Meet Sandtrice Russell | Licensed Professional Counselor & Podcast Host

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sandtrice Russell and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sandtrice, how does your business help the community?
My businesses help the community by offering a safe space in which clients can receive culturally competent counseling services and learn practical ways to enhance their mental and emotional health. Unique Destiny Counseling offers online counseling services which allows clients to access services from anywhere in the state of Georgia. The Self-Aware & Fucked Up Podcast addresses taboo topics in mental health which includes topics such as abuse, sexual assault, complex trauma, and neurodivergence and is available to help people globally.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve been in love with the field of counseling and psychology for longer than I can remember. I think I first fell in love with helping others when I was a 7th grade student at Gardner Newman Middle School in LaGrange, GA and I was selected to be a peer mentor for my class and since then it’s been a core mission in my life.

I think that what sets me apart from a lot of others in my field is that counseling isn’t what I do, it’s who I am. It’s not about financial gain, it’s about the love of helping and pouring into others.

I’m most proud of the work that I’ve done in highlighting the impact of historical and contemporary trauma on BIPOC therapy clients. Only a small percentage of licensed therapists, social workers, and psychologists are BIPOC, so I created a training to educate counselors of other ethnicities on how to effectively treat African American clients.

I was able to get to my current professional status after putting in work for nearly 15 years before I truly reached the pinnacle of my career. When I say pinnacle, I truly mean it took me 15 years to see myself as an expert or to truly believe that I was as good as others thought I was or as good as I sold myself to be.

Professionally, I didn’t have the easiest journey due to multiple setbacks throughout my career. My first set back occurred in 2004 as I was preparing to attend graduate school. I sat for the GRE with a free voucher because I was a broke college student, unfortunately I didn’t score well enough to get into the graduate school program at the college that I graduated from for undergrad. This led to me taking a lower level entry level job at a local inpatient facility and getting into a lot of debt right out of college. I loved the kids that I worked with and the job itself was really fulfilling; however, surviving off of $9.50 an hour was nearly impossible. As a result of this, during my early 20’s I bounced around from one job to another working in multiple mental health related jobs before I finally found stability working for a group home for adolescent sex offenders in my hometown of LaGrange.

While working at Creative Growth, I gained a lot of clinical skills working under a psychologist and assisting them with writing psychological assessments. I was quickly promoted from a child-care worker to a Clinician and later to an Admissions Counselor within one year. After working at this agency for 2.5 years, I recognized that I was selling myself short. I was great what I did; however, I still wasn’t being compensated appropriately for the work that I was doing, so I decided that if I was going to do master’s and doctorate level work, I needed to go back to school.

I enrolled in the Clinical Mental Health program at Troy State University and the rest is history. While in my final semester at the Troy, I began working at a local psychiatric hospital and my time at The Bradley Center helped shape the rest of my career. During my time there I worked side by side with multiple psychiatrists who truly educated me about mental health diagnosis and appropriately assessing clients which developed a new niche for me in the world of Crisis Intervention. This ultimately led me into full on suicide prevention working for the US. Department of Veteran’s Affairs before expanding my private practice.

Along the way, I learned to never give up on your dreams and to not despise small beginnings.

I think the one thing that I’d like the world to know about me is that my resilience and my faith in God has covered me throughout my journey and led me to this very moment. My brand is all about acknowledging the fact that life isn’t easy and it can often times be F’d up, but through therapy and learning to reframe your thoughts, we can all live our lives more freely.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We’d start the week off on Sunday with a nice little brunch at VVS or the Breakfast Boys and then hitting up the Beltline to walk off our bottomless Mimosas. On Monday, we’d hit up a movie at IPIC and have a low-key sort of day. Tuesdays, it’s all about Tacos at Las Cuatro Milpas in Riverdale, they have the absolute best authentic Mexican food on the southside. Wednesdays, we’re going to hit up a nice Wine Down Wednesday and check out one of the concert series or hit up JR Crickets for their Wednesday hot wing special. Thursday we’re hitting up Edgewood and bar hopping. On Friday, we’re heading to the Punchbowl in Marietta for drinks and a few games. Saturday we’d close out the week by hitting up My Sisters Room and dancing the night away.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d like to give a shoutout to Tanya Mitchell Cobb, one of the counselors at my high school. Seeing her come into an environment like LaGrange High School as a young, black woman helped me realize that my desire to be a counselor wasn’t such a far-fetched dream.

I’d also like to shoutout to my home-skillet, my ace Pontress S. Bailey for always encouraging me to push myself further and actualize my potential in the counseling world.

Last but, not least, my wife Jade A. Varner, for supporting my goals, dreams, and ambitions. I know it’s not easy being married to someone who wants to save the world and certainly not someone who works as much as I do.

Website: https://www.uniquedestiny.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/treethelpc/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandtrice-russell-lpc-cpcs-90533282

Twitter: https://twitter.com/treethelpc

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TreetheLPC/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@treethelpc

Other: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/SkpvOdYBVAb

Image Credits
Tourvoisier Zachary