Dawn-Petrice Youngs, LPC-S, NCC, BCN

When Dawn-Petrice Youngs was pursuing her Master’s degree in counseling in the early 2000s, her mother suggested that she not stop there and double degree so that she could jump into private practice someday if she wanted. Dawn-Petrice usually erred on the side of taking her mother’s advice, but she scoffed at the suggestion in this one instance.

Fast-forward eight years, and Dawn-Petrice is a successful and highly respected high school counselor in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD. But she can’t help but feel like her educational journey was far from over — opening the door to her life’s biggest “I told you so” moment.

“I remember saying, ‘Mom. I need to go into private practice,’” Dawn-Petrice said. “She just grinned at me.”

Dawn-Petrice’s mother, her husband of 22 years, three children, and countless colleagues know better than anyone that she is a lifelong learner and needs to add something to her repertoire every few years to help more people. Dawn-Petrice’s husband calls it the five-year itch, and it almost always plays out like clockwork. It’s why she started her career as a special education teacher and quickly moved into high school counseling, and it’s why she opened Youngs Counseling in 2016. After seeing how alternative mental healthcare benefitted her son, she became board-certified in neurofeedback so she could open Neurofeedback of Cypress. Now, she’s juggling two successful practices while pursuing a Ph.D. in Applied Psychophysiology.

“We’ve got three kids in college, and we’re paying for four college educations,” Dawn-Petrice said. “It’s a massively rewarding feeling when you’ve got a client sitting across from you, crying and saying that for the first time in their life, they don’t have underlying de-pression and anxiety. My husband likes to ask, ‘What more can you do?’ I honestly don’t know. But I’ll always want more.”

Accessible and Personalized Care in Cypress

Beyond her years of education and certifications, Dawn-Petrice is a mother to three children with ADHD. This has given her a unique perspective on mental health, and she has come to understand that it is the result of more than a tragic event, our upbringing, un-healthy relationships, learning disabilities, or behaviors. It’s also affected by our brains. As a result, she’s quickly become the go-to counselor and mental health therapist in Cypress with Youngs Counseling and Neurofeedback of Cypress.

She opened Youngs Counseling in 2016 to help kids, teens, families, and couples discover what it means to feel grounded, healthy, and whole—no matter what life throws their way. Youngs Counseling specializes in couples therapy, family counseling, anxiety and trauma, ASL therapy, and children and adolescent therapy. Three years ago, she opened Neurofeedback of Cypress under the same roof as an alternative approach to mental healthcare for patients who still suffer from underlying anxiety, depression, and ADHD/ADD and have exhausted traditional avenues. In these situations, patients couldn’t find relief through traditional approaches to medication — either because they weren’t responding to it or they didn’t want to be so reliant on that medication.

Neurofeedback is a safe and non-invasive type of biofeedback in which data from brainwaves is used as feedback to help retrain the brain. It is not considered a cure but rather a method of managing or regulating the workings of the brain so that it functions in a healthier manner. This is achieved by repeated training sessions using a computerized neurofeedback program to teach your central nervous system to reorganize and regulate brainwave frequencies. Neurofeedback assesses your brain and provides information about areas of dysfunction that are causing symptoms so they can be treated directly.

Not every patient who visits Youngs Counseling needs neurofeedback, and vice versa. But the holistic results are apparent.

“I kept thinking, ‘Wait a minute. I have a health degree and have been fascinated with holistic care for 30 years. There’s got to be more to this besides the trauma from having experienced something,’” Dawn-Petrice said. “I did a deep dive and found neurofeed-back, and it happened to coincide with my son spinning out of control and not wanting to take medication. I invested in this to save my son, and it did. From there, it made complete sense to offer it to other people.”

She added, “A client who uses neurofeedback is someone who has exhausted everything else. They’ve done therapy and taken medication and are now looking for something else. Or, they don’t want to take meds, and this is their option. I love helping them.”

Leading the Next Generation

The best part of having two thriving practices and a seemingly unending list of education under her belt is that Dawn-Petrice can now educate and inspire the next generation of therapists and mental health professionals. She has handpicked like-minded women in LPC associate Melissa Hoot, and counselor interns Arianna Stittiams and Haley Chapa. All three ladies are under Dawn-Petrice’s supervision, and she requires that they have the same thirst for knowledge and commitment to helping people as she does.

Life can be confusing, frustrating, and difficult. But with this team in your corner, you’re never alone.

“I’ve got a great team, and there’s no better feeling than knowing we are helping people,” Dawn-Petrice said. “It’s massively reward-ing, and I’m sure there will be something else I add in the future. After all, I’m always wanting more.”