Today we’d like to introduce you to Christina Perkins
Hi Christina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
This starts the day off with a complex narrative ask. I don’t know quite where to start so I suppose I’ll start at the beginning of me. I grew up in Northeast Tennessee, in a small town called Mountain City, Tennessee. It’s a large land county but a small population density, mostly working class folks who have lived nearby for generations. I grew up in a home with my mother and grandmother. I have a younger sister who is now 27 years old (somehow). I was always passionate and excited about school, I love learning and found school to be a space for my love of reading, engaging in learning, and playing outside.
I had plans from an early age to be a psychology major in college. I would be first generation college in my family and I had my sights set on going to an Ivy League school.
I graduated as Valedictorian of my small town high school and proceeded to attend Brown University in the fall of 2004. There, I finally felt like other people understood my love and desire to learn and I was so certain I was going there, I didn’t even apply to any other schools. My guidance counselor discouraged this plan but I was determined.
I majored in Psychology at Brown and met some of my favorite and life long friends that I’ve now known for half my life.
I took a break my sophomore year at Brown. Tremendous homesickness (paired with a boyfriend back home…) made me take a pause and come home to Mountain City to work for a semester. Thankfully the interim Dean at the time stopped me from withdrawing entirely—I am thankful for his guidance every day.
I went back after one semester of working for an attorney and in a restaurant, and completed my degree on time in the Spring of 2008.
I really wanted to be a clinical psychologist so I applied to 11 schools right out of undergrad. I was denied everywhere I applied. I had never failed at anything so I was despondent. I was still living very much in my overachiever parts.
I ended up taking a job at Emory University in Atlanta where I was working on a study about polycystic kidney disease. I very quickly discovered a lack of passion for the city and the work. I moved to Johnson City, Tennessee and took a job at a retail store as well as working as a sexual assault victim’s advocate for women who had experienced an assault. I went to court with them, sat in with them for support during a forensic exam, and in the first room where I walked in and saw that someone could benefit from my presence, I became a social worker. I became impassioned about standing with folks who were being looked down upon, questioned, and potentially harmed by larger systems.
I stayed in that job for 2.5 years, and the reality of burnout hit me quietly but swiftly. At this point, I was nearing 25 years old and needed a new adventure.
My best friend from Brown, Libby, had moved with another close friend, Justin, to San Fransisco. She let me know there was an opening on a research study at the Department of Public Health and I immediately applied and interviewed. After several weeks of nerves and interviews, I was given the job and started the process of moving to San Fransisco. I packed up suitcases, my baby cat Wilson, and got on two jets with a one-way ticket. I worked and lived in San Fransisco for right a bout a year before my contract was up and I recognized it was time for me to get a Master’s degree. I applied to several places but in-state tuition (remember I grew up working class, money is real) brought me back to Tennessee and the University of TN, Knoxville for my Masters of Science in Social Work.
I was in that program and working full time from 2011-2013. In December of 2012, I got a text from someone I’d known for ages, telling me she had a dream about me and wanted to know how I was–she later became my wife (we have been married now 10 years). In May 0f 2013, I graduated and went to work for a local community mental health agency. I took a different job in October of that year and in December of 2013, after many trips over the previous year to the doctor and to different types of doctors, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I was sitting in a hotel parking lot to take the phone call, where the ENT who had biopsied my lymph nodes called and said “remember the bad thing we talked about?” “Yes” I said. “It’s the bad thing. You’ll be put in touch with an oncologist.
The next few months are a blur of tests, staging, bronchoscopies, chemotherapy, and horrific medical debt because as a new grad and someone who had recently changed jobs, I had no health insurance.
I was 28 years old when I got the diagnosis and the prognosis that 90% of people are cured from Hodgkins. After many months of chemo and trusting my oncologist, I too was declared in remission. I’ve been in remission (and subsequently told I’m cured) since 2014.
I stayed at that job, while attending a cancer support group locally, and I tended to myself as best I could. It was during this time that my overachieving parts had to lie down and take a rest. I had to in order to survive. I stayed with that community mental health agency from 2013 until 2018. I ran a women’s IOP group for women with substance disorders and I was given the great privilege of building a program for pregnant and parenting women who had substance use disorders. I got to build my own team of case managers, therapists, and other supports to create a beautiful program that sustained after I was gone from the agency.
