A Conversation with Marcia Brownlee, LCPC

Growth Is an Act of Courage

Meet Marcia - Part 1

1.  You spent over twenty years in education and leadership before becoming a therapist. That’s a significant transition. What happened? What drew you toward counseling?

How much time do you have? To keep it succinct, after more than twenty years in education and leadership, I took a really close look at what I found most meaningful about my professional life. I realized that what consistently brought me the most fulfillment was supporting people to be brave, take chances, and step into their own strengths. Whether I was teaching, mentoring, or leading teams, I was always most drawn to the human side of the work. I am fascinated by how people grow, heal, and change, and I wanted to devote more of my professional life to supporting that process. Counseling felt like a natural next chapter. Every day I get to support people in becoming who they want to be, living the lives they want to live, and having the relationships they want to have. I can't think of more meaningful work.

2.  How does that background in education and leadership live in your clinical work now? What do you understand about how people grow — and get stuck — that you might not have if you’d started in therapy right away?

I think my years in education and leadership taught me to have deep respect for the process of growth. People don't get stuck because they're lazy or unmotivated. Most often, they get stuck because something important is hard, scary, or painful. And it's hard, scary, or painful in ways that are deeply personal and unique to each of us.

What I understand now that I might not have understood if I'd started in therapy right away is that learning and growth of any kind are acts of courage. Whether we're learning how to write, becoming a parent, grieving a loss, setting boundaries, settling our nervous system, or changing the way we relate to ourselves, growth asks something of us. It asks us to change our understanding of the world, tolerate uncertainty, risk getting it wrong, and be willing to become someone we haven't been before. That's vulnerable work. And becoming a counselor at this stage of my life, I bring with me my own deep personal experience of how difficult and rewarding growth and change can be. Because of my life path, I didn't understand that in quite the same way in my twenties or thirties.

3.  Your page heading is ‘Trust, Curiosity, and Collaboration.’ Those feel like words chosen carefully. What does each of them mean to you in the context of therapy?

These words are deeply meaningful to me, both personally and professionally.

Trust: If I trust you, you trust me, and we both trust ourselves, there is so much we can do together. That doesn't mean the work will be easy, and it certainly doesn't mean we'll do it perfectly all the time. But it does mean we can take chances, be brave, and trust that we'll figure things out together.

Curiosity: Curiosity inspires me to work hard to see through your eyes, to understand what you're experiencing and how you're making sense of it. I am deeply curious about what makes you you, and I hope to support you in becoming deeply curious about that, too. I think curiosity is a profoundly compassionate and self-compassionate act. It creates space for understanding rather than judgment.

Collaboration: I am the counselor, and I know some things about mental health. But you are the expert on you. This is your life, your relationships, your heart, body, and mind, your values, and your hopes. My role isn't to tell you who to be or what to do. It's to bring my knowledge and experience into relationship with your wisdom and lived experience. We figure things out together and meaningfully respond to one another.

4.  Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is one of your primary frameworks. A lot of people hear ‘acceptance’ and think it means giving up or settling. How do you explain what ACT actually is to someone who has never encountered it?

I think a lot of us come to therapy hoping that the pain will simply go away and stay gone. That's understandable. But pain is a natural and important part of being human. It tells us that something matters, that we've lost something, that we're vulnerable, that we care. Acceptance in ACT isn't about apathy, resignation, or settling for suffering. It's about recognizing that struggling endlessly to get rid of painful thoughts, emotions, and experiences often creates even more suffering. Instead of asking, "How do I make this go away?" ACT invites us to ask, "How do I want to respond to this?" and "What does this pain tell me about what matters?" Acceptance isn't surrender. It's making peace with the fact that pain is part of life so that we can spend more of our energy living.

5.  You talk about ‘psychological flexibility’ as a therapeutic goal. What does psychological flexibility actually look like in someone’s real life? What does a person do differently when they have it?

No one exists in a permanent state of either flexibility or inflexibility. We all move along a spectrum depending on our history, our circumstances, and what is happening in the present moment.

I often think about psychological flexibility in terms of stress and dysregulation. When we're under stress, our attention tends to narrow. We develop a kind of tunnel vision where our focus becomes constricted and our options can feel limited. Psychological flexibility is like having a wider field of vision. We can see more of what is happening around us and within us. 

In real life, psychological flexibility might look like pausing before reacting in an argument, making room for anxiety while pursuing an important goal, adapting when circumstances change, or choosing actions that align with our values even when they're uncomfortable. It doesn't mean feeling good all the time. It means responding to life's challenges with greater awareness, intention, and self-compassion..

6.  Person-Centered Therapy puts the client’s own wisdom and direction at the center of the work. What does that look like in practice when someone comes in not knowing what they need?

When someone comes to therapy not knowing what they need, I don't necessarily see that as a problem to solve. Usually they know something isn't working, something hurts, or something needs attention, even if they can't yet put words to it. It's easy and common to lose contact with our own wisdom and direction when we're in pain or when our understanding of ourselves is changing. And many of us have never had trusted contact with our own wisdom and direction in the first place. It may not have been something we were taught or shown.

In practice, person-centered therapy looks a lot like slowing down, getting curious, and creating enough safety for people to hear themselves more clearly. Rather than telling clients who they are or what they should do, I help them explore their experiences, emotions, values, and desires so that their own direction can emerge. A lot of what this looks like is me holding trust in a person's capacity for wisdom and growth, even when they can't yet see it themselves, and standing on that ground with them as they navigate and explore.

7.  You mention helping clients develop ‘a more compassionate relationship with one’s inner voice.’ What does that inner voice usually sound like for the people who come to you? What’s your goal for what it sounds like when they leave?

We each have a unique inner voice, so it sounds a little different for every client I work with. But for many people who come to therapy, that voice isn't particularly kind or compassionate. It often sounds critical, demanding, fearful, or disappointed. It asks questions like, "What's wrong with me?" "Why can't I get it together?" or "I should be doing better than this." The challenge is that we hear this voice all day long. It's the ongoing conversation we have with ourselves as we make sense of our experiences, navigate challenges, and move through the world. Because it's always there, we can start to believe that the way it speaks to us is normal or even necessary.

Most of us would never speak to someone we love the way we speak to ourselves. Part of therapy is learning that we deserve the same compassion we so freely offer to others. My hope is that your inner voice becomes more like your own best friend, someone who can tell you hard truths when necessary, hold you accountable, and encourage growth, and who does so with kindness, compassion, and a deep belief in your worth and capacity.

8.  Anxiety is one of your specialties. What do most people misunderstand about anxiety that actually makes it harder to address — something you find yourself correcting often?

Two things come to mind.

First, anxiety is an emotional heavyweight. It tends to carry a lot of other experiences under its banner. Insecurity, embarrassment, shame, grief, hurt, anger, fear, uncertainty, you name it. Especially if we grew up in environments where some emotions felt unacceptable, anxiety can become the label we use for almost everything uncomfortable. One of the surprising things about anxiety work is that as anxiety begins to loosen its grip, people often come into contact with other emotions that have been hiding underneath it. Learning how to recognize and make room for those emotions can be an important part of healing.

Second, anxiety isn't the enemy. Anxiety is useful right up until the point that it isn't. It helps us prepare, pay attention, solve problems, and respond to challenges. The goal isn't to eliminate anxiety. The goal is to develop the wisdom to recognize when anxiety is helping and when it has started running the show. A lot of therapy involves learning that distinction and practicing the skills to act on it.

Learn more about Marcia with Part 2!