for the entirety of my career. It’s shaped how I approach every client and every supervisory relationship that I’ve had since that day.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a licensed professional counselor in the states of Georgia and most recently Texas with over 18 years of experience in the field of mental health. I entered the field of mental health because I had a semi-traumatic childhood and I wanted to be able to help other kids who have gone through childhood trauma or abandonment.

I specialize in working with adults who are experiencing difficulty with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and members of the LGBTQIA+ population. I also host a mental health podcast called Self Aware & Fucked Up, where I discuss taboo topics in mental health in order to spread awareness and provide effective solutions for common mental health issues that are often overlooked. My mission for my businesses Unique Destiny Inc & Unique Destiny Counseling is to empower others through education.

My organization also facilitates workshops for professional development that focuses on cultural competency within the counseling practice, empowering youth to develop healthy boundaries and a healthy self-esteem and educating BIPOC on the residual effects of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) and ways to cope with the impact intergenerational trauma has on the mind and behavior of those impacted.

I think what sets me a part is my passion for the field and my openness to exploring my own mental health journey. I pride myself on being a counselor who will forever be in counseling because I believe it helps me manage my own shit, but it also helps me to be a better counselor. My authenticity as a counselor, professional speaker, and mental health advocate allows me to be a catalyst for change in the lives of those who I encounter.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the critical lessons that I had to unlearn is putting my job and career before the people in my life including myself. I was one of those counselors who worked a full-time job and maintained a heavy caseload that was higher than a lot of folks who I knew that did private practice full time. I really struggled with setting boundaries around work to the point that it negatively impacted my marriage.

The idea of always having to hustle was engrained in me because I grew up in poverty. I was raised by my paternal great-grandmother and my paternal great aunt, and we were on a fixed income my entire childhood. This pushed me to get a job because I wanted better for myself. I want to be clear in saying that my granny and my aunt never pushed me to get at job at 14, it was the circumstances around me that made me want to start working so early so that I could have the things that I saw other kids from two parent households with.

In college, I learned to manage working as a Resident Assistant, being in theatre, taking a full courseload, and being a part of multiple organizations on campus to include the incomparable Black Student Alliance at the University of West Georgia. Later in life, I started working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet because I was barely making a livable wage. Once I actually started making a decent amount of money, it still wasn’t enough because I was so afraid of being broke that I couldn’t escape that poverty mindset. I’m still unlearning overworking and not attending to myself and the important people in my life to this very day because if my bank accounts get to looking a certain way, I go into flight or fight mode and I could very easily overbook myself out of fear of “going broke.”

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

If I could go back, I think that I might have pursued my other passion, theatre and acting just as passionately as I’ve pursued my career in counseling and being a mental health professional. Up until about age 12, acting and rapping where my top two passions. It wasn’t until my Career Connections class in middle school that I started to cling to the idea of being a child psychologist.

I actually pursued acting at the collegiate level and even double majored in Psychology and Theatre for a few semesters before ultimately graduating with a minor in theatre. My time as a member of the West Georgia Theatre Company are some of the fondest memories that I have of being on stage.

Shortly after my undergraduate studies, I became the Drama Coordinator at my church at the time, Victorious Believers World Ministries. I wrote, directed, and produced a few stage plays for the Kingdom Players Drama Ministry. I also wrote, directed, and produced my first gospel stage play So Called Christian in my hometown of LaGrange Georgia in January of 2007. After doing that play, I took a very long hiatus for acting and I think that is probably one of my deepest regrets.

I was featured in a mini-series A Plague of Misery in 2015 and that was really fun to act on film for the first time. I’ve actually be thinking about getting back into acting lately so maybe I’ll explore that since I can’t actually go back and choose differently.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.uniquedestiny.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treethelpc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TreetheLPC/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandtrice-russell-lpc-cpcs-90533282/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/treethelpc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@treethelpc
• Other: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/treethelpc

Image Credits
Tourvoisier Rashad Zachary, Adam Bouska