We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dana Strickland a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How’s you first get into your field – what was your first job in this field?
When I decided that I wanted to go back to school to be a therapist I was working as a Library Technician on Luke Air Force Base. I went through about a year of imposter syndrome and then a lot of things in life changed so I told myself it’s time to rip the band aid off and either do it or not. Obviously, I decided to go for it but was intentional about planning. I knew that before I got to the practicum and internship portions of my program that I would feel better if I had more experience even adjacent to behavioral health so I applied for and got a job through the state with the Division of Developmental Disabilities (DDD) as a Case Manager.
Working as a Case Manager helped me get familiar with community resources, functionality assessments, and in documentation. Writing assessment notes to advocate for clients trying to be approved for services and learning what auditors look for are skills that I still use on a regular basis in my practice. I believe it was key to one of my greater administrative strengths which is in Clinical Documentation.
When I began to apply to Practicum and Internship sites I made an Excel spreadsheet listing out sites, location, distance from my home, estimated drive time, what client populations they serve, the name and licensure type of the Clinical Director and then made a rating system for how interested I was in being there. From there I started sending my resume and inquiries about opportunities for students. My resume actually made it to the top of the pile at a community mental health agency because of my first name. The Clinical Director has a son also named Dana. I know that I was actually a good candidate but if that’s what got his attention and made him look more closely about my experience then hey, I’ll take it. After my first name got my foot in the door for an interview, my experience with Case Management sealed the deal.
The Practicum is the first section of your field experience and requires the least amount of hours and direct contact. Because of my work schedule with DDD, even though I was allowed a compressed schedule and to adjust my schedule to start work later in the day so I could do my Practicum hours in the morning, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to get the hours that I needed for school if I couldn’t spend more time at my site and realized that I needed to find a part-time job but still needed to be able to live and pay my bills. I also didn’t want to take a job that wasn’t going to help move me in the direction I was going so I accepted a position as a Behavior Coach working with children who needed one-on-one support in the homes and helping their parents learn how to cope with difficult behaviors. While that job was interesting and I did learn some, it was really high stress with a long commute so I wasn’t any better off with trying to have any kind of a work/life balance.
I talked to my (now husband) and put myself on a super tight budget, withdrew my retirement funds from the State and lived off of that while I got approval from my school to double down on my hours and complete my field experience requirements faster.
At least three staff members (two therapists and one treatment coordinator) had volunteered to help me get settled in, learn the site’s systems, and act as mentors throughout my field experience. Literally none of them would give me the time of day. I would sit and wait outside their offices waiting for them to show up and let me in and once or twice one of them did let me observe but I was basically on my own. I started talking to a (different) treatment coordinator named Mary Lou and asked her as many questions as she could reasonably answer. She was an amazing resource and help for me during that time. She also gave me suggestions on who might be open to giving me some guidance so I took that information and started going door to door offering to do Clinician’s caseload clean up and treatment coordination in exchange for letting me observe sessions. This way I could still build up direct contact hours while I was establishing my own caseload. Doing this I also formed a great relationship with the Clinical Supervisor of the adult treatment team, Veronica. I also got to work with Robert who is one of the most amazing and creative humans I have ever met. Observing his sessions felt like a magician showing you their secrets. Any day I got to sit in with him or pick his brain was a pretty great day.
While I was continuing my Internship hours I made lists of trainings that I was interested in for professional development and started knocking those out one at a time. Before I graduated I completed EMDR Basic Training and also completed trainings in DBT, trauma recovery and resilience, and Solution Focused Brief Therapy. I tried everything I could to implement everything I was learning and creating opportunities for me to expand my skill set instead of waiting for something to drop into my lap. I wrote a curriculum for a DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills group and eventually took over the Women’s Group (therapy) and combined art, Mindfulness, DBT Emotional Regulation and Distress Tolerance, with Narrative therapy techniques.
