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

Thomas, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

The establishment of my mental health counseling practice rests on the shoulders of others. I utilized the knowledge and support of people who built successful practices, and found fellow colleagues to assist me in the journey of building and creating a sustainable practice. To this day, my business continues to thrive and stays strong with the support and connection to colleagues, mentors, former clients, family, and friends. If I take credit for the success of my business, it starts with the courage to ask others for advice and accept help when offered. My connections were made through teachers, school and work mates, bosses, business owners, and the web of people found therein. I reached out to strangers and allies in and out of the counseling profession. From this outreach, came the ideas and knowledge to help me build my business and keep it growing.

One of my greatest blessings in the creation of my practice came during my counseling internship when a classmate asked me if I wanted to partner in opening a business. At the time, we were working together at a community mental health clinic, and I had no ideas or thoughts about the next steps in creating a business. So, I said, “Yes,” to my classmate, Patti Boyle, and together we created our business, Practice PLLC. Our business gave us a shared responsibility with a greater footprint into the mental health counseling world. This collaboration cut costs through shared expenses for rent, marketing, furniture, and supplies. Perhaps the greatest resource in having a partner came with the help of carrying the emotional and psychological stress during the creation and growth of the business. We walked together in unknown territory sharing resources and knowledge about our mistakes and successful practices. As a therapist, I know from the world of Polyvagal Theory that regulation of the sympathetic nervous system that influences the human stress response can come from having greater social support. I am extremely grateful to have had the face of my partner to look into while she listened empathetically and offered compassionate responses. This gave me the Positive Vagal response needed for a calm and healthy regulated state that provided a high level of cognitive functioning for greater rationalization. In this higher state of being, I found safety and security for success in the business world because I had someone who was there for me.

Collaboration helped both of us to establish security and trust in ourselves as practitioners and successful entrepreneurs. Patti and I actually worked together as dual co-therapists in sessions. We learned from one another as we saw how the other worked, and this helped us to develop our own unique individual skill sets. My confidence grew to help me discover my unique way of practice. I believe that seeing her practice helped me truly understand how I could too because I knew that both of our individual styles worked. For the next few years, our business grew and found greater security in the marketplace. Our skills expanded and became more refined. Together, we found our acumen as therapists and business owners. Eventually, the strength and security we helped each other create led us to the place where we would go our separate ways. The time came when we needed to have our own space and freedom to serve our own schedules without restrictions. Though we separated, we have always remained allies and friends who support one another. Today, both of us are thriving in our individual practices, and we have a mutual respect, care, and support for one another.

My life continues to remind me and confirm the importance of having relationships in my life. I see the interdependence of the human species as an undeniable and crucial fact. The foundation of our healthy success as individuals is based upon the healthy relationships we create with our primary caregivers and carries forward with the greater positive social support system we create throughout our lifespan. Building relationships is not easy, and quite often, risky, when seeking trust in others, but my story of business success rests upon the positive nature and trust in those who responded to my ask for help. I am grateful for those who came before me, walked with me, and carried forward their own path to discovery and creation of a successful business in the world of mental health counseling. To this day, I continue to rely on people for the same support that created the business I have today, and seek out new people for more information and support to help me grow and become stronger with what I have built. I am encircled with people that feed me with business and I feed them. Together we maintain and serve the world by helping people find their way to the right individuals for healing. This is what keeps the business alive, thriving, and gives me security.

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?

Some people have always known what purpose they serve in the working world. At the age of five, I wanted to be a garbage man, but this was not to be, and my greater purpose would lead me elsewhere. The dream of riding on the back of a garbage truck slinging cans seemed romantic to my younger five-year-old self, but the culture at large pushed me to seek out more lucrative opportunities. As a child, I had no thoughts, passions or obvious skills for any specific job. During my primary years of education, I stuck to the standard preparatory classes for college, but gave no thought to any vocational aspirations. Arriving into the higher academic college world, provoked the decision for a choice of career path. I chose business as a major in my freshman year, and as a sophomore, I switched to mining engineering. My final years in college succumb to bohemian and artistic influences that inspired a desire to become a writer. At the end of the fall quarter in 1991, I ended up with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Washington (Seattle).

