Embracing a Holistic Model of Care in Mental Health with Jennifer Froemel

• Jennifer Froemel, a Licensed Clinical Practicing Counselor, shares her journey in the field of therapy and her holistic approach to healing. She emphasizes the importance of mind-body-spirit connection and offers a wide range of therapeutic techniques, including cognitive behavioral therapy and somatic-based interventions. 

Jennifer's practice, Innovative Counseling Partners, focuses on providing accessible mental health care and offers pro bono services to underserved communities. She also discusses the significance of bilingualism and biculturalism in therapy and the impact of her work as a scout leader. Her advice is to listen deeply to oneself and find a supportive dream team to help achieve one's goals.

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Transcript

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast. I'm your host, Amy Boyle. Today we're joined by Jennifer Froehl of Visionary and Mental Health and Therapy. We're exploring groundbreaking therapeutic techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy to Reiki and how they foster profound change. Jennifer's method is uniquely holistic, prioritizing mind -body -spirit connection for true healing.

We'll also highlight her dedication to community service, inclusivity, and her journey towards resilience and transformation. Let's embark on this enlightening journey with Jennifer Fromel.

Welcome Jennifer to the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I am so glad to be here. You know, as I often do, we need to thank Joyce Martyrs. She's the one that brought us together. Season one, one of her episodes is still one of my all time most downloaded. So she knows incredible people and I can't wait for you to introduce yourself, your phenomenal self to the rest of our listeners.

Thanks, I know, and I'm super grateful for my relationship with Joyce as well. Excellent, would you mind giving the listeners a little bit of background into the Phenomenal You? So I am Jennifer Fromel, an LCPC, so that's a Licensed Clinical Practicing Counselor, for those of you that are unaware, with the alphabet soup that is our world in therapeutic intervention. I have been a therapist now since 1996 when I graduated and have worked in a plethora of different environments, from residential treatment centers to inpatient psychiatric hospitals to clinic settings to integrated clinic settings. And most recently to my own group practice, which everybody has kind of identified. It's a hybrid of a private practice. It's not the private practice that you envision. I think a lot of people on some of those TV shows are sitting in the very posh rooms at the height of the city line. Mine is definitely more related to a Trader Joe's, if you will, of psychotherapy. Because of my model of care, I believe everyone deserves access to good mental health care providers. I like to grow them as well as then help people in the communities.

And when we started, when I started the group practice in 2014, I started the practice with pro bono services right away. Um, and it just continues. So excellent. I love the, the alphabet soup, um, deciphering the master code because there's so many of us that like, now I have MSJ and like before I had the MSJ, I didn't know what MSJ was, you know, it's like, what are those things you're like, oh, right. It means something to me and my colleagues and now I, you know, we can enlighten the rest, but it is, it's a big title otherwise. Yes. Where did the passion and the inspiration come from for you to begin all this? Yeah. So with regards to, you know, wanting to be a counselor or a therapist, it started again, kind of by happenstance. I knew that I enjoyed psychology. I took honor psych in high school andmy teacher was like, you have to do this for a living. And I was like, I'm not gonna do this for a living. I'm never gonna make enough money. And then of course, I went my route that I thought was going to aid and abed me and not having financial issues. And in fact, I found myself in a master's degree program for clinical psychology, just like that. It really is and has been my heart, right? Helping humans to improve themselves is also part of, you know, just who I have always been. You know, finding myself back on the playground when I was seven, you know, to like disputes on the playground and I would find myself in the middle, you know, not because I wanted to be, but because I saw a way through for them that they couldn't clearly see. And I was like, I'm seven. But that's just who I am. That's just how I've been ever since I can remember. That's incredible. I have a similar experience only looking back on it. And I think seven is kind of that magic age, you know, seven, eight, somewhere in there where you're independent enough to know who you, who you really are, but all the other influences fall away and you could just shine through and, the cool thing is when that translates into our adult years and that impact is always who we always were, which I think is fantastic. Now in your practice, you've mastered a wide variety of different therapeutic methods. You know, I saw cognitive behavioral therapy, Reiki, all these different things. How do you know what suits your clients best? And then what has inspired you to add that to your toolkit for helping others?

