PoundCake & Private Practice

04/17/2023

Celebrated Onyx Therapy Group ten years of serving and community building in the Black community (mental health) yesterday. Excited to hear the personal success stories of those building their private practices using the books as their guide! Thank you for allowing me to share on the mental health of entrepreneurs panel regarding PsycYourMind!

10/04/2022

10/02/2022

Pre-Orders went out last week! Visit the site to learn more about Book 1 and now, Book 2 as well as a bundle option.

09/01/2022

Book 2! Signed copies shipping to a mailbox near you. Pre-order link live via website!

07/01/2022

Poundcake & Private Practice: 5 Things I Learned During The Pandemic PRE-ORDER Open!

The Recipe for "making" your private practice from scratch. Inclusive of a tell-all book, continuing education classes and a customizable form list of therapy templates.

01/18/2022

[June 2022] And, another one!

From the author who brought you PoundCake & Private Practice: 5 Things I Learned During My First Year, this piece documents the growth and growing pains of Crystal’s mental health private practice, PsycYourMind, during a pandemic.

A somber goodbye to a loved one and life as we once knew it, yields an unprecedented journey of supporting clients, developing a robust internship-residency program as an approved clinical supervisor, all while being human.

PreHeat, The Pan, The Pour, The Oven, The Pedestal . . .chief tools and techniques used to fortify the practice during such a time as this.

PoundCake & Private Practice: 5 Things I Learned During My First Year, is a catalogued favorite and required reading among psychology and clinical mental health counseling graduate programs (inter)nationally, as well as appears on the resource book list for American Psychological Association; Division 35, Section I: Psychology of Black Women. Adept in private practice development, Crystal continues to encourage pursuit of private practice to counseling graduate students and colleagues, even when uncertainty is looking back at you.

Cover photo by Troy Woods of
Special Thanks to
Cover design by

Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-10: 978-0-578-34404-1

All rights reserved. Copyright on file.

From the author who brought you PoundCake & Private Practice: 5 Things I Learned During My First Year, this piece documents the growth and growing pains of Crystal’s mental health private practice, PsycYourMind, during a pandemic.

01/18/2022

Today, I stand before aspiring change agents, to lend what I know to them in preparation to enter the space. Training is never a one time thing. It is continuous. Passion turns into Traction. Traction turns into Consistency. Consistency turns into Mastery. Excited to get out of my armchair and return to William & Mary, Mason School of Business to shake some tables.

07/09/2020

When we talk about the lack of Black therapists available, we must look at the educational and bureaucratic structures which grant the ability to practice. You don’t know, what you don’t know. Here’s my book and face plastered on a column at my alma mater’s undergraduate library. A surreal moment. A futuristic moment (from the page of an Octavia Butler book) would be if I can encourage Black students to complete the licensure process.

For those who pursue a (under)graduate degree in counseling psychology, the curriculum focuses on research and....yea, more research. Then there’s internship—which typically places students in community mental health agencies. Private practice owners, step up to be a site. Then a grueling residency period of 2-3 years working for minimal pay with student loans and regular bills. Not to mention the board examination. Should you reach clinical licensure, most jobs are in community mental health clinic-type settings.

Most Black grad psych students don’t have start up capital to go into private practice. We have debt. Generational debt. So you take the clinic job. No one ever discusses most clients who look like me don’t want to go to a clinic. They want to sit down and be heard. Not rushed out after 15 minutes when it took them over an hour to get there and another 20 minutes of waiting in a crowded waiting room. Follow link for the “how to” when you only have $3.94 in the bank.

07/07/2020

Thoroughly enjoying my copy of
OURSELVES BLACK. Ourselves Black is a biannual, mental health resource magazine for the Black Community, beautifully written and designed to focus on our exploration of our mental selves through a select number of engaging resources, interviews, stories and photography. This will await clients in the PsycYourMind waiting room.

06/17/2020

Happy 2nd Birthday to PoundCake & Private Practice: 5 Things I Learned During My First Year! 🥳

The book is now listed on Bookshop, “an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.”