We recently connected with Shelly Stover and have shared our conversation below.

Shelly, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear stories from your time in school/training/etc.

Okay, so, when I think about training I immediately think about how when you become a therapist your training is never done, which is such a gift. To maintain licensure as a therapist, you’re required to continue learning and show proof of classes you’ve taken. I mean, how many careers have this expectation that you continue your education? I find it inspiring and I think there is a deeper element of working on yourself too that can impact how you practice this work. Also, there are so many mentors to be found (if you go looking for them). At the end of the day, there is way too much to know about Psychology to ever have all the answers and every client is coming in with their own unique goals and experiences. So I am continuing to learn and will never stop.

That being said, the first few quarters of Grad school changed my life. I lucked out and crossed paths with a professor that Antioch University hired to run the program I was enrolled in. His name is Dr. Stephen Southern. He had worked as a professor for a long time at various schools, as a clinical supervisor, chaired departments, and directed outpatient internships. He was trained at Masters and Johnson and really knew a lot about trauma and sexual dysfunction. I was fortunate enough to have him teach many of my foundational classes. He taught my theory classes, my trauma class, my treatment plan class, and my human sexuality class. I’ve always been interested in human sexuality and I continue to work with clients using things I learned from him about human sexuality and referring back to resources he generously supplied the class. I was also able to do this final class with him before I graduated which was about how intimacy is impacted by people who have experienced continuous relationship trauma. It was a wonderful class that helped me build more of a foundation of how to approach work with couples who come into therapy to unpack complex issues of betrayal and frustration where there are attachment wounds (and I also work on this with individuals too).

To dig a little deeper into the impact of Dr. Southern it was beyond what he taught us, so much of it had to do with his relationship to the students. He came into the program offering all of us so much support, care, and genuine interest. There is this concept of most therapists being wounded healers and in graduate school, you enter this delicate space of exploring your “wounding.” He provided a lot of safety in exploring all of this. I know I’m not alone, many of us felt so seen, even though this program was predominantly online. He was modeling how to be there for our clients, while also teaching us the theories and giving us space to integrate our own beliefs and questions in class. Sadly he’s no longer in this position at Antioch, so it did feel like I caught a spark and I do not take it for granted. There is this concept of building a strong “therapeutic alliance” with clients (which is the idea of therapy being a collaborative and trusting space between client and therapist). It is an essential ingredient and Dr. Southern accomplished this with an online program between students and professor, which seems impossible. This kind of alliance can allow you to see your own worth. My gratitude for Dr. Southern is the kind of gratitude that can bring you to your knees. I know I am one of many students whose life was influenced by having him as a professor.

Shelly, 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?

The most straightforward way to say this, is I’m a therapist who works with Couples and Moms. But overall, I specialize in working with individuals and relationships that are in big life transitions. Maybe clients are moving in with their partner, or expecting a baby, or feeling burnt out while raising toddlers, or going through a divorce, or balancing parenthood with a new career, or just lost someone and it’s impacting their relationships, or they are struggling to intimately connect after continuing to have the same sticky argument. I welcome it all. I tailor treatment plans to fit each client. I help people learn to self-regulate and co-regulate. I help them learn how to communicate, set goals, and tackle goals. I help people look at their history to understand why they behave the way they are now. Grief is often at the heart of most of my work with clients because with any transition there is loss. I help couples learn how to express painful emotions and feel heard by their partner. This is a career I’ve found after doing other things (like becoming a Mom and going through my own big life transitions). I am honored to do this work.

One area I’ve started to dive into is working with couples in the transition to parenthood. It is like pre-marital counseling but more like pre-baby (or post-baby) counseling. I worked as a doula and childbirth educator after I had my first child and understand how this transition can impact couples. It’s really rewarding because it can become preventative to a partnership and it has lasting impacts on the child. I’ve seen clients show up and shift their focus from themselves to the relationship and the family. I’ve seen clients take responsibility for how they are impacting other people, changing the whole dynamic of a partnership. However, I also do general work with couples. I’m trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy which helps couples learn how to express their emotions to each other, examine attachment strategies, and identify patterns of behavior in relationships.