Yeah, so that's the healer heal thyself, right? Much like in anything, I think a lot of people, you know, again, like Joyce, stumbling into her own financial issues and then finding her way out. And then now here we are, right? The financial mindset fix was born. I have found myself throughout my experience of finding different things kind of as they happen.

I then kind of go deep diving into, well, how do I repair? So I would say that over the course of my time, what's been happening is, you know, I started in the field of community mental health and started really recognizing that in community mental health, the way that the system is currently set up, you really need to learn to be a generalist really as a therapist. Otherwise you're not going to make it, you know.

So in becoming a generalist, I really learned a lot about all the different diagnoses and then what were some of the major methods of efficacy in helping people through them. And then as I dove into my more adult self and started having a family, I started finding things out by virtue of my parenting role. I had identified that it seemed that was something upwards going on with my son and I couldn't really put my finger on it. And so then I started to look for what I started to call like my dream teams of support and ended up discovering that truly like pediatric occupational therapies underpinnings are in psychology. And my son was showing all sorts of signs of having sensory processing issues that were creating difficulties for him in classroom settings.

And so in there, I ended up meeting a couple of people who are just phenomenal humans. And through them, I started to learn about different methodologies like somatic based intervention and started to delve into some of those and then started to do those trainings and then started to do the work with my own clients, not just my kids. And I think that over that time, when I decided to finally kind of the madness of working within these broken systems of psychiatric hospitals and community mental health centers because they all have their own issues in terms of systemic issues that exist. And every summer in community mental health would find myself beating my head against the wall because of the fact that every summer we would be told that we're gonna get grants cut.

And so then we wouldn't be able to provide the services in the same way. So I'd spend the summer twirling around all these possibilities. And finally I was like, you know, what if I just created something else? What if I created something that I would love that I could provide for humanity? And so I partnered with the pediatric occupational therapist. I partnered with a nutrition response DO physician and set up shop in their space. So we were all cohabitating, but cross pollinating each other's work with each other's specialty. And, and then that's how that's how ICP was born. I just really realized that the only way to truly get what is, you know, kind of full human spectrum is to join forces is it's that collaboration and not like, oh yeah, we collaborate with, it's like real collaboration with other providers for the improvement of everyone's wellness. Again, about cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as, I think you said somatic, right? I'm reading a lot more about this, like, you know, things that are trapped physically within us. Can you talk us through that? Like, it's not only a buzzword out there on the internet, but like, it seems to be very effective and I'd love to hear your opinion on that.

So in the work of somatic intervention, what we're really trying to do is get that person to think a little bit of a different way. When you get stuck in that loop, that's where things can go wrong, right? Because you're stuck in the loop. And now your neurons are kind of stuck in that loop. So the work with a client would be to help them let those neurons loosen a little bit.

That they maybe might have a little bit of exposure to what it is that they're fearful about happening. But outside of having the exposure, it's the doing it a little bit differently. It's a thinking about it a little bit differently to see, oh, I am okay. So it's that whole mind -body connection happening simultaneously. So to that point, exactly, how do you help people who think of, I'm coming in for quote unquote therapy to talk to get them to be open to the possibility of recognizing the whole mind body spirit connection for healing or people proactively seeking that because that is what your practice is known for. Because I feel like more people might be less intimidated by therapy if they knew they were doing something almost like you're going to the gym for your brain, right? Like that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, you'd be surprised. Some people are completely unaware of what we do at the practice, you know, even though I feel like the website has really been designed to give people that understanding. Our assessment tool is the very first thing that all of our clinicians do. Our assessment tool is truly doing just what we were just describing. It is identifying mind, body, spirit, not just your relationships with humans, which is I think more of a standard for most of what people think out in America and Europe is that therapy is going to be picking apart at your relationships. Yeah, of course, relationships are impacted by your behavior, by your feelings, by your emotions, by your traumas, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's all we're going to focus on. We're really looking to focus on your potential for wellness. And so we talk about food and people hate it.

They really hate learning about how food is in our America. They really hate to know that if they change it, it could change them. And a lot of people are really stuck in that mindset of like, well, but I've always eaten this way. Right, but food is produced differently than when you were growing up. And the way in which food is produced today is much different than it was produced in the 70s and 80s.

