Today we’d like to introduce you to Cheryl Delaney.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I first imagined having kids of my own, the image of parenthood I had in my head was rose colored and unimaginative. I remember driving to work at a job I didn’t enjoy, seeing a woman pushing a stroller to a playground and wishing so badly that I could trade places with her. Now when I see those parents, I still recognize that they are lucky but also that they are almost certainly exhausted, possibly bored, and probably running low on patience. I have three children now and I am no longer in a place of difficulty in my own life but I love working with and supporting parents who struggling in their role or who are struggling to become parents in the first place.
After several years of struggling, and after going to counseling, I decided to become a therapist. I love knowing that there are specific ways to address the ways I was struggling and that I can be of service to other people who are having a tough time.
Depression and anxiety are terribly common in mothers and fathers of newborns, and so many people don’t even recognize that what they’re feeling isn’t inescapable. My mission is to reach as many people as possible and give them tools that may help them feel better not just as parents, but as people, for the rest of their lives.
Has it been a smooth road?
When I was little, I never imagined being in business for myself. Both my parents worked for institutions that had pensions and HR departments – I imagined I would find a company to work for and stay there, or at least in the same field until I was ready to retire. The jobs I had before getting my counseling degree were in that kind of organization. I worked at an international public health non-profit and in an academic setting for years. There were things that I loved about those jobs, but they were not my passion.
Being able to align my personal goals to my professional ones has been an amazing aspect of starting my private practice. Struggling with the time demands and every insecurity you can imagine has been less fun. Even therapists have insecurities – we get to amplify them by feeling that we should be able to avoid them. One of the challenges has been staying strong in my vision even when things move slowly, or I make a mistake, or some marketing effort fails spectacularly.
When that happens, I have to remind myself to zoom out and take the long view. I believe so strongly in this work and I know the bumps along the way will continue to be worth it.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Bit by Bit Counseling story. Tell us more about the business.
My goal in life is to build a society that looks a lot like the one rendered in Star Trek.
Non-nerds, stick with me here! In Star Trek, the characters are, for the most part, considerate and transparent communicators who respond to crisis by making some tea and discussing possible responses around a conference table. Now, we can disagree about whether that makes for entertaining television, but it seems clear to me that it would make for an absolute improvement in experience. Imagine if everyone you knew were an expert at assuming good intent, being willing to admit to being in the wrong, responding instead of reacting.
I work with parents who are grieving, who are ashamed, who are confused and lonely and scared. What would it look like if they all felt well enough to assert their needs, to receive comfort and support, to believe that they were worthy of connection and encouragement? How might their relationships at home, at work and in the wider world look if we could quiet down their anxiety a bit, assure them that they are not alone?
My style is warm and, as you can probably tell by now, a little bit goofy. I love people and I have profound hope for humanity. I see so much pain in people and have been fortunate enough to experience profound changes in my own quality of life. I want to pay it forward.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
There have been recent developments in the field of counseling, for sure. The first ones that come to mind are related to how therapy is delivered. With the advent of services like TalkSpace and its competitors, text-based counseling is becoming an option for those who either can’t access in-person services or who just prefer the anonymity of texting. Right now, I think that meeting face to face has strong advantages over the alternative but I also celebrate any increase in accessibility. With improvements in virtual reality hardware and software, I can imagine a future where distance counseling retains many of the advantages of the bricks-and-mortar route.
The other developments are more ideas-based. There are so many people doing research on innovative approaches, new techniques, improved medications, finding ways to combine or simplify treatments to identify the most effective ways to help people through some of the main goals of counseling which are: to promote insight and understand your emotional experience better, to relieve stress and pain related to emotional injuries, and to foster skills to use in both preventive and remedial ways in the future. The more work the field of science does to understand the brain, the better able we are as clinicians to help our clients.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3754 Lavista Rd.,
Suite 200
Tucker, GA 30084 - Website: www.bitbybitcounseling.com
- Phone: 404-663-0682
- Email: cheryl@bitbybitcounseling.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bitbybitcounseling/
Image Credit:
Aaron Dill
Cheryl Delaney
Salvidia-Jones Photography
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