Reshma Kamal, Ph.D., LPCC

      Dr. Reshma Kamal is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor. She got her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 2013. She moved to New Mexico in 2008 from New York where she earned her Ed.M. in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University Teacher’s college in 1990. Since then, she has worked with City University of New York for over 15 years. In addition, she has also worked as a Guidance Counselor for high school students in New York and in Santa Fe. She has lived in many different countries as a child and traveled extensively. She came to the United States at the age of 13. She feels that she has been able to balance her family’s eastern philosophy (India and Pakistan) with the Western culture that she grew up with in America. It was not an “easy road.” To balance two different cultures and learn to live your truth is something that Dr. Kamal has had to do on a continuous basis in her life. In finding that balance, she learned many different types of beliefs and realized that there is a place in the human experience where “all meets and all becomes one.” In addition to English, she is fluent in French, Spanish, and Urdu/Hindi. Dr. Kamal feels that her experience of living in different cultures and being able to converse in different languages have been a great asset in her work as a counselor for this has enabled her to have an increased understanding of cross-cultural issues and the different ways that cultures view healing of the mind.

      For the past 6 years she has been working as a therapist for Southwest Family Guidance Center in Santa Fe. She works mainly with children and families many of which are immigrants from a Hispanic background. She is trained as a family therapist and strongly believes that “one’s life is entangled in our family roots and affects us in all that we undertake.” Thus, as one who believes that we are always part “of a greater system”, her goal in her therapeutic work has been to look at the environment of the individual and look at the whole picture. Hand-in-hand with that concept, Dr. Kamal also believes that we have to first heal ourselves before we can heal others. The work of the counselor is ever changing. In order to work with our clients we need to recognize and foster our own spark. By being cognizant of one’s own strengths and weaknesses we can harness the strength in others.