Kelley Raab, RP, Psychotherapist, Teacher, and Writer

I am a psychotherapist, teacher, and writer. While I have engaged in several career pursuits over the years, all of them have been focused on my passion – exploring the intersection of spirituality and psychology.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Biology, I earned two graduate degrees in religion, a Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Religious Studies. In these master’s programs I was fortunate to read the work of Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Erich Fromm, Victor Frankl and others interested how spirituality and psychology overlap and inform one another. After earning my Master of Divinity, I completed a year-long training program in counseling; at that time, however, I chose to enter a doctoral program focusing on psychology and religion, with the goal of becoming a university professor.

So, after completing my PhD in religious studies at the University of Ottawa, I embarked on a fourteen-year academic career, teaching at small liberal arts universities in the United States. After a while, I realized I wanted to go deeper than was possible with an academic appointment in religious studies, and I obtained additional training in counseling at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. At about that time I immigrated to Canada.

In 2005 I began a second career lasting another fourteen years, at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre working in Spiritual and Cultural Care. At the Royal, I had the opportunity to work with people from many different faith backgrounds and from no faith background. I counseled individuals suffering from anxiety disorders (GAD, OCD, SAD) manic depression (bipolar illness), depression, schizophrenia, and addictions. I also worked in the forensic program, running spirituality groups, and participated in several research studies on mindfulness and spiritually-based interventions. From my time at the Royal, I developed my own theory of therapy as a process of spiritual and psychological unfolding.

While at the Royal, I also became interested in how creative activities, such as writing, arts and music, can be both spiritual and therapeutic. I published a book, Creativity, Spirituality and Mental Health: Exploring Connections (Routledge, 2009). The main points of the book are that 1) both creativity and spirituality can work as allies in healing from mental illness and 2) we all have the potential for deep creative and spiritual connectedness. Personally, for many years I have played music, and recently I started writing fiction as an additional avenue for self-discovery. I also have a regular mindfulness practice, another means of looking deeply within.

There are many paths to self-discovery, and as a registered psychotherapist I would like to help you find yours. Whether you have a belief in God or nature or nothing at all, there is an energy that draws you to the people and events you need at each step of your life. I invite you to open to that energy and, with my support, take a step forward.