We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Harrell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rachel, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I got my resilience from my determination to succeed. Throughout college, I experienced many setbacks. Freshman year I was in an abusive relationship. This relationship consumed my life and destroyed my sense of self. Once I left this relationship I was determined to reinvent myself and to keep pushing. During sophomore year, I decided to join the equestrian team at my college. While this team allowed me to build my confidence and learn about my skill set, it became difficult to keep going after I experienced a brain injury. One day during lessons, I was thrown off a horse and received a concussion. After a month or so, I discovered that I had post concussion syndrome. Because of this, I experienced constant headaches and other and other physical concerns. Even though these symptoms made it difficult to complete school work, I was determined to pass my classes and continue on. Similarly, during my junior year I also struggled with my health. Towards the second semester of junior year I was diagnosed with mono. I had a very serious case which took 6 months to recover from. I was in and out of hospitals hoping to finally recover to relieve this feeling of major illness. Because I was sick for so long, it made it very difficult to go to class and work. I had an enlarged spleen and tachycardia, forcing me to quit dance for the semester. That summer, my childhood dog passed around the same time my mother was preparing for gallbladder surgery. These events caused me great pain making it even harder to recover from this illness. Although this point of my life felt like it was never ending, I pushed myself to get up everyday and finish my college career because I knew just how bad I wanted my degree in order to live my dream life. Now that I am a graduating senior on the dean’s list, I am thankful for the personal skills that I have learned from these hardships and how strong I have become because of it.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
As a graduate, I am planning on attending grad school to become a licensed mental health therapist. It is a dream of mine to eventually work towards obtaining a private practice as a child psychologist. Working with children has always been a passion of mine. I believe that a career in mental health will allow me to end the stigma and help individuals struggling with issues that they feel most burdened by.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Three qualities that were most impactful in my journey are determination, self discipline, and working hard. If I were to give advice to an individual who was early in their journey I would suggest researching their dream career early on and to gain the experience and skills needed for that job. Working towards a goal will help to improve these qualities.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
To me, an ideal client would be someone who is open to change and willing to receive feedback. In the field of psychology, it is very important for the client to use self critique and advice from others as a way to understand their behavior or thought patterns. This makes it much easier to change a specific habit or unwanted emotion that is causing harm.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: rachelharrell6208
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.harrell.1884?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rachel-harrell-654aba292
- Twitter: rachel102
