About Us
What Does Practice For Progress Mean?
What Does Practice For Progress Mean?
The phrase “Practice For Progress” describes our mission, approach, and beliefs. Our founder spent a decade working in community mental health organizations in Chicago before launching Practice For Progress. The name is a nod to our roots in harm reduction, trauma-informed care, growth mindset, and a holistic, practical approach to wellness. We recognize that change happens incrementally, in the context of healthy connection, and through experimentation and action. We have to practice in order to make progress.
Practice For Progress was established with a desire to improve the support systems for people receiving mental health services and the workers delivering them. Initially, we focused on offering trainings, consultation, and supervision to service providers to enhance their clinical skills and build a deeper understanding of philosophies of care. We provided a space to practice skills in order to progress the quality of mental health services.
For nearly 15 years, our founder has maintained a dual focus: support individuals and improve systems. We hold profound appreciation for systems-level work, but our passion has always been in creating working relationships with individuals. So, we shifted our focus to providing individual therapy. We continue to apply a systems-oriented lens to our individual work. We believe that offering high-quality, evidence-based mental health care cultivates growth that extends well beyond the individual. Your progress is our progress. We can practice together.
Our Mission
Creating Meaningful Changes Through Healthy Connections
Practice For Progress provides therapy services to assist individuals in making meaningful changes in their lives; at the same time, we aim to advance and reshape the practice of mental health care.
The people who seek out therapy are the ones who disrupt intergenerational patterns within their families and communities. They want to do things differently. It is a brave and powerful choice to strive for something new. We aim to normalize and transform therapy to a setting where people can bring their sense of worth, dignity, and pride along with their questions, challenges, and curiosities.
We seek to de-stigmatize mental health care and recast it as a wellness tool that is accessible to people across all identities. Therapy doesn’t just impact the individuals who are making changes in their own lives; it ripples out to their families, communities, and networks. The healthier you are, the healthier we all are. We are connected.
“Asking for help isn’t giving up…It’s refusing to give up.”
– Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
