Meet Shahidrah Cowgill | Psychotherapist & Group Practice Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Shahidrah Cowgill and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Shahidrah, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Fundamental Foundations Counseling Center, PLLC serves the community by providing quality mental health assessment, consultation, and counseling support to children, teens, adults, couples, and families. With specialized support offered for grief & loss, trauma recovery, relationship issues, life transitions, and much more. Our team of therapists provides support in-office and via telehealth, and our practice accepts most major insurances, private pay, and CareCredit to make services accessible.

The social impact we strive to make is in the development of unique programs to enhance resiliency by promoting preventative strategies to help people not only recover well, but live there best and thrive. Our Restoration Wellness Day Retreats, Creative Healing Arts, and Social Fitness-Ruck Club programs are second to none when it comes to enhancing holistic life wellness and empowering a healthy community with supportive and therapeutic connections.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My name is Shahidrah Cowgill and nearly eleven years ago, I made a decision to launch my solo counseling practice and it has been one of the best decisions I could have made. I have served in the mental health field for 15 years, currently licensed by the State of Texas as an LPC-Supervisor and nationally certified by the National Board for Certified Counselors. As a clinician, I have had the privelege to work with clients of all ages addressing issues of relationship struggles, mood & anxiety issues, trauma recovery, life transitions, grief and loss and much more. Beyond the scope of my clinical work, I am an author, speaker, mentor, devoted wife and mom.

I now serve as the Founder and Clinical Director of Fundamental Foundations Counseling Center, a multi-location, multi-practitioner group practice headquartered in Little Elm, TX. Our team of diversely trained providers offer support to children, teens, adults, couples, and families across North Texas via telehealth and onsite services. The FFC Center employs innovative and community oriented solutions to help clients Recover, Live & Thrive. Through assessment, counseling, mental check ups, retreats, social fitness activities, and psycho-education courses our clinic is focused on changing the status quo of mental health services in the community. The FFC Center currently has three locations in the DFW area, Little Elm, Allen, and Dallas. I think the breadth and unique offering of our services is primarily what sets us apart. Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy and EMDR Intensives for Trauma Recovery help clients get the relief they need by decreasing the intensity of persistent trauma reactions. Our range of support for couples includes pre-marital, marital, co-parenting, and non-traditional couples support. Due to the increase in the need to support children, teens, and families our staff can provide play therapy, sand tray, art therapy, music therapy, along with social skills training, and animal-assisted therapy for all ages.

I am most proud of our Restoration Wellness program because it normalizes the mental health process with a focus more on prevention and resilience. Our mental health day retreats are a universal and preventative mental health strategy that can reduce the incidence of a mental health crisis. This intervention is also cost-effective. By screening for cumulative risk factors that may progressively increase vulnerability to mental health disorders, this process informs participants of risk factors and recommendations to lessen the risk, along with increasing protective factors and resilience by focusing on the 6 zones of self-care. All attendees get access to our online community, and Restoration Wellness Tribe for ongoing support.

Where I am today is very different than how I started out in solo private practice and I wish I could say it was easy but it has definitely been a journey with both highs and lows. I went from just managing my personal schedule to developing a culture for our team of providers and administrators. I think the vision to help people recover, live, and thrive has always been the goal, and recognizing that there are foundational principles and systems in place that help us deliver quality support while taking good care of our clients has allowed the practice to grow and flourish. The primary lessons that I have learned are necessary to overcome great challenges is: to get support from mentors and coaches, be willing to see that every problem has multiple solutions, treat people with respect, know your numbers, have functional systems in place, provide consistent training to your staff, don’t linger with making decisions, provide information with clarity, and stay true to your vision.

Fundamental Foundations Counseling Center as a brand is about nurturing the community, from our team members to caring for the people, couples and families we serve with creative strategies to not only help them bounce back from life challenges, but to help them bounce forward into a healthy future with a tribe of support.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
The DFW is such a beautiful metroplex with so many fun and interesting options. Some must-sees are the Dallas World Aquarium, taking a train ride to the Ft Worth Stock Yards with lunch at Joe T Garcias, The Shops @ Legacy West, a fun day at Andretti Indoor Karting & Games plus a challenge round at Top Golf in The Colony. A Mandalay Canal Gondola ride in Las Colinas with Grimaldi’s Pizza on board. If it is during the fall or spring the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is a calming stop. Other food favorites would be visiting Klyde Warren Park for the Rotational food trucks, and for sit-down brunch or lunch I would recommend Pappadeaux’s, Grand Lux Cafe, and Twisted Root Burger Co. as my top choices.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
First and foremost, God gets the glory for all of my personal success and is at the foundation of this practice.  I give honor to many who have supported, encouraged, prayed, sowed time and money, listened, prophesied, offered wisdom, taught, and cared for me through the various junctions of this journey. My heart is so grateful for those who keep me grounded: my husband, children, my mother, mother in-law, family, and friends. None of this is possible without their support.  I shout out my past supervisors and mentors Rose Boehm, LPC-S (retired), Dr. Janet Hallman,  Casey Truffo & Joe Bavonese your advice and insight has been invaluable. My covenant connections and friends Kathy & Larry Burden, Troy & Karen Jackson, Transformation Hub Ministries, thank you for modeling how to activate faith and vision for the future.

To the FFCC family,  all of our amazing therapists past and present, along with our awesome administrative team make sure our services are delivered with excellence.  Without our stellar team, our doors would not be open to helping and serving the community.  We also appreciate every client who has trusted us to partner with them along their journey to restoration, understanding, and recovery.

Website: www.theffccenter.com

Instagram: @theffccenter

Twitter: @theffccenter

Facebook: www.facebook.com/FundamentalFoundationsCounseling

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCD0r_QqHJetSntZLQCDzdw

Other: @shahidrahcowgill – Instagram