About

Rushini Jayawardena

I don't know about you, but the "about me" parts of things still rattle me like the first day of college classes when everyone had to go around the room and share something about themselves. My internal dialogue always sounded a lot like "oh great this again. What can I say that makes me sound both interesting and normal? Maybe I'll just tell them my favorite fruit is mango." A masters degree and a clinical license later, I still don't quite know the right answer to that question.

My name is Rushini, and I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I was born in Sri Lanka, moved to New York City at a young age and made my way to Chicago much later in life. I love building therapeutic relationships with my clients and do this with authenticity. I show up as me, you show up as you, no filters needed. I will be your biggest cheerleader but will also be that mirror that reflects things you weren't aware of, or really just did not want to see (like those zoom x 4 mirrors that provide a little too much honestly about your clogged pores). I enjoy working with teenage aged individuals to older adults and have worked with various mental health related concerns such as trauma, anxiety, depression, adjustment, self-esteem, familial discord, cultural and personal identity and more.

If you would like to learn more about the services provided or to assess if I am the right fit for your self growth journey, please contact me.

In My Clinical Toolbelt:

Trauma Focused Therapy: Unresolved trauma has a sneaky way of showing up in other parts of your life. While ensuring you feel safe, we work to unravel ways traumatic responses are affecting you.

CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy): Our thoughts, actions and feelings interact with each other constantly. With this approach we examine the unhelpful and sometimes unconscious interaction of these three things.

DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy): I love using DBT skills to help develop safer and healthier responses to distressful moments and emotions.

Mindfulness & Guided Meditations: In a society were we are always on the go mentally and physically, I love using meditations to facilitate intentional awareness and stillness.

Yoga: The combination of mindfulness and movement can help reset and calm mental and physical restlessness.

Art: The beautiful place where words stop and freedom starts. This is less about the attractiveness of the piece or more about the process. I love using art as a way to move through emotions and create ways of coping and trying something new.

Relational-Cultural Therapy: We are social creatures, we thrive off social connections. With that being said, most of our wounds do not happen in isolation and are usually caused by fractures in our relationships with others. Using this approach we work to identify and heal these parts of our identities so we feel safe and empowered to reconnect with others.

Solutions Focused Therapy: We go to the drawing board together; identify things that worked, and things that didn't. Here we plan a course of action and checkpoints to get you where you want to go.

Play: I do not care how old you are, play is an important part of your humanness! Together we honor the playfulness within us and acknowledge that looks different everyday.

EMDR: With EMDR we take the emotional charge away from traumatic experiences that have not been processed fully. We learn to modify the template so the world feels less activating.