So helping people to understand that. So it's a tip toeing through the tulips process, honestly. I've had arguments for 45 minutes of a session about why almond butter is more important and better than peanut butter. And that, you know, neither of them are totally perfectly ideal. But when you're dealing with an aging child who is struggling with ADHD symptoms and racing thoughts, the last thing you want to do is just give them a bag of goldfish crackers and think that that's going to help resolve their nervous system, because it's not. So it's really interesting, right? Like how things come forward in that process, how people get activated when we're talking about their foods or about movement. Because I always say that our first line of medicine should be exercise and what we put in our body. I couldn't agree more. I recently had a conversation with my primary care and was talking about sleep. And one of the things she says, she's like, at your age, you know, we can talk about hormones, but she's like, let's talk about patterns. Like, what is your relationship with the room itself? What time you go to bed? How long you're in bed? I was like, oh, these were all such obvious things to me after the fact.

I was like, thank you for bringing that up. And it wasn't anything about anything else we were discussing during the appointment, but it's the thing that like a week, two weeks later that has gotten into my brain to go pay attention to that. And that's just, and it could make a big shift. So that's pretty, pretty fantastic. It makes a huge difference. Yeah. We, we have, we assess sleep hygiene. We assess for financial trauma. We're really, we're going after a lot in our assessment process. And it is a long process. I would say it's about three to five sessions long with each session being roughly an hour. But truly at the end of that assessment, we are so aware of so many different things that need to be altered for an individual to be kind of at their most functional wellness. However, a lot of our clients are like, I just want to do a little bit of CBT to get me functional again, because this issue with my mom is really problematic. Okay, but now we have their data. Now they've engaged with us and so then they can come back. We have that assessment. We know, you know, we can re -review that if needed, but that's typically how we do it. Fantastic. And I like the fact that it's so incredibly thorough so that it'll show up other things that, you know, people tend to hold back.

It'll come to the surface a little quicker so that it could be the most effective. When you started your intro, you talked about from the very beginning, you did pro bono work. Tell me why that's so important to you, your practice, and where do you see that going long -term? Well, I see the benefit of providing services to people who otherwise cannot afford to or don't know the value of again, my collaborative model of care for humans has led me to relationships where I'm familiar. So with our location and family focus, I had worked in the community in Cicero for a total of what, 13 years over the course of my experience and had really grown very strong relationships there. And when I left the community, I inquired if they would be interested in having access to therapists and they said, oh my gosh, Jennifer, that would be such a gift because we don't have a budget for that. All we have a budget for is from our grant and all that is is to provide these very basic buckets of service. And so yeah, if we could have your people and just provide you a space to do that in, yeah, we wanna do that.

And so in my mind, I was like, okay, that sounds great. I'm going to feel better knowing that when I left that community, they're not going to be high and dry without any support. And I'm also giving back to a community that I had been in for so long and was really well connected with. But bigger than that for me was the reality that I could help interns.

I could help growing clinicians to have similar experiences with populations that I had worked with myself. And that really, I think has altered how I have grown up a therapist. Because otherwise, I don't think I would necessarily be who I am today without having worked with those populations. And so when we started the internship process,

I said, all right, so you guys have one day of your internship time that must be donated to Family Focus. And then the rest of the time, we can have you work and learn about insurance -based interventions and things like that, and help out with back office. So for me, that pro bono intervention was so important because it provided both myself and those interns with that ongoing process of learning of what is it like to live in an area and really not be able to process through those experiences in a healthy way. And so we started in Cicero and then in 2020, before COVID happened, we started expanding into Aurora and Glendale Heights. And both, again, those communities did not have the support that they needed. So we currently get referrals from Cicero, Glendale Heights, and Aurora. And then this year, we started working with a wonderful organization called Community Health. Again, another one of my great relationships from back in the day, working in a FQHC. She reached out, we were talking, and she said, you know, we only have one provider who does therapy for the entire organization. And it is a completely volunteer organization.

The doctors are not paid, the nurses are not paid, the therapist is not paid. The only person that takes an income is the executive director for running everything. Community health has been integral in going out to those immigrant sites and assessing what their needs are, assessing some things that have happened, assessing for traumas that have happened in this process. This year started having an intern in their West side location of the city.

And this coming year, we're expanding to two providers there to give those services in that community. And presently, we are looking at expanding services into Kathmandu and Nepal. I last year completed a big lifetime goal of mine, which was to hike to Mount Everest Base Camp. And in doing so, I really fell in love with the people, the Nepali people.