When I was closer to graduation, I talked to the Clinical Director of my site and made my case for hiring me as a BHT (Behavioral Health Technician) before I graduated and agreed that if they gave me a paid position then, I would continue on there with the adult services team while I worked toward obtaining my Associates License (LAC) and likely after. In the beginning I planned on staying at that agency at least long enough to be able to apply for the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness program. The workplace culture began to change, there were always productivity standards but they were becoming more and more stringent which wore a lot of people down.
I never had any problems meeting my productivity standards but I had been promised a raise when I got my LAC but when it was actually time for that raise to come through, I literally got laughed out of the Clinical Director’s office. He told me I would never be paid what I was asking for ($25 per hour) because I just wasn’t worth it. I was already working a part-time job on the side to help pay for student loans so I started looking around and applying for positions in group practices. I used the same system as applying for Practicum/Internship sites and created another Excel spreadsheet. I got a position closer to home that paid more than I was expecting (still not great pay in hindsight but it’s all relative I guess). I stayed in that position until I left to start my own practice.
I am happy overall with the path that I’ve taken to get where I am. There were definitely a lot of bumps, some really hard days, and some things have gone according to plan but I’ve used everything that I can as a learning experience, leaned into my supports and tried to find ways of doing what I love in a way that works better for me and my team.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
My name is Dana Strickland. Since I was at least in fourth grade my life goals were pretty consistently centered around joining the military and making a career in the service. I did enlist and served in the Army. While I was active duty, I went through a life altering, traumatic experience that lasted 9-days. That experience left me feeling not just like I was in quicksand but like I’d actually been sucked all the way down and had been buried alive. When I think about one of the worst parts of all of that, a part of the experience that I really got stuck in was that when I finally got myself to talk to someone, to tell them what happened, their response was to say, “I thought soldiers were tougher than that”. It took years for me to ever talk about it again.
For a long time I worked but I just existed and wasn’t really able to be present. I was in my trauma, reliving it and trying to keep it stuffed down so I could pretend normal. Before, I could have never imagined a life not in the military and I needed to really sit with that and to be open to what would help me not just continue putting one foot in front of the other – because I’ve always been able to do that – but what would help me feel whole and to be able to live inside of myself again. I knew that my heart has always been in service. When I wrestled with the imposter syndrome about going back to school to become a therapist, I made a promise to myself that even if I’m not perfect at it, that I would not be another one of those people who are supposed to hear you and supposed to hold space, that dismisses another person the way I was dismissed. That promise to myself made it okay for me to be a therapist who is also human. It made it okay for me to really dive into doing my own work to process my trauma. It made it okay for me to connect with myself so that I can connect with others and hold that sacred space.
I earned my Master of Science in Professional Counseling in 2016 from Grand Canyon University. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor, the owner of Full Life Counseling in Surprise, AZ, and a board approved Clinical Supervisor. I feed my love of teaching and contribute to my field by offering a host site to Practicum and Internship students. I am an EMDRIA Certified Therapist, Consultant in Training (CIT), as well as a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. I specialize in providing trauma services to military service members (and veterans), first responders, and victims of violent crimes.
I provide in person and virtual services, offering EMDR extended sessions (90-minutes to 2-hours) and EMDR Intensives (half-day, full-day, multiple days). Using these extended and intensive delivery models, I have seen clients make amazing progress in much shorter periods of time than if they had been doing shorter sessions, ongoing/long-term therapy, or talk therapy alone. What I love and am most proud of is that I don’t “fix” anyone. I don’t solve their problems. I get into the dark spaces with you and hold space while you heal. Being allowed into those spaces with people is a precious and beautiful gift.
You can find more information about my services and practice at www.flcinaz.com and on social media @FullLifeCounselingAZ (Facebook and Instagram).
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Something that I tell my supervisees on a regular basis is that once you think you’ve got it and don’t need help, don’t need to consult, because you’re just so good that you know it all, you’re dangerous. Curiosity will keep us learning and open to shifting when we need to shift. It creates space for us to find clarity, helps us to be open to feedback especially when the feedback isn’t what we necessarily want to hear. Our egos, imposter syndrome, internal shame soundtracks… whatever gets in our way, can’t keep a foothold if we stay curious.
