We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Venessa De La Cruz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Venessa below.
Venessa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
The biggest risk that I have taken was to stop working for other practices and open up my own practice . When I went to graduate school having a private practice was not really a focus of my schooling. In Social Work, the focus is on larger systems that affect people and so there is much more focus on agency work. After graduate school that is where I started- community behavioral health. I appreciate my 5 years there as it taught me more than my education did about working with people and the needs that are missing for many. In some ways, it also continued to reinforce the idea that having my own practice was not for me. Which at the time, was fine with me. I was a new mom and did not want the responsibilities of owning a business. In fact, I had no idea what that meant as business classes are not part of the curriculum. I left agency work when my oldest daughter was born. She was a 33 week preemie and we needed to adjust our life a little for her well-being. After a few months of being home with her, I knew I needed to get back to work. While I loved being able to be home with her, I also missed working and talking to adults. So, I joined a group practice. The work was similar to the work I had known but it was slightly different. I would continue to work in group practices for the next 4 years. The last group practice I was at decided to close and we all had 30 days to either find a new practice to join or a new space to work from. This is when the fork in the road moment happened for me. After initially panicking for about a solid day, my husband and I decided it was time to just be on my own. And so, my own practice and business was born. We had a young family and this afforded me the opportunity to both be mom and a therapist. It was the best of both worlds but also a very steep learning curve. It is easy to say now, that it was the best decision but at the time, I had no idea that I could make it work and it felt like the biggest risk of our lives. It is interesting sitting here now and thinking about this journey I have been on. My youngest daughter asked me a couple of years ago if I was the boss at my job and I paused. It has only ever been me in this business and I never thought of myself as a business owner. I always just considered it my job. But when she asked me that question, I said yes. I am the boss. I am a business owner. We are now about 9 years into this business adventure, and I now say it is the dream come true that I didn’t know I needed.
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 back background and context?
Hi! My name is Venessa. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and certified EMDR & Brainspotting therapist. I am passionate about helping people learn how to heal from complex trauma as they are navigating multiple roles in their daily life. The majority of my practice focuses on experiences with attachment trauma, religious trauma, grief and reclaiming motherhood expectations. My approach is trauma focused using a combination of EMDR therapy, Brainspotting, Mindfulness and other evidence based practices. So, most of my clients will come in feeling burnt out, exhausted, have high levels of anxiety and feeling disconnected with life. They will often have chronic pain whether it be headaches, joint pain, digestion issues and sometimes will have diagnoses like Mood Disorders, Personality Disorders or Dissociative Disorders.
I see clients in a traditional weekly 1 hour format but now offer intensive therapy services. This means that we plan to meet for an extended period of time (think 3-4 hours over 1-3 days) so that we can focus on progress towards your overall goal. While the traditional format is helpful intensives allow us the opportunity to concentrate on your goal for a longer amount of time which can often feel like our progress speeds up a bit. It has been amazing to see the amount of progress that can be made in 3 hours.
When I am not seeing clients, I am building up the consultation side of my business. This has been such a passion project for me. I absolutely love being able to help other clinicians lean into their skills. I did not always have the greatest consultants along the way of my journey and I want to change that for others in my field. I want them to learn in a shame free environment where we explore how to build on what they already know and translate that into their delivery with clients. We need to cheer each other on in this work. What we do each day is not easy so having other colleagues in your corner, rooting for you is priceless.
These are the nuts and bolts of my business but what I am most proud of is building a business that also allows me to show up as me. I bring comfort into my space because I value that in this really hard work. You wont find me in a suit but mostly likely in some leggings, or a comfy dress with my shoes off and I will be sitting criss cross apple sauce in my chair. We have fidgets to play with, colored pens to doodle with and soft pillows to embrace us. There will also be a few f bombs that are shared because it is a great way to express what we are feeling. And at the end of the session we treat ourselves with chocolate, because that is needed after doing hard things! I believe all of these things allow my clients to feel a little more at ease in working through some really hard stuff.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This is a great question. For me, the lesson that has needed the most unlearning is thinking that I cant be successful in my field. There are many reasons why this belief has been part of my story- I am a woman, I am a woman of color, I am a mom, I am a social worker and the list can go on. I don’t think that my graduate education (or really any of my schooling) fostered a belief that women of color could be business owners. I come from a culture and religious history that had very specific views on the role a woman should have as an adult and having her own business was not on top of that list. I have and continue to deconstruct these old views in my therapy process because it is not true. Side Note- Yes, I am a therapist who participates in therapy. This is important because part of me believed that if I was going to be successful then I needed to have it all together so clients would take me seriously. And I can tell you that my clients appreciate that I am just as human as they are. Perfection is a lie and they don’t need me perpetuating the idea that it can exist. None of us leave this world without some hard experiences and I am no different. These long held stories hold us back from being who we are meant to be and it is time to stop living by someone else’s expectations or ideas and start living our own. It has been quite the journey to unlearn these old beliefs but the result has been absolutely worth it.
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
No! People have asked this question before and after nearly 15 years of being a therapist, I would not do anything different. I knew from a young age that I wanted to help people not feel alone in their pain. At 13, I said I wanted to be a psychologist but not understanding what that meant, I just knew this was the path for me. My journey to this field was not a straight line from that moment, but I got here. I am really proud of that. Now, I want to do more than therapy but the work is all related. Now, I am on a mission to help other clinicians of color find their path in this field. I will always be a clinician, I am just adding supervisor and consultant to the job description.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ignitehopellc.com
- Instagram: @emdrsocialworker
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/venessa-de-la-cruz-025b67132