Provider Spotlight: Lee Freeman, LPCC, MS, MA
Lee Freeman, LPCC, MS, MA
Lee is a newer member of the ICC, and has recently started a private practice. I can tell from speaking with him that he’s a good guy with a good heart! I love how he has a specialization in Christian and faith-based counseling. We all benefit from having a diversity of providers in our community that can meet clients where they are at and help speak their same language. Learn more about him and how he practices below!
Cole: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Lee: With experience in church and organizational leadership, Lee decided to go into counseling after teaching high school for a decade, where he saw up close and personal the need for more mental health support for teens. In teaching, Lee found that the best moments often happened when students were provided opportunities to discover things for themselves rather than having a teacher tell them. He takes a similar approach in counseling, striving to ask good questions rather than dispensing profound statements.
Lee loves counseling partly because it is so inspirational. He continually bears witness to awe-inducing displays of strength, resolve, vulnerability, resilience, love, faith, forgiveness, gratitude, and more.
In counseling, Lee is sometimes reminded of an advanced course he taught in the high schools, where students could earn college credit if they performed well enough on their assessments. Some students in those courses walked in at the beginning of the course with enough skill to pass the test immediately. Others, however, had to work much harder in order to excel. Students who earned a passing score would invariably have an “aha moment” where they understood the heart of the course, but these moments happened unpredictably at all different points throughout the year. Some came by it easily, but a few didn’t feel that tearful triumph until the last weeks of the school year. Always, Lee’s role was the same: meet them where they were and help them navigate the path to where they wanted to be, perpetually holding onto hope and lending some when needed.
Lee finds counseling to be quite comparable in this regard. As a teacher at Loveland High School, Lee won the Thompson Award of Excellence and was selected by the student body as their 2017 commencement speaker, using his signature blend of humor and encouragement in a speech entitled, “You Are Going to Fail.” Lee has been married to his high school sweetheart for over 14 years, works extensively with foster care, and enjoys creative pursuits such as writing and singing.
Cole: Tell us a little bit about how you practice. What are your specialities, if any? What clients do you love to work with?
Lee: I work with males ages 12 and up, couples, and groups in conflict. Many of my clients come to work with me because they are looking for a Christian therapist who understands and shares their faith values. As a former high school teacher, I especially enjoy working with adolescents and young adults. Most of my clients are working on some combination of anxiety, depression, relationship issues, pornography addiction, faith issues, and/or life transitions.
Cole: Why did you decide to get into the work that you do now?
Lee: My sister-in-law (Erin Owens) is a therapist. Her enthusiasm and skill really inspired me, as well as community members who would talk about how she helped them and made a difference for their families. As a teacher, I also witnessed up close and personal the teen mental health crisis. Before I received my mental health training, I felt ill-equipped but desperate to do something addressing the vast need in our community.
Cole: What are some of the biggest challenges facing mental health providers today, in your opinion?
Lee: We need insurance reform. Sadly, too many of the best mental health providers do not accept insurance because they don't want to deal with the extra work and potential clawbacks, which of course creates a systemic classism in mental health. I think another issue is lack of protection for therapists. Far too many good therapists live under a cloud of anxiety about the liability they bear for things mostly beyond their control. This dissuades good counselors from being supervisors or from working with certain populations for fear of risk exposure.
Cole: Where do you see the future of mental health care going?
Lee: I'm really not sure, other than the obvious answers like current trends continuing. That being said, I don't think our profession is going away any time soon. I could see tools like AI being used to augment therapy, but the vast majority of my clients need more human emotional connection, not less, and they recognize this. In many ways, I think mental health care is timeless, and I think much of the future will revisit the past, reclaiming the value of things like spirituality and close community relationships that have fallen out of vogue in recent years.
Cole: What’s one thing you recommend that all your clients do to see lasting impact in their lives?
Lee: There isn't really one thing; I much prefer a highly personalized approach. That being said, I believe there is no such thing as being too compassionate to yourself or others.
Cole: Where can people find you?
Lee: https://www.leefreemancounseling.com/post/what-jesus-and-a-broken-grill-can-teach-us-about-relationships
