Introductions!
Hello everyone! I’m Kajal Patel, owner and Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Sahas Counseling, PLLC. I’m excited to start this new endeavor and hoping to continue offering quality mental health care to the community.
It was always a goal to explore private practice at some point, but I was not willing to take that step until I gained knowledge and experience needed to help my clients to my best ability. I took my time, I did the hard work of getting a diverse amount of experience before arriving into private practice. For many people, therapy is not an easy step, and for someone to trust in me with their whole life story, I only found it appropriate to share a bit about me and my experience so that my future clients know who sits along side of them during their therapy journey.
MY CAREER JOURNEY:
I was sitting in accounting class, thinking “what the heck am I doing here?” I was struggling to find any joy or excitement from the many classes I was taking for a MIS major, but I was LOVING my Psychology class. I changed my major to Psychology during my bachelors program and couldn’t stop my curiosity and eagerness to explore mental health. It wasn’t until I actually visited a state hospital facility in GA (I shadowed staff from morning arrival, to treatment team meetings, to visiting multiple units of the hospital, etc.) that I realized that inpatient was definitely the place where I felt that I would gain the most experience while being very challenged.
My internships in graduate school really drove me into the mental health field in ways that I was not expecting, but it taught me a lot about compassion, advocacy, and the importance of community work. I started off interning and also having a graduate assistantship with a Rape Crisis Center in SC, advocating for sexual trauma survivors who were ready to report their trauma and finding them the resources to stay safe and begin their process of healing. It also involved me educating children and teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools to build awareness of sexual abuse and developing relationships where people felt safe enough to reach out for help. My next internship was at a private inpatient facility in SC where I gained the knowledge of diagnosing mild to severe mental illness in patients, providing individual and group counseling to adults, and working with substance use disorder issues. It’s during this time that I gained the clinical foundation needed to begin movement towards therapy.
Through the years I have worked with GA and NC government facilities in their state forensics inpatient and step down units, a state alcohol and drug abuse inpatient hospital, and then with the Veterans Affairs Hospital in one of their Substance Use Disorder, outpatient clinics. The challenges and successes faced with limited resources, case management, and hospital programs really provided insight into the amount of effort that is necessary and effective to help people in the community address their mental health needs. As I continued working in these facilities, most of my work focused on Substance Use Disorders, anxiety, depression psychosis, and trauma. i also gained experience with supervising interns and helping them develop their own foundation in the mental health field. When possible, I spent time engaging in self-care to prevent burnout. Many of us know the extremes of juggling careers and challenges in our personal life. Through the introduction of Yoga classes, I soon saw beliefs that had therapeutic approaches of mental health treatment modalities. I started to learn more about mindfulness, movement of the body and it’s successful impacts on reducing anxiety, building healthy connectivity towards the self, and creating empowerment to face challenges in the world. I ended up taking a 200-hr teacher training program, yoga and trauma trainings, and briefly taught yoga to children so that I could build the beginning foundations in yoga movement.
And then COVID happened, yeah that thing….
The tough calls were made and I let go of my VA position and focused on raising my two amazing kids. I was thankful to have started with a group private practice during the beginning of COVID. It was here where I started integrating mindful movement with talk therapy for the next 4 years, as well as supervising LCSW-A clinicians and interns.
Of course, a little humor for my Asian side…my last name is “Patel.” I gotta be a business owner at some point right? That is not the reason though. I want to have the freedom to use my skills and become more involved in the community in ways that I could not before.
Thank you for taking the time to get to know me and I look forward to meeting my future clients of Sahas Counseling, PLLC.