When I am interviewing either to hire new Clinicians or Practicum and Internship students I know about myself that every time I would rather have someone on my team that is open to learning, collaboration, and is willing to give and receive honest feedback than someone who has a certain GPA or background.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson I’ve had to unlearn was that it is okay to delegate. This sounds like such an obvious thing but for me, it was not something that I have done easily in my own life. For anyone who is into Myers Briggs personality typing, Gretchen Rubin’s 4 Tendencies, and/or Enneagrams, I’ll give you my run down: I am an INTJ-Assertive Architect (Myers Briggs), a Questioner (4 Tendencies), and an Enneagram 5 (Investigator). I’ve heard my husband caution others not to ask for my opinion unless they are prepared to hear what I really think. He has lovingly and sometimes with a certain level of resignation said, “if the baby is ugly, Dana will tell you”. So, here’s my long(ish) story about that…
It takes time for me to start lowering my guard to allow people in, past the surface layers to see my squishier center where the softer, gentler parts of me are more clearly visible. My squishier parts are my sense of humor that runs the spectrum from dry as dust to sarcastic and dark to Monty Python style silliness. It is not out of the norm for me to start singing in the middle of a sentence or to break out into a goofy dance. At my core I am very sensitive, warm, cuddly, generous, and loving.
Because I go at my own pace with opening up, those are unfortunately not the parts of my personality that people see first. What you get first (and anytime I’ve decided it’s safer to guard myself) are the parts of my personality which are a blend of stoicism, introversion and shyness which means it takes me longer than most to start “warming up” to anyone. In general, my unwillingness to “go along to get along” tends to be frustrating. I’ve been accused a few times of trying to “incite riots” because I have no issue with openly questioning authority – not because I’m a contrarian but because I usually have a lot of questions and relentlessly pursue the “why”, especially if something doesn’t make sense or seems like BS. I am absolutely not the person who will let you get by with messiness and the more I care about you, the more likely I am to have those “ugly baby” talks with you. I am not quick to offer compliments and I won’t say anything just because it may be what you want to hear. Even though that has caused a good amount of tension in my relationships, the potential social benefits of buttering people up isn’t worth being disingenuous.
If I were candy, I would be a warhead. If I were coffee, I would be espresso with no creamer or sweeteners. If I were wine, I’d be a punchy dark red. Basically, I’m an acquired taste which is why I often say, “I’m not for everyone”.
My mom made a lot of sacrifices to support us. She joined the Army before I was 2 years old because she was trying to create stability for our family. The small town where we lived was in what turned out to be a decades long recession and to be honest, my parent’s relationship was never very functional or healthy. By focusing on her career, she did what she knew how to do and focused on the areas of life that she felt rewarded her the most. Whenever something was not going well at home (which was almost always), she would just work harder and try to pull everything off perfectly.
The positives of growing up as an Army brat is that I got to travel quite a bit and spent a lot of my childhood in Europe. That has had a significant and I think positive impact on my way of conceptualizing the world. The negatives were that we moved around quite a bit, so I didn’t grow up with any real tribe or sense of being grounded by a core group of people. The other negative was that my mom was gone for more of my life than she was home. This can be typical for a lot of military families, what made our situation different was that my dad has struggled with addiction for as long as I can remember. When he was fully present and sober, he could show up and be a great dad. When he wasn’t fully present and wasn’t sober, he could be explosive and cruel, or he might disappear and be off on a bender somewhere and all of the adulting responsibilities fell onto my sister who is not quite 2 years older than I am.
The way our household operated when my mom was gone was so opposite to when she was home. It created a weird internal push-pull for me because one part of me wanted the “stable” parent to come back and the other part of me understood that the stress of my parent’s super dysfunctional relationship on top of whatever other stress she brought home with her always seemed like it made everything worse. My anxiety would go through the roof, and I would withdraw. I often felt like I had to walk on eggshells (and Lego bricks) to avoid getting in trouble. I felt constantly like a Halloween cat, sideways walking with my hackles raised, ready to duck and cover if something popped off.