And while I was out there, I learned that they do not have a budget line item at all for social services in that country. They are that poor. They are the seventh poorest country in the world. And I found out that they have a ton of problems with sexual abuse of youth. And there are very few residential places where those kids can go to, to feel safe and to heal.

from what they've experienced. And so in my time there, I ended up partnering with the gentleman who was part of my group. And I've now been working with his cousin who basically heads up that residential program in Kathmandu. And we're looking at the potential of us starting to provide free services there, either this fall or next spring.

There's a big time difference. This is a 12 hour time difference. So we're like, okay, we could do a 7 a .m. appointment or we could do a 7 p .m. appointment. But again, that concept of like, if we provide something, is that better than doing nothing? And so far, what our answer is, is yes, it is. I love the vision and expansion. And I want to go back to you mentioning it was community health, correct? On the website.

The importance of language. I know that your practice has a lot of bilingual therapists. And how important is that to making sure that the program is successful? Yeah, so important. So again, another funny little story, a little snippet. Back in the day when Jennifer was young, she got a Spanish Cabbage Patch Kid and became immediately like enthralled with all things Spanish and Spanish speaking. And then in seventh grade I started taking Spanish and just continued all the way through college. So I am bilingual myself and it's so important to me, I think, to realize that the world is bigger than just English speaking.

And so I value that tremendously and I respect it and I understand why in fact clients would prefer to speak to someone who either speaks their language or looks like them. And again, you know, as a white woman, I don't necessarily know if everybody would understand it that way, but because of my experience and because of my bilingualism, I do get it and it's very much important to me. I quit jobs where they knew I spoke Spanish and they had me interpreting for master's level interns. I was like, no, this is not the same. So at the practice again, outside of our trauma informed trauma approaches being very important, our integrative assessment being very much important. The biculturalism and the bilingualism is very important to me. Does that make it hard for our work? Yes, it does. It makes it hard for me as a manager because, yeah, I mean, if I lose somebody who's bilingual and who is fully licensed, now it's a task of mine to figure out how to replace them and get those clients what they need and just ensure that those services continue in the way that I know that is best for them. I recently, as I'm going through the process right now of hiring our next batch of interns, which now we take 10 a year. So when I started, we took three, we take 10 a year. And as I'm interviewing these new people, I'm realizing that I don't just interview them for internships.

I interviewed them for the potential to stay here and find a home here. And recently we were looking over our roster and I counted of our 42 clinicians, 21 of them have at one time or another been one of my students. I guess it is a big deal, right? Like that whole idea, if I build it, they might come and they might find a home here. It's happened.

So it's exciting. And then, you know, to have other people come in and feel that feeling where, you know, they previously had never felt that before. It's just been really great. That must be incredibly rewarding and a nod to the success of what you offer that people can say and grow because, you know, in a society where a lot of people are job hoppers these days, it's so important to have that ability to grow within where you are and that it feels like it's mutually beneficial for all parties involved. So that's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. On a, on a side note, uh, when I was reading your bio, I love the fact maybe because it hit a chord with me that you talk about being a scout master and a scout leader. Um, I myself had been a scout leader for 10 years and I wonder what does that mean to you in regards to what you're doing now and where was your initial draw for?

That's a big role all into itself or a big responsibility. We'll put it that way. So I'd love to hear more about that. Yeah. So, um, again, when I was seven, uh, I was a Girl Scout and it was a short lived timeframe. I was a Girl Scout for about a year and then, uh, we moved and I never found another troop. Uh, then in college, uh, it was my, I would say my senior year, I believe I was invited to work at a Girl Scout camp and live in a tent for the summer in Wildrose, Wisconsin. And it was amazing. And it was so good. And honestly, one of the goals that I have for the practice and just clinical, my own clinical growth is to create an eco retreat resort kind of setting in like the Starved Rock area.

