About Me

Hello and welcome! My name is Lorena Fernandez. I am a Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate student at Houston Christian University, building on more than 15 years of experience in Person-Centered Expressive Arts, education, facilitation, and experiential group work.

Throughout my career, I have guided individuals and groups in using creative expression as a pathway to personal development, self-discovery, emotional awareness, and healing. My professional journey has taken me from industrial engineering and international education to expressive arts therapy and mental health group facilitation. These diverse experiences have shaped my appreciation for human complexity, individual differences, and the many ways people make meaning of their lives.

Since January 2024, I have worked as an Experiential Group Therapist at Charlie Health, facilitating groups for adults experiencing significant mental health challenges. My work includes trauma-focused groups and groups addressing anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. This experience deepened my understanding of the needs of people navigating complex emotional and psychological challenges and motivated me to pursue a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling.

I chose this path to strengthen my clinical knowledge and skills, better serve the people I work with, and expand the settings in which I can practice professionally. My emerging counseling identity is grounded in a person-centered philosophy that emphasizes empathy, authenticity, respect, and trust in each person's capacity for growth. I see Person-Centered Expressive Arts as a distinctive strength that I can bring to counseling while continuing to develop an integrative, evidence-informed clinical approach.

I am committed to ethical practice, cultural humility, lifelong learning, and creating a safe, nonjudgmental environment in which clients can explore their experiences and discover their own possibilities for change. As I continue my clinical training, I look forward to integrating my extensive experiential group work with the assessment, counseling, and intervention skills needed to support clients across diverse settings and levels of care.