[title subtitle=”words: Dwain Hebda
images: courtesy Whitney Richmond with Yellow Roads Photography”][/title]
Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Ben Storie looks back today and admits that he should’ve opened his counseling practice, Relationship Solutions, long before it actually came to pass this June.
“My wife and I have had different side hustles here and there running conferences or workshops and doing different things,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming about doing my own business for a long time and I think I got kind of stuck in the dreaming category for a few years when I probably should have launched way before now.”
In fairness, it’s not like Ben’s been sitting still the whole time – the Oklahoma native and father of two has spent nearly twenty years in the field of counseling amassing the kind of professional and life experiences that today position him to take on all manner of clients.
“I started working in the field in 1998 when I graduated [from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla.] and I’ve worked in just about every capacity you can,” he says. “I worked in day treatment, out-patient, in-patient, rehab. I’ve worked with families and couples, adult individuals, kids. Covered the whole spectrum.”
Also, during that period, Ben stepped out for three years to pursue a songwriting career in Nashville. He and his wife started a family, welcoming one daughter by natural means and another one by adoption. In between the family moved to Fort Smith to be closer to family, a move Ben called “the best decision we could have made.”
The second best, he said, was to finally take the plunge and open Relationship Solutions.
“I think most counselors, actually I’d probably say all counselors, everybody gets into this business for a reason,” he says. “Maybe it’s because we’ve got our own baggage we’re trying to figure out how to deal with. Or, there’s a pivotal moment in our life where we just really felt like at some point this is the thing.
“Usually there’s a moment or a series of events that leads somebody to the field of counseling. No matter how much money you make, if there’s not purpose and passion involved in it, it’s just too draining. It’s really, really hard work.”
Relationship Solutions is comprised of five counselors and covers a gamut of client segments among individuals, families and couples. Ben says regardless of the specific situation, there are broad elements that all patients share to one degree or another.
“In the context of a secure connection, we can pretty much handle anything life throws at us. So, we’re really in the connection business,” he says. “Whether that’s working with couples or individuals making peace with themselves, so many of us have self-loathing.
“We really see more value in talking to yourself like you would talk to somebody that you really love. If we can help an individual with the connection they have with themselves, we’re setting people up to win. We’re setting them up to have more success in a variety of ways.”
Part of the challenge of providing effective counseling is people often wait far too long to seek help whether out of pride, ignorance or shame. Not unlike other health conditions, the longer one waits to address one’s view of themselves or their ability to function in a healthy relationship, the harder it is to make changes.
“On average, when a couple seeks out counseling, they have been struggling at a serious intensive-care level for six years or more,” he says. “By the time we get them, they’re on life support. So, we’ve got big work to do.
“The reason why a lot of people don’t see a good return on counseling is they just don’t realize how bad things have been for so long. So, when you’re trying to resuscitate things, it may take a while before we get that heart beating again.”
If, however, people seek out help in a timely manner the results can be startling.
“If we can get people through the doors before they have gone to the life support stage, people flourish. It’s like watering a flower. It just blossoms and grows,” Ben says. “If we can get to them before they’re in crisis it’s amazing what we can accomplish.”
Ben says workshops are a good gateway mechanism for getting people to get a taste of what counseling can do, particularly if they have some sort of squeamishness over individual sessions.
“We’re better than we’ve ever been with this whole stigma of mental health, but we’ve still got a long way to go,” he says. “Our primary clientele is always going to be women and wives,;they’re the ones who are dragging their husbands to these things. Most guys assume we’re going to side with their wife and they need to talk about their feelings more. So, we have to overcome some of these obstacles.
“A workshop is less of a time commitment, less of a long-term commitment, and even if we can take care of their relationship just for a Friday night and all-day Saturday event, it just works wonders. Then we’re a little bit less intimidating, people understand more of what we do and some of them choose to follow up.”
Ben says something that sets the practice apart is its focus on a specific type of therapy that has a proven track record on improving relationships, a methodology practiced by all of Relationship Solution’s counselors.
“Every one of our counselors practices a specific model of therapy called emotionally focused therapy,” he said. “There’s been decades-long research that sort of bears out this work that we do. It’s effective. It produces change and there are results. If couples come and see us and are practicing this strategy, they’re going to improve.
“If you are in the context of a safe, secure relationship, almost anything else that life hits you with you can manage. There’s even research that talks about how in the context of a secure connection you can manage pain better, like physical pain. So even though a lot of people come to us and they’re like, ‘Teach us communication skills, teach us how to cope,’ we actually go a level or two beneath that to focus on creating a secure connection. That’s the starting block that we are coming from.”
Since opening its doors, the response to the new practice has been overwhelming, Ben says. While gratifying, it also attests to the level of need that exists within the community.
“I would just encourage people that if you’re stuck or if you are caught in a self-destructive pattern or if you’re just hurting and you can’t make sense of it, sometimes we need outside perspective,” he says. “We need somebody else to take a look at our situation and begin to put pieces together and make sense of it.
“That’s the lane that we really thrive in. That’s what I do all day long and that’s what my team does, too. We take lots of pieces of information and we piece them together and we make sense of your story.”
Relationship Solutions
4019 Massard Road, Fort Smith, Arkansas
479.242.3200
myrelationshipsolutions.com
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