Ashley Gordon Prater, LCSW
Ashley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in the state of Texas. She holds a Master of Social Work and a Master of Public Policy and brings over a decade of experience across child welfare, crisis intervention, victim advocacy, and both outpatient and inpatient clinical settings. She also serves as an adjunct professor, where she teaches social work.
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This work is not just a job for her, it is a privilege and an honor. Ashley believes therapy is a collaborative and deeply human process, and she values creating a space where clients feel seen, supported, and able to show up as their full selves. Therapy then becomes a place for exploration, meaning-making, and healing, where clients can better understand the patterns, relationships, and systems that shape their lives.
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She works with children, adolescents, and adults navigating anxiety, trauma, grief, eating disorders, substance use, and life transitions. She has a strong passion for working with children and primarily uses play therapy to help children express what words often cannot, supporting emotional expression, regulation, and healing through creativity, connection, and relationship. She also enjoys working with LGBTQIA+ individuals, neurodiverse clients, and creatives.
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Her approach is integrative and she incorporates systems, developmental, and feminist perspectives alongside clinical work. She draws from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), emotion-focused therapy (EFT), compassion-focused therapy, and psychodynamic frameworks, as well as play therapy interventions. She is also trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), which she incorporates when clinically appropriate. Her work is gentle, hopeful, and grounded in a harm-reduction lens that honors each client’s lived experience.
Outside of the therapy room, she shares her life with a lively household: her toddler, her twenty something year old child, her long-term partner, and a very fluffy Pomeranian named Skittles. She is a proud Pomeranian enthusiast and can often be found at local theater, concerts, live shows, or even wrestling events, taking in the energy around her.