Today we’d like to introduce you to Madi O’Malley.
Hi Madi, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I opened my therapy practice a year ago as a telehealth option throughout the state and in-person availability near Ocean City, but a lot had to happen to make that dream a reality. My mom told me over and over again, “Don’t waste your twenties.” Once I hit 20 years old, it was like the race had begun. So began the decade wherein I would earn two degrees, get married, have two children, and buy a home.
I guess the first step into this journey was at St. John’s College in Annapolis. I graduated from its Great Books program with a deep appreciation for philosophy, a thirst for existential inquiry, and a lot of worry about how to make these skills marketable in the job world. After a lot of self-examination (the only life worth living, after all) I realized a red thread that ran throughout my life: I wanted to help people and I loved hearing their stories. It didn’t hurt that I was no stranger to mental health needs myself. The fall after graduating St. Johns College I was accepted to Johns Hopkins in their Clinical Mental Health program. I also found out I was about to be a very unexpected mom. In 2015, with hands covered in glitter from making decorations for my daughter’s first birthday party, I began my graduate program. Three years later, I had a diploma, a license, and now two children.
As my career grew more mature, I was eager to find my place in the world of mental health care. For a while, I worked with a population as broad and as general as people from 4 years old to nearly 80. I learned from every single person I worked with and truly feel incredibly grateful for their generosity, honesty, and openness. I also began to learn more about myself as a therapist. I loved being a generalist. Every day was something new. Sometimes I was helping a high schooler work up the courage to ask someone out and sometimes I was helping a parent grieve. Every relationship deepened my understanding of the depth of the human experience and the needs that unite us all.
Over time the perfect synthesis of all my varied interests emerged: sex therapy. As a clinician who now specializes in sex therapy, I sit at the crossroads of so many intersections. My work requires a sharpened skill set to work with body-related concerns, relationship issues, gender expansiveness, the minimization of people, social justice, addiction, trauma, and more. Sometimes it’s hard, but it is never boring.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Despite my decision to set course through my twenties with very clear goals in mind, it was not at all smooth sailing. My first pregnancy was unplanned and a little bit of a detour. My second interrupted the semester I was supposed to be completing my practicum and there is no maternity leave from an internship.
My marriage struggled greatly as the weight of everything continued to bear down on us. We went from silly, carefree, slightly obnoxious 20-somethings to facing addiction, debt, and a stress-induced eye twitch that lasted over three months. I remember being in the aisle of Shoppers Food Warehouse in Annapolis when Taylor Swift’s “22” came on. My best friend and I had been blaring that song less than six months ago as we celebrated our graduation. And, then, there I was trying to figure out how to use my WIC checks (they were checks back in the day), pregnant, with a term paper due. I did not feel 22 anymore.
Despite significant financial barriers which required me to work three jobs at one point, I was able to accomplish what I wanted. Unfairly, this is not true for everyone. What were hurdles for me become total brick walls to others and the therapy field at large suffers for it. I have also experienced my share of mental health and relationship struggles, as well as withstanding the depleting nature of Lyme disease. There have been times that I have doubted myself as a therapist with thoughts like, “If I can’t figure it out what good am I to anyone else?”
Sometimes that question still haunts me but what I can say definitively is that my struggles allow me to have true empathy for clients. When a couple comes in to say they feel hopeless in their marriage I don’t just feign compassion, I can feel the pain. And then, we get to work.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I opened Catharsis Counseling in January 2023. I am a “solopreneur,” so I have my hands in every aspect of my business (it’s kind of like working three jobs again!) I specialize in relationship and sex therapy, which more simply means, I help people develop more secure emotional, intimate, and/or sexual relationships with themselves and their partner(s).
I am proud to be able to witness people growing closer with their partners or feeling more free in their sexuality. I am trained to keep my emotions out of the therapy room, but the time that I am most likely to tear up is when I see a couple look at each other with their defenses down and express how much they miss one another and how happy they feel to be doing the work we are doing. The world we live in currently is a tough one. So many people just want to feel like they have a partner through it all. I love helping them find a way back to this.
I am not the therapist for everybody but I am perfect for those who crave authenticity with a dash of philosophy. I pull from the latest and greatest therapeutic theories but also weave in the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Nietzsche, and Epictetus, usually with a coffee mug glued to my hand and sitting in some weird criss-crossed manner. I have a dry humor that frequently flies out, I cuss, and I will openly tell a client if I don’t know something.
My care for the person or people in front of me is never hidden from my face despite being told several times in graduate school to, “Fix your face, counselor.”
What are your plans for the future?
This year, I will be completing my PhD in Clinical Sexology. I plan to continue to grow my practice to support my family while they achieve their goals.
My long-term goal is to establish or grow an existing union for mental health care workers in the state of Maryland. Many new graduates in the mental health field, armed with nothing but theories and hope, are given the highest acuity clients which is neither fair nor effective for the client or therapist. The need for mental health care is increasingly apparent, but what struggles to become actualized is accessibility to this education and licensing requirements, a salary that will allow someone to pay back student loans, and more employment opportunities that are not predatory or burnout-inducing.
Mental health care workers are supposed to have parity with other medical professionals–meaning we are supposed to be paid a similar rate–but despite having one of the most extensive amounts of requirements, the field is one of the lowest paid. With the advent of national telehealth providers, therapists are offered some relief from the scare tactics and low-balling of insurance companies, but generally, therapists in their employ are independent contractors with no employer-sponsored healthcare, no 401k, and no PTO.
For many social workers and licensed professional counselors, our credentialing boards are not interested in or not effective in changing policy. Protection for mental health techs or assistants is non-existent. I have heard it asked before, “Do you need a therapist or do you need a union?” I believe it’s time to have both.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.catharsiscounseling.net/
