Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alexis Cameron. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Alexis, thanks for joining us today. What was your school or training experience like? Share an anecdote or two that you feel illustrate important aspects or the overall nature of your schooling/training experience.

Training towards becoming a therapist was not as straight forth as I imagined it would be. My initial hope was to get my Masters’ degree in Counseling so that I would be able to move on towards achieving my Clinical Psychology PsyD degree. I thought diagnostic testing was my end goal, but I had no idea that I could fall in love with the process of therapy and its intricacies that would captivate my attention. I absolutely loved my masters level training. It was definitely a mixture of being challenging, emotional, character-building, new, terrifying, enriching, and rewarding. I remember being a first year graduate student in my first semester having to record myself (on video) and a peer in the training labs. We were practicing mock therapy sessions and when it was my turn to practice being the therapist and using basic level questioning, I froze and kept telling myself ‘I can’t do this.’ Although I did not know it at the time, this experience is so similar to the clients I see today who are choosing to share their stories for the first time with a stranger. Therapy can be scary, intimidating, raw, but also edifying and transformative.
During my 2 year training, I worked on a pediatric unit in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Every stigma I had imagine about psychology and psych hospitals were debunked from my experience. My patients changed and elevated my level of training and consciousness into how mental health impacts us as humans, which led me to pursuing my PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision. I am currently in the dissertation writing stage and focusing on the effective of therapeutic approaches on African American children from licensed therapists perspective.

Alexis, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Alexis Cameron and I am a licensed psychotherapist. When I was a young girl I always new that I wanted to help people. That sounds so cliche but is really a part of my story. I struggled for a while trying to decide between the medical world and the psychology field. At one point throughout college I even considered if I wanted to become a teacher because of my love for children and knowledge. When I was in college I was blessed to have the opportunity to have this immersion experience called “Clinical Psychology Term.” This experience offers me a unique opportunity to understand the functioning of the human mind and to explore careers as clinical psychologists, counselors, and social workers. After completing this trimester, my mind was made up and I knew I was being called into the field of counseling/psychology. Currently, I work within a group practice and primarily work with children, families, and couples. People seek out therapy for a variety of reasons. I assist individuals with problems related to life stress and adjustments, trauma, divorce, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, multicultural and racial difficulties, substance use/abuse, adoption etc. really anything under the moon. An area that I enjoy working with involves the education on how generational unhealthy patterns within families are significantly prevalent. There is no such things as a normal family and that is something that we all have in common. So, I decided to establish A.Mari Wellness that operates primarily from Instagram. I use my clinical background and knowledge to curate content for educational, comedic, normalizing, and advocacy purposes. Very recently, I have decided to tap into my creative side to show the world what a therapist not only looks like, but also to help dismantle misconceptions on therapists/therapy. Therapy is not so scary as it may seem and there is so much taboo about who goes to therapy, why you go therapy, and what it entails. I believe in the power of community and sharing experiences bring us closer together. We live in a day and age where we are starting to have difficult and honest conversations within our families about boundaries, disappointments, poor communication styles, our expectations, wishes and desires, traumas and that takes tremendous strength and courage to do so. Access to accurate and responsible information on my platform is my main objective with helping those heal in communities. I believe that you find purpose and joy when you are helping others. So I hope to send that message through my brand.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

-Any book, article, podcast, talk by Nedra Glover Tawwab and Dr. Anita Phillips. Don’t walk, but RUN and research them!!
-It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn
-Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow- by Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky
-Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents= by Lindsay Gibson
-Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

“Trusting the process” is one of the most therapy cliche’s statements but honest and real lessons I am constantly being reminded of. I used to have a professor who would repeat this statement to me all the time. Of course being young I would dismiss this statement and would become so irritable at the amount of times she would say this. For me, life is my biggest teacher and to this day I probably remind myself of this statement every single day. What I was not aware of is that my professor was unknowingly preparing me for life’s challenges and disappointments; reminding me that things is life will not always be easy or goes as planned, but we have to trust that things will work out the way they are meant to. Ultimately, it is a process and the light at the end of the tunnel should not be ignored.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @a.mariwellness
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-cameron-lcpc-5bb447b0
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@a.mariwellness