Field of Expertise
- Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Supervision
Licensure and Certification
- Licensed Professional Counselor, Alabama
- National Certified Counselor
- Approved Clinical Supervisor
Biography
Dr. Tomeka W.L. Barris-McGhee is an authentic, courageously humble, transparent, and reflective clinical mental health counselor educator, licensed professional counselor (LPC-AL), nationally certified counselor (NCC), approved certified supervisor (ACS), facilitator, consultant, and author. A counselor educator since 2010, she has nearly 15 years of service to and leadership in the Alabama Counseling Association (President, 2017) and the American Counseling Association (Executive Board Member of Clinical Director/Placement Coordinator Interest Network 2013-2015). Additionally, Dr. Barris-McGhee has contributed to both the professional and layman communities through mental health advocacy efforts with Alabama Counseling Association’s Day on the Hill and with a team of state and regional counseling association leaders on Capitol Hill (2011, 2017), state, regional, and international presentations, and clinical and non-clinical writing projects. She consults with area businesses, churches/clergy, and clinical professionals to support the needs of the community in the areas of mental health ethics, grief and loss, cultural competency and humility, parent-child relationship, spirituality/religious issues and development, and other mental health or life transition concerns.
She adeptly and intuitively facilitates group experiences for counselors-in-training, colleagues, administrators/leaders, and community members toward personal transformation and professional enrichment in the areas of identity development or construction and the soul work inherent in transitions across the life span such attachment, developmental trauma, historical or intergenerational trauma, grief and loss, faith or spiritual development, and the formation of cultural competence and cultural humility. Her work involves creating safe, sacred, and transformative spaces by which individuals and groups can engage in deeper self-and-other exploration that informs and transforms one’s core identity and narratives, cultivates life-giving and true Self ways of being, and responds to the perennial questions of “how to live.”
Across time, she has leveraged her pedagogical, clinical, and ministerial expertise, along with her personal life’s journey through dark nights and triumphant day breaks, to advance the ministry of reconciliation in and between healthy personhood (mind-body-spirit) and healthy relationships (self-God-others). Above all, she enjoys times of silence and solitude in reflection and contemplation at her favorite monastery or lake/ocean, listening to music, reading, and, most importantly, spending slow-paced, sunny days on the porch playing and relaxing with her husband of nearly 28 years and three children.
Dr. Barris-McGhee is excited to be co-chapter faculty advisor (CFA) for the Rho Eta Sigma online chapter of Chi Sigma Iota International Counseling Academic and Professional Honor Society.