Where providers could provide services amidst nature and aid our folks and reconnecting to themselves and healing. Um, so that is a goal of mine. When I spent that summer, you know, it was like two and a half months in the forest. Working with kids, I ironically found that I had a girl with Tourette's. I had a girl with trichotillomania where you, the hair pulling. I had another girl who had severe anxiety. I had another girl with bedwetting issues due to some trauma and abuse. And it was like, oh, they're in my group. Like there's seven other groups here, but they're in my group. Well, I guess this is supposed to happen. I love teaching them and being alongside them as they find new things, right? Amidst nature within themselves. And as a scout leader, so I started off with my girls being Girl Scouts when they were five, and I have continued to be their leader. And then in 2018, when we were out at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, the girls turned and looked at me and said, so now that there's the potential for girls to be Boy Scouts, will you do that too?

So basically I run both a Girl Scout and a Boy Scout troop simultaneously. And what we do in Girl Scouts can work for the Boy Scouts and vice versa. I infuse a lot of the Girl Scout methodologies in with the Boy Scout methodologies. And when we're looking at advancement, we're simultaneously advancing on both the Girl Scout and the Boy Scout side. What my daughters kind of drew to my attention was that as they've been talking to friends who've graduated, and are looking to colleges, they're like, ma, there is like nothing for girls to be lifetime Girl Scouts when they go to college. But if you're an Eagle Scout, that's a big deal. So I said, good point. So I've talked to the higher ups at Boy Scout level, and they are all like, whatever you do. I mean, all that matters is that you are infusing the skills and fusing those methodologies that we, you know, we are and doing those things with your girls. So that's really kind of my thing is like my girls wanted the opportunity to try to keep doing both. And so I said, if it doesn't kill me, I'll keep trying, I'll keep doing it. So of course, I'm going to the Girl Scout thing for this training, I'm going to the Boy Scout thing for this training, just to stay in the mix. But I really, really enjoy that time, that skill building. We were at the first aid meet and I think there were 15 groups there and I think our group landed five. I'm like, five is good. Fifth place is great. And we're a small but mighty troop. And so I really love that. I love seeing them kind of light up. I currently have a parent who keeps coming to all the meetings.

And at the end of the meeting, she sends me these long texts or she calls me and she says, I never knew these things. I'm the parent of three kids and I never knew these things. And I feel so lucky that I'm getting to know them now, you know, and I'm like, that's great. So she's kind of like my fifth, you know, scout in the truth. That's awesome. I love it when there's a gun that synergy that crossover that is natural, but impactful. And then to your daughter's point, like, well, what about college applications? Cause I have only sons. And so only one of my four sons took it all the way to Eagle. But the same thing, like that was a big deal. They're like, okay, well, we can't make Eagle. We better get life scout because that's something that could stay on a resume for the rest of our lives. And I'm like, to your point and you know, speaking of phenomenal, we need to make sure that this should count for any of the scouting for girls and women as well, because it is so vital to who we are as people, survival, simple things and complex things, you know, how to start a fire, how to change a tire, all these things matter. So kudos to you for taking that on.

Well, you know, oh my gosh, I don't even know how it always does. The time goes so darn fast. If we were to distill down one piece of advice for someone breaking into the industry, being open to therapy, anything in that range for making a difference, what is your main go -to advice for the audience at this point in time?

My main advice would be really listen deeply to yourself, that you have the answers. And even if it seems like it's scary, the reality is, is when you lean into it, it's usually the best thing you could have ever have done. And to truly find a dream team of support that helps enable those wishes and those visions that you have, because they can happen. I love that. And we are stronger together, period. And so I fully believe that 100%. Well, I'll make sure that all your links are listed in the show notes as well. Is there anything specific for how people can reach out to you beyond, you know, just we'll say it out loud as well, because some people are audio. Some people are visual learners. Right, right, right. I would say are probably the best is going to our website, which is not short. It's innovative counseling partners .com You'd be able to find my bio and link there. You could also find me on LinkedIn at Jennifer Fromel. And then you could also find me on Facebook and Instagram under Innovative Counseling Partners as well. And I'm really open to fielding any questions that people have. I really enjoy that process of processing through somebody's thoughts.

Obviously, right? That's what I do for a living. So I'm more than happy to do that with any of the listeners. Excellent. Well, I certainly hope that a handful or more reach out because it's when that magic of conversation happens that doors are opened and windows are open for many, many people down the line. So thank you again. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Speaking of Phenomenal.

Be sure to subscribe, rate, review, and even share the podcast, as well as stay tuned for more inspiring conversations. Remember, each and every one of you is capable of extraordinary things. Until next time, take care and remember, you are phenomenal.