Outside of my sessions with clients, I’ve also been giving speeches. All of which have been about maternal mental well-being. Last year I went to Atlanta to talk at a conference for Moms about the many different shades of grief that can accompany motherhood (much of it being disenfranchised, because grief isn’t modeled outside of the loss from a death, and no one is taught how to grieve). I’ve also spoken about sex after birth. This year I hope to start offering one-off childbirth education classes for couples to help empower them through the birth process, run a divorce group for women with my supervisor Aurisha Smolarski, and start to offer workshops for parents about how to talk with their children about healthy intimacy in relationships. I’m also working with a colleague on a program for partners postpartum and looking forward to that launching at some point.

Working as a therapist is so rewarding. I see holding the space for people to walk into their deepest darkest places is sacred. I care so much about my clients. I’m also very down-to-earth and exude a lot of warmth and humor. However, I can call clients out on their behavior when necessary. It has been remarkable to witness clients make changes and own the direction they want for their life and in many cases work me out of a job. ;)

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

Therapy is the business of relationships. I think life experience can help with this because you have more people you’ve interacted with. You’ve experienced more time connecting to others. Clients all have their own unique life that has impacted how they relate to others and even to you as the therapist. Living through hardships in life can bring a level of depth to the work, which is important, but I believe the potential for healing lies in the relationship between client and therapist. It takes more than one simple session, but over time, change does happen. I had a supervisor talk about planting seeds for clients that may take years before they are harvested and I believe it.

Also, you have to learn how to market yourself if you are going into private practice. To have a steady stream of clients in private practice, you have to build relationships with people who will trust that you can help, figure out SEO for a website, or pay for advertisements. You are essentially creating your own small business, which was not a class offered to me in graduate school. So you apply this in the real world and it takes time to connect with other people and let them know what you are doing, but also who you are. Once again, it all goes back to relationships.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Gosh, this is a great question, there is so much unlearning in adulthood. I’m thinking about how I had to learn that in motherhood I was sacrificing some of my own life goals to focus on my children in the hopes of lifting them up so they could go and accomplish more than I ever did. But I started to realize that I was really just modeling for them to do the same thing and sacrifice their own goals. Does that make sense? Sacrifice may be too strong of a word. Maybe it’s more like there was an element of self-abandonment happening because I was so focused on them having what they needed, that sometimes I didn’t check in with myself or think about the big picture of my life.

I started to realize this when they both were in elementary school. The preschool they attended was only a few hours a day and I always felt like I had just enough time to realize I was breathing before picking one of them up, but now I had from 8 am-2:30 pm. I began to understand how I had been neglecting my own needs. It was like I was going through a mini-identity crisis. Who was I now? What did I like to do? How do I feel when it’s silent? Oh my gosh, it IS silent.

The experience of motherhood can be all-encompassing. It’s wild to be pregnant, have your body open in a way that produces another human being, and then feed them with your body, lose sleep, nurture them, encourage them, and witness the small milestones (and the big ones). Mothering is an incalculable relationship that is so rewarding and in many ways not discussed openly how much giving of your life force that happens. Our children do not belong to us, and yet here you are providing space, comfort, and security in a way that you hope nurtures them to be productive members of society and live a meaningful life. You want them to know their natural talents and the things they can achieve. You also don’t want to miss out on a moment when they may need you and you start to understand you can’t always meet every need and that you have your issues too. They become these magnificent teachers. I mean, children are gifts. I wanted everything for my kids. Yet, my life was still happening too.

So when my daughters entered elementary school, I realized how focused on them I had been (which I recognize was a privilege) and with more time on my hands, I started to understand I needed to do more than motherhood. I think there are deeper reasons why I was so focused on them, but that may turn into a novel, so I won’t go further into that. In many ways, this time frame became the preamble of a transition that led me to become a therapist.

The idea of being a “good” Mom or even a “good enough” Mom is so subjective. How you choose to live your life, work on yourself, and meet your needs is so important for your children to see. Not everyone has the same story, resources, or capacity to do this. But I do find that it’s important for mothers to know that claiming their lives while raising children teaches their kids they can do the same. Maybe you want to stay home with your kids? Maybe you want to run a bank? Maybe you want to be the head of the PTA or become a dancer? There is a level of mothering yourself that is important in motherhood and often not addressed. I’m passionate about working with Moms and working with clients to thread the needle between addressing their life goals inside of how they want to be a mother.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shellystover.com
• Instagram: @shelly.stover.therapist
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelly-stover-amft-a04938236

Image Credits

Rhys Stover