We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth O’Brien a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
In 2017 I was a woman who was juggling way too many things. I had a full time psychotherapy practice in maternal mental health, I was a founder of Postpartum Support International Georgia state board (serving mothers across the state) , I was raising my three children & I was developing a “modern housedress” fashion line. We just moved into a historic “fixer-upper” home, my relationship with my also “busy” husband was strained and I decided this was a good year to run a marathon. HUH? As you might imagine first and foremost my body took a hit, I was on the path to Burnout City. Looking back I can see clearly how all of those plates I were juggling lead me to path that lights me up today. Clearly I am not the only woman or person to experience Burnout, but I deeply experienced all of the anguish, self-blame and realizations that have positioned me to be a change maker in how we work today. The lessons from that time were; when working on the housedress the questions I kept bumping up to is “why don’t we have a fashion line that represents all the jobs of women in/outside of the home”, to realizing with the board work I love working in systemic changes vs exclusively working with individuals. I experienced being spread too thin and how so many of my clients and friends were too and it’s ripple effects. I learned no matter how much self-care you do, as a woman and for marginalized folks, our economic system isn’t built for us. So I decided I wanted to work differently and to help others reimagine and co-create a different way of working from a intersectional eco-feminist perspective.
Elizabeth, 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?
I have been working in mental health for over twenty years both in Fairbanks, Alaska and now for the last decade in Atlanta, Georgia. I have dipped my toe into many aspects of mental health from working in the school system, hospitals, treatment facilities , postpartum doula and private practice to name a few. After becoming a parent myself, I grew super interested in early childhood mental health and maternal mental health because I could actually offer prevention which is not easy to find in this field. We often are doing repair work. I built several private practices with no business training and I loved it. I realized aspects as an entrepreneur came naturally as a strategic thinker and being highly intuitive. For years I have been offering consultations to other therapists who are building their practice but now I am offering this very stylized business consultation to mostly women and female identified entrepreneurs and their teams who want to work differently. I blend my mindset work with helping people reimagine a sustainable way to live + work so they can avoid burnout.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Over and over again I hear from my clients I am compassionate, hopeful and I am a straight shooter. I love to hear my clients stories and equally to help them rewrite their narratives as they design their next chapter. Since I have been doing this work for so long I also see patterns of trauma, behavior and I am able to really help folks navigate where they are and where they want to go while accessing their bodies as a place of information and resource. When clients work with me, their practices grow, they feel better, they begin to work differently. And if I am not the right fit, I am great at referrals.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
In 2021 I joined a six month entrepreneur incubator program for women and marginalized folks. The program was launched by Rachel Rodgers and her team at We should all be Millionaires. Even though I already owned three successful businesses, I knew I still had my own work to do regarding mindset, operations and growth. I benefitted from this steep investment because the container of the cohort kept the learning moving, however one of the biggest messages I learned was – stay in your zone of genius and subcontract the rest. As a woman I was conditioned to believe I should literally “do it all”. Early on the incubator it was suggested we take the assessment Clifford 34 Strengths which is this great validated tool. From this tool you can glean what comes naturally to you and what strengths may not. After taking understanding my results, I was able to conceive the concepts of REALLY working in my ease vs accepting I should be on the struggle bus. We have been taught working hard is one of the best metrics for success, I got that. But what I also needed to learn and understand, working with ease is actually more productive, more rewarding and simply more fun.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.eoba-lpc.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethOBrienLPC
- Other: https://theshiftshop.squarespace.com