Lucid Counseling & Wellness | Counseling in Devine, TX | Mary Rivera LPC-S

“Hi, I'm Mary Rivera Founder and Owner of Lucid Counseling. We are a Private Practice Entity since 2017. I am Licensed by the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council- Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors as a Supervisor#75057 (LPC-S) in the State of Texas. I believe every person has intrinsic value and worth. But trauma, grief, painful experiences, and difficult seasons of life can make it hard to recognize that worth in ourselves. Sometimes we become disconnected from who we are, question ourselves, or find ourselves wondering, “What is wrong with me?” I understand what it is like to experience traumatic events and to have to find your way forward. That lived understanding, combined with my professional training, has shaped the way I approach therapy: with authenticity, compassion, and respect for each person’s individual story. My practice focuses primarily on trauma, grief, anxiety, depression, and experiences that leave people feeling stuck or disconnected from themselves. I utilize EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to help clients process traumatic and distressing experiences and reduce the impact those experiences continue to have on their lives. Understanding Grief Grief is not only about the death of someone we love. We can grieve the loss of a relationship, a marriage, our health, a career, a sense of safety, the life we thought we would have, or even the person we were before something traumatic happened. Sometimes people experiencing grief wonder, “Why am I still feeling this way?” Understanding what grief is and how it affects you emotionally, physically, and mentally can help you better understand what you are going through. Grief does not always follow a predictable timeline or a specific set of stages. It can come in waves. You may have good days followed by unexpectedly difficult ones. Learning about your grief can help you recognize that your reactions have meaning. Therapy can provide a place to understand the loss, process the emotions connected to it, and learn how to carry what happened while continuing to move forward. The goal is not to forget. It is learning how to live while honoring what mattered. When You Want More Than Another Questionnaire Sometimes people come to therapy after years of asking: “Why do I feel this way?” “Why am I struggling when I’m trying so hard?” “Is it anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma—or something else?” “I’m tired of filling out questionnaires. I want more information about what may be happening.” For individuals looking for another layer of information, I also provide 19-channel qEEG brain mapping. A qEEG measures patterns of electrical brain activity and can provide objective information that may be considered alongside your symptoms, history, clinical assessment, and other relevant information. Rather than replacing a comprehensive mental health or medical evaluation, qEEG can provide additional data that may help guide conversations about treatment and next steps. For some people, seeing objective information about brain activity can also help shift the question from “What is wrong with me?” toward “What is happening, and what can I do about it?” Trauma Therapy & EMDR Trauma does not always look the way people expect it to. It may come from a single overwhelming event or from experiences that accumulated over time. You may function well on the outside while still experiencing anxiety, avoidance, intrusive memories, emotional reactions, negative beliefs about yourself, or the feeling that a part of you remains stuck in the past. EMDR therapy is designed to help the brain process distressing experiences that may continue to affect the present. The goal is not to erase your story. It is to help the past become the past so that it no longer has to control how you experience yourself today. There is hope. Healing does not require pretending that difficult things never happened. Sometimes healing begins with having the freedom to acknowledge your story, the authenticity to be who you are, and the choice to decide what comes next. Freedom. Authenticity. Choice. You are more than what happened to you—and your next chapter does not have to be written by your past.