Post college, the creative arts took hold of my life. I hung out with painters, writers, and musicians, called myself a writer and a creative type. While entertaining my artistic passions, I supported myself in the field of social work. My career in social work began in the mental health field as a counselor in a residential treatment facility for the chronic mentally ill. I spent three years at the Summit Inn (halfway house) working my way into different roles as counselor, activity director, and mental health coordinator. After three years in residential treatment, my career plateaued, and I sought out greater fortune in another field of social work. In my next job, I went to work for a company called TRAC Associates, a vocational rehabilitation company. Here, I stayed for next 25 years serving people from lower socioeconomic classes, immigrants, individuals with disabilities, and the unemployed. I found a suitable home with this company, a place of friends who would become surrogate family members and relationships that continue to this day.

I might not have ever left my job with TRAC Associates. It is the kind of company that provides a safe haven in the world where one can be happy with just enough to provide for your basic needs. The ultimate decision to move beyond TRAC Associates and become a counselor came from the motivation to provide more for my family. My greatest inspiration to grow in my career came after the birth of my daughter. In a moment, my little world became bigger with a little one. I needed to provide resources to give her greater stability. I wish I could say that my motivation to become a counselor came from an aspiration to heal, but the truth is that I just wanted to be able to provide a greater cash flow to give my daughter access to more choices than what I could. In my quest to find a better cash flow stream, the idea of counseling came to me through watching a television show called “In Treatment.” Watching the main character, a therapist, in the show sit with his clients rang a bell in my consciousness to say, ‘I can do that.’ In many ways, mental health counseling seemed a logical next step up from my career in social services. Years of training and experience helping people with the logistics of managing basic needs, good listening skills, the desire to help people, and a secret passion for hearing people’s stories, allowed me to realize that I might make a living as a counselor and rise up in the socioeconomic ladder.

In my early forties, I enrolled in graduate school for psychology and mental health counseling. At the time, I was a divorced single father with a fulltime job. My daughter was five years old, and she was in my custody on a half-time basis. It is true that my daughter inspired a career and an economic transition in my life, but graduate school sparked an evolutionary transformation that saved both of our lives. What eventually ensued in my counseling education process is an awakening and awareness of my own state of mental and physical health. Becoming a counselor, if you do it right, forces the initiate learner to take part in the process of counseling as a client. To be absolutely honest, I entered counseling training with little faith in the process of counseling for myself. I had had brief encounters in my life with mental health counseling and was not impressed or inspired by my experience in therapy as a client. If anything, like a reluctant and ignorant subject, I believed that I could or would not be influenced by the “head-shrinker,” (therapist/counselor). But I had chosen this career path for a greater purpose, and the training in the counseling field provoked and lured me to eventually succumb to its process. I’m sure that making students participate as a client is standard throughout most mental health training programs. Students need to practice on one another in order to learn the process and basic tools of counseling. I ultimately gave way to the counseling training process when I realized that in order to help my fellow students, acting as a therapist, I needed to be a true and honest client. There is no way that I could fake or misrepresent myself as a therapy client. If I were to help my classmates, I had to give them the truth of my reality. When I gave way to the therapy process, I began my own journey of awakening unto the truth of what the process had to offer.

