An Interview with Brock Grace: Male Counselor in Winston-Salem
Brock Grace has worked in the mental health field since 2006 and has experience working with all ages, demographics, genders (including trans and non-binary), and ethnicities. He has has a passion for working with youth, and was a Counselor in partnership with the William G. White Jr. YMCA of NWNC for 2 years. Brock Grace is a male counselor in Winston-Salem who owns his own private practice in Winston Salem at Give Grace Counseling.
This interview touches on the thought behind his welcoming office space, his philosophy in working with kids in his counseling practice, and how he collaboratively integrates parents into the counseling process. - Travis
Interview with Male Counselor Brock Grace
Office Space
Travis: I've come to your office a few times and met you in your space. One of the things that is immediately clear is that your office is set up to really make boys and young men feel comfortable. It's a space that somehow is both cool and appropriate at the same time. I'd love to hear what in to that creation of your space.
Brock: If I'm being 100% honest with you, the creation of my office space is a perfect combination of my wife and myself. There's a lot of colors in the office, bright loud colors. That's a lot of me. As far as the organization and things and let's say as far as my degree is being framed, that's all her touch. So the posters on the wall of course, I wanted those things up, but then she said we need to add some light matting to offset the colors for it. So that's a perfect combination of me and my wife Danielle kind of brainstorming together: me giving into some of her thoughts from a woman's point of view, because at first when I designed it, you know, I was getting a masculine look and she was like soften it up a little bit. So she came in did her touch and I kind of got out the way grudgingly. I'll put it that way. Then between the back and forth, we came up with what you you've seen that.
Travis: And how do your clients: boys and young men, tend to react when they first see that space and encounter it?
Brock: Oftentimes, young boys are pleasantly surprised right off the bat. There are things in my office that they can easily identify with. Whether that's some of the Marvel characters that are on the wall or the poster of Miles Morales, or the basketball. It takes a lot of the stress away. Usually they're expecting to see someone else when they come and their parents let them see my profile first. During the first encounter, we just talk about things that they liked, that I liked, and we get to know each other.
Travis: That totally makes sense. It sounds like it breaks down the distance between you and your clients and allows them think ‘oh, maybe this is someone I can feel safe with…be honest with.’
Brock: Absolutely.
Counseling Experience
Travis: I know you have done it all in the counseling world: residential treatment facilities, group homes, outpatient therapy…I’d love to hear how all those different experiences inform your work with clients today.
Brock: It allows me to, one, meet the client where he or she is. If they are 7-8 years old…I've worked with kids in different populations from high school to middle school to even college age. So I try to use my background to let them know that no matter what they're going through, it's probably something I've already assisted somebody with and that the way the clients feel is ‘okay, he has some experience dealing with teenage male related issues’.
I try to keep things very open and honest with the kids. If there's something that they present as new or challenging, I'll let them ‘hey, I don't know too much about that. Let me do my research on it and then we can pick that back up next session’, but I always start with where they are, and then we build from there.
Usually when I meet kids for the first time I have the parents outside of the room. I'm asking the kid a lot of questions just to get to know each other. At the very end, I bring their parents in and myself and the parent or guardian will work on what they think the kid should be focused on. I have already executed the same questions like ‘hey, what do you want to work on with me?’ And I take there direct input when they say ‘hey, I want to be better at sports. I want to control my anger’ or, you know, peer pressure and things like that. Then, I'll allow mom or dad to come in and get their feedback. And from there the three of us or four of us, we then come up with a plan of action to best help the client.
Partnering With Parents
Travis: I'd love to hear more about that. It’s a really interesting topic: how you work with the parents of the clients you’re seeing. That’s one of the unique things about therapy with minors.
Brock: The way I work with parents is I explain to the kids before the parent comes in, ‘hey, what you're talking about is confidential’. I will let them know that I like to do what I call a session overview. If the kid talks about anger or we did some activities on anger, I'll share with the parent the activity that we did, maybe the worksheet or the game that we played or the skill that we created today. I won't go into details about if little Johnny said ‘well, two days ago, my mom made me mad because she took my PlayStation 5 away’, but I will show the parent a blank copy of the worksheet so they get a gist that these are the focal points that we worked on…these are the skills that we practiced and learned today. Sometimes I give them a direct link if I show the kid like a video. I say ‘hey, here's a video you can use as the parent’, and she can look back later on and look at it and that way she knows exactly what me and little Johnny went over the day. Mom and dad to stay connected in sessions, but it also allows the kid to feel free to talk about whatever it is he or she needs to talk about.
