For Hilary Stowers the opening of her new holistic health office in Leesburg is the culmination of a life of experiences in the worlds of finance, nutritional counseling, grief education, and her own struggles with chronic conditions and medical gaslighting.
Stowers is a resident in counseling who offers holistic mental health therapy to those dealing with grief, anxiety, trauma, life transitions, self-esteem issues, women’s health, and other related areas. She is also a certified grief educator and trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy.
“Having education in the different theoretical approaches combined with being trained in EMDR, I would be considered a trauma-informed clinician, being a certified grief educator, so grief literate. And then having the nutritional certification, I hope to kind of weave all of that together to be able to look at a person with a truly holistic lens and help them with whatever they’re struggling with,” Stowers said.
That lens is also informed by her own life experiences.
In 2001, Stowers developed what became chronic Lyme disease, which could have been prevented but was initially misdiagnosed. An otherwise healthy, athletic person who rowed crew, cycled, jogged, and ate well, Stowers found herself battling thyroid disease, anemia, aches and pains, and complicated migraines with neurological side effects.
Years later, after meeting two holistic doctors who were able to identify the root cause of her pain and treated her with a blend of traditional and alternative treatments, Stowers’ Lyme disease went into remission.
Professionally, Stowers was entrenched in the financial world, and offered nutritional counseling on the side. Finding success in her practice, around 2020, she began to consider going back to school to get a master’s of education degree with a concentration in clinical mental health counseling.
“If I’m good at this and I like it and I’m succeeding, why shouldn’t I pursue this?” she said. She enrolled at George Mason University.
Upon completion of her program, Stowers merged her two worlds of nutrition and mental health counseling, and converted her practice to offer what she described as a “truly integrative” approach to care.
Stowers described a time when a client showed several symptoms of depression that were also synonymous with having low iron. Her background in different fields allowed her to ascertain the root cause of those symptoms rather than just treating them.
EMDR is another tool in Stowers’ integrative care tool kit.
EMDR was initially designed by Dr. Francine Shapiro in the 1980s to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but Stowers said she’s used it for everything from helping people with interview prep to aiding clients reprocess a bad breakup.
Stowers said that EMDR uses bilaterial stimulation to engage both sides of the brain to reprocess traumatic memories stored in a dysfunctional state. BLS can reintegrate and reprocess the memories, so they feel less intense. Ultimately, the traumatic memory is stored more adaptively in the brain, improving emotional regulation, she said.
“Research shows its approximately 85% up to 100% efficacy of successful reprocessing after one session for a single acute event,” Stowers said. “If you have something more complicated like sexual abuse, we don’t know how many sessions it’s going to take. Whatever the reason for the reprocessing, it’s not me as the clinician doing the work. It’s quite frankly not even you as the client doing the work. Your brain is doing the work.”
She’s also been on the receiving end of EMDR, which she believes makes her a better clinician.
Stowers is also an advocate of Internal Family Systems developed by Dr. Dick Schwartz. She decribed IFS as “parts work,” involving a mapping of the client’s “parts,” categorizing by coping strategies. She said the model was particularly helpful for giving clients actionable steps toward self-healing, with a focus on nurturing those parts, separating them from the self and addressing what those parts try to tell the individual.
Stowers said she wants her clients to find a sense of agency in their lives and be able to make decisions that are aligned with their values.
She also hopes to see therapy destigmatized and for healthcare insurance companies to recognize its role in preventative medicine. Her practice operates with a private-pay practice where she offers clients a monthly fee for a variety of treatments without insurance providers dictating the care.
“Helping people who maybe have lost their way for whatever the reason, and they want to get in touch with themselves again, and they want to be able to make decisions that affect in a positive way the trajectory of their lives, their careers, their relationships like that, it’s an honor and a privilege,” Stowers said.
Hilary Stowers Counseling is located at 222 Catoctin Circle SE, Suite 122 in Leesburg. Learn more at hilarystowerscounseling.com.
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