About Angela

Angela McLean grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in 2008 returned with her family to the Raleigh area from Nashville, Tennessee. As a trained Marriage and Family Therapist, Angela works from a holistic perspective and is concerned with the overall, long-term well-being of clients and their families, forming a strong partnership with clients focused on finding a solution that works for each individual. Angela has seen success in the lives of people who came to her with a wide range of problems. Her approach of combining marriage and family therapy with mindfulness allows her to serve individuals, couples, and families effectively.

Experience

Angela has over 25 years of experience in the mental health and social service fields and has provided counseling to children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families in a variety of settings, including intensive in-home, residential, and outpatient care. She also worked exclusively with adults struggling with substance abuse for two years and with children with developmental disabilities for one year. Her private practice, in both Nashville and Raleigh, has focused in large part on individual and couples therapy for adults.

Education and training

Angela received both of her degrees from Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, TN: a Bachelor of Science in Social Work (1999) and a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy (2005). While working toward her Master's degree, she received extensive training in the Multi-systemic Therapy treatment model, and she participated in extensive training in Family Systems models while completing licensure requirements. Additional training includes the treatment of addictions, anxiety, chronic pain, interpersonal neurobiology, and attachment theory.

Angela has extensive experience with mindfulness and meditation as applied to psychotherapy, with over 12 years of formal training, personal study, and teaching clients. She holds a certificate from the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, affiliated with the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry, where she trained directly with leaders in the field over a nine-month period.

Angela's other primary training focus is Emotionally Focused Therapy. She has completed all levels of training in applying this model with couples and individuals through the Carolina Center for EFT.

Outside the office

Angela and her husband have been married for over 20 years and have a daughter and two sons. She enjoys oil painting and crafts of all kinds, whether creating them herself or seeing the work of others. She also enjoys yoga, hiking, and travel. Angela's personal journey with mindfulness meditation began in 2006; she maintains a regular meditation practice and enjoys continued study as well as learning from the process of teaching others.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction was developed in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. It is designed to enhance your body's ability to heal itself and maintain the balance needed for overall health and well-being. Mindfulness is about being fully aware of whatever is happening in the present moment, without the filter of judgment. Simply put, it means cultivating awareness of the mind and body and living in the here and now. While historically rooted in Buddhist meditation traditions, and found in all the other major world religions, it has expanded beyond its spiritual roots and is used in psychology and prescribed by physicians for stress, pain, and a variety of illnesses.

Participants in mindfulness training become more aware of the thoughts and feelings that occupy our minds as we rush through our days on autopilot. When you observe your own inner state (your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and mental processes) as a scientist would, you are likely to be surprised at what you find. Many marvel at how much time they spend rehearsing the future or rehashing the past. As you begin to practice living moment by moment, you will start to sleep better, cope with stressful situations more effectively, and find more peace and enthusiasm for life.

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion is a practice often taught alongside mindfulness, developed by Dr. Kristin Neff. It is the opposite of the self-critical thoughts many people repeat to themselves, and can be defined as "treating yourself like you would treat your very best friend." Self-critical thoughts and feelings are strongly associated with anxiety, depression, and other conditions that bring people to counseling. By learning the practices of mindful self-compassion, clients are able to face personal failures and difficult times with kind attention and connection rather than isolation, without having to get rid of the pain of the experience. Learn more at self-compassion.org.

What is Emotionally Focused Therapy?

Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is a well-known approach to couples and individual counseling developed in the 1980s by Dr. Sue Johnson. It is based on the science of adult attachment, which views people as wired for intimate bonding with others.

In couples counseling, EFT focuses on creating a secure, healthy bond between partners. Sessions first identify the current pattern of interaction that has blocked connection. Couples then experience and practice open, bond-creating communication in session. Over time, these experiences of safe intimacy develop into a new pattern of secure bonding that naturally spills over into day-to-day life, and couples learn to trust their new bond and find safety in deep intimacy with their partner.

For individuals, EFT reshapes a client's patterns of engagement with significant others and with themselves. Clients process emotional experiences in session in a way that allows them to integrate difficult and traumatic experiences, learning to meet hard emotions with openness. A new, stable sense of self and confidence with others often follows. Learn more at ICEEFT.

Or call (919) 868-6242.