Travis: That's so so good. As a parent, if your child is in therapy you just sort of drop them off into this black box…you don't know what's happening and you think ‘I hope something good is happening but I really have no idea’. Just having any sense of what is happening in that space is so comforting as a parent. And you’re right that you also need that confidentiality part for the children and youth to feel comfortable.
Brock: I found that it helps the parents buy into it because if I give little Johnny a homework assignment and it's ‘I hate my homework’ Johnny can work on this worksheet with his parents. I found that sometimes the parents will actually help them answer some questions. So it now takes it back to the parent child dynamic where the mom is teaching Johnny coping skills or Johnny sharing with his mom. When we did this in session I might say ‘hey, can you now do this with your brother?’
Now the whole family knows some deep breathing techniques or some anger management tools and things like that because you and I both know it's not just the kid who's having an issue…it’s affecting the whole family.
Counseling Theory
Travis: I love that. When I hear worksheets my mind goes to a cognitive behavioral lens…I'd love to hear what the theory is that you draw from, and how you understand what happens in the room when you're with a client.
Brock: I draw a lot from the CBT lexicography in therapy: trying to get kids to understand how their actions, their behaviors and their consequences all line up together. Oftentimes, I'll do the CBT triangle with kids during one of the sessions and we'll talk about ‘hey, based on our triangle, what was your actions leading to this behavior? What was the consequence that led you to do this?’
Oftentimes we draw on the whiteboard to give them visuals of, ‘hey, you felt that this kid really didn't like you? So therefore your action was to punch him? What were the consequences, you being suspended? Now, what would happen if you felt like he bumped into you and it was a total accident?’ They'll say, ‘well, maybe I would have walked away’. I say, ‘well, what are consequences that actually happened’ and so we kind of work on that in session and there are some games I have dealing with mindfulness and getting them to slowly change the way they think about situations…to learn that how we think about something controls the whole outcome, I think.
Travis: Yeah, that's great.
Brock: And with the mindfulness activity, I incorporate it with the parents. Let's say if we do the game with the kid, I’ll say ‘hey, are there any questions that I asked you that you want to know from mom and dad?’. The kids like to see how they answered and it gives a kid the chance to be the teacher back to their parents. And I know it puts a parent on the hot seat because they don't know what we've talked about. But it allows for that genuine conversation. I’ll say ‘mom, tell us about how you got mad and you responded inappropriately’. Now it makes the parent more approachable so that she or he can talk to their son or daughter.
Partnering with Parents Part 2
Travis: What I'm hearing Brock is that in the relationship with you and your clients, you’re not just uniting with the client and pitting the son against the parents. It sounds like you’re asking unifying and collaborative questions like ‘how do we all all come together? How do we all be on the same team, and then everyone wins’.
Brock: Yes. I was taught early on in this field that our job is to work ourselves out of a job. We help the person by teaching the skills, and then you kind of fall back in their lives. And I found that the best way to do that is to also educate the mom or the Guardian on the skills we're working on so that once you know they're no longer in therapy, they can practice these skills. The client is with us one hour a week. They're with their parents for the next seven days.
Travis: Oftentimes parents fall into either two camps of either a) not helping their children name any goals or any direction, or b) the parents give the child their own goals and dreams. What I'm hearing Brock is that you create space to help the child find their own goals and take ownership of their own individual and unique dreams. There's a lot of power there.
Brock: That is true because if we are motivated ourselves to work towards something, we'll put more effort and energy into it. If I were to say ‘Travis, you now have to do this’. You may say, ‘well, I don't want to, so I'm not going to put the effort into it’.
And you're 100% right. Sometimes parents say, ‘well, my kid's gonna do this’. It's like, is that what they really want to do and are you working against your kids true desires, and is there a common ground that mom gets a little bit of what she wants and your son gets he wants to create an overall positive dynamics?
Interest/History In Counseling
Travis: I'd love to hear your story of how you got into counseling.
Brock: Going from high school to college, I thought I was going to be an accountant. I like math. I was good with numbers in high school. I did my undergrad at Minnesota State and I took one accounting class. I was like, ‘there's no way I could do this for the rest of my life’.
I did okay in the class, but the assignments and things made me just like…I can't do this. I can't wake up every day and this is my life.
Right around that same time, they were opening a program called for rehabilitation. It was brand new to the school. My aunt was one of the counselors there. I was sitting in her office and I was like, ‘Auntie, accounting is not going to be my business’. And she's like, ‘well, what about psychology?’ And I was like, ‘well, I like it, but I don't know too much about it’.