The motto for my business is “Peace of Mind through Greater Consciousness.” This needs to be framed in the realm of my healthcare practice. The idea of greater consciousness might initially disturb an individual. In fact, my own awaking into greater consciousness provoked the awareness that there was and is some messy shit within the inner sanctum of my brain and body. I became aware that there were levels to my suffering that played out in complex dimensions of my inner and outer worlds. Let me pull back here. The mind is complicated and messy for most people. What is important in this context—is the idea of healing from suffering. I believe greater consciousness creates a pathway to freedom through a healing process. Healing acts as a lessening of symptoms that come from some a place of suffering. The process of healing begins when the individual identifies, acknowledges and accepts the reality of the condition for which they perceive. I began to see this truth in practice as a nubile student in the academic halls of graduate school for psychology when I accepted the invitation to become a therapy client for my classmates. Once I opened the door to examining the truth of my existence and having that verified by a trusting witness, the counselor, I began my own journey to reach for Peace of Mind.

I am far from a place of reaching ultimate peace in my mind, and the awareness of what is happening inside me has shined a light onto the chaos of my mind. Counseling identified a major force in my chaos which I now recognize as Anxiety. Anxiety is an emotional energetic force that is spawned by the primary emotion of fear with a focused direction toward future events or outside the body. When we talk about anxiety, we are really talking about a fear that manifests in a way to limit forward motion of the self and creates a type of paralysis or unwelcomed behavior(s). Waking up to the reality of my life in my mid-forties, showed me that anxiety was in control and had been for the majority of my life. I realized that it had affected every step in my life’s journey. Seeking my choice in career and purpose, anxiety paralyzed me with the fear of making a wrong decision. My dream of becoming a garbage man was probably eradicated by some kind of fear of becoming something that other people wouldn’t like. The concept of others not liking what I do is related to symptoms of social anxiety that controlled me. Over the course of my life, I have created countless unhealthy relationships based upon a fear of not being liked or the need to be liked to sooth my insecurity. My inner awakening showed me the primary control factor of Anxiety in my life, an inner disturbance and unsettled nature, the Chaos, that displaced me from greater states of security, health, and peace.

Counseling offers many tools to help in the treatment of disorders like anxiety, but in order to find those tools of treatment, one must take the first step toward Identification of the issue. The Identification brings naming, and defining of the disorder. In the second step in the counseling treatment process, the client must begin to Acknowledge the identified disorder. This process says “hello” to the disorder, and begins to create a relationship and deeper understanding of the disorder. Greater understanding and relationship with the disorder lends to the possibility of finding tools to treat it. And finally, in order to treat the disorder, there has to be a process of Acceptance of the disorder on two levels: 1. To accept that you and the issue of dysfunction are operating in some sort of relationship 2. To accept a desired need to dissolve or change the relationship. When a client has taken these first three steps of identification, acknowledgement and acceptance, the critical aspect of therapy begins to help the client figure out how to let go of the disorder with the right tool(s).

The human world operates within a frame of order and chaos. What we know about treatment in healthcare is that it is an applied science and not an exact science. This is to say what works for one does not work for all. I have always taken an outside/in approach to treatment. That is to begin to work with what the conscious mind knows (the outside), working within the realm of the rational intellectual mind to find practical solutions to solving problems of dysfunction. One thing that I have learned about anxiety is that it provokes real physiological responses from the nervous system which are perceived as a felt sense in the body. The invisible perception of anxious emotional feeling communicates to the body with symptoms such as shallow breathing, increased heart rate and high blood pressure. My own relationship with anxiety provoked a serious medical concern in regard to a high blood pressure issue. This reality initiated a fear for my life’s safety, and I thought it crucial for me to confront this physiological problem. My discomfort from the inner feeling of anxiousness seemed less a priority. So, my first steps in treating my anxiety began with my doctor and exploring my high blood pressure symptoms. My treatment plan began with medicine to lower my high blood pressure. In addition, I had to address an overweight problem through a regiment of healthy eating and regular exercise. I also had to incorporate regularity in my sleep routine. All of these interventions provided ordered steps to take on the chaos of my anxiety from an outside perspective. With every new client that comes into my practice, I offer and suggest that the first step toward better mental health begins with the high level of focused maintenance of their physical body. This is working the Outside/In strategy to treatment with the goal of reaching an overall healthier mental health and physiological states congruently. These tools of physiological intervention have become important in the management of my anxiety, which is the beginning of my outside/in work perspective in therapy. This outside process of aiming for greater overall physical health has been transformative and successful in managing, as well as, lessening my anxiety symptoms. The irony of it all—is that focusing on the outside began with the process of looking at what’s going on with me on the inside. Just remember—it’s all connected: One Big Circle–Outside In/Inside Out. The healthcare system has always known that the mind/body connection feeds and heals in tandem. One affects the other. Ultimately, the individual takes control with the look, whether it is inside out or outside in, but to achieve ultimate success this perspective should always operate holistically.