In addition to their highly dysfunctional relationship, my parents had at minimum, very high standards for how my sister and I performed whether that was academically, athletically, or how well we put on a happy face and helped promote their narrative of our being a happy, healthy family that loved and supported one another. It was not acceptable for us to make a lot of mistakes, have less than perfect grades, to get into any kind of trouble at school, or to be less than aggressively ambitious. The talks I got from my mom never included “I just want you to be happy”, the talks were always either about how I wasn’t doing something well enough, how I should be more like my sister and what’s wrong with me because I wasn’t, or “why can’t you just smile and be happy?”. If the conversation were about anything that I wanted to do in life the feedback was “well if you’re going to waste your time doing that, you might as well just be a hairdresser”. As a side note, I honestly don’t think she knows how much money you can make doing that.
If I wanted to play soccer, I needed to also do cheerleading and gymnastics, so I was balancing my tomboyish ways with my mom’s desire for me to do “girly” things. I loved running but it wasn’t enough for her that I just loved it, being fast meant that I needed to be an Olympic athlete and that I should be striving to “be on a Wheaties box”. My tendency toward questioning and debating meant that I needed to channel that energy by becoming a litigator so that at least my less than endearing parts of my personality would be “put to good use”. I grew up with the understanding that my mom did not want me – she wanted a second child, but she wanted a second child who was essentially just like my sister but who would be “her” child (my sister was a “daddy’s girl”). But you know how that goes, we make plans and God laughs, so I was born and I was the exact opposite of the person she was hoping for. Without question, I knew in my bones that I was not going to be who she wanted me to be, I wasn’t going to be able to be who I am and be enough for her at the same time.
That rejection sucked. I learned from growing up to avoid my feelings, to avoid being close to people, and to avoid asking for or accepting help like it was the plague. I learned to be needless and wantless and that if I couldn’t be that, then I needed to be resourceful enough to figure out how to take care of myself. I learned that people weren’t reliable and if they did happen to show up that it wasn’t likely to go the way I wanted it to go. Like my mom, I had ways of deactivating or retreating from my emotions by throwing myself into whatever work or activity I could do. I stayed busy. I’ve always loved to read, do crafty and creative things so those provided escapes when I needed to retreat from social pressure and the world. I had some friends but the parts of my personality that pushed my mom’s buttons were (and still are) typically the same ones that push most other people’s buttons too. I always did well in school and was even considered a “gifted” (I can get on a whole soap box about those programs, so I won’t get myself started) student. If I didn’t know something or had a problem, I wasn’t sure how to solve, I wouldn’t ask for help, I would find books that might help me understand what was going on and what I might be able to do to fix it. When I struggled in school (math was absolute hell for me) I would buckle down and try my best to force my brain to focus so I could push through. Basically, I adapted to become anti-dependent or super autonomous and to compartmentalize my emotions so well that I have to be really intentional about recognizing them.
That “worked” for me for a long time and then I met my husband and found myself in a relationship with someone I actually wanted to go home to (weird concept huh?). I was (finally) diagnosed with ADHD in my early 30s which helped me to get a much better grasp on what was anxiety versus inattention and hyperactivity. Through the years I have put and kept myself in therapy to explore and work on my emotional and relational avoidance. I actively work at delegating, asking for help, and tolerating my discomfort while allowing people to show up for me. Being able to do and continue the work I get to do with my clients and my want to show up in my relationships differently than I’ve been able to in the past keeps me working the process of making peace with my emotions regardless of what they are and allowing myself to be vulnerable with boundaries. That has been the biggest and hardest “unlearning” in my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.flcinaz.com
- Instagram: @FullLifeCounselingAZ
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FullLifeCounselingAZ
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCQBg4ASbr9leC2q2LQW00A
Image Credits
Dana Strickland, Amanda Walker, Tim Bernier