Kimberly Smoots

I am a psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at Real Talk Clinical Psychology in Houston, Texas, where I work with children, adolescents, adults, and the caregivers who are doing the hard work of showing up for them. My clinical focus includes anxiety, depression, trauma, ADHD, autism spectrum conditions, intellectual disabilities, and the kinds of school-related and developmental challenges that don’t always have obvious names but carry real weight in a person’s life.

My background is in school psychology, which shapes how I think about behavior, learning, and emotional experience. Schools are systems, and systems have assumptions built into them. For children and families who don’t fit those assumptions — whether because of neurodiversity, culture, language, family structure, or simply the particular way a child is wired — the gap between what a system expects and what a child actually needs can become a source of chronic stress. I came to clinical work with that tension already in mind, and it continues to inform how I understand the people I work with.

I am bi-ethnic — Mexican and Black American — and that experience is not incidental to my clinical perspective. Growing up navigating multiple cultural identities, and sometimes having to translate between them, gave me an early education in the complexity of belonging. Questions of identity, race, and community are not abstractions in my work. They are part of the clinical conversation, especially when a client has spent years learning to present differently depending on the room they’re in.

My research background reflects this same orientation. I have focused on racial equity and community care, including work on autism assessment practices for Black children, a population that has been historically underdiagnosed and underserved within clinical and educational systems. The research asks what culturally responsive and socially just practice actually looks like in the context of formal evaluation — not as a rhetorical commitment, but as a concrete clinical responsibility. That question doesn’t stay in the academic literature for me. It comes into the room.

Clinically, I am trained in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Relational Cultural Therapy, and Trust-Based Relational Intervention. These approaches share a common assumption: that the relational context of a person’s life matters enormously, and that healing tends to happen within relationships rather than despite them. I work to bring that awareness to every clinical encounter, whether I’m sitting with a child who has trouble naming what they feel, a teenager navigating social dynamics that feel overwhelming, or an adult who has carried something heavy for a long time without ever having a space to set it down.

I provide therapy in English and Spanish. For clients and families where Spanish is the primary or preferred language, this matters beyond access. It means that the most important parts of a person’s experience — the parts that often live in the first language — don’t have to be translated before they can be heard.

I see clients in person at our Houston office and via telehealth across Texas. I accept Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Oscar, UnitedHealthcare, and Curative.

If you are a parent trying to understand what your child is experiencing and how to reach them — or if you are an adult carrying anxiety, depression, or trauma that has never had a proper clinical container — I would be glad to talk.

Kimberly Smoots | Book Here