Shaping the Future of Counseling and Therapist Support with Lynn Louise of Wonders Counseling. Ep.57

Episode Overview

• Episode Topic:
  In this episode of Mastering Counseling, we will learn about the journey of Lynn Louise Wonders, a seasoned therapist and founder of Wonders Counseling Services. From her humble beginnings in the field of counseling to the evolution of her practice, Lynn shares insights into building a successful therapy practice, specializing in marriage and family counseling, and navigating high-conflict divorce cases. We explore her transition to online therapy and the impact of the pandemic on the mental health landscape.
  
• Lessons You’ll Learn:
  Listeners will gain valuable insights into the challenges and rewards of establishing a specialized therapy practice, especially focusing on children, families, and couples. Lynn’s experiences shed light on the importance of specialized training and support for therapists dealing with high-conflict divorce cases. Additionally, her journey into authorship provides inspiration for therapists seeking innovative ways to support their clients, especially children, through therapeutic literature.
• About Our Guest:
  Lynn Louise Wonders is a seasoned therapist, author, and founder of Wonders Counseling Services. With over two decades of experience in the field of mental health, Lynn has dedicated her career to providing specialized counseling services for children, families, and couples. She is renowned for her expertise in navigating high-conflict divorce cases and has authored several books, including the popular “Miss Piper’s Playroom” series, aimed at normalizing therapy for children.
  
• Topics Covered:
  During our conversation, we cover a range of topics, including Lynn’s journey from starting her own practice to specializing in marriage and family counseling. We explore the unique challenges therapists face in high-conflict divorce cases and the need for specialized training in this area. Additionally, we discuss the impact of the pandemic on the mental health landscape and Lynn’s transition to online therapy. Finally, we examine her passion for authorship and the creation of therapeutic literature for children.

Episode Transcript

Becky Coplen: Thanks so much. Returning to mastering Counseling. We’re so glad our audience is back with us. And today I’m very excited to introduce  Lynn Louise Wonders, whose practice is called Wonders Counseling Services. Thanks so much for giving us your time today, Lynn.

Lynn Louise: Thanks, Becky. I’m glad to be here. I appreciate you asking me.

Becky Coplen: Well, you have been in this world since as early as 2007, and Wonders Counseling Services was launched in 2012. But why don’t you talk to us about the beginning of all that, your earlier practice, and then how you built your own practice?

 Lynn Louise: Yeah, well, actually, my career started in 2001, and then once I worked my way through associate level and all of that and became fully licensed, I started my own practice in a suburb of Atlanta where there weren’t a lot of resources that focused on children and families.  I opened a private practice back in 2007 called Marietta Counseling for Children and Adults.  I brought in other clinicians, and we started a group practice there that was very successful. Still there today, owned now by someone that was my intern many years ago. and during that time, between 2007 and 2012, there was rapid growth and a lot of people noticed that I was able to build a business pretty quickly and, and successfully. A Lot of people started coming to me asking me, how do you do it?  I started sort of helping people along the way in terms of building their, um, practices.  but also what happened during that time is that I learned that I enjoy teaching, the writing, the consulting and the clinical work more than managing people and managing a big group practice. I sold that practice and went in  and opened Wonders Counseling Services, which started off as a solo practice and then just became a small boutique practice where I had just a few other clinicians at one time. but it was pretty much designed to have prongs of clinical work for counseling clients, primarily children and families and couples. a prong that was focused on continuing education training and then a prong for consultation and supervision services. That’s where we are today. Alot’s happened since 2012, obviously, in the world and in the field of mental health. And things just continue to evolve and grow.

Becky Coplen: I like that a boutique practice is just a little smaller and focused.  It’s a fun word.  now with your current practice since 2012, and I know you said you didn’t want to manage a large practice. Is it only you the only therapist or doing all three prongs, or do you have other people who are part of it and working with you?

 Lynn Louise: At this point, it’s I’m the only one because I closed the physical practice actually before the pandemic just in, you know, I don’t know, it kind of just happened that I closed it and went online with a lot of the work that I was doing solo. Then the pandemic happened and I was already set up. I was already doing, you know, online therapy. I was doing online programs and supervision and training. For me, it was  pretty much an easy shift because I had already started that. In fact, I was one of the very first ones way back before webinars were really a thing doing continuing education, online, doing teleseminars before we had webinars. that distance reach and that distance connection thing kind of came naturally for me. At this point, I see a small caseload of clinical clients, then most of my work is in teaching, continuing education, writing other programs. I’m an author. I have a line of children’s books and a book for child therapists about navigating high conflict divorce cases. I just have a lot of things where I’m really connected to the greater community and mental health. I work a lot with other therapists rather than so much clinical work at this point.

