Rocio Mercado

My personal background, culture, and values play a large role in my inspiration to be a therapist. I recognize how everyone has their own history, which will shape who they are and how they react to positive and negative situations. My cultural and educational background are a constant reminder of the importance of empathy when hearing someone’s individual story. I’m passionate about helping others who need support in current childhood challenges, processing childhood trauma, creating healthy communication habits to form strong relationships, and processing the impact of anxiety and depression.

We will be working as a team to help you get closer to the goals you want to meet. With strength based approaches, I hope to empower you to reflect on your emotions and utilize the learned skills to start implementing them into your life, outside of our sessions. My priority is to include your own background, experiences, and values to set goals for treatment. Communication is key in all relationships and is necessary to feel safe and understood in your treatment.

Building rapport is a vital part of beginning the trust between a client and a therapist. During my first session with adults, I like to review your goals and expectations of treatment, as well as any previous experiences in therapy, as those can shape our view of treatment. I want to make sure I take your most important values into account in order to create a safe therapeutic environment. From my experiences, children and teens have a harder time building that trust. Therefore, my first session with them includes a whole session dedicated to getting to know one another with an ice breaker activity. I find this helps form the foundation to that safe space to begin opening up.