Empathy Made Me A Good Human Being And Great Counselor – Exclusive Interview With Jennifer McClendon
Jennifer McClendon is a licensed professional counselor and licensed clinical alcohol and drug counselor with over twenty years of experience in the mental health field. Early childhood and young adult experiences led her to counseling for personal growth and created an opportunity for her to become a counselor helping others recover from similar challenges. She specializes in care for substance use, trauma, anxiety, stress, depression, and co-occurring conditions.
Jennifer McClendon, LPC, LCADC
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Jennifer McClendon, born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey and the youngest of my parent’s seven children. Favs... spaghetti, plants/exotic flowers, r&b music, late 80s-90s hip hop era, iced ☕️ Beliefs...sneakers go with everything, iced coffee should be free, and everyone needs healing and love in their life! I love writing and wouldn’t mind having a featured column in a major magazine. My career as a counselor turned 21 this year.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
The name of the business is Renew Counseling, Consulting, and Wellness Services, a private counseling practice that centers wellness and autonomy in its services to treat substance use, mental health conditions, and justice system impacted persons.
People meet me when they are experiencing emotional or psychological discomfort. Counseling is a safe space for people to renew their wellness. It’s a professional relationship that simplifies the process of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and identifying goals. It’s a supportive space that allows people to build or restore their self-confidence and experience healthy change in one or several areas of their life. The expected outcome of our short or long-term work together is renewed wellness and autonomy. Counseling can then become welcomed and not required.
Consulting is provided to businesses who want to improve their quality assurance. The focus is on identifying service gaps, creating services specific to their client’s needs, and measuring the outcomes of the services. Next, reviewing employee workplace practices to learn how wellness is incorporated into the business structure. Then providing strategies that will center employee wellness in the business model. The goal is to prevent burnout and compassion fatigue, while retaining employees.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
Counseling is provided to adults 23 and older. Consulting is provided to businesses who provide a combination of behavioral health, substance use, and mental health services to teens and adults. What are your current goals for your business?
To use a media platform to bring healthy exposure to the brand. The goal is to inform new people and businesses about the services provided, grow the customer base, and build a great team.
What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?
Personal-Maintain my health, wellness, and commitment to learning and growing as a human being. Continue leading with grace and humility.
Business-Establishing the brand as being committed to providing quality consulting and professional counseling services. Demonstrate commitment to using social media as a way for people to connect with the brand and the person behind the brand. Not knowing how to integrate social media with my work and adhere to the regulations for my field has been a learning curve. I look forward to understanding it better and using it for the business in a healthy way.
Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?
All the people who spoke to the good in me when I was trying to figure out my life. The people who encouraged me, prayed with me and for me, didn’t judge me, called out my strengths, and helped me improve in other areas. Those people inspire me to be the best I can be.
What is your work inspired by?
My work is inspired by the people who helped me get where I am today. I met a lot of people who were going through hell but at the same time gave me patience, compassion, and unconditional regard. I am in awe of their ability to have done that and owe them in a way that I don’t think I can ever repay. Their only request is for me to do for others what they did for me; return grace and compassion in a selfless way. My work is also inspired by my lived experiences.
Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
My greatest career achievement is still loading but if I had to choose one, starting Renew Counseling, Consulting, and Wellness Services in 2018 was a big career accomplishment. My intention after college was to become an entrepreneur in my field, but I froze once I achieved my credentials to work independently and stayed in a job relationship where we didn’t need each other anymore. To see myself actualize this goal was overwhelming, really thought I was dreaming at first. This was my first time celebrating a personal accomplishment and giving myself credit for my efforts.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
When I realized my empathy made me a good human being and great counselor, not the degrees or credentials. I don’t think you can learn empathy; it’s cultivated through life experiences. It’s a different outcome when you are speaking to someone who hears and understands what you are saying. Empathy has helped me achieve more in my personal and professional life than any class or test I took. Others saw it and experienced it, but I didn’t realize it for a long time, and it made me curious. I wanted to know what others knew about me that I did not yet know about myself. Why did people say I was a good friend or did my job well? I learned it was the way I treated people and helped others that mattered to them most and empathy allowed me to do that consistently.
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