Richard Broach

If you’re struggling with intrusive or recurring anxious thoughts, depression, relationship difficulties, trauma, or questions about identity, purpose, and meaning, you don’t have to figure it all out alone. After 20 years as a Licensed Professional Counselor, I’ve learned that change is possible—even when you’ve been struggling for a long time.

I work with adults and seniors, and I am bilingual in English and Spanish. I am also affirming and experienced in working with LGBTQIA+ individuals.

My background spans mental health, health care, and pastoral care. Those experiences have taught me to see the whole person rather than reducing someone to a diagnosis or collection of symptoms. You don’t need to have everything figured out before coming to therapy. I’ll invite you to tell your story in your own way, and we’ll start from there.

My style is conversational, collaborative, practical, and direct when that is helpful. I don’t believe therapy should consist only of talking about problems week after week. We want to understand what keeps a problem going and then find realistic ways to begin changing it.

I draw particularly from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Internal Family Systems and parts work (IFS), mindfulness and relational approaches. Rather than forcing everyone into the same therapeutic model, I adapt our work to you and what you want to accomplish.

With anxiety and intrusive or obsessive thoughts, we may look closely at the cycle between thoughts, uncertainty, anxiety, reassurance seeking, avoidance, rumination, and other attempts to make the anxiety go away. Often the struggle to obtain certainty or eliminate an unwanted thought becomes part of what keeps us trapped.

With relationship difficulties, we may explore recurring patterns between partners as well as the fears, expectations, past experiences, and ways of communicating that contribute to them.

I also take a whole-person perspective. Relationships, family history, work, physical health, sleep, activity, spirituality or meaning, culture, and past experiences all can be relevant to understanding what is happening now.

Therapy should recognize strengths as well as problems. Our work includes identifying the resilience, values, abilities, and relationships you already possess and learning how to use them more effectively

Our first session will feel more like a thoughtful conversation than an interrogation. I will want to understand what brought you to counseling, what has been happening recently, some of the important experiences that have shaped your life, and what you hope will be different as a result of therapy.

You don't need to arrive with everything figured out. That's part of what we can discover together.

I tend to be an active therapist. I will listen carefully, ask questions, offer observations, help you notice patterns, teach skills when they may be useful, and respectfully challenge you when I think another way of looking at something might help. At the same time, therapy is not something I do to you. We work together, and you remain the expert on your own life.

Clients often come to me saying, “I know what I'm doing isn't working, but I don't know how to change it.” That's a very reasonable place to begin. We can slow things down, look at the different pieces of the puzzle, understand how they fit together, and begin making changes that are realistic rather than overwhelming.

My goal is not to turn you into someone else. It is to help you become more fully and freely yourself.

También ofrezco psicoterapia en español. Mi meta es ofrecer un espacio cálido, respetuoso y sin juicio donde podamos hablar abiertamente sobre lo que está pasando en su vida, comprender mejor sus pensamientos, emociones y relaciones, y buscar juntos maneras prácticas de avanzar.