Before earning his clinical credentials, Rick built a career in journalism — earning his Master’s in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University. He became a war photographer and foreign correspondent and traveled to some of the most devastated and conflict-ridden places on earth. He witnessed firsthand what trauma does to people — how it fractures identity, rewires the nervous system, and leaves behind a kind of damage that does not resolve on its own. That experience was not just formative – it pointed him toward becoming a trauma psychotherapist.

After completing his Master of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Rick spent three years as a hospice social worker. That work deepened his understanding of the human capacity for suffering and for resilience, and it grounded his clinical instincts in something hard to teach: the ability to sit with people in the darkest places without flinching and without rushing toward resolution. He moved into private practice in 2018, and in 2020 he founded Kismet Ketamine, Psychotherapy & Wellness Infusions along with his wife, NP Meagan Steele in Frederick, Maryland. The vision of the practice was deliberate – to provide comprehensive trauma therapy to clients who have the most complex stories, clinical presentations and symptoms.

Rick is a Licensed Certified Social Worker-Clinical (LCSW-C) and a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP) with over a decade of clinical experience. He is a certified EMDR therapist and consultant through EMDRIA — the international governing body of EMDR — and a certified Brainspotting practitioner, with deep expertise in Internal Family Systems therapy and Ego State work. His theoretical orientation is Jungian, which shapes how he understands the deeper architecture of the psyche and the meaning-making that trauma disrupts. He is also a member of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), reflecting his specialization in complex trauma and dissociative presentations that many generalist therapists are not equipped to treat.

Rick is a longtime member of MAPS — the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies — and has spent years studying the science, history, and clinical application of psychedelic medicines. That depth of knowledge is not incidental to his practice. It is central to it. Rick brings his expertise in psychedelic-assisted therapy directly into his work at Kismet through ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, ketamine-assisted EMDR, and ketamine-assisted Brainspotting — approaches that combine the neuroplastic window ketamine creates with the specific trauma-processing methods he has spent his career mastering. He also works with clients on plant medicine integration: supporting people who have had psychedelic experiences outside of clinical settings and are seeking help making sense of what those experiences brought to the surface.

What runs through all of it — the war photography, the hospice work, the trauma specialization, the psychedelic medicine — is a single thread. Rick has spent his adult life in proximity to the places where ordinary life breaks down and human beings are left trying to find their way back to themselves. He does not approach that territory as an outside observer. He has traveled it. And he has dedicated his training, his credentials, and the clinical infrastructure he has built to finding the most effective possible ways to help people navigate it.

Rick works exclusively with adults who have trauma histories and PTSD symptoms. He does not practice general therapy. At Kismet, he works as part of an integrated clinical team — in regular coordination with the medical director and other clinicians — so that every dimension of a client’s care is aligned and working in the same direction. For clients who have been through other treatments without finding lasting relief, that specificity of focus, depth of expertise, and genuine team coordination is often what makes the difference.