Community Highlights: Meet Alice Stricklin of Alice Stricklin Counseling

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alice Stricklin.

Hi Alice, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
As a native of Nashville, TN I learned what it was like to live in a community that valued coming together, working together, and looking out for one another.  My roots in southeast Nashville allowed me to see and experience how life can be hard and yet neighbors and community can come alongside the hard experiences and offer support. These roots carried me into my undergrad education at MidAmerica Nazarene University where I studied psychology and sociology. My goal was to one day work with children and families who had experienced hard things in life like trauma, abuse, and grief.

I had some twists and turns after undergrad that landed me in a public health program where I learned about the importance of maternal and child health and the survival of communities.  I applied that knowledge in my master’s program in marriage and family therapy. There I began the work of learning how to be with children and families in hard places and help them reconnect to the strengths within themselves and the community. I began practicing these skills in my first real job out of grad school with Youth Villages. I worked there as an in-home family counselor and a group home counselor with teen girls. Later, I spent a few summers interning at an inpatient facility for teen girls.

Those experiences taught me about myself, the world, and the resiliency that exists within human beings.  I carried many of those lessons into my post-masters work at a non-profit in Franklin, TN called the Refuge Center for Counseling. There I became rooted in my own view of trauma. That view is trauma can be healed in the context of community, self-compassion, and individual personal resiliency. I also learned at The Refuge Center the value of providing affordable mental health care.  This is around the time that I had a vision and dream of a similar program in my own community of Lebanon, TN.

Fast forward 8 years, post-pandemic, that dream began to become a reality.  It was born out of a need in this community an increase in referral calls needing mental health assistance and a lack of options in our fast-growing community. My vision has always been to recognize the mental health needs in my community and partner with other like-minded organizations to meet that needs. We currently have a working relationship with 2 non-profits in our community: Compassionate Hands Ministry and Rest Stop Ministries. The counseling interns at Alice Stricklin Counseling provide mental health services for the people they serve at these non-profits.  We also partner with local churches and organizations that allow us to come and speak on various mental health and relational health topics.

We work hard to build community relationships and have several churches and community organizations that help provide scholarships for individuals and families who need mental health services but cannot afford them.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Is any road smooth? If we don’t have the bumps and roadblocks we never learn. I went to school to learn about people, people groups, relationships, and family systems. What I did not learn in school was how to own a business.

Those lessons I have learned by trial and error and by asking people who know. I was not like a lot of small business owners where I had a dream of owning a business and I started out with my business plan and got all my ducks in a row to open. I did it backward. I did what I knew how to do (counseling) and then figured out the other things as they came up. When I opened in 2016, it was just me. I did not add anyone else to my practice until 2019. From 2020 to the present we have gone from 3 people to 7!

Supervising staff is not new to me. I have played that role in other organizations. However, there is something about you being the owner and the supervisor that brings a new element. Their livelihood depends on the way I run my business. I do not take that responsibility lightly.

As you know, we’re big fans of Alice Stricklin Counseling. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Our mission is to walk alongside women, men, children, teens, and families as they find hope and healing on their journey. Part of our role on the journey is to recommend some tools, part of our role is to highlight how one is already equipped, and our role is always to listen with the intent to understand.

Our clinical team is here to help empower people to be the leader of health in their families. We are ready to walk with any and all family members on the journey to a better life. We specifically focus on the areas of strengthening relationships through couples counseling, child and teen family counseling and healing from trauma through trauma-based counseling. We use a variety of counseling theories and techniques including EMDR therapy, Family Systems therapy, play therapy, CBT, TF-CBT, mindfulness-based therapies, Prepare-Enrich therapy, and more. Our counselors see couples, families, individual adults, children, and teens.

We are specifically known for our trauma-based therapy of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR Therapy). Alice is both a trainer and a consultant of the model. While everyone at Alice Stricklin Counseling has different modalities and specialty areas, Alice has focused most of her career on using EMDR Therapy with trauma, complex trauma as well as grief and complex grief. Two clinicians at Alice Stricklin Counseling, Alice and Katie, do EMDR intensives. An EMDR therapy intensive is a larger block of time dedicated to working on a therapeutic goal in one sitting. Therapy intensives are different from the traditional therapy session in that there is a dedicated time set aside to focus specifically on mental health or relationship goals. We find that therapy intensives are more efficient
and more cost-effective in the long run. Without the interruptions that happen in a traditional therapy process (e.g. crisis of the week, start-up and close down time, check-ins) more time can be devoted to the therapy goal and the focus can stay on working through trauma and/or grief memories. Our intensives include intake appointment(s), and then anywhere from 2-6 hour blocks of therapy scheduled from 1 day up to several days depending on the client’s need. More about our intensives can be found on our website at https://www.alicestricklin.com/therapy-intensives.

I also have a passion for developing mental health providers. From this passion, I provide supervision for those pursuing licensure in the state of TN in Marriage and Family Therapy as well as Licensure in Counseling. I also provide consultation and training for clinicians who are wanting to become certified in EMDR therapy. I also lead training for clinicians on how to become an EMDR therapists. Alice Stricklin Counseling specifically is dedicated to training the next generation of counselors. We do this by having interns who are working on their master’s in counseling. We provide clinical supervision, group supervision, and training opportunities on-site.

What would you say has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
To ask questions of those who have gone before me. I have been so blessed to have generous mentors who are willing to share their lessons with me. So many friends and colleagues have shared their policies, contracts, mission statements, office design plans, etc. I feel so grateful for the lessons of generosity they have taught me. So much so, that I strive to do the same.

Pricing:

• Session fees range from $30 to $105
• Intensive pricing varies

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alicestricklin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicestricklincounseling/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Alice-Stricklin-Counseling-730798550705138
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQGPlsE834R0hUlh-2gYedA

Image Credits
Logo created by Rachelle Spalin