Becky Coplen: Okay. Good. Thank you for that explanation. Let’s talk specifically about how you felt there was a need for I believe you said marriage and family counseling especially. I don’t know if you said marriage, but I know if families are going through divorce. You did a lot of work there. Let’s talk about your call to that and how that looked then and maybe how it looks now.

 Lynn Louise: Yeah. So back when I was. Doing more of the clinical work. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I found myself in.  working with a lot of families, specifically serving the needs of the children in the families where the parents were going through higher levels of conflict and divorce and custody dispute related cases.  I ended up in court a lot. that ended up being an area of specialty that I never would have consciously chosen, but I just landed there. along the way realized, whoa, this is a very sticky wicket.  This is a slippery slope. And we as therapists are not prepared for this. through my experience wading through the sticky wicket, you know, dealing with a lot of stress and a lot of  you know, consequences of those kinds of cases, I realized there was a need in the field to help therapists be better prepared for those cases, especially therapists who see child clients and couples I do couples work as well. I ventured out into writing a book and creating some training and some consultation services around that. I still find to this day that there are a lot of therapists who feel very lonely in their experiences with those cases, because a lot of times it is very sticky.  things happen that people don’t want to really talk about and they need to have training and support around that.  I think it’s sort of a void. And our graduate training and so forth, I don’t think that there’s enough preparation for therapists in these kinds of you know, those kinds of cases. It’s just because it brings up issues that sort of shifts the needs in the clinical situation for the therapist to attend to.  it becomes more than just clinical. It becomes legal and their ethical issues and that kind of thing.

Becky Coplen:  That’s what I was thinking as you were talking. I have some experience in foster care and adoption and when you end up going to court and working with lawyers, if things are always so dicey and not really how you think they may come out.  I’m sure you had to work with different lawyers and kind of talk with them for guidance as you helped other therapists and families.

 Lynn Louise: Well, certainly there were times when I had to have my own representation, you know, when I was, you know, pulled into certain cases. That’s why we have liability insurance and  you know, to help us with all of those kinds of things. But definitely there’s, there’s, there’s space for that in terms of making sure that we know what we’re getting into. we’re not saying the wrong things and doing the wrong things and. It really is a whole different realm.

Becky Coplen: For sure. And you’re right, I don’t think too many  graduate programs are involving the legal end of things. It’s like learning as you go which could be dangerous and costly. Thank you for doing that work.  Let’s talk about your authorship of a children’s series. Let’s talk about the names of those and what the focus is and how people can get them if they need them for their own practice.

 Lynn Louise: That’s been a really fun project for me. The series of books I have is called Miss Piper’s Playroom. It all started, interestingly, with a little dream that I had about this character, Miss Piper, who is a therapist, she uses play and creative, expressive, interventions with children in her playroom. The series of books. At this point, I don’t think I remember 7 or 8 books in the series. but each book features a different client, except for the very first one, which introduces Miss Piper and coming to therapy for children and families.  but it’s illustrated beautifully by an illustrator I found in Ukraine. The character is very much,  Miss Piper is one that advocates for children to celebrate who they are. We have one about an ADHD year, and we have a, one about a child who identifies as autistic and I’ve collaborated with others in  a number of these books to make sure that we’re providing information that’s representational, racially, ethnically,  sensitive to neurodivergence needs. In the child therapy field. The idea of the whole series was to serve as a tool that therapists can use with their child clients, for parents to prepare children for going to therapy, also sort of normalizing anxiety, social anxiety, ADHD,  grief and loss. Just the idea of going to counseling, what it’s about and how it doesn’t have to be anything scary. It can be something that can be really, really supportive.

Becky Coplen: I love that. Can we get these on Amazon? I’m gonna,  I know people, I’m a school counselor and I work closely with the special ed team and we all love our books. Of course. I don’t know what anyone has thought. Are they on? 

 Lynn Louise: They’re on. If you just look up.

 Lynn Louise: Miss Piper’s playroom, Louise wonders. You’ll see the whole series there. I have another couple of books that are not in that series, but are children’s books that are also therapeutic and educational. I’m sure I’ll be adding more in the future. I’ve just taken a couple of years off from that work so I can focus on other things. Lots of passion Projects.

Becky Coplen: Right? No, I love that. And I’m thinking I could be wrong, but because it’s a series and the way you talked about it, it’s just like something you can continually add on as you have a new idea.

 Lynn Louise: Yes, definitely.

