This week we invite you to meet Amberly Stevens, Marriage and Family Therapist In Training, and HEART Counseling’s first employee.

I knew from the time I was a little girl that I loved listening to people’s stories. As a kid, teenager and young adult, I found myself time and time again in situations where I had the opportunity to sit with friends, classmates and family members in difficult moments. Emotional connection and meaningful relationships always felt important to me, and I knew early on that whatever I chose to do in life, it would involve being with people and helping them through their difficult times. 

I took a less traditional path through my education and career. After getting a Bachelor’s Degree in Family Studies with a Human Development Emphasis, I worked in Assisted Living for a little while until my husband’s job brought us to Wisconsin. Working with adults in Assisted Living, and spending time with them and their families was an honor, and I realized that the part of the job I enjoyed the most was sitting with people in their grief, and holding their emotional burdens with them for a while. 

I took time out of the workforce for several years and stayed home with my little boys. It was a mix of contradictory experiences; both intensely fulfilling, fun and joyful, and difficult, lonely and overstimulating, all at the same time. We had many amazing adventures including driving across the country to see family, and paddle-boarding our way across as many lakes in Wisconsin as we could. I will always treasure that time as a stay-at-home parent, but I could feel that there was something missing. 

Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy

I decided to go back to school for a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy after being a stay-at-home parent for about 5 years. As I tell my clients all the time, sometimes the body just “knows that it is TIME” and that is how it was for me. Even though grad school at that time in life was challenging, I always felt rooted in my desire to help, support and connect. 

In my Marriage and Family Therapy program at Edgewood College, I was taught models and theories that were heavily influenced by General Systems Theory, which in a nutshell is that every part of a system is impacting the other parts of the system all the time, and the system itself is constantly adapting to those impacts. This is foundational to my work, because I believe that all symptoms, problems and “disorders” make sense in the context of the broader system that they exist in. This allows me to take a non-pathologizing, and deeply compassionate approach to my work. 

Being a Therapist

Practicing therapy for me is not about fixing people’s problems and sending them on their way. Being a therapist to me means helping use my knowledge, settled nervous system, curiosity and collaboration to help people access the inherent healing qualities in themselves. I quickly gravitated toward trauma work including EMDR and Internal Family Systems (IFS) modalities because of the hope for healing that they offer.

Learning about brain development, nervous system development and function, and how stress and trauma impact that functioning was life changing for me. Not only did it shape my future career trajectory forever, but it brought me better understanding of myself, my struggles, and took me to a transformative place of self-compassion. I also now have a much more expansive view of the people in my life, those I interact with, the clients I sit with, and the broader world. 

As I work with clients, the undercurrent of everything I do comes back to relationship and connection. I consider each intervention, strategy, protocol and offering of psychoeducation to be an opportunity for me to offer that connection and relationship, which in and of itself can be healing. I consider practicing therapy to be an honor and a gift and I am so grateful and energized every day by the work that I do.