Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalie Meengs.
Hi Natalie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I didn’t plan on being a therapist. This is actually my third career path. I graduated from a very competitive creative program at the University of Texas at Austin and, shortly after, bombed an interview for a copywriting position at my dream ad agency.
I will always be grateful to the creative director interviewing me, who, after barely glancing at my portfolio, asked, “Okay so…what do you really want to do?” I was shocked he could sense the misalignment between my work and my energy. Then he told me, “There are a million ways to be creative. Go make jewelry. Go make art. Copywriting is just one narrow way to be creative.” It felt like I had permission to jump the track I had worked so hard to put myself on.
I’d like to say it was then that I had an epiphany that I just wanted to help people and became a therapist – but I didn’t. Instead, I spent a very long, strange year in finance which I will spare you the details of. (I would, however, like to take this moment to thank my then-boss, Paul, who deeply invested in my development for the long term. Immediately after I told him I was leaving the firm, he offered to write what would be an incredible letter of recommendation for me to use for my counseling grad school application.)
After completing grad school, I began my career as a therapist working in residential rehab for alcohol, substance, and sex/love addiction. It was a heavy environment, but I appreciated how residential care allowed me to share more time with clients, sometimes eating lunch together and often getting to meet their loved ones during family weekends. The proximity and consistency offered the space for more authentic connection to develop, which still informs how I show up with my clients today.
While working in rehab, I met my supervisor Tammy, who still mentors me now. There was an unspoken way she held space for me that invited me into the development and deeper self-trust of my clinical intuition. They really turn you loose after grad school and the first few years of being a therapist is a steep learning curve. I am so grateful for Tammy’s support during that malleable time to help mold my personal approach and identity as a therapist.
I have been in private practice now for 6 years and work with individuals to create a safe space within themselves that allows transformational change to unfold. I aim to mirror back my clients’ power to them. The impetus to transform is much more potent when it comes forward from the inside, not when someone tells you what to do. I see my work as helping people uncover that knowing for themselves, as Tammy did for me in my early clinical years.
I can’t share about how I got to where I am without acknowledging the people that were my guideposts, at times unknowingly. It feels like I’ve been in a pinball machine where unsuspecting players served as loving inflection points leading me to where I am today – a path that feels truly aligned with who I am. While it’s not copywriting or jewelry making or paint on a canvas, I’ve found my own version of creativity in meeting people in the mystery and offering my skills and presence in the dark.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was not an easy path. Aside from career pivots and building up student loan debt, through grad school I was also coping with the slow and unforgiving loss of my mother to cancer. I would not recommend learning how to be a therapist while you are falling apart on the inside; but if you must, make sure you have incredible friends. And maybe a hobby you use your hands for. Mine was puzzles.
A more recent struggle was allowing my work with clients to expand with me, beyond what grad school taught me therapy traditionally looks like. The last few years, I’ve been bringing more of my natural inclinations and passions into my therapy sessions alongside my training and certifications. It’s been so fun to see my clients taking ownership of our time together and truly making it theirs!
As you know, we’re big fans of Natalie Meengs LMHC, LPC-MHSP, SEP. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I work in private practice and am licensed in Tennessee and Indiana. Most of my sessions with clients take place online, but I have some in-person space in East Nashville. For almost a decade, my speciality has been working with Highly Sensitive People (HSP’s) and empaths as they process traumatic experiences and renegotiate safety in their nervous systems. While that is still very much at the core of my practice, my niche has evolved to include expansion and growth work.
I am a certified Somatic Experience Practitioner, a body-based trauma therapy that is highly effective in supporting people as they process traumatic experiences by increasing their awareness of their “felt sense.” I am also trained in brainspotting, another body-based tool. Both of these modalities goes beyond spoken words and allows clients to access their nervous system’s natural inclination to move forward by moving energy.
While those are my credentials, the best way to describe my approach is empowering clients to take ownership of their own energy field, which I believe is our greatest resource and often untapped in traditional talk therapy. Somatic Experiencing and brainspotting are simply tools I use to do that. I think it’s important to note that I have been a recipient of any therapeutic modality I offer. I believe that as therapists we should only invite clients to go as far as we are willing to go within ourselves.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I have been studying astrology and personally working with my own birth chart and astrological transits for years. I am excited to now be offering the option to bring astrology into my clients’ healing work as another tool to support their goals. In these sessions, I couple my skills and knowledge in nervous system and energy work with my clients’ unique birth charts and active transits. These are not chart readings, but sessions where I help clients quite literally step into the energy of their chart and experience it for themselves.
A metaphor I like to share with clients (or anyone) new to astrology is that it’s like the weather – you can go to the beach anytime you want but it can be helpful to know when the sun is shining. It’s simply the conditions and you have free will at all times within those conditions. When you have awareness of the energies at play, you are empowered to use your free will to co-create alongside them. It can be truly life-changing!
Whether it’s Somatic Experiencing, brainspotting, astrology, or a combination, my approach embodies a deep truth – the power to heal (and live!) is already wired within each of my clients. My role is to fan the flame until they come to discover and cherish their own light. The end goal is that my clients become so attuned to their own light that they confidently tend to it themselves so they can live and love from that sacred place. No matter how small the flicker may be, there is hope in our innate design for wholeness.
Pricing:
- $175 – 60 minute session
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nataliemeengssep.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nataliemeengslmhc/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-meengs-lmhc-ncc-457ab357
