We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amanda Villaveces a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amanda, thanks for joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

It may sound cliché, but the pandemic was certainly a defining moment in my career. I had started building my organization, Mental Health Lou, only a year or so prior to 2019 and assumed it would be something that gradually grew over time, since it was a side project and not my main job.

Of course, in 2019 everything seemed to change. Professionally, I felt like I was thrown into the rapids; my private therapy practice was getting multiple requests daily for new clients and Mental Health Lou, my small organization with a team of only three, was suddenly being asked to do interviews with the mayor to talk about mental health. We had protests in our city, a pandemic, people were suffering from anxiety, grief and lack of connection. I felt drawn to do something, even though I was now working from home, (my office was now reduced to a small little corner of my room so that my kids had space to do online school) and I wasn’t sure how exactly to help.

Pretty quickly though I realized this was what I had been building my org for, to serve and connect my community to wellness resources, to help improve the overall mental wellbeing of those around me. This truly felt like a pivotal moment in building my organization and I knew I could either choose to sink or swim. I could see how my small org not only had potential to grow, but really potential to help connect people and promote important mental health info during a serious time of need. So I chose to swim.

This meant long hours helping people find counseling resources, seeking out and promoting mental wellness events and filling in the gaps by creating workshops and wellness summits that provided free education and tools to my community. And while I was often exhausted at the end of the day, that decision has been one of the most fulfilling choices of my professional life.

Mental Health Lou is still continuing to grow and provide resources and connection for others. In 2020 we hosted a free week long online Wellness Summit with over 20 speakers. In 2019, 2020 and 2021 we promoted 25-50 mental health events for the month of May, worked to get May declared Mental Health Awareness Month by the Governor and helped community members find a therapist!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

For those who don’t know me (which is most of you!), I’m Amanda Villaveces. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist and a community mental health advocate. I work in private practice with mostly teenagers and adults and in 2019 I became the Director of a community organization called Mental Health Lou. Ever since I was a teenager I dreamed about starting an organization that somehow helped people with their mental health and wellbeing. And if you don’t believe me check out the google doc I made in my early years of college titled “My non-profit.”

I’ve always been interested in mental health because 1. I’m a caregiver and 2. I find people fascinating, seriously I could listen to people all day. I have worked as a therapist for over 9 years and what I found is that at some point I wanted to do more. While I love working one on one with clients, I felt the drive to teach and connect with a larger audience early on. I’ve also always been a big networker and love sharing resources with people. Actually, if I had a super power, I’d say it was my ability to to connect people to resources (that’s a super awesome power right?). So from this desire to do more, to move out of the therapy room and into the community, I began to build Mental Health Lou. Now, Mental Health Lou is quickly becoming my “non-profit.” The mission of MHLou is to connect my community (in Louisville, KY) to the many mental health and wellness resources in our area. We also promote mental health events, host workshops and trainings and work to demystify the process of seeking mental health help.

What I most love about this org is that it’s collaborative. I get to meet and work with amazing professionals throughout the city, support other local non-profits and find creative ways to bring mental health out of the therapist’s office and into the community.

Our next big thing is MindFest, which is a mental health festival that’s free for the public and highlights providers and resources and is a place to engage in conversation around mental health. It’s a collaboration between MHLou and other mental health advocates in our community and is definitely a labor of love!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I’m a firm believer in making real connections. This may sound silly in the era of social media everything, but I think it’s still really important to get to know people and maybe even meet them in person if you want to provide a service for them.

So one thing I think that’s helped without building our reputation on the market is that we show up and connect. Over the last year I’ve reached out to more people to build connections, than ever. Sometimes it’s to do business, others it’s just to say “hey I like what you do!” And from the feedback I get, it’s that people like knowing who they’re working with. They like meeting you in person (if possible), they like getting to have coffee with you and learn more about why you do what you do. So while this may sound super nostalgic, and time consuming (it can be!), I really find these person to person connections incredibly valuable when it comes to building a solid reputation with clients and the community.

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

So resilience is often viewed as how we “bounce back” from difficulties, but I’d like to talk about how it’s more about “bouncing forward.” I actually do a lot of workshops around Resilience and Burnout and I feel like when we talk about resilience in the media, we’re often looking for stories of how people persevered through tough times. And I would say there have been many times I’ve persevered through tough times in the last two years, but that perseverance or resilience wasn’t me just “toughing it out.” Instead it was more about me reminding myself each day to do good things for myself, to drink water, talk a walk, go to bed on time, laugh, take deep breathes and be nice to myself. These are some elements of resilience that have helped me get through some of the most anxiety provoking times in the last two years. They aren’t things I necessarily would have done if I wasn’t a therapist and didn’t remind my clients to do them daily, but they’re things that I’ve found have been important in keeping me steady. Afterall when you’re growing a business, parenting, and trying to survive in this world, it can be difficult to remember to come up for air, but having these small practices in my daily life, have helped me remember to not get hyper focused on the stressors of life and to refocus on what’s most important.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mentalhealthlou.com
• Instagram: @mentalhealthlou
• Facebook: mentalhealthlou
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnOZeWLGhFYPToFNJQJgtpQ/videos

Image Credits
M. Haas Photography