ABOUT RACHEL HOWARD, PSY.D.

 

Dr. Howard is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Los Angeles, California. She has helped thousands of people, and has a commitment to excellence, assisting both couples and individuals in their journey of personal growth and childhood healing. One of her many interests includes working with couples. Dr. Howard strongly believes that one of the most powerful catalysts to growth, change, and childhood healing is through the couple relationship. Therefore, she co-founded Focus On Relationship and is dedicated to helping couples to thrive, by teaching them to recreate, deepen and maintain their initial feelings of attraction and “being in love.”

 

She is particularly skillful at empowering couples to discover, or rediscover, their own unique sense of playfulness and romance by helping them to find a more loving, humorous, enlivening, passionate, intimate, deep, fulfilling, life-long connection with one another. She is one of the few practitioners who combines EMDR with ego-state work with both individuals and couples. She has a professional reputation of being able to provide help to couples in minor distress, as well as to those in tremendous crisis; such as helping couples survive and thrive after infidelity, impregnating other women and other kinds of betrayals.

 

Additionally, Dr. Howard is an expert and is certified in the practice of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), as well as in hypnosis. She treats individuals and couples who have experienced both large and small childhood and adult traumas which have tremendous impact on our lives and on our relationships. She also treats depression, anxiety, eating disorders, relationship issues, career dissatisfaction, and relationship difficulties.

 

Further, Dr. Howard has a wide base of experience from which to draw when she is helping people change their lives. She believes in keeping up with the most cutting-edge, well researched treatment modalities available today in the area of psychology and mental health. Therefore, she uses an eclectic approach to her therapy work, because she believes that each person deserves an individually tailored treatment. One form of therapy, just like one antibiotic, does not and should not work for all. She utilizes a combination of psychodynamic, object relations, solution focused, cognitive behavioral, humanistic/existential, EMDR, somatic experiencing, hypnosis, imagery, meditation, breath work, as well as the contents of her life experiences to help catapult people into growing and enjoying the most of their human potential. She enjoys, and has a tremendous amount of experience, working with individuals, couples and groups.

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Dr. Howard is an EMDRIA certified practitioner and EMDRIA approved consultant. She is a contributing author to Dr. Laurel Parnell's most recent book, Attachment-Focused EMDR: Healing Relational Trauma. She is a former facilitator for the Parnell Institute.

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Most recently, Dr. Howard developed and presented The Use of Relationally-Based EMDR (RBE) in Couples Therapy, a short lecture format presentation for the LA County Psychological Association couples special interest group. The lecture has been expanded into one- and two-day workshop formats.

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Currently, Dr. Howard is integrating the benefits of the NeuroAffective Relational Model™, as developed by Dr. Laurence Heller, in her RBE work with individuals and couples.

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To arrange for counseling, workshops, or speaking engagements, contact Dr. Howard.