I’ve spent most of my working life in rooms where something hard was happening. Fifteen years in hospice care taught me that people don’t need to be fixed, and they don’t need to be rushed. They need someone steady who will stay in the room with them. That’s the work I do now, in private practice in Tyler, with adults and couples across East Texas, in person or by telehealth.
My faith is not something I set aside when I sit down with a client. It shaped why I do this work and how I understand what people carry. For clients who want it, I integrate a Christian framework directly into counseling — scripture, prayer, and the questions faith raises when life stops making sense. Grief tests belief. So does illness, divorce, and watching someone you love disappear a piece at a time.
That integration is always yours to direct. Some clients want faith at the center of every session. Some want it present but quiet. Some would rather we not go there at all, and that’s honored without argument. What doesn’t change is the clinical training underneath: evidence-based therapy, delivered by a licensed clinical social worker.
If you’ve been looking for a counselor who shares your faith and is also clinically trained, that’s what this practice is.
I started as a hospice aide. That’s hands-on work — bathing, turning, sitting through the night, being present for families in the last days of someone’s life. I did it for fifteen years, and I never stopped wanting to do more of it.
What I kept running into was the limit of the role. I could care for the body. I could sit with a daughter in the hallway. But I couldn’t do the deeper work that people so clearly needed, and that sent me back to school for a Master’s degree in social work, and eventually into licensure as a clinical social worker.
Opening my own practice was the last step. It means I can take the time a person actually needs rather than the time a system allows.
Every part of that path still shows up in how I work. I’m not uncomfortable around death, dementia, or the exhausted, guilty, complicated feelings that come with caring for someone who is declining. I’ve been in those houses. I know what they ask of people.
I see adults and couples in Tyler and the surrounding communities, including Whitehouse, Bullard, Flint, Lindale, and Chandler, and by telehealth anywhere in Texas.
Individual counseling for adults working through depression, grief, anxiety, trauma, low self-esteem, and major life change. Couples counseling for partners trying to find their way back to each other, or to navigate a hard season without losing the relationship in it. I work with men and women both.
I hold specialized training in women’s mental health. Women move through seasons that reshape identity — motherhood, caregiving, divorce, aging, the point where the people who needed you stop needing you the same way. That deserves more than a general approach.
I work with adults in the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and with the families around them. This is some of the loneliest grief there is, because it starts long before anyone dies. My training in dementia care covers Alzheimer’s, related dementias, and geriatric mental health, and it’s grounded in years of doing this work at the bedside.
If you are caring for someone on hospice, I want to be clear about where I fit. Your loved one likely has a social worker through the hospice agency or facility, and that is appropriate. My work is with you — the spouse, the daughter, the son who is holding everything together and has nowhere to put it down.
I also work with professional caregivers. CNAs, aides, nurses, and staff in nursing homes, hospitals, and hospice agencies carry loss on a schedule that never stops long enough to grieve any of it. Compassion fatigue, burnout, and the weight of patients you got attached to are real clinical issues, not weakness. I did that job. You will not have to explain it to me from the beginning.
The first session is not a test. We talk about what brought you here and what you want to be different. You set the pace. Nothing is required of you that you aren’t ready for.
From there I draw on the approaches that fit you, not a fixed protocol. I use Dialectical Behavior Therapy for managing intense emotion and building coping skills, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for making room for hard feelings while moving toward what matters, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for the guilt and self-blame that attach themselves to loss, and EMDR for trauma and memories that stay stuck.
My approach is warm, direct, and collaborative. I’m not going to sit silently and let you fill the hour. Healing begins with connection, and connection requires that I actually show up in the room too.
“Therapy is an act of courage — a choice to claim your healing, your voice, and your strength.”
Stacy Huddleston, LCSW
I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the state of Texas, with a Master’s degree in social work and specialized training in trauma, grief, addiction, dementia care, and women’s mental health. I’m trained in EMDR, and I’m a member of the National Association of Social Workers at both the national and Texas chapter level.
The certifications matter, but the fifteen years that came before them matter just as much. One taught me the clinical framework. The other taught me what it actually costs to sit with someone in the worst week of their life.
verified listing on Psychology Today
Some of what I’ve learned sitting with people has made its way into books. They’re written for anyone who needs them, whether or not we ever meet.
Building a Strong Marriage: A 90-Day Christian Devotional Journal for Wives offers ninety days of Scripture, short reflections, and simple steps for wives who want to move their marriage forward. It comes from years of watching couples who didn’t need a breakthrough so much as someone willing to go first.
The Pet Loss Healing series, Healing After Pet Loss, Understanding Pet Loss Grief, and The Pet Loss Healing Workbook, is for anyone grieving an animal they loved, and for the people trying to support them. Losing a pet is real grief, and it’s often carried alone.
All of my books are available on Amazon. Reading them is never a requirement for counseling. They’re simply there if they help.
Reaching out is the hardest part. You don’t need to know what to say or have it organized before you call. Tell me what’s going on and we’ll figure out where to start.
