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

Lexie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Setting up an independent practice is a daunting endeavor. Can you talk to us about what it was like for you – what were some of the main steps, challenges, etc.

Starting my own practice was never really the plan. I loved the work I was doing as a clinician and administrator in the addiction field. After having children and my own struggle with perinatal OCD and postpartum depression, I decided my priorities had to be different. Who I wanted to help and HOW I wanted to help completely changed.

The first step to starting my practice was coming up with a name. I focused on what I wanted pregnant and postpartum people to feel when they saw the name of my practice. Once I narrowed in on my name, I bought the domain name, I established as an LLC, I got all of the necessary business licenses and then went to work building relationships with people in the community who I knew would need to know about my practice. I don’t know that I can say I would do anything differently in how I started my practice.

A lot of young therapists plan to go into private practice for many reasons: freedom and independence in scheduling, the ability to decide who you work with, opportunities for travel, higher pay. No doubt, these are all great reasons to want to go into private practice. The biggest mistake I see from young clinicians is that they don’t allow themselves to do become well rounded clinicians by working in community agencies that serve various populations. If you are a young professional reading this, the best advice I can give you is to get out and work in community agencies, learn about how to address the needs of the whole person and not just their clinical needs. After some time working with other clinicians and with a varied populations, narrow in on who you love working with and go after building that practice!

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 back background and context?

I’m Lexie Belle (she/her)! Hi! I’m the clinical director and founder of Her Hope Behavioral Health, a mental wellness group focused on working with women and pregnant/postpartum people. I have the incredible privilege of being a mom to three great kids, a wife to the best man I know. I’m a sister, a friend, a daughter, and a counselor. Before going into the counseling field, I worked in the community agency world helping to address the needs of underserved children and their families. The longer I worked with these families, the more I realized connecting them to services (food assistance, housing assistance, and school voucher programs) would not resolve the years of unaddressed (and often undiagnosed) trauma and other mental health concerns that continued to contribute to their need for community agencies to intervene. After a few years in the community agency role I decided I wanted to have the most impact possible in my community. I did a little research and decided the greatest way to effect change was going to be as a counselor. I earned my graduate degree in Counseling Psychology and went right to work in the community.

For the last 8 years, I have had the great honor to work with pregnant and postpartum people, people struggling with loss of a pregnancy or a baby, and women struggling with mental health due to reproductive disorders like PCOS, PMDD (a severe form of PMS), endometriosis, chronic pain related to fibroids, and women struggling through perimenopause and/or menopause, and teens who are struggling with PMDD. Women and pregnant/postpartum people are the reason for the work I do. It’s what sets me and my team apart from other group practices. While more and more clinicians are pursuing the specialty of reproductive mental health (thank goodness!) what sets us apart is that we are a group that exists solely for the purpose of supporting people through the span of the reproductive cycle. are focused in the work that we do so that we can do it well.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

If I could go back, I would absolutely choose the same profession. It was a long road to this profession and this specialty.

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

The most helpful thing in my professional career has been passion for the work I do. The reality is, this work is hard. It’s gut wrenching. And the thing that keeps me going on those really hard days, is the passion for this work, the passion to help the mothers, women, and pregnant people I have the honor to serve, and my team.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.herhopebehavioralhealth.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/herhopebh
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/herhopebh
• Other: www.instagram.com/mommy_hued

Image Credits
Erica J Photography Key Moments Photography Shutterstock