Today we’d like to introduce you to Keil Davis.
Keil, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Some people know what they want to do from a very young age.
Not me.
I was four years out of graduating from Texas A&M when I was on a backpacking trip from Brazil to Colombia, thinking a lot about what I value most. I was at a turning point in my life where I began focusing more on career and community and less on travel and adventure. So, I began thinking about careers and what might be most rewarding to me. I have always enjoyed having deep chats with people and helping others, I just never thought of it as a career. So, I reached out to a few people I knew in the field, including one close friend who had recently finished grad school where she studied counseling.
The more I learned about it, the more excited I got about the possibility of pursuing the career. I began studying for the GRE with the help of apps while traveling through Bolivia. Several weeks and long bus rides later, I was in Bogota, the city I was set to fly out of. I couldn’t wait to get back to Texas and hit the ground running. That I did: I spent a lot of time studying for the GRE, took the test, knocked out some undergrad prerequisites for grad school, and got accepted to Sam Houston State University’s graduate program in the Fall of 2011. That seems like forever ago.
The journey since has been like climbing a mountain by placing one foot in front of the other with the occasional opportunity to turn around and take in the view. After grad school came to the incredible opportunity to intern at HGI Counseling in Houston. After my internship, I practiced at a Xavier Educational Academy working with adolescents in a school setting. I then went to work at Westpark Springs Behavioral Hospital practicing as a full-time therapist in the adolescent unit. Most importantly, it has felt more and more like I’m in the right place, doing the right thing.
I accrued the 3,000 hours required for licensure last fall and applied for full licensure. While waiting for the state to process my license, I started putting together the nuts and bolts of a private practice. I was fortunate to find a wonderful office for rent in the Museum District to set up HTX Counseling and Wellness. The day I received news of full licensure was like reaching the summit of the mountain, only to realize that I was now standing at the foot of a whole new mountain to climb with HTX Counseling and Wellness.
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?
Ooof, grad school was a marathon. It taught me how much grit and resilience I had. Nothing had ever stretched me so thin and challenged me in so many ways. I learned a lot about myself and what I was capable of on a lot of different levels during those three years.
The internship introduced me to working with young people for the first time. It was there that I gained an appreciation for young people’s unique struggles and their depth of understanding. The job at the school showed me a so much about the documentation and ethical side of the practice. Finally, the hospital job prepared me to handle psychological conditions I had never been to exposed to before. Psych hospitals are like emotional emergency rooms. People are admitted who are needing stability at critical moments in their lives. It was some of the hardest, yet most rewarding, work I’ve ever done. I continue to practice part-time in a hospital setting today.
Please tell us about HTX Counseling and Wellness.
My mission is to help young people and their families. On my business card, it says “Helping young people enjoy their youth and families become family again.” That sums up the goal of HTX Counseling and Wellness: I see it as a part of the community. I mostly work with adolescents, age 10 and up. I find that young people, like a lot of people, are rounding the learning curves associated with emotions, communication, socializing, and mindfulness. Most schools don’t talk about these things enough. The challenges associated with adolescence generally involve family members, so I work with families just as much as I work with young people.
The thing I take the most pride in is being able to help families through really difficult times. The most rewarding part of my job is seeing family members begin to really listen to each other and understand where one another is coming from. I also like seeing the look on a young person’s face when they have a moment of insight or discovery and realize a new way of seeing something that makes communicating with mom or dad easier. Seeing clients grow in terms of self-esteem and self-worth or watching them start setting healthy boundaries and initiating important conversations that they have been avoiding for years, is amazing. Seeing progress in my clients makes me feel honored to even get to be a tiny part of their stories and success. It’s why I do what I do.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Oh man… my favorite memory from childhood would have to be the birthday parties. Some years, my mom would take a group of friends and me to Mountasia or Playcation Station to ride Go Karts and play video games. Other years, my dad would take a group of friends and me to a Houston Aeros hockey game. They were always fun. As my Dad says, “We went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” Haha. Being around family and friends while having fun has always been, and still is, one of my favorite things to do with my time.
Pricing:
- Rates for Individual sessions are $125 an hour.
- Rates for family and couple’s counseling are $150
Contact Info:
- Address: 1118 Barkdull St.
Houston, Texas 77006 - Website: http://www.htxcounselingandwellness.com/
- Phone: 832-318-0674
- Email: keildavis@htxcounselingandwellness.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/htxcounselingandwellness/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/htx-counseling-and-wellness-houston
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