Today we’d like to introduce you to Ruth Fowler, LPC, MCC.
Ruth Fowler, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was a high school English and Creative Writing teacher for 25 years in Texas, California, and Louisiana. About mid-point in my career, I wanted to try my hand at business, having had a successful tee-shirt small business in New Orleans, La. as a sideline to teaching before moving back to Houston. I was born and raised in Houston, so I came home.
At that time, 1981, my cousin was VP for M. David Lowe, a job placement company with 9 offices so she and her success led me to that company. I worked at corporate headquarters for 1 l/2 years and became no. 7 out of 85 placement counselors during that period. The other counselors (all dealing with degreed individuals) in the top 10 had taken 9 or 10 years to reach that point of production, i.e. placements.
I decided I preferred teaching even though to do so meant a huge cut in pay, so I returned to Spring Branch ISD where I had started out in 1968. It turned out to be a very good thing that I chose to leave M. David Lowe’s because after opening a 10th office, he ended up shutting them all down over the next year due to the downturn in the 1980s economy. He hadn’t believed it was true. He mistakenly thought we employees just weren’t working hard enough.
With the downturn, many people of my age bracket were laid off or cut back from their companies. They knew I had had some experience with placing people on jobs, so they, their relatives and friends, came to me for help. After helping counsel 3 people in their 20s, all in the same family for their potential careers, I said to myself, “That was fun, I think I’ll do that when I retire.” I mistakenly thought I could just put out a shingle that said, “Ruth Fowler, Career Counselor.” My cousin told me she thought I needed a license. I wrote Austin for information and they told me I needed college hours that equaled a master’s degree, so I said to myself, “Well, I’ll probably never finish, but I’ll start and see what happens.” Three and a half years later, I had the degree, a masters in counseling. To become a licensed professional counselor, I had to intern for 2000 hours.
I found a psychologist and former Harvard professor, Dr. Robert Sarmiento, who specialized in career counseling, to be my supervisor and mentor for the internship. He had counseled me for my career back in 1983. By this time, it was 1995.
Dr. Sarmiento was on the national board of a worldwide recovery organization called Smart Recovery, and he wanted me to take over the once weekly meetings so that he could handle paying clients during that time. I thought I would do it for the length of the internship and then quit. Here it is 22 yrs. later, and I am still facilitating those meetings, and thoroughly enjoy doing so.
I was lucky enough to be able to study with Dr. Albert Ellis, the founder and developer of modern day cognitive behavior therapy (but he called it REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). Dr. Ellis was best friends with a man whom Dr. Sarmiento and myself later officed with, Dr. Earl Saltzman. I used to lease office space from Dr. Saltzman. Today, he leases from me.
Early on, clients would say to me, “Okay. You’ve helped me with my career; now help me with my in-laws, my out-laws, guilt, anger management, depression, anxiety, marriage issues, children, parenting, etc.” I began taking courses in those areas for more in-depth training.
I continued to teach for the first five years working nights and weekends as a counselor. When I retired from teaching, I started counseling full time, always as a sole practitioner. After five years involved with career coaching, I became eligible for the Master Career Counselor designation, which I applied for and received.
Clients like it that I taught children, and a good portion of my business includes serving children and their parents, particularly with the needs of the gifted. Marriage counseling has also become one of my specialties. These specialties have evolved over my career. Lately, I’ve been seeing more children who suffer from anxiety, a sign of the times. Over the years, I have also become a specialist in drug and alcohol (and other self-defeating behaviors) recovery treatment.
I wrote a children’s chapter book about 10 years ago, sold about 100 copies, and put it aside. Now I’ve hired a new illustrator and am working to getting it published in an upgraded fashion. That has meant some serious rewriting. I hope for it to be a series. I’ve written about 6 or 7 chapters for book 2 and named the chapters for Book 3. We’ll see what happens with that project. I’m excited about it.
Has it been a smooth road?
The only struggle occurred when Dr. Saltzman decided to retire, and the rest of the counselors in his suite had to decide what to do next. Even pooling our resources, we couldn’t afford that office space. At that point, I decided to strike out on my own, and that was 5 years ago, but it was a move just down the hall from Suite 108 to Suite 105. It’s been a marvelous experience so far. In the meantime, my colleague, Dr. Sarmiento had died, or he and I would have continued on working together but independently.
In addition, during the last seventeen years since my retirement from teaching, I traveled all over the world with a medical group of counselors, psychologists, and other medical practitioners as well as trips on my own. Those trips have enriched my practice. Each trip was about 10 days to 2 weeks. I give talks on cruise ships related to general psychological topics, but of late, the ships’ cruise directors want destination talks, so I prepare and present talks on such topics as Pancho Villa for a trip down the Mexican Riviera, and on art and artists for Italy, or Santorini for Greece. I’ve probably given 100 of those type talks.
Locally, I give talks to companies like Exxon, Dow Chemical, NASA, Technip and school districts on such topics as “Overcoming Procrastination” or management.
I continue to take coursework, workshops, and seminars to enhance my depth of knowledge. May 22nd, I attended a full day seminar on counseling couples with drug or alcohol (or both) issues, for example. I studied with Dr. Ellis seven times as well as Dr. Harville Hendricks, Dr. Phil McGraw, Drs. John and Julia Gottman, and others.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Positive Directions Counseling Services – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
I am most proud of the fact that I’ve been able to succeed on my own since the beginning from day one as a sole practitioner.
First, I listen to clients, clients and their families or significant others and then begin offering solutions, suggestions, and practical wisdom from personal experience as well as from educational resources. I’ve had personal counseling myself, and the ones that worked for me were those who offered me concrete solutions to my issues, not in the way of telling me what to do, but in offering me other ways to view situations or methods of resolving whatever issue came up for me.
My company motto is “Helping others to help themselves”. I try to live a well-rounded life myself and help others learn how to do that for themselves.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Houston has a vibrant, diverse, invigorating environment with so much to engage Houstonians in our interests like the yearly art car parade or fabulous music venues. I love all our sports teams and support them as much as I can. I lived in LA five years, and we have far better drama outlets than LA does, in my opinion, e.g. the Alley Theater, Stages, Main Street Theater The EnsembleTheater, The Queensbury. We have so many universities, which makes us a city of learners – I believe I read that there are 12 universities in our city. We’re near the water, i.e. Galveston, which makes me happy.
I have generations of friends here besides my family. My high school classmates meet for lunch every other month after all these years. My classmates said that when we were in high school we talked about our boyfriends, later our husbands, then our children, then our grandchildren, and now our physical aspects as we are aging together.
People here are almost always friendly, warm, and interesting, not trying to impress others.
What I like least is that the traffic is difficult and requires a veteran to navigate it. I am concerned about out of town visitors trying to get around Houston.
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
