Today we’d like to introduce you to Sydney McQuade.
Hi Sydney, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Hi and thanks. Likewise! Basically, I grew up with a lot of feelings! I eventually came to recognize this as as what is mostly understood to be, an empath. I remember organizing my stuffed animals around my bed so ‘everyone’ felt included at bedtime! Fast foward, people are naturally wired this way they can often feel drawn to the field of psychology, which with the right motivations and training can feel like a phenomenal fit. Luckily, this is how it went for me. I remember volunteering in high school at Safe of Austin (at the time, it was known as SafePlace of Austin), the Austin Children’s Museum (before it was The Thinkery) and a nursing home in Central Austin. I volunteered so much I was awarded the Presidential Service Award in my junior year. After that, it felt pretty easy to decide to focus on psychology as a field of study in college. I chose St. Edward’s University, as I was also offered a soccer scholarship, so away I went.
Feeling fascinated by psychology as a whole, adn more specifically captivated by the space occupied by psychological trauma, I completed internships, had a few teaching assistantships, played NCAA soccer and graduated. I was admitted into graduate school for Counseling Psychology at The University of Houston and after my graduate degree, I worked really hard to get my license as quickly as possible. I was able to focus my attention on fine-tuning clinical skills. As I mentioned, I had always been drawn to the trauma recovery space and so I began a solo private practice in 2016 here in Austin to do just that. It grew quickly, which to me mostly felt like an indication that specific trauma therapy is overall an area in need of excellent and specialized providers here in Austin. Because of this I decided to take a risk and grow my solo trauma-focused private practice into a group practice by reinvesting slowly and hiring like-minded clinicians, one by one. Today we are a practice of 6 clinical providers with plans for more expansion into 2 other markets. As of now, we offer specific evidence-based trauma care to hundreds of clients and psychiatric medication management to a subset of those folks.
Alright, 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?
Never is it a smooth road, nor has it been an easy road! Take your pick, owning a business. Staying sharply clinically informed. Supporting clients around the same topics, I myself find distressing (a recent pandemic comes to mind). Two words often come to mind when I think about what has been challenging: female entrepreneurship. I can’t even begin to describe the number of hurdles that women business owners face, some more subtle than others. I am lucky enough that the clinical space has been fairly easy to navigate as a woman owner and clinician, but never without it’s rough patches. Navigating the business world is more where the challenges arise. I’ve learned many lessons along the way and I’m sure I’ll continue to as we go. I constantly remind myself, and often my clients, that everything worthwhile is hard and should scare you. I often feel a sense of anxiety when hatching a new idea or decide to grow around one of my edges. Sometimes things don’t workand require an adjustment, and other times they turn out sparkly and wonderful! It’s all fine. I will say, I have been fortunate enough to stumble into some profoundly special business relationships along the way and would not be in this place without those people and our relationship. Overall, I love strong female partnerships and business relationships and believe that having these makes obstacles and challenges seem much more manageable.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a group psychotherapy practice in South Austin focusing on trauma recovery via individual and family counseling and psychiatric medication management. There are many kinds of trauma ranging from attachment/relational trauma to near-death experiences. Our practice and its providers are all trained and some are certified in evidence-based trauma therapy. Generally, what this specifically means is that we have all done special and research-supported trauma training. Within the trauma world, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is considered the ‘gold standard’ for treatment. While we definitely don’t use this therapy in every session or with every client, it is an invaluable tool that provides a compassionate conceptualization, which helps us to both align with and also treat clients suffering from many kinds of trauma. What a lot of folks don’t realize is that often times trauma can be the nucleus of a problem with symptoms ranging from anxiety to disordered eating to mood instability to relationship trouble. Given that fact, we of course are also all very experienced in helping support and manage many other client experiences. We prioritize and value genuine healing while understanding there are many ways to heal, and being able to honestly offer this to clients is something we’re proud of. We strive to be ethical, buttoned-up, and evidence-based while placing client goals and compassion at the heart of how we treat and care for clients.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Many things, in all honesty. In a field like this you have to keep your head on a swivel and attend to all the things. The whole person. Couple that with trying to run a business, keeping both your employees and clients happy, and you have more than a full time job! I often have to assess my prioritization because I feel like so many aspects of being a business owner, a boss, and a trauma/mental health steward and clinician should all be labeled as ‘the most’ important. Ultimately, if I had to choose, the most important thing would be behaving ethically and with kindness. Sometimes this means I get taken advantage of, but I’d rather live life as a human, clinician and business owner giving people the up front benefit of the doubt and approaching things with vulnerability rather than living life as a guarded person. I’ll take the challenges along with the good if that means I can enter into situations and relationships with an open and kind heart. I find that if you do this, most things work out and you get to stumble upon lovely moments of beauty you would have otherwise missed out on.
Pricing:
- Insurances accepted, in network
- Psychiatric medication management pricing online
- 125 – 175 private pay session, therapy
Contact Info:
- Website: CounterbalanceCounsel
ing.com
Image Credits
Matt Montalvo
