Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Burris
Hi Kim, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
A spiritual awakening in college lead me on my path to becoming a holistic therapist. I needed to do my own personal healing, and was left without answers after going through the traditional medical model approach to healing and wellness. I have always been fascinated with the human experience and in deep awe and inquiry as to the mystical nature of being human, and this lead me to study religion and psychology as an undergrad at USC, and eventually lead me to get my degree in Integral Counseling Psychology at CIIS in San Francisco to become a holistic therapist. My work in this field has always been about the transpersonal aspect of healing, helping my clients understand the existential underpinnings of their suffering and using all of the available tools from western psychology, eastern spiritual practices and the most recent advances in neuroscience to provide people with a unique plan for their healing journey. My career started with my own personal private practice in San Francisco and eventually expanded into a group practice – The Holistic Counseling Center. I opened the center in 2022 with a physical location in El Dorado Hills, CA. The center has been growing rapidly and we now serve clients across California, with a majority of our clients residing in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I became a therapist in order to heal myself. I wanted to do the work personally to overcome my struggles with perfectionism, self-sabotage and anxiety. The journey has been deeply fulfilling, transformative and challenging. The most surprising part of being on a healing journey is the ever unfolding layers of pain to uncover, and recognizing that the journey doesn’t ‘end’ but continues to unfold and deepen. My self-healing and self-discover journey continues as I lean into my new role as an entrepreneur. Founding a counseling center has been wildly exciting and humbling. Serving clients with holistic mental health care is something I am deeply passionate about. When my private practice became full during COVID, the calls kept coming from people who resonated with the idea that mental health is more than just how the mind works, and were looking for a holistic and spiritual approach to healing. The center started organically with a few other clinicians that found my website online and asked if they could work with me. That was the ‘easy’ part! The biggest challenge on this journey so far has been trusting the process while staying on top of the ever changing market and marketing trends. To me, marketing is all about making sure the message gets in front of the people that are looking for us and our services. Post-COVID the marketing landscape has changed dramatically, with a lot more big box therapy companies coming on the scene. Learning to stay in integrity with my brand message and not get caught up in ‘competing’ with some of these big companies has been a growing edge in the past year.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Holistic Counseling Center. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
The Holistic Counseling Center provides psychotherapy that honors the mind-body-spirit. We work with adults, couples, moms, and teens and specialize in supporting humans that are struggling with anxiety, depression, perfectionism, self-sabotage and finding purpose and fulfillment in their life and in their relationships.
One of the unique services we offer is transpersonal psychotherapy, also known as spiritual therapy. This approach honors and explores the existential and mystical part of being human. It provides a deep dive into the unconscious patterns and programs of the human mind, ego and experience that can keep us stuck repeating outdated and self-sabotaging ways of thinking, feeling and being in the world. It helps people get out of their head and into their heart, connect with their intuition and higher self, and see their struggles from another perspective. This approach weaves together traditional psychotherapy with a holistic approach that looks at what is going on for our clients somatically (in their body), emotionally (in their heart), mentally (brain chemistry, ego) and spiritually (soul purpose, higher self perspective).
What I’m loving most about this work right now is that many psycho-spiritual practices and approaches rooted in mysticism used to be called ‘woo-woo’ or dismissed by science, and are now being embraced and used in the field of neuroscience. What used to be fringe, is now science, opening up so many more people to a holistic approach to healing that can change their life.
I also want people to know that psychotherapy is self-care. The stigma is softening and I couldn’t be more excited for that. Therapy is for everyone! It’s not just for people in crisis or with severe mental health challenges. Yes therapy is great when you ‘need’ it, but it’s amazing when you use it for personal growth and self-development. Therapy can help your create the life you want by helping you excavate the parts of yourself that have been long forgotten or abandoned and align with your best self in order to heal, grow, integrate and transform. The result? Less fear, less uncertainty, less self-sabotage, and more ease, more confidence, more growth and more love.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Taking risks is an opportunity for growth. If we stay in the lane of doing what we know and doing what we’re ‘good; at we can be habitual about our life and growth can become stagnant. Evolution and transformation is our birthright and most often, growth and transformation comes when we do something new, which inevitably means we are taking risks.
Personal risks I have taken that have offered huge opportunities for growth include moving from San Francisco to NYC to pursue a career in music in my 20s, subsequently moving back to SF to pursue a career as a therapist, opening up my own private practice when I only had 4 clients, taking the big leap into opening a group practice when I only had one office and had never managed a staff before, moving from my one office suite to a seven suite office, and moving back to the Bay Area while still managing a physical office location and expanding the business to serve all of California and beyond!
If it’s not already obvious, I actually enjoy taking risks. I’m learning that every move is an opportunity to learn, to grow, to cry sometimes, and to celebrate. I come to know myself deeper every time I take a risk and try something new.
Pricing:
- Psychotherapy services range from $150-$225 for 50-minute sessions
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theholisticcounseling.center/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kim.burris.psychotherapy/
Image Credits
Theresa Winslow