Bridging the gap from the outside to the inside, I stumbled upon some inside the mind therapy tools utilizing mindfulness practices such as prayer, contemplation and meditation. When I first started looking at these mindfulness practices, I was not a spiritual or religious person. My feelings about the subject pushed against the idea of these practices. I had a healthy negative perspective on the idea of religiosity and didn’t want to be bothered. Only through the lens of science and academia in psychology with evidenced based research of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that utilizes self-regulating tools like breathwork, did I open my mind to investigating mindfulness practices. The term Mindfulness has incorporated into the lexicon of psychology and become a type of psychotherapy in its own right. I have since turned a corner in my relationship with these types of practices, and recognize the importance of spirituality as an essential component in a healthy state of mind. The phrase that religion is “the opiate of the masses” points toward a universal truth for both spirituality and religion that can provoke blissful opiated states providing relief from the emotional/psychological struggles of the mind. Here again, psychology has found a branch into studying the efficacy of spiritual practices, and its own division known as Spiritual Psychology. So, from a non-religious position, I began my own practice of meditation to simply try and alleviate my anxiety symptoms.

Those early days of meditation practice provoked greater anxiety in me. I really struggled to sit in contemplation and stillness. I kept searching for the right style of meditation to make the process easier, but I struggled to sit for even brief periods of time. Continuing to look for mindfulness strategies, I stumbled upon the work of Wim Hof. Wim Hof utilizes a form of breathwork meditation called pranayama. In conjunction with breathwork, he incorporates a practice of cold exposure. His method intrigued me and seemed more engaging, so I signed up for his course. I trained in his method and found it to be a functional tool that significantly lessened my anxiety. Pranayama breathwork provides an immediate impact upon the central nervous system to provoke intentional stress with the breath and a calming effect after the breathwork style of bhastrika (bellows breath) of pranayama. In addition, cold water exposure forces a greater stress response on the body and provides an exercise for the individual to help manage the external stress through an inner mindfulness process of breath and acceptance of the stressful state. For me, this action and regular exercise with the Wim Hof method, provoked a change in my nervous system that definitely lowered my anxiety symptoms with consistent practice.

The thirst for greater levels of good feeling kept me looking for more relief from my suffering, and an ultimate cure to my anxiety. Through a tangential connection to Wim Hof, I found another breathwork system created by Niraj Niak. Niraj’s breathwork process also uses pranayama, but incorporates a deeper connection to the process through music. His system incorporates a rhythmic process of breathing with music that he calls SOMA Breath. In a unique way, SOMA breathwork utilizes pranayama and provokes the same idea of intentional stress in its practice. The intentional stress comes from prolonged rhythmic breathing with the addition long uncomfortable breath holds to a point of provoking internal anxiety from the bodies desire to breathe. After taking the 21 Day Awakening Breath Journey through the SOMA Breath institute, I became a dedicated practitioner and went on to become certified as a SOMA Breathwork Instructor. With breathwork, meditation, exercise, healthy eating, and a better sleep process, I was able to find a higher level of physiological functioning, get off high blood pressure medication, and significantly reduce my anxiety symptoms. This is the connection of my outer experience of treating my anxiety to an inner experience of treating my symptoms through meditative breathwork practice. In this space, the inner work began to affect the outer reality. I am working holistically to find Peace of Mind both inside and out.

