Autumn Maxwell

The best advice I've ever received came from my dad, who has always said since I was little, 'You owe it to yourself to see where you stand with a person.' This has really shaped my level of discernment when creating connections. It allowed me to be fearless in my interactions and my ability to just love and connect with people. As someone who's naturally a little bit sensitive and shy, I think that advice has given me a good foundation to really be able to discern connections and opportunities that align with me, and ones that don't. If I put myself out there and it goes good, I see now where we stand and that this can actually go somewhere, which opens up new doors. It's helped me overcome the fear that sometimes we can have as women to make connections, go out there, put ourselves out there, or advocate for ourselves.

If I had to hit it with a one-liner, I'd say honestly, just knowing your why. I really believe that if you know who you are and you know why you're doing what you're doing, you can align your life with that. A lot of times, especially with young people fresh out of high school going into mental health or the military, it's just like, okay, I don't have an idea, we're still trying to find ourselves, I don't know who I am, so I'm just gonna do this thing or make this commitment. But the military, for example, you're making a really, really big commitment that could end really great, or there are implications to that sometimes. So I guess just going through it knowing why you're doing it and what do you want to get out of it. I think that will kind of align you with what best fits who you are.

There's just this mental health epidemic happening right now. Especially with the intersection of social media, a lot of adolescents and young adults are really experiencing an uptick of mental health disorders. They have the information to self-diagnose and go a little bit further than we would like. The numbers are staggering - there's one therapist in Dallas for every 3,000 clients, or something like that. It's really hard because there's a lot of people who need care, but just getting therapists to the point where we have that visibility so they can connect with us is a challenge, especially in private practice. One of the biggest challenges I'm seeing is that there are a lot of people that are suffering, and we're trying to connect with other therapists and work together communally so that we can provide care for these people. This isn't just happening in Texas, but everywhere - it's just not enough people in the field.