Meet Elizabeth Preston
Elizabeth Preston recently joined the Simplify Life team as a Professional Counselor for teens and adults.
She specializes in helping adolescents and adults explore, manage, and face the daily stressors and long-term challenges of life with curiosity, gentleness, and flexibility.
We asked her some questions.
What do you love most about being a counselor?
I love getting to know someone and their story. I feel very privileged to be able to help a client understand how the people in their life and the experiences they lived through have shaped them into the person they are.
Walking alongside someone while they create space to see a new story they can create or a perspective that was not available before are some of the things I love most about being a counselor.
What made you want to be a counselor?
I have had several family members and close friends who experienced mental health struggles over the years. Watching them go through something that can be so isolating, made me want to fill that need and be a consistent place of support to those dealing with mental health issues.
Even if someone is not undergoing depression or anxiety, so many people don’t have outlets to talk about what is going on in their lives, so I want to create that space for others.
Who do you help?
I work with teens and adults on some of the issues that are most “in our face” in the world today.
I love to walk with the teenager feeling that they cannot handle the pressure of having to be perfect or the woman who desires deeper connection with others but feels held back by her anxiety.
This is just a small sampling of the issues I work with along with depression, body image, and self-esteem.
What do you love doing when you aren't counseling?
I love anything that takes my mind somewhere else! That looks like hiking with my husband and Australian shepherd, reading a great book, or cooking with my favorite podcast or music.
If you had a ticket to go anywhere, where would you go and why?
I would head to Tanzania in Africa. While I would love to hike Mount Everest, a much more realistic dream of mine is to hike Mount Kilimanjaro and then go on an African safari.
I'm on the fence about going to counseling. What's your advice to me?
That’s totally understandable! Counseling is a big step and it’s not always an easy decision to make.
I would suggest asking yourself:
What situation, past experience, or emotion is prompting you to look into therapy?
Have you tried anything to help manage it? Has it worked?
Do you feel like you need more support, a comfortable place to untangle it, or some more tools to make life a little bit easier?
Depending on your answers, counseling could be the right choice for you. There are many different counseling styles and each therapist has their own personality, so you can look around and see who you click best with.
