I'm not sure why this is called Huston Therapy on Yelp as her business is called Irvine Family Counseling on her emails and her website is https://www.irvinecounseling.com/.
Short version:
Things seemed good for the first few months but then just didn't go anywhere. There didn't seem to be any urgency or motivation on her part to get anything accomplished quickly, in spite of my being very open to diving into therapy and being committed and consistent. I would say, trying to be generous, I think she would maybe be a good therapist for someone without kids, someone who wasn't married or didn't need any marriage assistance, for someone who isn't looking for spiritual support and isn't Catholic, for someone who doesn't need to get deep work accomplished or did not care how long the progress took, and for someone who isn't too concerned about hearing back in a timely manner, or at all, in response to emails and voice mails. For these things though, the skill set doesn't seem to be there.
Longer version:
I have seen various therapists for different things big and small over the years and always gotten a lot out of therapy. I have enjoyed different kinds of therapists with different approaches. I wanted to specifically try trauma therapy so started with this therapist as that was her background. I believe in giving everything a fair shake and invested 6 months of weekly therapy. I would say the first couple of months, where you are sort of just going over everything, were fine. She seemed very nice, professional, and polished. Sadly, I ended up having a very disappointing experience over all. It was my first disappointment with therapy.
As a mom I would say her advice wasn't practical for having kids. For example, telling me a solution was for me to leave or go take a nap and my husband just had to watch the kids, and that would be a natural consequence for my family... that's not realistic with kiddos or a husband who is working from home... I mean, he's working, not doing nothing. LOL
As a wife her advice didn't align with the Christian principles I follow. I was specifically seeking a Catholic therapist and wanted someone with a deep spiritual insight which the website highlights that as being a component if desired. I expressed the desire for this at the onset but it never seemed to be incorporated into the therapy sessions and the advice I received (on multiple points) actually did not align with my faith, which concerned me a lot as I try very hard to practice my faith diligently. I clarified the advice multiple times to make sure I was understanding and even discussed that it was not aligning but it remained the same advice which did not seem good for a godly marriage. I was always surprised, that although I brought this up, and asked for clarification many times, she never once asked me how I felt it didn't align with my faith and never took any action that showed she felt this issue was worth probing or resolving.
The therapist is disorganized and hard to schedule with. On one occasion, according to her explanation, she either deleted multiple emails and a voice mail or, if she managed to somehow not receive any of them, didn't do the follow up that was necessary if she thought she didn't hear from a patient. I was told by her she had a lot of phone numbers and likely deleted everything as spam. She also didn't seem to be a good listener or maybe didn't have a good memory and frequently got facts and things I told her incorrect and forgot things she said we would work on. I saw other reviews that said she was a good listener and easy to schedule with last minute so I wonder if things have changed as they were older reviews? When I just recently was working with her that was not the case, and she was implementing a rule where she doesn't schedule any appointments any sooner than a week out.
I had two goals that we discussed at the start of weekly therapy (faith-based therapy and using any specific form of trauma therapy). About 5 months in I tried to discuss that it didn't seem like we were working on either goal or making any forward progress and I was hoping to kind of take stock and see what we could do and where we were going. Since I have done therapy before I know it takes time and there are no short cuts, but I do feel after 5 months it should seem like some progress has been made or direction discerned. It just felt like there was no rush or urgency and we had all the time in the world... that's great if I want to spend endless money and just have someone listen to me talk, but not if I want to be productive and accomplish anything. Things got weird and went kind of downhill after I tried to discuss that (the deleted messages, not showing up to our appointment, etc.) and I tried for another month and then gave up. It's a bummer because I felt like I wasted a lot of time, effort, and money. read more