Coatlicue Sierra Rose (she/her)

I am a Texas Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) with experience working with adolescents and adults seeking and in recovery from addictive behaviors. I practice Integrative Meaning Therapy to guide clients in their quest to discover a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in their lives throughout their recovery journeys. I use narrative therapy interventions through an existential lens to navigate these choppy waters.

I have extensive experience working with adults and adolescents engaging in career exploration and career change through my work in university and community college settings as a professor, advisor, and counselor since 2003. I've also guided people in residential rehabilitation settings to refocus and strategically pursue their career goals congruent with their developing recovery identities, strengths, resources, and supports.

I'm a proud Chicana/Tejana member of the disability community, former teen mom, and first-generation college student raised in generational poverty. My work is informed by my lived experience, including my journey as a woman of color with vitiligo universalis and my lifelong quest to confront internalized misogyny, racism, and ableism. My doctoral dissertation and my subsequent peer-reviewed publications disrupt dominant cultural narratives of racism, colorism, ableism, and heteronormativity.

I am a Texas Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor who has worked extensively with adolescents and adults seeking and in recovery from addictive behaviors. I use existential narrative therapy to help people to tell, retell, and reframe their stories to empower them in grappling with the lifelong existential questions of (1) Who am I? (2) Where do I belong in the world? and (3) What are my meaning and purpose? These questions are umbrellas under which many of our human struggles are nestled.

Effective therapy must take the whole person and their lived experiences into account, including individual and generational trauma. Trauma affects socioemotional and physical development throughout the lifespan and must be addressed when treating sequelae like addictive behaviors, anger, depression, anxiety, body image issues, self-harm, and feelings of alienation.

I hold a Ph.D. in philosophy & I slide back and forth between existentialism and absurdism depending on the day. I'm a devotee of Gloria Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, Bruce Alexander, Gabor Maté, Albert Camus, Viktor Frankl, and Michael Steger. I echo Frankl's agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche that "those who have a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how.'" “I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter." -James Baldwin

My work is informed by my lived experience, including my journey as a woman of color with vitiligo universalis and my lifelong quest to confront internalized misogyny, racism, and ableism. My doctoral dissertation and my subsequent peer-reviewed publications disrupt dominant cultural narratives of racism, colorism, ableism, and heteronormativity.