Ramon Recio

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to learn about my practice. I am Ramon Recio, a Florida Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) with more than thirty years of experience supporting individuals, couples, and families through life’s most difficult chapters. I hold a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and completed doctoral coursework in Counselor Education and Supervision. My career has spanned community mental health centers, hospital systems, and private practice in both New York City and the greater Tampa Bay area, including my current work as a Behavioral Health Psychotherapist at BayCare Behavioral Health, St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Over the years I have had the privilege of working with a wide range of clients: adults navigating anxiety, depression, grief, and life transitions; couples and families seeking to repair and strengthen their relationships; individuals in recovery from substance use; veterans; and people from culturally diverse backgrounds, including children with developmental challenges and their families. I am fluent in English and Spanish, and I welcome clients who prefer to be served in either language.

Outside of credentials and titles, what I most want you to know is this: I am warm, energetic, and genuinely curious about the people I work with. I believe each person carries strengths that are often hidden beneath what they came to therapy to address, and a meaningful part of our work together will be uncovering and using those strengths. I also recognize that for many clients, spirituality, faith, or a personal sense of meaning is an important part of their lives. I am respectful of every client’s belief system and integrate that dimension only when, and how, you want it included.

My approach is integrative, strengths-based, and tailored to the person in front of me rather than to a single theoretical school. In practice, that means I draw from cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, solution-focused work, family systems, and supportive psychotherapy, blending them based on what your goals are and what tends to actually help you.

From our first conversation through the end of treatment, I aim to create an environment that feels welcoming, respectful, and free of judgment. I work collaboratively. You are the expert on your own life, and my role is to help you make sense of what you are experiencing, identify patterns you may want to change, and build the practical skills and insight needed to move forward. I conduct ongoing brief assessments throughout our work so that we can adjust the plan as you grow, rather than locking ourselves into a treatment approach that no longer fits.

I have particular experience with mood and anxiety disorders, relationship and family concerns, substance use, grief and loss, life transitions, caregiver stress, and the emotional impact of chronic medical conditions. With every client, I keep one principle at the center of the work: focus on strengths first. Symptoms and struggles are real and we will absolutely address them, but lasting change tends to come from building on what is already working, not from spending every session cataloguing what is broken.

The first session is, above all, an opportunity for us to get to know one another. Starting therapy can feel uncertain, so I work to make that initial conversation calm, paced, and welcoming. There is no expectation that you arrive with the perfect words or a polished narrative; we will figure it out together.

During our time together, I will complete a psychosocial evaluation, which is a structured conversation about your current concerns, your history, your relationships, your physical health, and the goals that brought you to therapy. I will ask questions, but you will also have plenty of space to share whatever feels important to you, in your own words. By the end of the session, you can expect to leave with three things: a clearer sense of how I work and whether it feels like a good fit, an initial picture of the issues we will focus on, and a tentative plan for what the next few sessions will look like.

Most importantly, the first session is where we begin to build trust. Therapy works because of the relationship between client and clinician, and that relationship starts on day one. My commitment to you is to show up with warmth, honesty, professionalism, and a genuine interest in helping you move toward the life you want.