Rachel Ferdowsi Licensed Psychologist

• Florida, Licensed Psychologist, 10373

My career as a licensed psychologist began during my time at Nova Southeastern University where I earned my master’s and doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology with a specialty in psychodynamic psychotherapy. After graduation, I completed a one year clinical psychology internship at Henderson Behavioral Health Crisis Stabilization Unit, an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Lauderhill, FL, where I specialized in long-term mental illness assessment and treatment. I also completed a two year postdoctoral residency where I provided psychotherapy for individuals, families, and couples in a private practice setting, along with facilitating a weekly postpartum support group for new parents. I have extensive experience with diagnosis and treatment of moderate to severe depression and anxiety, as well as personality disorders. Additionally, I have experience conducting personality, intellectual, disability, and academic evaluations for children and adults. I work with adults, couples, and families using a psychodynamic approach to therapy. . Through this approach, the client is encouraged to examine unresolved conflicts that arise from past dysfunctional relationships and manifest themselves in current symptomatology. My training and experience has shown me that difficult experiences throughout life, and especially during childhood, can affect how we think, how we feel, and the way we relate to ourselves and other people. We can then find ourselves feeling and behaving in ways which we don’t like and don’t understand, but which we seem unable to change. It is my belief that through the development of a safe and supportive relationship, psychotherapy can help us understand who we are as individuals, what our life experiences and our relationships mean to us, and the ways in which our experiences may be affecting our lives.