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

Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

While I’d had an interest in psychology for as long as I can remember, I didn’t think I could make a career out of it until I was 35 and had fallen crazy in love with a man who is a psychotherapist in private practice. His success and the fact that he had made a career change to that field in his 30s made it start to seem possible. Things with him didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, and by the week of my 36th birthday I was in a very dark place: along with the heartbreak of that unrequited love situation, I was also miserable in the career field I was in at the time–writing and content management for a publisher in the healthcare industry. It felt like I’d failed hard in both love and work, which are two areas of life that are extremely important to me, and there just didn’t seem much point in continuing to try at anything, whether it was in relationships or my career. More and more, I felt like if I had to spend the next 30 years at the company where I worked or a similar one, doing the same kind of work, while also struggling to meet people I truly felt a connection with, there didn’t seem to be much to live for.
In my interactions with this person I mentioned above, I’d learned a lot about working with dreams, including dream incubation, where you write down a question before going to sleep with the intention of experiencing a dream that answers the question. So the night of my 36th birthday, the question I wrote down was, “Why should I continue living?”
I did have a dream that night, but it seemed unrelated to my question. I was partially disappointed, partially relieved. However, that day a childhood messaged me on social media to wish me a belated happy birthday. She said she was in town visiting her mother and stepfather and asked if I wanted to meet up over the weekend. I agreed to meet with her and as I was driving to where she was staying I reflected on my friendship with her. We’d been friends in elementary school until age 10 when her mother had an affair with someone from their church, divorced her father, and moved to a different town with her new partner. Ten years later when we were 20, her father died by suicide. I had lost track of what happened to her and her family after that.
During the evening we spent catching up, it was clear that her father’s suicide had deeply traumatized her. She talked about being in multiple relationships that were abusive, losing custody of her children, struggling with mental health difficulties, and having difficulties maintaining a job. I wanted to help her but felt overwhelmed–all I could do was sit and listen.
As I was driving back home, it was like an inner voice was asking me whether I would want my family and other loved ones to suffer the way that my friend had. This was the turning point where it really set in that the suicidal thoughts I was having were not about literally ending my life, but about ending the circumstances in my life that weren’t working out. Falling in love with a therapist was life’s way of pointing me down a more meaningful path than the one I’d been on, and so I applied to some graduate programs in counseling psychology, was accepted, and started my program shortly after my 37th birthday.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of Utah, as well as a life coach and energy healer to clients all over the world. I offer soul-centered psychotherapy and coaching, as well as psychologically-informed energy work that is focused on helping people connect with their inherent wholeness, authenticity, and divinity. I also offer case consultation to other mental health professionals. I came to this discipline after 16 unhappy years in a different career field, during which I struggled with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and relationship issues. The turning point came when I fell in love with the man I mentioned before who is a psychotherapist in private practice. Although that situation didn’t result in the outcome I wanted, it did seem to set in motion a series of events that led me toward starting over in a brand new career field as a psychotherapist. From this, I learned how important our relationships with others can be in reflecting things back to us things about ourselves and our own lives, and this is one of my guiding philosophies in my work with clients.

My psychotherapy practice is focused on a depth psychological approach to addressing mental health issues. Depth or Jungian psychology places an emphasis on making unconscious processes conscious. This can include things like working with dreams or creating art to explore the images that are present in the unconscious. Integrating this approach with talk therapy can lead to powerful shifts in the relationships clients have with themselves and others. My typical clients are adults who are experiencing depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship difficulties, career issues, difficulties related to faith and spirituality issues, grief and loss, meaning and identity issues, career issues, women-specific issues, and psychological aspects of health challenges. I work with both individuals and couples.

I’m trained in individual and couple therapy, depth psychology (Jungian), multiple energy healing modalities, and creative arts therapeutic interventions. I integrate complementary methodologies and techniques to offer a highly personalized approach tailored to each client, regardless of whether they are coming to me for psychotherapy, case consultation, coaching, or energy work; this is what I’m proud of and what I feel sets me apart from others. My approach to healing is person-centered, gentle, and direct, with an emphasis on providing support and practical feedback to help clients effectively address personal life challenges, as well as using depth psychology in making unconscious processes conscious. With compassion and understanding, I work with each individual to help them find hope and meaning, build on their strengths, and attain the personal growth they are committed to accomplishing.

The main thing I want potential clients/followers/fans to know is that it’s never too late to make the transition into a more meaningful life, and we all have an inherent inner wisdom that can help us. Even when it seems like nothing else has worked out, it’s not too late and you’re not too old to find a way of being in the world that works better for you. There’s always hope as long as you’re still alive.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

Yes–despite what my career path has looked like, I would do most of it again. Sometimes I like to think that if I could go way back to when I was 19 and had to pick an undergraduate major, I would have gone with the impulse I had at the time to major in psychology, and that would have made more sense and been easier than the career path I actually took.
However, back then I wasn’t sure what kind of job I’d be able to find with that degree, and the idea of becoming a therapist didn’t seem like the right fit. Instead, I got a bachelors degree in biology and then a masters degree in technical writing, and I worked for a long time in corporate and academic positions related to healthcare and the life sciences. That background has actually been very helpful as far as understanding how our biology impacts our mental health, navigating the healthcare system, interacting with medical professionals, managing a business, and being able to write effectively.
So even though I took “scenic route,” much of what I learned along the way is still useful to this day. It also helps me empathize and work with clients who are struggling due to career-related difficulties.
Because of this, I actually would make most of the same choices; but looking back on it now there were some jobs I would have quit a lot sooner than I actually did.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I had hoped that in switching to the mental health profession I’d have more supportive work experiences in better work environments than what I’d become used to in my prior career. In some of my corporate positions I saw ways of doing business that seemed ethically questionable, including some pretty poor treatment of employees and clients. There also seemed to be a lack of work-life balance. I was really disappointed to find that the situation was no different in my first job as a marriage and family therapist intern. The interns (students still in their graduate program) and associates (pre-licensed clinicians who had graduated but still had to complete a certain number of hours under supervision) were supposed to be getting one-on-one supervision from the owner of the practice where I worked, but instead it was one hour per week of group supervision where the 8-10 people there had about 5 minutes to discuss the client case they were most worried about. There was really not much support provided at all and I usually left supervision meetings more confused than when I when I went in. I tried to find another internship but every clinic I called was full. I asked for supervision that actually met the required guidelines but I was told no, and treated like I was a problem for doing so. I was the last person to be assigned any clients until several other interns quit and their client cases were assigned to me, which kept happening even after I said that I was at capacity and couldn’t see more clients. For all of this, I was paid $10/hour, which was a huge pay cut (and for comparison’s sake, the KFC up the street was paying $12/hour at the time). All this was actually worse than anything I’d experienced in the corporate world. Fortunately I found a different supervisor, and though I had to pay her for her time because she was outside of my organization, at least I was actually getting supervision that met the requirements of my graduate program. Then after a year at that internship, a friend helped me get a slightly better intern position at the clinic where he was working.

Basically, working in the mental health field can be extremely brutal, and a lot depends on the culture of the clinic where someone is working. Especially for those who are not independently licensed and are working under a supervisor’s license, there may often be an expectation of working a lot of hours, usually for low wages (or in unpaid positions), with little support or training. Most of the intern and associate positions I worked in were like this, though a few of my friends had better experiences. There were many times when I thought about just quitting, but the thought of having my own private practice kept me going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://amandabutlermft.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alembicamanda/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmandaButlerLMFT
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/amanda-butler/7/7aa/926