Welcome to Belltower Counseling.
I’m so glad you’re here. My name is Margaret Barrett and this is my practice.
I am an artist at heart and in practice and consider it a privilege to venture into the unexplored terrain of the human mind and heart with others who are willing to make the journey. I especially enjoy working collaboratively with people who desire to liberate themselves from limiting beliefs, unhelpful patterns, and ways of relating that no longer serve them.
My therapeutic approach has been shaped by the belief that everyone deserves to encounter—and participate in– the full breadth and depth of the human experience. We spend a great deal of our lives learning which parts of ourselves–which “darknesses”—are acceptable and which should be hidden, managed, outgrown, or overcome. Meanwhile, the art of being alive requires that we embrace a vivid spectrum of feeling and experience, where tenderness, heartache, joy, grief, humor, disappointment, bewilderment and beauty can each find their place of belonging.
Like a belltower tolling its solemn invitation, the parts of ourselves that we choose to ignore or abandon are calling on us to pause and bear witness. They beckon to us, over and over again, to embrace the strange and wonderful music of our inner experience and to open ourselves to its many possibilities.
I hold a Master of Music Composition, Baylor University, (2010) and a Master of Counseling from Amberton University (2024).
My LPC Associate License number is #94659 and I am supervised by Amanda Stretcher Lewis, LPC-S #71824.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”- Carl Rogers
Is Belltower Counseling right for me?
My work centers on helping clients become less estranged from themselves and to gradually build the inner capacity to stay in relationship with their own experience. By learning to take responsibility for our own growth, we become freer to inhabit our lives with greater depth, choice, and aliveness.
Belltower is a safe, affirming place for this kind of inner exploration: not an escape from the wilderness of being human, but a way of meeting one’s own life with more curiosity, courage, and compassion.
While all adults (18+) are welcome at my practice, Belltower tends to be a good fit for the following:
Artists and creative thinkers
People who feel confused, stuck, or plagued with existential questions
Individuals who struggle with being “not enough” or “too much”
Those living with anxiety, depression, childhood trauma, and CPTSD
Anyone who feels lost, broken, bewildered, or disappointed by life
Services:
Individual therapy for adults (18+): $160/hour
Couples therapy: $160/hour
15-minute consultation: no charge
Note: I offer sliding scale to a number of clients on my roster - inquiries welcome so we can make therapy affordable for you.
A note about insurance: I have chosen to practice as a cash-pay business so that we are not submitting your therapeutic journey to approval of a third-party system. This means I am not considered an in-network provider. I believe this allows me to do my best work. I am happy to provide Superbills for any of your sessions, which you can submit to your insurance company for possible reimbursement using out-of-network benefits. If you have questions about this, I’m happy to talk with you about it.
" I wish that I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being." - Hafiz, Persian Sufi Poet, 14th Century
I’d love to chat with you on the phone for a free, fifteen minute consultation and see if working together makes sense. Drop me a line here and we’ll get started.
Let’s connect.
Resources and favorites
Essays:
“The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Losses” by Tim McKee
Interview with Krista Tippett on the Great Discontent” with Tina Essmaker
Books:
One Long River of Song By Brian Doyle
Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard
I Don’t Want to Talk About It by Terrence Real
Body-Centered Therapy: The Hakomi Method by Ron Kurtz
On Being a Person by Carl Rogers
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson
A Book of Delights by Ross Gay
A Significant Life by Todd May
Music:
Podcasts:
Let this Darkness be a Belltower
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.