Rosabel Sanchez

What led you to transition from teaching to therapy?

Hi, I’m Rosabel Sanchez and I am a mental health therapist for Optimum Joy. When I became a teacher a few years in, I had a principal that was just going through a really hard time in life. And for some reason I found myself going to her office and just like talking to her and just communicating with her. And I felt like I was like this safe space for her. People were talking about what was going on with her personally. I would sit with her and she wouldn’t give me all the details, but it was more like her just having a place to just like share her overwhelmness and what she was going through in life and just have someone just listen to her.

And after a while of their conversations we were having, she’s like, “you know what, I think you missed your calling. I think you should have been a therapist.” And I was like, “what?” And now I had just really just began teaching and it was really like caught me off guard. She’s like, “no, you’re a great teacher, but I think you missed your calling and you should have been a therapist.”

I still have been sitting across people and talking to people from marriages to even good friends who have lost their husbands and their children and just the loss of it and the grief. And I think throughout all of it, I just learned that I’m able to like to sit in like dark rooms with people and dark spaces that they’re going through and just like hold that for them and be there for them in that season. And even throughout my life and my grief and the loss of my mother and the trauma I had to go through that—I just feel like I’m just equipped for that. I’m equipped to sit across someone and be like, “it’s okay. It’s okay that you’re not okay. It’s okay to hold that.” And I hope that I could be that hope for you that it’s going to be okay. Eventually

How would you describe your approach in the therapy room?

I think my favorite thing about being a therapist is just like getting to meet people and hear their stories and sit with them in their stories. And from their stories and like hearing their feelings with it and experiencing it and just helping them like get to the root of it. It’s like, I see it like an onion. And I feel like in the beginning, we’re just like slowly like peeling it and peeling and peeling it, and just getting to what really is going on in their lives.

Cause sometimes like people, they’re so caught up in like the surface that they haven’t really dived into the deep part of their heart and what’s hurting inside. And so for me, like to be a part of that and to peel that for them and take it like just one step at a time and be a part of that journey and get to the root of what really going on in the lives—to me, like to be a part of that and to be a part of their story of healing, it means a lot to me.

What brings you joy in your personal life?

What brings me joy? Um, my family. Um, I have an amazing husband who I’ve been with for 30 years. Um, it’s been truly a blessing. He’s truly my best friend. I have four amazing, precious children that I can’t believe I raised and I asked myself, “what did I do right?” Cause I’m still trying to figure that out, cause they’re so good. Um, sometimes they convict me because I feel like they’re like these little angels walking around me. And I just feel like I want to be a better mom every single time I see them. And of course my fur baby—um, my puppy, he’s three years old and he’s just taking the place of being the baby of the house because my kids have gotten older.

And so for me, like being around my family and just having them all in the same space, especially when we travel and we’re just going through all these journeys together, it’s precious. I hope that I continue to have that, to have them around me, um, to have those vacations with them. I also love to host—that brings me joy to have people come to my house and for me to cook for them. I’m Puerto Rican, so we love food, and my husband’s Mexican, so it’s just a lot of food going around in our families. And I just enjoy that. I enjoy sitting across the table and just having conversations with the people that I love very much and that I feel so grateful to have in my life and just to go through this journey with them and have that support of my husband and my children for all the crazy things I want to endeavor. It’s been a joy.

What do you enjoy doing outside of the office?

Outside of the office I, besides being an educator and being um, responsible for so many like pre-K classrooms across the city of Chicago—it’s a privilege and I love that—but I also love yard work. Um, I love to mow the lawn. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but to me, it’s very therapeutic. I love to make my lines straight on my lawn. I love to water my grass. I love to water my plants. I just love to be outside and taking care of my yard work. I feel like it’s a very therapeutic process for me.

Another thing I love to do is I just love drinking coffee. I could drink coffee and sit across someone drinking coffee. They want tea? That’s fine. I don’t judge them, but I love coffee. And I love to sometimes just sit in a corner in my living room with my puppy on my lap and just read or write or just have that quiet space for me just to be on my own. And really enough, I love to eat at restaurants alone. I really love doing that. I try to schedule that as much as possible because I feel like being with yourself and knowing what that looks like is really important.

Which populations and areas of concern are you most passionate about?

Who would I like to work with? I would like to work with a variety of people. I especially like working with people that have anxiety or grief or sadness, all those things, because I have gone through seasons myself. I’ve gone through seasons where I had to experience, even at the age of 21, that early an anxiety attack in college, and for years having to once in a while deal with some internal anxiety attacks—and so for me that’s something very personal.

Another thing is grief from the losses that I’ve experienced myself to the losses my friends and family members have experienced and just sitting with them. That’s definitely where my heart is at with people that are just having to sit in moments of darkness and hopelessness and just those types of things.

Another thing I like to work with is couples. For many years I’ve done work with ministry with couples and just sitting across couples in their worst moments, in their traumatic moments of like fidelity and just really strong tough times and just helping them process that and going through that and giving them that glimpse of hope that things may be okay eventually but you’re going to have to do the work for it. And lastly, I think I would love to work with people that deal with church hurt. As someone that’s very involved in church and have seen so much hurt throughout, my heart goes out to them because I don’t want them to have this image of God that’s not true because of what people have done to them and so for me to sit across with them and help them process that, that’ll be also a good thing to do.

What is your therapeutic philosophy?

I think I’m pretty much a person just really like person-centered. I can’t help being that because as an educator I’m very student-centered and so I’m pretty used to just facilitating things and providing a safe space for kids to learn and so for me to provide a safe place that’s non-judgmental for an adult to process their hurt and to come to a place of healing—that’s pretty much what I love to do. Just providing that space where I can encourage someone, I could give that person hope, I could listen to their stories, I could just be there for them and not judge them in any way. To me that’s the most important thing to do.

What would you say to someone considering therapy for the first time?

If someone’s coming to counseling for the first time, I think it’s important for them to know that it’s not a weakness. It could be a little scary, but it’s something very bold. It calls for strength for you to do that. To be wanting to get to a place in your life and you’re saying, “you know what? I think I need a little help. Like, I think I need to sit across someone and process the things that are going on in my life.” That’s bold. It’s very bold. And I think that for you to want to do that, it’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing. And it’s good for you to have that self-awareness to know that you need some help.

I think that in my own journey and in my place and time where I needed that, I’m happy that I took those steps. I think those steps is what helped me realize even more why I want to be a therapist. Because I learned through my own process of this horrible car accident I was in and someone having to die because of that car accident and having to go through PTSD, although I already had anxiety and all these other things, it was really helpful for me to sit across someone and process that tragedy. I think it would have been harder and it would have took longer if I would have did it by myself.

If I were to give someone a word of encouragement into like what it looks like to really go into counseling, I would say do it. I mean I think sometimes we get caught up in just like overthinking things and so my encouragement to you is like give it a try. Just try it out. It doesn’t mean like you have to sign some kind of contract in your stuff for life but it’s you just saying, “you know what? I’m going to give it a try. I’m going to go in and I’m going to do something for myself.”

I think sometimes we get so caught up in the people in our lives and taking care of other people that we don’t take care of ourselves and so I encourage you to take a moment and really think about what’s going on in your life and the kind of help that you need and just do it. Get the help because when you do that, when you take care of yourself, it’s like that oxygen tank in the plane and you put it on you. That moment, they make you do it first so that you can help others and so if you really want to be good for your family and your friends and healthy and all those things, you got to start with yourself and so I encourage you to just do it.