More on Jimmie

The story

I know what it's like to spend years trying to figure out where you belong, wondering if you're on the right path while everyone else seems so certain.

I grew up just outside Houston in the kind of place where the houses were mobile homes, and the roads were dirt. My family of six didn’t have much, but I like to think that it was living out there that taught me to make the most of what I had and to appreciate everyone around me no matter their walks of life. These two lessons still guide me today. I had enough drive to go to college, but not enough to figure out what I actually wanted. Friends had always told me I was a good listener and naturally empathetic, so I thought at 18 I’d go to school as a Psychology major and become a therapist. But I wasn’t ready for the work required, and I didn’t really understand what “being a therapist” even meant. So, naturally, halfway through college I switched to creative writing and put the therapist idea on the back burner.  

After college, I had a handful of unfulfilling writing-adjacent gigs before I landed a job as a middle and high school teacher—it was here that everything clicked for me. While my job was to teach, it also became a place I could show up for my students and be someone they could feel safe coming to with questions big or small. 

While I was teaching, that itch to become a therapist came back. Students trusted me with more than just schoolwork. They trusted me with breakups, trouble at home, worries about their future. I realized that those moments before and after class—building a relationship, helping my students through life's difficulties—were what I found most fulfilling. After nearly a decade in the classroom, I started my training to become a therapist.

I bring all parts of my story into the room with you: the kid on the dirt roads making the most of what he had, the writer looking for the details in a person's story, the teacher who wanted his students to feel safe and seen. Now I’ve confidently found my purpose as a therapist where I bring those parts together into the things I've always loved doing—sitting with people, making room for everything they carry, and meeting them where they are.

My training

From my time as a teacher and at Rice, adolescents and young adults are one of the populations I feel most at home with. I chose social work as my path to becoming a therapist because of its person-centered, big-picture lens. I believe we do not operate in a vacuum—we are the sum of intersectional parts, impacted by the systems around us—and this mindset anchors how I work throughout the therapeutic process.

I received a Master of Social Work with a clinical concentration from the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. As part of my clinical training, I worked at Rice University’s Wellbeing and Counseling Center as an individual therapist. There, I gained experience with approaches such as Solution-Focused therapy, CBT, and DBT.

My commitment

You are not a problem to be solved or a list of symptoms—you’re a whole person. I am committed to listening to your story, holding it with the care it deserves, and working alongside you. I won’t be distant, distracted, or checked out during sessions—I will be fully invested in our relationship and coming to understand what makes you, well, you.