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

Ansley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back at internships and apprenticeships can be interesting, because there is so much variety in people’s experiences – and often those experiences inform our own leadership style. Do you have an interesting story from that stage of your career that you can share with us?

One of the settings I worked in during my internship over a decade ago was a drug court program in Appalachia. I had little personal or professional experience with substance abuse/addiction at that time. I had anxieties and preconceived ideas about what working in addiction would be like from what society had taught me (they have moral failings, they’re selfish). At the time I had little desire to work in addiction long term. That year I discovered so much about how addiction is a disease, a family illness, a broader systemic problem, and the importance of resources and access to quality mental health and addiction care for all. I realized how so many of the folks I worked with may never get sober or be able to stay sober long-term not because of their own ineptitudes, but because of systemic failures of them and their families; lack of access to safe housing, often living with other family members actively using, lack of mental health support in the area, lack of funds to receive better mental health support, and being in an isolated region, among other things. Those were and are still some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. I continued on working in addiction treatment for the next decade due to the care and respect I have continued to have for people trying to heal their lives and get sober. Being able to provide quality access to mental health and recovery care is something I do not and will never take for granted. No matter the socioeconomic status, something I understand we all have in common is the desire to be free from suffering.

Ansley, 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 Ansley Campbell and I am a Marriage and Family Therapist and AAMFT Approved Supervisor. I have worked as a therapist for the past 11 years. I chose the field of Marriage and Family Therapy because my grandfather had been one of the first Marriage and Family Therapists in the field. Doing therapy through a systemic instead of individualistic lens made the most sense to me. I have spent the majority of my career working in substance use disorder treatment facilities from being a therapist to Clinical Director. I currently own my private practice, Devenir Counseling, Devenir meaning becoming or to become. I am trained in EMDR and have used it for almost a decade to help clients heal and move through their trauma. As a queer therapist myself, I am a passionate advocate for and enjoy serving clients in the LGBTQ+ community. Additionally, I have enjoyed training and supervising over 30 therapists, finding my love for supervision is as great as my clinical work. I am most proud of the relationships I’ve created and cultivated with clients, supervisees and coworkers over the years. I practice and lead from a place of integrity, authenticity, compassion and honesty, focusing on the inherent value of each individual I encounter.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Value the people and team that you have. See them for their individual successes and struggles, and learn what makes them individually feel valued. Don’t say you value your team and then take advantage of their time, money, intelligence and expertise. Don’t micromanage people. Trust the people you hired until they prove you can’t. Create time to spend with your team, not only talking about work, but also come to understand them and their lives. People will see you really care for and value them when you put them above profit and the business, and as studies and experience have shown, this allows the business to thrive. All of this helps create an environment where people can enjoy coming to work every day. Hiring a team of people who work with integrity and care also creates an environment of people who enjoy being around each other. When you hire people with the similar shared values and goals, it creates high morale and a positive environment to work in.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Some of the most valuable information I’ve learned has come from working in a team setting for a decade. If I had pursued private practice or some other solo endeavor too early, I would have lost out on countless amounts of insights and understandings that only working so closely on a team could have provided me. It also helped me understand my limitations of knowledge. It is one of my highest recommendations to new therapists, don’t go into private practice right away. Work somewhere on a team so you can learn from others. Doing therapy in a vacuum only provides so much growth when you know and understand so little in the beginning.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://devenircounseling.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ansley-campbell-ma-lmft-85364243/
• Other: [email protected]

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