The foundation of treatment in my therapy practice came to me in graduate school after discovering the work of Carl Rogers. The work of Dr. Rogers is akin to the famous Mister Rogers of children’s educational television, and both share a saintly kindness and care for people. This kindness is validated in the principles of the design Carl Rogers created with Person-Centered Psychotherapy. There are three principles imperative to person-centered psychotherapy: Unconditional Positive Regard; Congruence; and Empathy. Carl Rogers put forth this form of therapy and was one of the first people in the realm of therapy to research and validate its efficacy with evidence. It is from this platform that I place my therapy practice and fallback on its principles continually when I am lost in the maze of any of my clients complicated realities. My experience practicing Person-Centered Psychotherapy has made me a better person, as the theory of his therapy becomes ingrained in my everyday life to help me to just be kind. To operate on this level with unconditional positive regard (without judgement), congruence (on the client’s level), empathy (the search for knowing the client’s feeling world), has transformed my relationship to everyone in my life, including me. This practice is extremely difficult in its simplicity, but has brought about a focus of mind that is akin to transpersonal spiritual states. If I didn’t have a spiritual practice before becoming a clinician, I do now with Person-Centered Psychotherapy.

My career since stepping into the world of therapy takes me in directions that seem to be guided by circumstances beyond my conception. This is a predominant theme in my life. I have never truly known what was the right direction for me, but the direction seemed to always prevail through a tiny trail of breadcrumbs somewhere around me. The crumbs were never easy to find. Most of the time, I just wanted to be given the whole loaf of bread, but the crumbs were always there. This is how I found myself becoming a couple’s relationship therapist. I never thought that I would practice outside the boundaries of individual therapy, but during my second year of graduate school, I somehow ended up volunteering at a conference for Dr.’s John and Julie Gottman, and special guest, Dr. Susan Johnson, entitled The Johnson Gottman Summit. At the time, the Summit represented the highest and most respected academic and scientific researchers in the realm of relationship therapy. Ironically, I had decided to go out of simple curiosity. I knew the Gottman’s to be local academic royalty in the field of relationship counseling, and I wanted to see what these elite academics had to offer. My free ticket to the conference came through an opportunity to volunteer. This volunteer gig put me working next to the Gottman Institute’s regular staff employees who managed operations for the conference. After a weekend working alongside the Gottman Institute staff, I made a couple of friends who invited me to join them and work regularly for the Gottman Institute.

I never thought that I would become a couple’s relationship therapist, but that would change. For the next seven years, I worked many weekends in support of the Art & Science of Love weekend workshop hosted by John & Julie Gottman. The workshop provided an intensive journey into learning the Sound Relationship Theory created by Dr. Gottman. Many couples would return annually to experience the knowledge and practical application of the therapeutic tools used during the weekend workshop. I can only speak to this experience as a blessing in disguise for me. Being in the presence of such incredible knowledge and teachings from its founders, my Gottman work experience ultimately lead me to become a Certified Gottman Therapist. The practicality of the Gottman’s Sound Relationship Therapy provided me with certain truths that transformed my personal and professional life. I am forever grateful for the knowledge of knowing what makes relationships successful and last. Overall, standing as a Certified Gottman Therapist has fueled my business to make it sustainable and secure. I am glad I picked up this particular bread crumb trail that lead to The Johnson Gottman Summit, and my own evolution as a counselor to become one that helps couples find a way to a successful relationship is a key factor for many of my couples finding their own Peace of Mind.