In 2018, after several attempts at trying to conceive a child and failing, and feeling pretty burnt out, I decided to go into private practice. Slowly, I built a practice from 1-3 clients per week up to 20-25. In September 2018, I launched that practice full time. I worked for myself solely until 2022.
I also completed my Doctorate of Social Work from 2018-2021. I was a little busy-maybe my overachiever parts weren’t totally offline. In addition, I began my own trauma therapy to address my childhood and adolescent trauma experiences–certainly the best work I have ever done for myself.
We can’t skip covid…because that was real in the year 2020 (and still is). I had a uterine surgery in 2020 in order to manage my fertility issues (I had grown fibroids that would not allow me to be pregnant. I allowed my body to rest and heal and manage having covid more than once over the next couple of years. I continued teaching as an adjunct for the University of TN, I began mentoring students at the UT Psychological Clinic as their field instructor. And then in October 2022, my son, Everett, was born. I began working full time for UTK at the Psych Clinic in January 2023. I keep a day of clients because I want to stay grounded in the skills I want to share with my students. Working for the university has allowed me to take on administrative tasks and to avoid burnout (in the land of Telehealth only therapy from 2020-2021, that wasn’t hard to reach).
Now, in 2025, Everett is 2 and a half, I am expecting my second son in May, and I am still in the field of helping, mentoring students, sometimes teaching, running a small practice, and operating on the Board of Directors for Magnolia Harbor Carefarm–a traumatic grief agency and animal sanctuary that’s housed locally here in Knoxville. Things are still, perhaps, a bit busy.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I don’t think smooth is quite the word I’d use. It’s been a trek with different peaks and certainly some valleys. My childhood was rife with challenges but that’s not the entirety of my story. It’s a piece and it’s foundational. But it’s not the whole story.
Reconnecting, dating, and marrying my spouse and having my children–obvious highlights with some valleys of postpartum anxiety and of course, marital stress that all couples experience. The cancer diagnosis was quite a mountain peak and a valley at the same time. Covid caused a struggle both in terms of health safety and in figuring out how to pivot to Telehealth and work from home.
Being queer in Northeast TN isn’t always an easy peasy ride and so I’d say navigating cultural issues and being queer parents while also working in a public facing job has sometimes been harrowing. Creating space for myself while parenting has also been a struggle. Overall, thought the road has not been smooth, all those peaks and valleys, have led me here. I wouldn’t trade that for a smooth drive.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the states of Tennessee and Virginia. I have been in the field of Social Work since 2010 and have completed my doctorate in Social Work in 2021 at the University of Tennessee. At this time, I am the Assistant Director of the UT Psychological Clinic where I mentor masters and doctoral level students learning how to be therapists. Additionally, I have a small private therapy practice where I support mostly LGBTQIA people and those with complex and other traumatic experiences in their background.
I am trained in EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and Internal Family Systems (IFS). I am passionate about creating spaces and relationships that help individuals feel safe, heard and held, so that they can approach the parts of themselves and their stories that feel overwhelming, scary, or challenging to be with.
I would say I’m known for being honest in session and in treating people as whole humans–in other words, I don’t think we can separate ourselves from our contexts, our histories, and the time of history we currently live in. I am most proud of my capacity to continue showing up with my clients and students despite the context we currently live in.
What sets me apart? I would say my capacity for showing up in community and living my advocacy values in my job settings and not operating as anything other than my authentic being.
As of last fall (2024), I have founded the Appalachian Death Workers Collective which is a group of individuals who work with death, dying and grief in the greater Knoxville area. We are putting together informational sessions for the year and are excited to launch our first FYI info session about death work in March 2025.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
We all deserve a space to share our stories. It’s one of my favorite parts of being a therapist is holding space for folks to articulate themselves and their stories.
I would not be who I am without the support of my circle of friends. Some have been with me since 2004 and others are newer to my life but they are my chosen family and I’m always grateful for them.
Pricing:
- In my therapy practice, I suppose, my sessions are $150/intake and $125/therapy hour.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theUnburdenedSelf.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/161ZvruAJv/
- Other: Christina@ChristinaRPerkinsLCSW.com
