Megan Veon (she/her/hers)

Tell me about you in five words:

Open-minded. Transparent. Deep. Light-hearted. Mindful.

Why did you become an art therapist?

I loved creating art ever since I was a small child. My parents bought me the (now vintage) Little Tikes drawing desk. It was my favorite thing. I spent hours drawing at that desk and then I’d run to my mom and ask her to write down the “words to my book” and staple my pictures together.

In my second year of undergrad my school offered an intro to art therapy class. I was intrigued. I never heard of art therapy before, but I knew I loved my psychology classes and I still loved art. From day one in that class, I tapped back into that experience of what it was like when I was a child passionately creating. I knew immediately that this was my calling.

Tell me about your education/certifications:

In 2014 I graduated from The George Washington University with a Masters of Arts in Art Therapy. The program taught trauma-informed art therapy, thus building my foundation as a trauma-informed therapist.

Soon after, I began working in Maryland. In 2016 I earned my Maryland state licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC) and my board certified registered art therapist (ATR-BC). A year later in 2017, I received my Maryland state licensed clinical professional art therapist (LCPAT).

In 2020, I became a Maryland board approved LCPC supervisor.

Why do you primarily work with teenagers?

I love adolescents. Yes, I really do! Adolescence is a unique time of life and so much growth happens. Did you know the brain doesn’t fully develop until about 24 plus or minus 2ish years? We’re actually adolescents from ages 12-24ish! Anyways, teenagers have a lot of bravery to try new things that adults are much more resistant to doing. They are creative, they experiment, and they’re honest. They’re not going to politely nod and agree with me if I’ve got it all wrong. I respect that; I respect them and the importance of the stage of life they’re in.

Adolescence is also an incredibly hard time of life, which makes sense because of all the growth that happens. There’s a reason we call them growing pains. I enjoy assisting teens to find ways to get through this.

What were you like as a teen?

I was a pop-punk emo kid. A witty intellectual with Valley Girl-isms. I loved local battle of the bands concerts, memorizing lyrics to as many songs as possible regardless of genre, watching Futurama, learning about history from my dad, making art, and working out.

Despite doing well academically and loving to learn, I despised almost everything about school. Group projects, waking up before the sunrise, tests, public speaking, social interactions, grades, pretty much everything. My clients and their parents echo a lot of the same school stressors. I like imparting what helped me through mixed with strategies and tools I wish I had known back then that I’ve learned through training, researching, and supervision.

Why did you want to become a supervisor/consultant for clinicians working with adolescents and children?

I have seven years of experience working with adolescents in IOP and PHP programs and three of those years I also spent working with children in IOP. Having spent that much time in higher levels of care with these ages, I know the field needs more supervisors that can de-intimidate, de-mystify, and de-burnout therapists to increase access to mental health care.

I had some amazing supervisors. Then a series of incredibly skilled therapists that were so burnt out that they were no longer good therapists or supervisors. I paid for good supervision outside of my places of work, invested in good therapy, and noticed a huge difference between myself and my coworkers.

Then I had a good therapist, who lost her license because she had an inappropriate relationship with one of her other clients. That’s when I felt the negative impact of bad supervision for the first time as a client. It disturbed me, made me question if I knew what good therapy even was, and it took some time to recover and trust therapists I didn’t know before that incident.

After some time passed and enough healing set in, I decided to become a supervisor. There’s a reason things are cliché, and yeah, I decided to be the change I wished to see in the world.

What do you do outside of work that fuels you?

Hiking, walking with my yellow labrador named Lana, making art, journaling, sitting in the sunshine outside on warm days or a sunny spot inside on cold days, looking up when I’m outside to see the spots of light shine between the tree leaves or the stars in the night sky, and tea.