Community Highlights: Meet Rebecca Williams of Inland Empire Couples Counseling

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Williams.

Rebecca, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My professional journey started in education, with a desire to help teenagers, who I think are often given a bad-rap when really they are curious, creative, and trying to figure themselves out and where they fit in the world. Working with with troubled teens in a school setting led me to understand that there’s only so much schools or other institutions can do to help kids when their family lives are unstable or dysfunctional. And that led me to family therapy and ultimately couples therapy. One of the best things we can do to make kids’ lives better is to help their parents be happy, stable, and available for them, which they can’t do if they are caught up in conflict with each other.

I started my private practice in 2016 with a desire to help mixed-faith couples and found that there was a real need for qualified, competent couples therapists in my area. I expanded to include other therapists in my practice in 2018. I am proud to say that we are known in our area as the best couples therapists in town. It really matters to me that I support the therapists who work here so that they get great training, are not overworked, and are therefore able to provide excellent service to the couples who trust us to help them with their relationships.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I don’t believe that anyone who is successful professionally has a smooth road and mine has been no different. The biggest challenge for me is that while I got great training as a general therapist, I didn’t get much specific training in couples therapy. That’s a fact that often surprises people: in therapist training programs for marriage and family therapists, couples therapy is often an elective class. Many MFTs have received no specific training in couples therapy. And it is a specialty. Individual therapy techniques just don’t work effectively with couples. We often have clients come to see us after they’ve tried couples therapy with another therapist who didn’t specialize in couples and didn’t get good results. So I had to do a lot of training and learning (and some trial and error) to figure out what actually helps couples get better. And now I train all the therapists who work with me in what I’ve learned. And we get great results working alongside our clients to make changes in their relationships.

I also didn’t receive any training in how to run a business. So I’ve had to learn a lot about that since opening my own practice.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Inland Empire Couples Counseling?
We offer high-quality, effective, and specialized couples therapy for people in Riverside county. We can also see couples online anywhere in the state of California. We help couples who are in the 20s up to their 70s and beyond find creative solutions to their problems so they can enjoy more happy, connected, loving moments with each other. We help with everything from premarital counseling to decisions to have kids to infidelity, military deployment, infertility, parenting, alcohol problems, and sexual concerns. We also help couples who are deciding if they want to stay together or separate and offer co-parenting support for those who want to divorce or separate well.

What sets us apart is that we are a boutique specialty practice for couples and relationships. Everything from your first call to the length of your sessions to how we help you celebrate ending therapy is designed specifically for couples therapy success. This is so different from working with a big organization that’s only set up for individual therapy, where your couples therapy is a sort of afterthought. I think many in the public would be shocked to know that when I tell other therapists we specialize in couples, I often get a response like “Ew! Good for you. I’ll do it, but I hate working with couples.” I’m proud that people who come here are served by therapists who have a passion for working with couples, they really love this work and have the specialized training to be good at it.

I also love our Couples Therapy Retreats. We’ve designed an intensive two-day retreat that helps couples who want results fast to dive deep into their issues and see lasting change quickly. We get more done in those two-days than we would be able to do in two months of weekly therapy. These retreats are another thing we can offer because we’re not trying to shoe-horn couples therapy into a system that wasn’t designed for it. Our therapists really care about helping their clients. And when someone comes to work with us, they get the benefit of the whole team. We regularly consult with each other. So if you have an issue your therapist has never seen before, someone else on our team has and will help your therapist know what to do.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
If someone is just starting out as a couples therapist and wants to learn from me, please contact me and see if we’re hiring.

But more generally, for someone just starting out in business, I’d say don’t be afraid to specialize! The more specialized I became in my couples therapy skills, the better I got at it, which meant the work actually became easier and more rewarding for me AND my clients got better results. Sometimes in business we’re afraid to go too specialized because we think that we’ll miss out on clients or customers. But I haven’t seen that to be the case. Therapists I’ve never met say that my practice is the only place they send couples because we have such a strong reputation. I wouldn’t have that if I didn’t specialize.

Oh, and when you don’t know something, learn from an expert. The money I have invested in business coaching to help me learn what I didn’t know about running a business has paid for itself many times over. When you don’t know, learn from an expert. Don’t be so proud to think that you’re going to figure it all out yourself. You might be smart enough to do that, but you’ll spend a lot of time doing it. It’s a better use of your time to pay someone to teach you the business part so that you can spend your time doing what you are awesome at!

Pricing:

• 80 minute couples therapy session: $295
• 50 minute individual therapy session: $195
• Couples Retreat with one therapist: $3500
• Couples Retreat with two therapists: $5000

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.iecouplescounseling.com

Image Credits
SuStudios Photography for the headshot.

All other photos or images I created.