{"id":252357,"date":"2022-06-19T04:30:17","date_gmt":"2022-06-19T04:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/?p=252357"},"modified":"2022-06-19T04:32:31","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T04:32:31","slug":"qa-hillary-bacon-therapist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/19\/qa-hillary-bacon-therapist\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Hillary Bacon, therapist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Name: <\/strong>Hillary Suhalla Bacon<\/p>\n

Age:<\/strong> 27<\/p>\n

Hometown: <\/strong>Mayfield, Kentucky<\/p>\n

What led to you becoming a therapist?<\/h3>\n

\u201cAfter a conversation with my dad, his education background is in criminal justice. So, I was kind of toying around with criminal justice or social work, and we really talked it out and he was like, ‘You need to go the social work route. And I think that’s what you should do.’ And I value his opinion very much. So, I went with the bachelor’s degree in social work.\u201d<\/p>\n

What made you want to specialize in eating disorders?<\/h3>\n

\u201cI figured out that I wanted to work with people with eating disorders, just based on my own experience and my own testimony. I’m a person of faith. And so I think God used my testimony with my illness, to birth what I was going to do for the rest of my life, and that I would relate to my clients in ways that nobody else could because of my personal experience. My dad had a big influence on that, too, and just my general love for people, but also my own personal experience and eating disorder recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you do on a daily basis at your job and as a student?<\/h3>\n

\u201cI am transitioning from community mental health crisis services to private practice. Right now, my day and my schedule looks pretty crazy. I’m entering an eight-week super intensive semester of school, a summer semester. And by the end of that eight weeks, I will know what my capstone is going to be on. Once I’m fully licensed, I will be moving over to private practice five days a week and I will no longer be working in community mental health as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you manage to balance work and life?<\/h3>\n

\u201cMeeting my boyfriend was really, really, really good for me, as far as giving me a reason just to slow down in life and not work so much. And something that I tell my younger siblings all the time, that I stand by 100%, is that finding out what doesn’t work a lot of times is just as important as finding what does so for me with work-life balance. I just had to find what didn’t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

How long have you been recovering from your eating disorder?<\/h3>\n

\u201cSo I have been in recovery for eight years, this year. April is my recovery anniversary month, because April of 2014 was the month or time in my life where I finally realized that I was very sick and that I had a problem and that I needed help. And that was the first time that I ever saw my therapist, and I continued to see my therapist for the next eight years. I’m not specifically going to therapy for eating disorder stuff anymore. I’m very thankful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

What role did your family have during your journey to recovery?<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe role that my family had in my recovery from my eating disorder was a bigger role than anything or anyone, well next to my faith, but my family, I call them my first treatment team. Because in the beginning when I moved from Bowling Green back home to the Mayfield- Murray area with my family, they were what I had. There were no therapists in the area. There were no informed dieticians in the area. in-patient treatment was not an option for me for a plethora of reasons, but I call my family my first treatment team because they were all I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

What’s your relationship with your siblings like?<\/h3>\n

\u201cI have a very, very deep, intimate bond with my siblings. I have two brothers and a sister. And they’re the most important people to me, this side of heaven. They’re the best love that I’ve ever known and the greatest love I’ve ever known, and I wanted to recover for them. And my initial motivator and recovery was that I didn’t want them to see me angry anymore. I didn’t want them to see me sick anymore. I didn’t want them to see me miserable and just sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

What motivates you to stay in recovery?<\/h3>\n

\u201cI stay in recovery because I want to honor the journey that I’ve been on. I want to maintain all the beautiful progress. I also want to do right by the community, the eating-disorder community, and I want to do right by my profession and my clients as well. Because if I take care of myself and I maintain my recovery then that’s going to allow me to guide my clients towards their own recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Name: Hillary Suhalla Bacon Age: 27 Hometown: Mayfield, Kentucky What led to you becoming a therapist? \u201cAfter a conversation with my dad, his education background is in criminal justice. So, I was kind of toying around with criminal justice or social work, and we really talked it out and he was like, ‘You need to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":252359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,467,462],"tags":[],"staff_name":[476,510],"class_list":["post-252357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-x22","category-xposure-2022","staff_name-cooper-bass","staff_name-gabriella-plasencia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252358,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252357\/revisions\/252358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252357"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=252357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}