Meet Our Therapists — Alexa Ehrlich

At Symmetry Counseling, we are proud of our staff of highly trained and experienced licensed mental health professionals. In the above video, meet Alexa Ehrlich, an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist here at Symmetry Counseling.

What made you decide to be a therapist?

I decided to become a therapist because I have always just really loved understanding relationships, meeting people in my friends’ lives, my family’s lives. I’ve always not only liked relationships but I’ve been really intrigued by love, so that translates over to my work with couples therapy. Another reason was I went through a really bad break up myself several years ago, went to start seeing a couples therapist and an individual therapist, and noticed the tremendous amount of impact they had on my life and decided that was a field I wanted to go into.

What are your specialties?

My specialties here at Symmetry are, specifically within couples work, dealing with sex therapy. So any communication issues or sexual dysfunctions or things that people are going through, any type of discomfort or awkward things they can’t talk to their partner about and learning how to talk about that. Within individuals and couples, dealing with depression, anxiety, and a multitude of other things. You can find more of those in my bio on our website.

What is your therapeutic stance?

My therapeutic stance, I would say, is one that is nonjudgmental. I like my clients to enter the room and feel that they can be themselves and that they’ll be accepted in any way they show up in the room and that they can learn from past behavioral patterns, things that they maybe want to change or that they want to keep to move forward and to experience life and their relationships in different ways.

What do you enjoy most about being a therapist?

What I enjoy about being a therapist is that I deal with a lot of diverse, different types of people, and through these people, I have heard some really, really cool stories, some sad stories, all over the spectrum. And people decide to share with me some things they have never shared with anyone before and I feel so grateful that they’ve let me in in that way.

If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

If I was an animal, I’d say I’d be a black lab because I like that black labradors, as dogs, you can go to them and pet them or you can let them come to you. And I hope that in my clients’ lives and my family’s lives and my friends that they all know that I’m there for them when they maybe need a break or they’re not ready yet for help or they don’t want someone to step in that they can come to me when they’re ready.

What do you do for self-care?

For self-care, I go to Corepower, I do yoga sculpt. It starts and ends the class with mindfulness and in between, it’s a workout so I really like the combination of that. I also like spending time with my family and friends with my partner. I enjoy reading, both for pleasure and for work. I enjoy going to conferences to learn more about the field because that’s really exciting for me on a personal level but that also helps me professionally.

What are your hobbies?

My hobbies, I would say, I enjoy, from time to time, baking and cooking. Working out I would say is a hobby and I enjoy that very much. I like certain different series of shows on Netflix and I enjoy, as a hobby, just spending time with people who I care a lot about.

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

I am 100 percent a night owl. I am not an early morning person. It would probably be drastic to say I hate mornings, hate is a strong word, but if clients ever need to meet in the morning, I will make an exception and show up and be ready for them. But mostly definitely, I am a night owl, and that helps because a lot of the couples I see come in the evening.

What is your favorite quote?

My favorite quote I would say is, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” So really learning how to handle the stressors in life and it’s really important to understand how you carry those day to day, year to year, and through all your different relationships to help you succeed.