Becky Coplen: That’s awesome. Very cool. I will be looking into that for sure. I’m sure our listeners, you know, we always love new resources. And especially I think when you take it maybe not that counseling is an adult thing, but something more serious and then you can put it in a kids mindset is awesome. very cool. We’ve talked about how you are doing a lot of continuing education for other therapists. you’ve been doing that a long time as well. talk to us about maybe what your webinars are like are they all online and people purchase the lessons or books? Talk about that world?

 Lynn Louise: If anybody is interested in seeing specifically, I’ll just point you to my website, Wonders counseling.com. And if you go into the courses tab, you’ll see all the different kinds of courses and things I have. But I have a learning platform that is referenced there that has  my own training. And I also host a few other people that I find wonderful that also have a few courses on the platform. Most of them are play therapy related. Some are parenting related, some are general.  there’s one about social emotional learning for preschoolers there. There’s navigating high conflict, divorce and so forth. But, what I’ve been doing since 2010 is leading seminars, or they used to be seminars. Now they’re webinars. But online and then recording them and having them available and most of them are available for continuing education credits. Some of them are only available for learning enrichment, which is where the price is a lot lower. But they can just get them just to learn the material. Most of them are around two hours, some are 3 or 4 hours. I have a few one hour ones on there. They were recorded live, most of them. there’s some interaction with the participants that happen to be there live.

 Lynn Louise: Then there are handouts that go along with them. And my most present project is the mindfulness based Therapy Training Institute, which is going to be launching this year in 2024, which is going to be a separate platform, but it’s all connected under the same umbrella, and that is going to have tracks for training. under the topic of mindfulness based play therapy, mindfulness based work with couples and mindfulness based work with adult individual clients. because that mindfulness based work is something I’ve been actually doing since long before I was a therapist for over 30 years. it’s a way of bringing it all together, and it’s something I’ve been using in my work anyway. it’s just bringing it more to the forefront. But, I’m really passionate about teaching, and the feedback that I get is that my training is rich in content, but also engaging and interesting. It really is because it’s born out of a passion that I love helping people to get inspired and to have something new that lights them up and, and helps them to carry on with their work. And I like to think of it as throwing a pebble in the lake and seeing the ripples effect, you know of knowing that if I’m helping one person learn, they’re helping other people and that’s helping others.

Lynn Louise: People, right? Right.

Becky Coplen: No. That’s amazing. I mean, I’m kind of wide eyed over here thinking, how are you managing all of these things? but, you know, I guess if you’ve been doing it a long time, too, it’s just so natural to talk about, but yeah, that’s awesome that it’s all on the website. Do you do any more in person seminars or even in person therapy? How is that shifted? And I do want to go back to how you, sorry, let’s pause that question. I think it’s amazing that you were online ahead of the pandemic, and were just flooded with people needing a counselor or b other counselors saying, what do we do? Talk about that time, right.

 Lynn Louise: Okay. So let me just clarify. Before the pandemic, I was doing online training online, continuing education training, and consultation.

 Lynn Louise: Like practice building support for therapists. I was doing a little bit of distance at the time. We called it distance counseling. I had gone and gotten certified in distance counseling before we had this kind of a platform. It was a telephone email way back in the day, I was doing some of that as an add on to be able to meet with adults or parents of my child clients when needed. When we couldn’t get them into the office, I wasn’t really doing distance therapy with child clients. When the pandemic came along  we all had to go online for the most part. Some brave souls stayed in person the whole time. but most people went online. The idea of doing play therapy over zoom or what other platform, you know, people were using was brand new and really scary. And for a lot of people and because I had been doing online work, it came very naturally for me to help people to adapt. I partnered with several people, and we just basically got really creative. Alot of therapists ended up doing telehealth based play therapy. I contributed a couple chapters to that book that’s written or edited by Doctor Jessica Stone called Telemental Health Play Therapy.

 Lynn Louise: I personally did not, love doing play therapy online. I’m an in-person play therapist. I think that three dimensional interaction and play with the toys for me and for my clients was really important. So as soon as I could get back to in-person, I did. Okay. I will say, though, that there are some that have done really well and some children do really well with the digital medium. They’re digital natives. They were born into this digital age, and there are a lot of therapists who do really. Well with digital based play therapy and more power to them. That is not my area of choice or expertise, you know, in terms of the work that I do now. but I think that what’s happened in the field of mental health overall, beyond child therapy and play therapy, is that we have all been exposed by force to this reality and the possibilities of what we can do so we can reach more people. We can work with people in rural areas. Now the therapy that I do  my clinical caseload is almost all adult clients, and it’s all online because I’m licensed in a state that I don’t live in any longer.

