We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Liz Higgins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Liz below.

Hi Liz, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I imagine that most business owners’ visions are born from their own struggle, and I am no exception. Almost 11 years ago, I was engaged to my partner, and even though we had a healthy and positive relationship with each other, I experienced a lot of anxiety during that engagement phase. I often wondered how people could POSSIBLY know that they found “the One”, and what that meant in the first place. I felt a lot of uncertainty in myself about being good at commitment and showing up for the demands of modern day life and love when I was also just beginning to explore my career path.

I tell people that becoming a couples therapist changed the trajectory of my life, for the better. Because of the training I have been privileged to participate in as a Relational Life Therapist and through the Healing Our Core Issues Institute, the last 11 years of my life have been seeped in personal development and relational growth. I had so many questions about myself, my partner, and our relationship going into marriage and the beginning of my career. Leaning in and doing my own work allowed me to make tremendous strides in managing my relational anxiety and developing a healthier and more realistic sense of myself in life and my relationship.

I felt like I had been let in on so many amazing and life-changing mindset shifts about relationships, that the everyday world just wasn’t talking about. This grew into a desire to help others in my generation understand healthy commitment in the context of our fast-paced, modern world. Couples therapy is but one incredible vehicle to help people manifest incredible, powerful change within themselves AND their relationships. It is also very experiential, which means that change often occurs in real time in our offices, between partners who are brave enough to do the work together.

Our practice, Millennial Life Counseling, works specifically with this generation and can help guide individuals and couples therapeutically to achieve transformative and lasting change in the way they do life and love. I’m so proud of our mission to help this generation cultivate epic marriages, relationships, and lives.

Liz, 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’m a licensed couples therapist, clinically trained coach, published writer, speaker, and the host of The Millennial Life Podcast. I’m incredibly passionate about millennials and their journey toward health and wellness…most of all, in our relationships. My writing has been featured on platforms including Huffington Post, The New York Times, Elite Daily, Today.com, and more. I founded Millennial Life Counseling in 2017, a Dallas based practice helping millennial couples and individuals create epic marriages, relationships, and lives.

I would say that what sets us apart is the way we truly care for our clients. I become so disappointed in other areas of my field when I hear how long and strenuous the process of even TRYING to find a qualified couples therapist is. At MLC, we treat our clients like family from the first phone call or text to the final session. We truly care about practicing the core of what we teach our clients: how to be relational. We care about learning what works for you and your unique relationship, and we know and hold space for the fact that one relationship can be drastically different from another. So, we are not “one size fits all”.

We are a practice that encourages differences, diversity, and owning your own genius. So, as a team, we are each encouraged to pursue the training that resonates with us personally and professionally as therapists. We do not all use the same model or framework with clients, and I believe this encapsulates the millennial mindset; that there are many beautiful ways of reaching success, health, and wellness. Each therapist on the team brings unique and diverse insight to the team and in how we support our clients.

In our practice at MLC, we do lots and lots of couples therapy, premarital counseling work, parent coaching and counseling, and individual therapy. We are a trauma-informed practice, which means that we engage in consistent trainings to be versed in treating trauma (which is a specialization of a few of our therapists) and complex trauma, which relates to relational and environmental contexts in which you grew up, and the impact this may have had on you and your relationships.

I don’t know another practice in town comprised of this amount of licensed marriage and family therapists, and I value the way that our team is able to function like a fun-loving family together. We are supportive of one another and have FUN while carrying the often heavy work we do with our clients.

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

My advice for managing a team is this: DO YOUR OWN WORK.

I cannot stress enough how your team will become a mirror for your unfinished business in life. I had some pivotal moments in my journey as a leader where I had to confront the ways that I was being boundaryless with my work and putting excessive amounts of energy into people-pleasing, rather than being authentic in my working relationships and learning to allow others to be accountable. We all have our learned ways of “adapting” in relationships, even with our teams. Some entrepreneurs are relationally avoidant, maintaining an expert status and not leaving room for their team to cultivate their own voices or contributions. They avoid feeling controlled or dictated upon by others. Other leaders (*raises hand*) can be overly pleasing, functioning from a deeper need to be accepted, seen as perfect or as a savior of sorts.

The reality is that good management and leadership takes many relational skills. Trust me when I say that the path to better relational skills begins with a deep understanding of yourself and your own relational/attachment tendencies. I do this work daily with other entrepreneurs and can say that the process of self-discovery within this realm is huge in helping leaders connect better with their teams and create systems and work environments where others can truly thrive.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I’m a mother of two and wife. My daughter (older kid) is almost 5 years old. She’s very close to the exact age of my business. So, I often look at her as the “physical representation” of my businesses age (it’s a very helpful reminder sometimes!).

Like many other small, service-based businesses, we were catapulted into a completely online world due to the pandemic. It was a challenging time, full of unknowns, and lots of breakdowns at home while trying to seem at the office like I had it together. I did not. It was brutal at times, coming home from a full day of telehealth, navigating the unknowns of our profit margins that were all over the place for a little while, and then nursing a baby or just mom-ing for the remainder of my days. Life with toddlers is especially unique, because just when you think you’re in a rhythm with schedules and habits, developmental milestones throw you off all over again. Like many families, we were grieving the loss of normal socialization during a critical time in our kids development.

I think back on that time and see all the moments I could have (and dreamed to) quit. But, I didn’t. Largely due to the support of my incredible husband and some amazing team members, we forged ahead and somehow, someway (parts are definitely a blur) made it through.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.millenniallifecounseling.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/millenniallifecounseling
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/millenniallifecounseling
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-higgins-lmft-s-4875149a?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lizmft
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/millennial-life-counseling-dallas-3

Image Credits
Tamytha Cameron, Dallas photographer