FULL TESTIMONIALS

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My husband and I saw Rachel for a year, both in person and virtually. She immediately put us at ease and was always fair, professional, friendly,  fun,  and positive. She was 100 percent there and focused, and used amazing skill and perseverance with my husband who was resistant. It was always a pleasure to see her smiling face and and she was encouraging and patient.  She was hands down the best couples therapist we had seen. She encouraged us to be curious and outcome oriented. She gets to the heart of the matter in a warm, a loving way and I am indebted to her for helping us to have the marriage I had longed for.

--RW

I was struggling to find the fire and meaning in my relationship, and sometimes felt like I would never be truly seen or understood by my partner. Rachel helped us build a common cause, a shared process, and a language for the moments when I would start to shut down. It was liberating to work with someone who understood all of the parts my partner and I were bringing, and how we could find a harmony within the differences, which at first felt so daunting. 

--DC

I just would like to reach out and tell you again how grateful we are for you helping us through our problems. We could not of done it without your help. I'm not a big person on expressing my feelings as you've learned haha. We are stronger as a couple like we used to be before everything happened. Again thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

--SL

Rachel is an excellent therapist--perceptive, creative, and exceedingly smart. My partner and I came to her early in our relationship with a range of concerns and patterns and she helped us get more present, communicative, and tolerant of our anxiety, so that our relationship could grow the way we wanted it to. I love her for being able to see what is going on underneath the surface and guiding us toward figuring out what really matters.

--TF

I am not exaggerating when I say that one EMDR session with Dr. Riverwood was life-changing. The weeks since our session have been my best in years. The breakup I was struggling with now barely registers as upsetting. I have had enjoyable, relaxed conversations with family members. My low-grade, easily activated PTSD is gone, and I'm much happier and centered in my day-to-day life. When hard things happen, I can take them in stride, feeling my feelings without losing myself to anxiety or depression. I found Dr. Riverwood to be warm, welcoming, and clear in her instructions. Anyone who has done talk therapy but felt like there was something more should pursue this work with Dr. Riverwood. 

--NJ

...Our home life continues in its checkered ways, but that too, is seeming better, bit by bit --- and your helpful sessions have accounted for the largest part of that.  We both more than occasionally participate in behaviors that aren't helpful, but I think we also both often review those words and actions in the aftermath and understand how things might have gone differently with a little more generosity on each of our parts. We also sometimes look back to try to understand what we were truly wanting or needing from the exchange.  Maybe less often we actually do this review in advance of our remarks or actions, but it certainly happens more than it used to.  Speaking with clarity, reflecting back or confirming what we hear and understand, and discarding the unuseful idea of blame, are all coming more slowly, but at least with more awareness in the aftermath.  

We have briefly gone to counseling together at a much earlier time in our relationship, and I have gone to counselors/therapists as an individual three other times during our many years together.  Your quick insights and ability to analyze a remark or behavior within the larger dynamic & context, and your guidance in what kinds of challenges or goals might actually help change those dynamics and no longer respond to them as inevitable, have been far more helpful than any other help & guidance that we or I have received.  You are truly gifted as a listener, and as an analyst of what you are hearing & seeing.

Many sincere thanks to you, Rachel, from both of us.

C&G

     It is a rare thing to encounter a person -- anybody -- who combines emotional and rational intelligence in a way that is natural, spontaneous, and integral to the way they inhabit the world. Rachel is just this kind of person, and these are just the qualities that were essential to the difficult and challenging process of couples therapy.  [My partner] and I spent two years working with Rachel intensively, every week, to move through a series of questions and problems which had woven themselves through our relationship for several decades. It was astonishing to see the way Rachel met and identified those concerns, and the way she progressed with so much agility from problem to problem, and idea to idea, absorbing new information with energy and humor. It seemed to me as if the more Rachel learned, and the more complicated things seem to become, the more she grew excited and focused.  At her disposal is a dizzying array of tools...some intellectual and technical, some intuitive and improvisational, and many that defy any simple categorization. It was an awareness of her wide bandwidth that made working with Rachel such a pleasure and such a gift. After most of our weekly sessions, [My partner] and I would turn to each other and let our jaws drop once again: Rachel had somehow, Houdini-like, escaped from the weeds and snares that we had laid down in front of her, to emerge once again with fresh encouragement, vivid insights, and creative suggestions for our ongoing process.  

     Though her formal training and professional grounding are impeccable, there is, in this way, a magic to Rachel's therapeutic approach. There is a way in which Rachel's sense of humor, and clarity, and modesty combine to allow her to pose hard questions and let frightening possibilities linger long enough to be considered fully, without anxiety.  Week by week, obstacle by obstacle, we pushed forward both as a couple and as individuals, trying to recognize the parts of our challenge that were shared and the parts that could never be shared. Slowly, gently, and expertly, Rachel helped to guide us through those thickets and into a much better place.  It is not really magic, of course, but rather (most likely) very hard work; Rachel has studied and examined a large number of traditions and strategies in relation to couples dynamics, and her curiosity seems limitless. She is open-minded in the extreme sense, such that no possible configuration of problems or solutions seems to be unfamiliar to her or unworthy of earnest consideration and exploration. She can be exceedingly pragmatic, which is very much desirable as things seem to spin out of hand sometimes, and she at the same time is ready and willing to range far afield into the uncharted terrains of human consciousness. 

     Rachel is, in short, the kind of person you want alongside on a long, tricky, uncertain journey into unfamiliar places that often seem like a wilderness.  Because of all of her extraordinary qualities and capacities, we completely redefined the questions that had brought us to therapy in the first place during the time we worked with Rachel as a couple. We covered ground that we never knew even existed when we walked into her office for the first time. All of this is a testament to Rachel's abiding generosity, fierce intelligence, and brilliant luminosity as a therapist.  It was our privilege and wild good fortune to have worked with her.

--JC