Meet Lily Hall

We were lucky to catch up with Lily Hall recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lily, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

“Finding your purpose” is such an interesting concept to me. As a mental health therapist, I work with a lot of clients who experience distress around this idea. It’s something we humans seem to struggle with a lot! I believe defining and examining what purpose means to each of us individually is a really important piece. What many people believe their purpose is can actually stem from fear based places- like people pleasing, overachieving/proving our worth, etc. When our “purpose” stems from those places, it can lead to feeling burnt-out, empty, or not enough.

I define my purpose as simply existing; connecting to myself, others, and what’s around me, as well as slowing down enough to experience all aspects of the human experience (even the more uncomfortable ones). Through deep connection with ourselves, we can more easily notice the things that fill us up, bring us joy, and motivate us to keep going. Values and purpose can also go hand in hand, as research has shown that living in accordance with our values can contribute to greater life satisfaction, improved decision making, enhanced resilience, and more meaningful relationships.

For example, some of my values are community, exploration, curiosity, learning, nature, creativity, mindful movement, fun, nourishment, independence, reflectiveness, authenticity, and compassion. From there, there are endless ways that I can live out those values; and living out those values gives me a sense of purpose. It helps me feel authentic, fulfilled, and grounded. I love that values provide a template with a lot of room for interpretation to make it your own and a lot of space to continue evolving. Unlike goals, you can never fully “achieve” a value. The focus is about intentionally continuing to find ways to move towards embodying them.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I work as a mental health therapist within a group private practice, Ember Psychotherapy Collective. I offer individual therapy and specialize in supporting college students, young adults, and adults to compassionately navigate their inner world. Together, my clients and I often work through things like anxiety, depression, trauma, self worth, identity, and relationships. I support my clients in learning to connect to their emotions, understanding how external experiences have shaped internal patterns, healing wounds of the past, finding effective coping strategies, and working towards self-acceptance to create meaningful change.

I specialize in a type of therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. It’s an approach that I’m really passionate about and it certainly helps me feel a sense of purpose in my work. IFS is based on the premise that we all have a complex internal system of “parts” each with their own personality, beliefs, emotions, and sensations. Accompanying the parts of us, IFS also believes that we all have a Self. Our Self is compassionate, curious, and calm and carries patience, persistence, and perspective. Our Self is able to be a witness to difficult experiences, rather than just re-living them or being flooded by them. The movie Inside Out is a really simple and beautiful example of parts and how much of an impact it can have when parts of ourselves are in conflict with one another.

Our parts generally react outside of our consciousness to situations within ourselves and the outside world. IFS allows us to build a more conscious relationship with these parts, which in turn allows us to make more conscious choices about how we respond. All of our parts are trying to help us, but can sometimes get stuck in extreme roles driven by past pain or vulnerability that was too much for us at the time. IFS helps us slow down and really listen to these parts so that we can learn how they came to be, why they’re stuck in these roles, and ultimately help heal the more vulnerable parts that are holding onto past experiences. Once these more vulnerable parts feel helped and seen, protective parts of ourselves are generally freed up to play roles within our system that better serve our present day experience. One of my favorite aspects of IFS is that it views humans as having everything we need to heal already within us, so it’s about finding our way back to that inner resource rather than trying to create it from scratch.

The group practice where I work, Ember Psychotherapy Collective, has four offices- Denver, Boston, Phoenix, and Florida. I am licensed to see clients anywhere in the state of Colorado or Massachusetts!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I would say three qualities that have been most important in my journey have been openness, resourcefulness, and self-discipline. Imposter syndrome is such a real experience and these qualities have really helped me move through it. After finishing grad school, I committed to spending a lot of time to continue educating myself about as many therapeutic modalities as I could. There are so many resources available these days, many of which are free, so I do my best to take advantage of them! I have done this by listening to podcasts, reading books, following experts in various areas on social media, connecting with other professionals, finding online trainings, etc. From there, I was able to gain a broader knowledge of the different approaches and theories and choose what resonated with me most. The openness to learn what all is out there allowed me to make a more informed, intentional decision about what I wanted to focus on. Openness also helps me balance what I already know alongside an awareness that there are always new perspectives and things to learn. Self-discipline has been a really necessary quality because the temptation to fall into auto-pilot coasting or leaning into easier/more immediately rewarding things is so real. Have I fallen off the self-discipline wagon at times? Absolutely! It’s part of the human experience 🙂 But, I do my best to find my way back onto it each time. For me, connecting to my why behind doing hard things, creating tangible goals, and leaving time in my days to be able to chill, lean into the easier things, etc. have all been useful strategies.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

There are a few books that I absolutely love and would recommend to anyone! Self Therapy by Jay Earley and No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz are two of my favorites. They’re great introductions into understanding the framework of IFS and beginning to get to know your own parts. Not a hard read and super digestible for everyone! A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Towards What Matters by Steven Haynes also has a lot of helpful insights around mindfulness and living in accordance with our values.

If you’re a therapist or just someone who enjoys denser reads (it reads a little more like a textbook, but has soooo much valuable knowledge), I will ALWAYS recommend the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk!! It was the first book that really turned my approach to therapy and mental health in an entirely different direction. It facilitated the shift for me to focus more on working from the body up to the brain rather than primarily focusing on the mind and overlooking the value of what our body holds and communicates. This shift has made a huge impact in my own life and has led to a lot of really impactful work with clients as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.emberpsychotherapycollective.com/
• Instagram: @emberpsychotherapycollective