Today we’d like to introduce you to Candice Hasler.
Hi Candice, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m a somatic and cognitive behavioral therapist — and honestly, I think I’ve been doing this work since I was four years old.
I earned my Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling from UCF back in 2012 and when I started my first paid internship, fresh out of graduate school, I remember thinking “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do something I would do for free.”
I started out in agency work – “the trenches” as they call it. For many therapists, it’s a high burnout position with a ton of clients, almost no time for planning or clinical development, and minimal support. It felt like working at a factory, where the pressure was on to be quick and efficient, but everything in my body was screaming that this wasn’t the path to actually helping people heal – at least not the deep kind of healing I so badly wanted to help people find. I left work most days feeling defeated and overwhelmed.
So I left. But instead of going back to waitressing, like I’d initially thought, I opened my own practice, Let’s Talk! Counseling and Services right here in Baldwin Park. I had exactly 1 client, and I was determined to do right by him!
The more I got into the field though, the more I felt ill-equipped for “the big stuff.” A client in panic made me panic internally. Trauma felt intimidating to me. Suicidal thoughts gave me anxious thoughts about worst case scenarios of my own. Thankfully, when I’m scared, I crave information.
I quickly realized that I wanted to go beyond the basic skills of supporting people, offering them a safe space to process the stress of their lives. In order to do that, I knew I was going to need real tools and probably some kind of road map. That’s when my journey of professional development really began.
I devoured trainings like they were Gideon’s cookies. I studied manualized therapies like CBT for panic disorder, exposure treatment for anxiety, and cognitive processing therapy for PTSD. I dove into cognitive behavioral therapy, attachment theory, emotion focused therapy, and others. The more equipped I became, the more relaxed I could be in sessions – and the more deeply I could help.
Somewhere along the way, I realized the answer for me wasn’t what I thought it would be. What I love most about this work is not feeling like I’ve mastered it, but working with clients who challenge me to keep growing. One of the greatest gifts of this field is the endless ability to keep learning and growing as a professional and to benefit personally from that growth in the process.
It wasn’t until I stumbled onto a book called “Waking the Tiger” by Peter Levine, PhD that I found the last piece of my clinical puzzle – Somatic Experiencing (SE).
I’ve spent the last several years completing advanced trainings in somatic therapy practices that focus on how trauma lives in the nervous system. SE has taught me how to track someone’s physical and emotional experience in session and use these cues like a treasure map, to find the deeper spaces where trauma has kept them stuck. We use the body’s natural regulation strategies to balance trauma work with safety, and teach clients how to find this sense of safety for themselves outside of sessions too. SE guides clients to slowly build capacity to hold and move through some of the most painful experiences of their lives.
There is something so profoundly meaningful about holding space for another human being, that I count myself lucky to have made a career out of it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As a therapist, I started out working in outpatient addiction treatment centers and I experienced such an intense feeling of burnout so early in my career that I was absolutely sure I’d gotten the wrong degree, gone into the wrong field. Luckily my mom had the sense to suggest I start my own practice – so I did. I cobbled together a livable wage from 4 jobs in the early days while I got Let’s Talk! Counseling and Services off the ground. Looking back though, I learned so much from those experiences – I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Let’s Talk! Counseling and Services?
We are a small therapy private practice located in Baldwin Park. We specialize in providing individual therapy for adults with anxiety and trauma. We started out as a solely cognitive behavioral therapy practice, but found over time that clients with trauma, especially childhood trauma, had a hard time applying the tools of CBT consistently, despite what the research says about the efficacy of those tools.
Over the past 4 years, we’ve incorporated Somatic therapy techniques, such as Somatic Experiencing, to support our clients with a history of trauma in healing the patterns that traumatic experiences have encoded into their nervous systems.
By combining somatic healing with cognitive behavioral tools, we no longer just help clients shift thinking and behaviors, but instead have the tools to support clients in outgrowing patterns they’ve been stuck in for decades.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
As a kid, I was into art, animals, and the outdoors. I loved to figure out how things worked, but only if I could teach myself. I enjoyed learning anything I could do with my hands – drawing, painting, cooking, woodworking, you name it. Still do.
Pricing:
- $165 for Individual Sessions
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.letstalkcounselingandservices.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letstalkcounselingandservices/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetsTalkCounselingAndServicesLLC
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candiceconroy/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/candicem321/featured
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/LetsTalkCounsel/
