Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathryn Perkel.
Hi Kathryn, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
My name is Kathryn Perkel, and I am a Clinical Psychologist presently living in Knoxville, TN. I currently work in private practice with the most sensitive, loving, and wise human beings that I have had the privilege of walking alongside on their journeys to healing their most broken and vulnerable parts of selves.
My intuitive ability to see into and experience another person’s emotional pain has been present in me since I was a small child. I used those skills early on in my practice as a Clinical Psychologist. From my first practicum experience seeing clients, I seemed to effortlessly connect with and share in my client’s most painful human experiences.
What I continued to struggle with, however, as an intuitive empath and healer, was my ability to shed my client’s life experiences when coming home at the end of my day. Client stories of sexual abuse, experiences of abandonment, relationships ending, to the existential dread of simply being human; such difficult reflections would cling to me as I tried to fall asleep each night.
My inability to separate from my client’s most vulnerable parts of self intensified as I took on many of the same roles I helped my clients through. During my graduate school education, I became married and gave birth to my first son. I went from a naive empath navigating “other people’s problems,” to experiencing nuanced existential shifts within my own soul when I first committed to my life to a partner, and later when I became a mother for the first time.
As I clawed my way out of each crisis experienced, I entered therapy for the first time and began my own spiritual exploration at home. I delved into readings on Buddhism, Mindfulness, and psycho-education-oriented literature on relationship healing and marriage. With this, I began to incorporate mindful-based practices and meditation exercises in my personal life as well as sharing in the most healing practices in my clinical work.
Unfortunately, my most impactful educational experiences did not come from the textbook learning I gained through my Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program. While I was in the classroom discussing Erickson’s life stages, Freud’s
obsession with sex and penis envy, and Aaron Beck’s formulation of thinking patterns in Cognitive Behavioral
therapy, I was alternately experiencing profound shifts in healing my soul. I achieved this by learning to access my energetic soul body and infinite life experiences through meditation and deep imagery exercises.
My mindfulness practices expanded into the spiritual realm through both my work with clients as well, later, with the traumatic death of my brother-in-law at the age of 36 years old. While in session I also noticed during guided mediations that I led my clients through those words I shared during those exercises flowed through me rather than from me.
I became curious about the power of my healing abilities when I dropped out of my ego-ic mind; I also began to understand that the less I tried to impose my own clinical agenda on others, instead of letting divine intervention flow through me for the highest and wisest good of my clients, our most impactful clinical breakthroughs were achieved.
With this, I began to allow for divine connection and guidance in my own meditative experiences as well. By the time my brother-in-law died, leaving behind his wife, my sister, an almost-three-year-old son, and another son on the way, my connection to the spirit world was already strong. I had no doubt when a tree fell down on the front lawn of my sister’s house the morning we buried her husband that it was his spirit screaming out for another chance to make it home the night he died.
Later, when I connected with a psychic medium, I was also given clear and reliable information which reaffirmed my connection to my brother-in-law as well as other deceased loved ones residing on the other side.
As I began to understand more about the relative nature of life and death through my own life experiences, delving into the literature on near-death experiences, valid mediumship scientific studies, to learning ways to connect to angels, spirit guides, and the like, I began to share in the explorations with my clients as well.
It was during this time I began to witness firsthand, the profound relief and joy my clients’ soul-level selves experienced while allowing space in session to explore, connect to, and believe in the reality of our soul-level selves (devoid of any specific religious context).
The soul fractures through so many of life’s most painful experiences. From childhood sexual abuse to physical and emotional trauma both inside the home and out in the world, it has been my duty and honor as a healer to address the whole person, including mind, body, and soul through my therapeutic work.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It has been a challenge to integrate my clinical and spiritual practices together.
Somewhere along the way, though, I found a way to integrate many of my East meets West philosophies which have shaped my clinical practice and personal life for many years now.
I also struggled to leave my client’s most painful stories behind when I would leave my work at the end of the day.
Through my own energetic and spiritual practices, I have learned to create internal and energetic boundaries which have helped me both in session and at the end of the day to leave my client’s stories and the work yet still to be done, at work.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Kathryn Perkel, PsyD?
Many people seeking therapy are simply sensitive souls in need of new or different ways of protecting themselves in a world that does not always honor the intuitive, sensitive, and creative self.
I am passionate about helping individuals struggling with anxiety, depression, and obsessional thinking which I believe often results from highly sensitive creative individuals lacking an outlet for expressing and understanding themselves.
In the session, I tend to incorporate mindfulness practices and guided meditation/imagery to help clients challenge early wounds and harness their creative potential. Additionally, I am Reiki Master Certified; I also incorporate energy healing into many of my client sessions as I believe non-verbal trauma associated can become stored in the body.
I strive to heal the restless and weary souls that are aware of their own internal struggles but lack the skills to manage their highly reflective and at times painfully aware selves.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
Any books by Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle, and near-death experience literature (Life After Life, Proof of Heaven, Every Breath is Precious) and podcasts (Let’s Talk Near Death, IANDS NDE Radio).
Contact Info:
- Email: drkathrynperkel@gmail.com
- Website: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/kathryn-perkel-knoxville-tn/283916
- Instagram: @kathrynperkelpsyd
- Facebook: Dr. Kathryn Perkel, PsyD
- Other: Podcast: Soul Centered Therapy
