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

Hi Heather, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Growing up, I always wanted to be on television. My dream was to be a singer, actress, model, television reporter; in addition to Miss America. Well, my first semester of college ruled out television reporter when I was one of about 200 students auditioning for one of two spots on our campus news channel. I realized really quickly that was going to be a tough field. Over the next few years, I changed my major many times before taking a psychology course that I excelled in. I decided to major in my psychology and then continue on with my master’s degree to become a counselor. My goal as a counselor was always to have my own private practice. When I graduated from college in 2012, I happened to have been pregnant with my youngest daughter and wanted to try private practice right away. In the area we lived at the time, which was predominately Medicaid clients, it was very difficult to get self-pay clients as a new therapist. I had my daughter and when she was a year old (on her first birthday actually), I entered the world of community mental health. I spent from November of 2013 through May of 2020 working for mental health organizations and agencies. When co-vid shut down everything in the spring of 2020 and all therapist went remote for many months, I took the biggest risk I could have taken professionally…to go all in with private practice. I had already begun the credentialing process with insurance panels and as soon as I was cleared, I began promoting myself locally, now living in Northern Colorado with clients who had private insurance and who could self-pay. I began to build my own caseload and as soon as I was able, I began offering in-person sessions again at my home office, which was wanted and needed by so many of my clients. Soon, my current clients were making recommendations to others and my caseload began to build. In 2021, Colorado launched the I Matter program for Colorado youth to receive free counseling sessions. I had expressed interest in the program and with my background working with youth, I was accepted to see clients through their program. I was now, a matter of a year, seeing over 40 clients a week in my own practice. I got so busy, I couldn’t handle all the I Matter referrals, so I got certified as a LPCC supervisor for the state of Colorado and took on three LPC Candidates working towards their licensure. I was now able to share my caseload of I Matter clients and help even more children in Colorado receive services through these LPCCs who were under my supervision. I am now running a successful practice, in which I have the freedom to create my own schedule, take off when I want to, work when I want to and see as few or as many clients as I want without meeting organizational expectations. I have more freedom and making more money than before and I did it all by taking a huge risk during a time others were playing it safe. Sometimes, it takes stepping out in faith, when it seems the least likely time to do so. One thing I’ve learned in life is that when God tells you to move, you move. And when you obey Him, you will reap the reward.

Heather, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Through my own personal journey with Trichotillomania as a child, I found that people often didn’t care to get to the bottom of a person’s problems or behaviors, they just wanted to put a band aid on the symptoms. As a therapist myself, I give my clients tools to bandage the wounds, but I get to the bottom of their values, beliefs, behaviors by asking questions and getting to know not just who is in front of me, but also their background, their family history, their relationship history, etc. We can’t heal, what we don’t know is hurt or what we can’t see, so “I dig into the wound”, so we’re not just bandaging, but healing. My goal as a therapist is to get to know my clients story and to hear their story, in order to dig into those areas that are negatively impacting their lives. Everything we do, say and how we respond, if done in an unhealthy way, stems from a message we’ve told ourselves in the past. I’ve had to go on my own freedom journey both emotionally and spiritually to understand that and I want to take my clients on that same journey. Healing and emotional freedom are available, we just have to be willing to dig into those wounds and do the work. I’ve worked with clients who are living with Trichotillomania, anxiety, depression, codependency and trauma. I’ve helped clients overcome and heal from abusive relationships, including narcissistic abuse. And I’ve not only helped clients heal from these things, I’ve overcome them myself. I believe that’s what makes me a great therapist. I’m not a therapist who has never been through anything in my life and is trying to pretend to understand what my client is experiencing. I’ve actually been there, experienced and know what they are going through.
As an author, I’ve written about my story and experiences in my children’s book, “Where’s My Hair? A Trichotillomania Story for Children” and the upcoming book collaboration, “Reigning Resilient Queens”, as well as my own personal testimony that is currently in the writing phase. I’ve also spoke about them publicly at conferences, on podcasts and in radio and television interviews.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

I believe I began to answer this question, in the previous question. I believe the answer is personal experience. I ask people who tell me they only trust people who haven’t been divorced for marriage advice or people who haven’t had trauma to help them heal from trauma, “Why would you want to learn from someone who’s never gone through what you’re going through?” I believe this is a valid question. If you’ve never struggled, how do you help someone who is? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I would rather learn and be treated by someone who has gone through what I’m going through and come out the other side and knows what did and didn’t work for them, than someone who can’t relate and is only speaking to you what they read in a book somewhere. A lot comes from another person’s experience. They learn what does and doesn’t work. They can relate emotionally to your experience. There is so much more to gain from someone who’s been through something than someone who seems to have not been through anything. I also believe that those who say they haven’t been through anything are delusional and wouldn’t be a good therapist anyway, because we have all been through something at some point in our lives. If we are choosing to believe we haven’t been through anything ourselves, we still have work to do on ourselves before we start helping others. (I might have just offended some people with that one).

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

For me, it wasn’t so much a lesson I had to unlearn, but a message. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I found a poem in a photo album that belonged to my mom. It was handwritten, but I don’t know if my mom had written it or copied it. What the poem was about, however, was a woman who found out she was pregnant with a baby girl and her partner had wanted a boy. I was the oldest of two with a younger brother. I never asked about the poem or if my mom had written it, if it was about me or anything. What I did (or then enemy did rather) was tell myself, “My father didn’t want me and doesn’t love me”. Something that was fabricated. But not only did I tell myself that as a child, with anyone aware, I carried that with me for over 30 years and through carrying it with me, I lived it out. No matter what anyone told me, specifically men, I was unloved and unwanted. It negatively impacted how I functioned in relationships with men throughout my entire life. It took God leading me through a journey of emotional freedom, for me to recognize when that message was rooted in my soul and what I needed to do to change the story I had been telling myself for over 30 years.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.heatherbrookelpc.com
• Instagram: @heatherbrookemodel @heatherbrookelpc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeatherBrookeMALPC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-meyer80537/

Image Credits
Benizo Bill Murf