I took some classes in high school, but she got me on the track for rehabilitation studies, and they were offering scholarship money. So it was like, well, here's a program that is going to pay for school and give me some tuition reimbursement. As I learn more about it, it became really fascinating to me, and then I eventually went on to get my master's and am currently working on my doctorate.
It just so happened that when I finished, a classmate of mine who graduated a semester before me, said, ‘I know a company that's hiring. Would you be interested in working with elementary school individuals, or middle school individuals?’ And so I got a chance directly to go into the school system and I've loved it ever since.
Travis: That's great. I'm so glad at such a young age you were able to recognize truths about who you are. I'm so glad you had that wisdom and self-awareness at such a young age in college.
Brock: Now, also in college, I was doing construction work. So I would do construction work around my class schedules. My grandfather had a construction business. And I just knew that it wasn’t meaningful work. It was great. A lot of the people in my family do it…but it's too hot in the summers, and too cold in the winters, and I was like, ‘I can't do this and I'm not going to be an accountant’. And when I learned more about psychology and rehab studies, it was like, ‘hey, this is gonna actually work’.
Travis: Can you share more about how your time in rehabilitation studies informs your work with clients today?
Brock: Rehab studies helped me understand the psychology behind things, but also works with individuals with physical disabilities. So part of my track took me to another company that worked with people who have more physical challenges. I got a chance to work with that population. What it taught me is to meet people exactly where they are, and not where I think there should be. Everybody comes in at different cognitive or physical ability. And it's like okay, they have their goals and where they want to be but Brock, ‘how do you know where the client ultimately where he wants to go?’
Travis: I'm hearing there may be a connection between rehab studies and how you talked early about helping clients find their individual goals and the importance of creating a supportive and open environment to help them…really listening to who they are and how they desire to change instead of coming in with your own preconceived notion of what change in their life needs to look like.
Brock: One of the things I do with that: let's say I get a lot of school referral. A lot of times they'll give you a packet this thick of everything that's wrong with this kid. I always read that after I meet the child, because I don't want to have a preconceived notion about what other people say Johnny's done. Let me meet him for the first time. I'll keep it very transparent with the kids and say ‘hey, I understand that you've gotten in trouble at school. It's in the school referral, but I want to know who you are, what you like and don't like’.
I get to know them before I read anything that's five years outdated about this kid, because to me that allows the kid the chance to one change and also to feel like this person is not judging me, based on a bad experience I might have had two years ago with a teacher who, let's be honest, might not have been the best teacher, the kindest person to that child.
Travis: What do you find most meaningful about your work?
Brock: The counseling field to me is great because it allows you to meet people that you otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to meet. And as you're helping people, it allows you to reflect on the work that we do. Oftentimes, we don't get a chance to be rewarded for it until after the process is done. What I mean by that is I've had the chance to bump into clients and parents, years after I work with them. The mom or dad will say ‘hey, little Johnny is now in prospect scholars you know, making good grades, he's no longer getting in trouble’. Those things are very meaningful.
I had an opportunity with the very first client I started working with when I started Give Grace Counseling. I was leaving Black Panther with my wife and my daughters. She just went to the bathroom. I'm standing outside holding her pocketbook and I see the mom in the lobby and she was like,’can you come here for a second?’ I'm like, ‘sure, if you want me to’ (because I wasn't gonna go approach her for confidentiality reasons). II had a chance to see her son who I worked with, and she gave me a pleasant update about how he's just thriving in school now. So stuff like that is very rewarding for this field. And that's kind of what I appreciate.
Hi, I’m Travis.
My clients describe me as calm, compassionate, and curious…
You have these qualities inside you at your core too. You just need a little help uncovering them.
If you’re dominated by anger, anxiety, shame, or self-criticism, I can help you re-connect with who you really are: confident, calm, courageous, compassionate, and connected to yourself and others.
Travis Jeffords - LCMHCA | MDiv. | Male Counselor
In-person counselor: Greensboro & Winston-Salem
Virtual counselor: North Carolina
Licensed Counselor
Please note: The information provided in this blog is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional counseling or therapy. The content presented here is based on my professional knowledge, personal experiences and research, but it should not be considered as a replacement for individualized mental health advice.
Every individual is unique, and the content provided may not be applicable to everyone's specific circumstances. It is important to consult with a licensed mental health professional regarding your specific concerns and to receive personalized guidance tailored to your needs.