 Lynn Louise: Long story we don’t need to go into. but so it allows for that. You know, even though I was licensed in one state, my husband got a job in another state, and, you know, I moved. I can carry my practice with me and work and continue to see clients online. there’s a lot of beautiful things about this. I’m not seeing child clients online. Every once in a while I’ll have a former client that will need a patch session or something. But, I think that the face of mental health has changed since the pandemic because of everything that we had to do that opened up a lot of other avenues. I’m sitting back and watching how even the way I used to, to support people in building a private practice has changed. And there’s lots of people like you doing wonderful podcasts and offering, you know, coaching services and all these practice building kind of things that reflect the New age. I think of mental health. I’m kind of sitting back watching this and all by myself and watching how a lot of things are changing, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it continues to evolve very rapidly.

Becky Coplen: Right, right.

Becky Coplen: Well, I love that you were so prepared digitally, but yet personally, you prefer especially for the play therapy to be in person. you know, just, I don’t know, hands on the items. And I can see that. I mean, we did online school and then school and they don’t relate exactly. But yeah, I think I’m the same. Like, you love the fact that you can be online and there’s great things, but especially with smaller children, that being right with them to see all parts of their movement and all that I think is so important. Well, let’s talk a little bit. And actually we haven’t talked about it in a few episodes, but a little bit about self care and boundaries. We know you’re doing a lot of writing and seeing people and helping other therapists and launching this new institute. How do you make sure that you are up to the task?

 Lynn Louise: It’s a good question. It’s an important question. I just based on something else you mentioned about, how do you do it all kind of. I get that a lot. I want to just say that, I don’t want anybody to think that the way that I’m doing things is the way everybody should do things. I just happen to be ADHD or myself, And it’s a gift in that I’m wildly creative, and I have my mechanisms for keeping myself on track. So I am able to do a lot of different things, but not everybody’s cut out of that cloth, and that is fine. I mean, if you have one niche and one thing you do and you want to do that one thing, well, go for it. I just like the variety and I’m just very artistic and creative that way. tied into the self-care part of my self-care is that it’s good for me to have a variety of projects. But what one thing I’ve realized is that I can’t pile it all on at the same time, like I had.

 Lynn Louise: I’m having to take time off, this last year and this year, from writing any children’s books or doing any of that work, because I’m focusing on some other projects. It’s kind of like knowing, okay, maybe I can have 2 or 3 projects going at one time, but any more than that starts to feel like a crazy juggling act. And I start to get overwhelmed and that’s not healthy. I’ve learned to use calendars and use planning and to be very organized in my own way with my ADHD brain. in order to make sure that I’m staying on task as much as possible. I use timers and I use the calendar  and I live by the calendar. I’m constantly looking at it. And if there’s a glitch in a mix up with something that can throw me off. But that’s one thing about self-care. The other piece is that it’s really important to practice what I preach, which is the mindfulness piece, which requires slowing down and just breathing and sitting back and watching and reflecting.

 Lynn Louise: And getting plenty.

 Lynn Louise: Of rest and making sure that I’m taking time for nature. I’m a big nature enthusiast as well. It’s about finding relative balance. And I say relative balance because your balance might look different than my balance. For me, it might mean I can do several different things all at once. You might have a, you know, situation where you’re really only able to do one thing at a time and, and then rotate. I think that each person has to figure out what works for them so that they are feeling rested and nourished and  feeling fulfilled in the work that they’re doing. And there’s sometimes when a project that I’ve been working on doesn’t feel exciting or fulfilling to me any longer, and it’s time to just set it aside for a while. And that’s a part of self-care as well.

Becky Coplen: For sure. definitely. People are wired so differently and how much they want to take on and I find myself a little bit like you. I like having different things. Things. but definitely the calendar is so huge and sometimes trying to then I like variety too. Like, I partly love being a school counselor because no day is the same and it’s absolutely never boring. but yeah, with my own goals and things, you have to separate that time out. like, I could never podcast eight hours a day, right? But I love that, you know, I can go do this for a little bit and then pop in and do this. It’s cool that way. what, advice, I don’t know, with your continuing education, very important. Do you have a lot of connections with universities and master’s programs because of that? And what advice would you be giving to people in those programs that are about to be certified or have just completed their programs?

 Lynn Louise: Yeah.