One of the most important and personal aspects to my work as a therapist has come from my work as a Focusing Oriented Therapist and therapy client. A colleague of Carl Rogers, Eugene Gendlin, is the originator of the Focusing theory and process. These two pioneers, Rogers and Gendlin, in the field of psychology researched the aspects and efficacy of talk therapy. In Gendlin’s work, he found that success in therapy happens for a majority of people when they engage in a somatic process of exploring what he calls a “felt sense.” It is something that occurs for the individual as a perceived sense within the physical body. Quite often this Felt Sense lends to a knowing and truth for the person. Somatic therapy has become very popular in recent years as a primary intervention with people who suffer from trauma. Many therapies have emerged as to lend to engaging not just the mind, but as well—the body. The body has hidden answers and gateways to open up the mind to reveal truths for pains, behaviors and ways of being that cause suffering. This opens up an avenue for exploring greater aspects of consciousness. I can testify to the Focusing process lending healing within my own mind and body. Working with my clients through Focusing, I have seen physical pain dissipate and emotional healing manifest through a non-linear process beyond the rational mind. This process opens a door to Greater Consciousness that most people rarely access. Connecting the mind to the body is an essential process for the individual to find Peace of Mind, and for me, Focusing provides an opportunity to the world of Greater Consciousness.

My services and practice in the field of psychotherapy continue to question, explore and evolve to discover more about me, and those I serve. I do think that that there is truth in the concept of Peace of Mind through Greater Consciousness. Philosophers argue and debate the concept and meaning of consciousness. I cannot claim to be on an intellectual level to give an adequate definition of meaning, but the contemplation and study of this meaning is provocative. Consciousness lends to knowing, thinking, perceiving, and understanding the experience of this life. As a counselor, I am forever intrigued by the experience, perception and understanding my clients share with me. This is what the “About” section of my website says regarding myself and business, Thomas Auflick, PLLC: “How can you be better and evolve to higher states of being? If you want to understand your suffering and move toward higher functioning, you need to put effort into examining your reality, touch what ails you and lean into the work that will start your ascension. An unexamined life keeps us trapped and oppressed by our suffering. Peace of mind is an elusive concoction of ingredients that involve our movements, thoughts, feelings, relationships and work. Thomas Auflick PLLC is an evolution in progress that is helping me find my own peace of mind through a practice of greater consciousness. All of the services I offer are an extension of my own individual development. I look forward to working with you to help you find peace of mind through our collaborative greater consciousness.”

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Success in therapy is directly correlated to the positive relationship created by client and therapist. I was fortunate to find processes, theories, practices, therapy tools, colleagues, friends, and knowledge that inspires me to want to provide counseling with integrity. All of the services that I provide are a part of me because I believe they have something that can help others as they have helped me. This creates an inner belief of positivity in what I do. My reputation precedes me in the tools I choose to use. In the therapy process, I hope that I am demonstrating that critical aspect of Person-Centered Psychotherapy: Unconditional Positive Regard. If my clients realize that they are being helped in the therapy process with this component, then we have a chance of finding the trust needed to do difficult things. Achieving this state of trust gives us the possibility of healing and my reputation has a possibility of proceeding to the greater world. I believe this is happening as referrals in my business are prominent.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The primary strategy for growing my clientele comes from casting a wide net into the marketplace. All of the therapy tools I utilize in my practice have a proven efficacy from evidenced based knowledge from scientific research. This knowledge of information gives credence to the greater market place of therapy. As a Gottman Certified Therapist, people seek me out as a therapist because of the large base of information that comes from the research of John Gottman. My business utilizes the world’s phone book, the internet, to provide information through my personal website, social media, and other websites in the healthcare marketplace that advertise my services. I am connected to a greater community of mental healthcare providers through community groups, as well as my own network of colleagues and friends that I maintain. The final tool that I use to connect to clients comes from my participation with a limited number of healthcare insurance companies. All of these points of access to my business, create avenues of contact to potential clientele. The starting point begins with the need to ask for growth. When I am in need to expand my practice, I start by asking my inner self for more. This is a psychological tool that I believe is important for everyone in growth. I believe that it is important to set the stage with a conscious act of inviting and asking for something wanted. In this way, I am more aware as to be looking for what is needed where, when and how for connecting to the people in the world that can benefit from my services.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.counselingwithtom.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/auflickcounseling
• Youtube: @thomasauflick389

Image Credits

Thomas Auflick