Today we’d like to introduce you to Ana Rodriguez.
Ana, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in Colombia, South America, and raised in Dallas, Texas. A child of divorce, I bounced back and forth between both countries, and I grappled with assimilating to both cultures, all the while feeling somewhat isolated in each as well. Feeling other-ed was normal, yet I quickly learned to take the best that both worlds had to offer. As an adult, I have come to appreciate the exquisite flavor my upbringing has had on my ability to perceive others compassionately and openness. Bilingual and given a heart for travel at an early age, I now thirst for adventure and for understanding everyone and their unique viewpoints.
One of my missions in life is to be a healer. I chose counseling as a career to help others find their truth, discover their freedom, and challenge their growth. I love how powerful the counseling relationship can be in producing a change in clients. I am honored to walk through someone’s darkest valleys and most triumphant recoveries. I find great joy in contributing to and supporting such a journey.
I attended Abilene Christian University for my bachelor’s degree, where I studied psychology with a theology minor. I then transitioned into my graduate studies at the University of North Texas, where I focused on adult clinical mental health and animal-assisted therapy. I began working at an eating disorder hospitalization program and fell in love with the boldness, complexity, and pervasiveness this disorder had on women, men and their loved ones. I found that the higher acuity patients and I had a natural draw to one another.
My patient’s deep, complex stories were rooted in trauma, and I found that I had the heart and the stamina to not only understand go into that depth with them, but I could also conceptualize it physiologically, biologically, and psychologically. It all just clicked for me, I knew that my niche would be just that; how trauma-informed care relates to any flavor of trauma and the impact those negative life events have on our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world.
A self-proclaimed foodie, I naturally gravitated to becoming best friends with a fellow staff member who was the program’s long term expert dietitian and nutritionist named Amy. After personally working at the center for 4 years and her having worked there for 8, we both decided to make the leap into private practice. I think it’s fair to say taking one of the biggest risks financially, creatively, and personally, we chose to look for a home practice versus an office building. One of my personal goals was to own a practice where people would walk into a comfortable, warm and welcoming environment… a cozy couch, a living room with Friends playing on the TV, freshly cooked goodies in the kitchen and friendly dogs welcoming them in.
I wanted people to feel like they weren’t sick or getting “treated”. I wanted to take the sterile medical model away from counseling, and instead, I wanted to overwhelm them with a welcoming relationship, laughter, and a safe solace. Amy was on the same page. She was passionate about bringing cooking groups and meditation with real exposure and safe to our clientele, and she was on board with the house idea. Cue in “The Hibernia House”, a pale yellow, historic home smack dab in the middle of the St Thomas neighborhood in Uptown, Dallas. We felt good vibes after finding out a psychic used to own the space and took it as a “witchy feminine sign” and committed to space. Opening up in February of 2019, we held a Champagne and Sage open house in August and have been honored to walk alongside many men and women from all over DFW. Many days you can walk into past our home and smell homemade cookies and watch the puppies sunbathing on the patio. We are truly living our best lives (and so our the therapy dogs). The house is a dream come true and I am grateful daily.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As for eating disorder specialists, both Amy and I have dealt with our fair share of misunderstandings for communities that do not understand the non-diet approach both of us take in our philosophy as healers. We have gotten some push back for our pretty liberal, feminist-relational, open-to-all people regardless of race, gender, age, size, or sexual identity or orientation. Particularly when it comes to being body-conscious, we take pride in our deliberate consideration for the decoration and couches in our home that can allow for all sizes to comfortably sit without feeling judged by the unintentionally “small” couches and spaces in many other establishments.
We aim to empower all women and men to be their true selves in the most un-shaming way possible. We have women’s various body shaped portraits in many different areas of our offices, we only use one bathroom for all, and we constantly have a variety of different types of food to show our clientele that all food fits. We have aesthetics and coffee from local vendors in the Dallas communities and try to a meditation room with calming essential oils to promote mindfulness.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
My personal business is called Transcendence Counseling. Transcendence (in my own definition) means to go beyond a prior form of oneself; to surpass the ordinary; to be exceptional. Amy’s nutritionist private practice is called Bloom and Zest, and we co-own The Hibernia House. Two separate entities, one beautiful mission under a single roof.
My bread and butter revolve around my specialty in trauma, eating disorders and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). I believe that the mind can often heal itself naturally the same way as the body does. Much of this natural coping mechanism occurs in sleep, particularly during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. EMDR utilizes this natural process in order to successfully treat a myriad of mental health concerns such as PTSD, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders. I offer individual, couples, and family therapy.
Being a child of a Marine, I always grew up wanting to implement “bringing my dogs to work every day”. After all, that’s the dream, isn’t it? I went through the process of training both of my dogs to be therapy dogs and saw amazing results for not only my patients’ lives but for my pups. A certified therapy dog, Eloise & Lola are technically called complex rated therapy dogs. This means that they are trained to work in locations such as hospitals, schools, disaster relief centers, and yes, the therapy office. Their training enables them to detect distress in the biological and chemical changes that occur when people shift in emotion.
Once they detect distress in someone, Eloise will whine or come over and Lola will comfort the person who is having a shift in their emotion or who is feeling uncomfortable in their distress. Patients have to refer to them as “an emotional traitor”, in that they will not let you hide from your own distress. Thankfully, Eloise & Lola display the beauty of non-judgmental self-compassion when soothing pain and invalidating discomfort. They often come to sessions dressed in costumes during Halloween, Holiday sweaters in the Fall, and stylish bandanas in all the times in between. It is amazing to see both dogs work with those that might not trust the human world, as animals tend to make more understanding listeners.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I think the proudest moment of my career so far has been the combination of exquisite moments between myself and a client who genuinely thanks me for the growth they have had with their time with me. It sounds cliche, but when they truly see change and growth in their own life, I have never felt anything so fulfilling to me in a career than to be a part of helping others transcend to a more empowered version of themselves.
Pricing:
- $150 per 50 minute session
- $225 per 90 minute session
Contact Info:
- Address: 2604 Hibernia Street
Dallas Texas 75204 - Website: https://www.transcendencecounselingtx.com/
- Phone: 4439496797
- Email: transcendencecounseling@gmail.com
- Instagram: @transcendencecounseling; @thehiberniahouse
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