 Lynn Louise: I you know, generally speaking, a lot of graduate programs have that what I would consider preliminary training that students get to prepare them to begin the journey of going out into the field of mental health and working, continuing education is something that we are required by our licensing boards to have on a regular basis, to stay up to date on the most current, you know, learnings and knowledge that’s coming out. But also after you get out of your master’s program, you want to begin to you know, specialize in a certain area or, you know, hone in on a particular area of interest, or you might grow and expand and decide, I really want to learn this, or I want to learn more about that, I want to work with this population. the continuing education  courses that I teach and you asked me if I teach in person, I do, I, I teach, I lead in person conferences all over the country. I’ve been to Ireland.  I’ve done online stuff all over the world as well. But, I do it in person as well. My university connections are more that I have colleagues that are professors and administrators in various play therapy and child and family and adolescent, you know, therapy programs that we know each other because they have to have their continuing education, too, we know each other in those realms.

 Lynn Louise: It’s not so much a direct connection except for sometimes they’ll like I’m leading an in-person event in Nashville in March this year, in 2024, and I’ve got students coming from various local universities at a discount to come and learn with me. but then I also have therapists who have been around for a while that are coming to learn with me. I think we can all learn together, but there’s definitely something about how much information you already have and experience that you have that lends to the kind of training you’re going to have. If you’re still in graduate school, you’re probably not going to do C courses. Although you may some will be coming to my training, because they’re play therapy, basic play therapy related courses. But if it was a more advanced play therapy training or a couple’s counseling training, I wouldn’t probably see students from a graduate program there because they’re still learning at the level that they need to learn at in order to do, you know, what they need to do at their level of development.

Becky Coplen: Great.

Becky Coplen: just one other thing. On the C courses, do they build on each other like are a lot of them individual like here’s your one course on, you know, one part of play therapy or is it like a whole series usually?

 Lynn Louise: Well, that’s a good question. Most of my courses on my current platform are what I would call a la carte, training where they’re standalone, where you can learn about, you know. Using cognitive behavioral play therapy with OCD. Or you could learn about how to use prescriptive play therapy with families. Or you can come and learn about you know, basics like a creative and expressive play therapy act, interventions with children of this age. So the way that I teach is prescriptive and transtheoretical. my mindfulness based play therapy program that I’m designing and I’m working on right now, writing a book about that right now is Transtheoretical. What we do is we look at the seminal historical theories, in play therapy and psychotherapy for children, and we then look at how we can utilize mindfulness practice through those theoretical models. if someone was mostly or only child centered, or if somebody was a Jungian play therapist, or they would still be able to utilize that. My aim at teaching people is to meet them where they are or have them come to where I am in that particular training and if it’s a fit for them. whereas some people teach only from one seminal theory and, and they have a series and, and that kind of thing. I will have a certification program in mindfulness based play therapy that will be available. I’m not sure if it’ll be this year or in 2025, but I am working on that. But it’s still it’s still rooted in being transtheoretical, because I believe that we need to be able to see that we can either be a purist and come from a particular theory and still use this model, or you can use many different theories and be prescriptive depending on the needs of the client that’s in front of you.

Becky Coplen: Very interesting for sure. Thank you for clarifying that and giving us all options, especially people who are already licensed and needing, you know, wanting to know more or really want to launch into becoming a play therapist. That’s awesome. Is there anything else that you feel like we didn’t get to talk about today that you would want the audience to know about?

 Lynn Louise: Oh not.

 Lynn Louise: Really. We really covered a lot of ground. I just would be welcome. Anyone who wants to learn more about my resources, I will say one thing. I do send out a curated resource newsletter. I do it myself. I don’t hire anybody to help me with it. I may be getting some help soon. It’s a lot of work. but every week I try to aim for every week I send out a newsletter. So if anybody wants to sign up for that and get those resources, they can sign up under the resources tab at Wonders counseling.com. I’m kind of well known in the field as being a resource hub. And, you know, people will come to me and I have a group on Facebook called Growing Your Child and Family Counseling Career. If people want to come and join that group. And we just have discussions and I really am passionate about just being of support. And I like to point people to other trainers and other consultants and other experts. It’s not all about me. It’s about the fact that we’re all in this together, and there’s some incredible colleagues that I have that do just great work in this world. And I’m always happy to point people to who they need to go learn from if they’re interested in a particular topic. That’s not in my wheelhouse.

Becky Coplen: Very collaborative is what I’m hearing, for sure. So yeah. Well, thank you so much, Lynn, for giving us your time today with all the other things you have going on. I feel like we’ve delved into a wealth of resources that people can look at on your website and possibly purchase your books. Thank you so much for your time today.

 Lynn Louise: Thank you so much for having me, Becky.

Becky Coplen: Yes. And to our audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Please leave us questions or comments. And let us know what you’re interested in talking about in the future. We look forward to future episodes where we continue to explore the worlds of counseling therapy, the business side of all that. And, just hearing from all the people in this field that. Have a wonderful day.