Richard Aab

Richard has always had a passion for understanding emotions and the personal stories and values that create meaning in our lives. After honing his unique listening skills by earning his BFA in theater at NYU, he turned his professional pursuits toward understanding clients’ long-term goals and creating financial pathways to achieving them as a registered Financial Advisor with UBS. After years in the financial services industry, he found himself longing for a more personal connection with clients. Utilizing years of experience in his own personal wellness journey, he embarked on helping individuals create their own physical transformations as the owner of Apparently Different Fitness in Charlotte, NC. However important the physiological techniques he utilized, he quickly discovered that it was his clients’ emotional and mental connection to health, aging and fitness that was the driving force in their success. By understanding their stories, their values, and the meanings that they created for their futures (and their pasts), he found his true calling: helping clients unlock their personal motivations to create change in all areas of their lives. In 2020, he began his studies in the Clinical Mental Health Counselor, M.Ed. (Master’s in Education) program at NCSU with an anticipated graduation and licensure in the Spring of 2023. As a counselor, his guiding principle is autonomy: you are in charge and have the answers and wisdom inside you. His job is to help draw out the emotional and mental health and vibrancy that is already there.

Counseling Approach

Richard works exclusively with adults through telehealth and has completed all required coursework for designation as an NBCC Certified Telemental Health Provider, with expected accreditation in September 2022. He utilizes a combination of existential and humanistic techniques within the specific modality of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a 3rd-wave cognitive-behavioral therapeutic approach, to help clients achieve their goals. This includes the exploration of personal values, the meanings we give the stories of our life and experiential, behavioral strategies to align clients’ values with the content of their lives. He also utilizes Motivational Interviewing (MI) techniques to address personal motivation to create change. As a Master’s Level Intern, Richard will be under the direct supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Grady, LCMHCS.

Richard has a deep commitment to working with individuals overcoming developmental and childhood trauma, and combines cutting-edge, neuroscientific research with traditional existential and behavioral therapeutic modalities to first unlock how the experiences from our past influence our present and then move past these experiences into a desired future. He is currently completing the Certified Clinical Trauma Specialist—Individual (CCTS-I) designation from the Arizona Trauma Institute with anticipated accreditation in May 2022.

As you work together, Richard will support you as you create your own goals and design your own strategies for testing new ways of being in the world that empower you to craft the life you want. In the words of Victor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Richard looks deeply forward to exploring that space with you and helping you find your own freedom.

If you would like to be connected with Richard, please email raleigh@wefixbrains.com, call 919-900-7552, or click this link to request an appointment today! Prioritizing your mental health is essential to your overall well-being. Your body, mind, and spirit rely on your mental health. If you can't take care of yourself, it affects your relationships and even physical health. We would love to support you in reaching your counseling goals! Call or connect today!