Internships at Pelletier Counseling

Hello, potential intern!

Welcome to your launching point for figuring out whether Pelletier Counseling is the right internship site for you. I'll use this page to give you a rundown of who I am and what I think this practice has to offer as an internship site. This website, along with my Psychology Today profile, has been personally written by me — so I think it's a fair representation of my voice and style, and should give you a good feel for both my clinical and personal approach as you decide whether I'm the right fit to help you transition from student to clinician. If you'd rather get a feel for my actual persona, there's a video at the bottom of this page covering more or less the same ground.

First and foremost, I want to address the elephant in the room: this internship is unpaid. I fully support the field's shift toward paid internships and hope to set my practice up for that eventually, but I'm not able to offer it right now. What I can offer instead is something I think is worth considering as a trade: alongside the standard supervision and training you'd expect from any internship site, I'll teach you how to actually run a private practice. I'm an open book on this. There were a number of lessons I had to learn the hard way when I started my own practice, and I'd rather help you skip that process entirely. We'll cover how to set up a practice, how billing works, how to build and maintain a caseload, and anything else that might help you decide whether practice ownership is right for you. If it is, I'll help you get set up from day one after graduation — and you'll take your established caseload with you. If you want to continue our supervisory relationship afterward, we can keep running insurance billing through my existing contracts. If you'd rather seek supervision elsewhere, I'll wish you the best and be genuinely glad to see you succeed.

If you're still reading, I'm hoping this sounds at least a little intriguing — so here's more about me. I graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in May 2011 with a Bachelor's in Psychology, then earned my Master's in Community Counseling from the University of Nebraska–Omaha in December 2013 (the CACREP precursor to your current program, so a lot of our graduate school experience will feel familiar). Since then, I've worked at several community mental health facilities before deciding I'd rather set my own schedule and be my own boss. I opened this practice in December 2018 and moved to full-time private practice in July 2021. It's been a genuinely worthwhile whirlwind — I've been able to build a work/life balance that prioritizes family first, while still offering high-quality care at a pace that keeps me excited to come to work.

Clinically, I primarily use Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Motivational Interviewing, though my training background is broader — TF-CBT, AFFT, Play Therapy, Addiction Counseling, and more. I've also supervised interns before, including one whose primary approach was Play Therapy and another whose primary approach was Art Therapy. Because of that, I don't look for supervisees who share my exact clinical style — I care more about a good personal connection and a real dedication to learning. My goal is to help you grow in whatever direction interests you clinically, not push you toward mine. If you've made it to the internship stage in a CACREP program, I already know you're a skilled clinician. You don't need another teacher pulling you in a particular direction — you need someone to help you feel confident in your own clinical decision-making, especially when things get hard.

Beyond the clinical side, I also want to help you learn to manage the realities of this field. Every program talks about work/life balance, but it's a genuinely difficult thing to actually embody. My biggest frustration in this field is watching talented, wonderful clinicians burn out shortly after leaving school — right when we need them most. So alongside everything above, I want to spend real, intentional time helping you reflect on your own relationship to work/life balance and what that looks like for you specifically. My hope is to help you build a long career in this field, one where you wake up excited to do this work — because it truly is a privilege, even when the secondary stress and vicarious trauma make that easy to forget.

If this all sounds like what you're looking for — or if you have questions, or think I've missed something important — please reach out. I'm always happy to connect, and even if we're not the right fit, I'll be genuinely glad to talk and cheering you on regardless. You can reach me through the Contact page on this site, by email, or by phone.

I look forward to hearing from you, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

-Chris