Belle Morey is not the kind of counselor who learned about addiction from a textbook and stopped there. She learned it from living it. Before she held a degree, before she earned her clinical credentials, before she built this practice, she was the person on the other side of the conversation: struggling with addiction, surviving overdose, and fighting her way back to a life she did not think was possible.
That lived experience is the foundation everything else is built on. When you sit across from Belle in a virtual session and tell her something you have never told anyone, she does not flinch. She does not judge. She does not give you a clinical nod and redirect to a worksheet. She gets it, not because she read about it, but because she has been where you are and she knows what it takes to get to the other side.
But lived experience alone does not make a great counselor. What makes Belle exceptional is the combination: the personal understanding of addiction paired with rigorous clinical training and years of professional experience in the field.
Belle holds a Bachelor of Science in Substance Abuse and Addiction counseling from Ottawa University and is a certified Clinical Substance Abuse Counselor (CSAC) in the state of Wisconsin. She has worked as a Substance Use Disorder Clinician at the Family Health Center of Marshfield’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Recovery Center, one of Wisconsin’s established behavioral health treatment facilities, where she provided direct clinical care to individuals across the full spectrum of substance use disorders.
First-responder experience in rural northern Wisconsin
Clinical Substance Abuse Counselor, State of Wisconsin
Substance Abuse & Addiction counseling, Ottawa University
Evidence-informed coaching beyond traditional recovery models
In Belle’s recovery coaching and licensed SUD counseling, she draws on CBT tools and ACT principles. But if you asked her to describe her approach in plain language, she would tell you she meets people where they are, she does not pretend to have all the answers, and she believes that any forward movement counts, even if it is a millimeter.
She offers licensed substance use counseling, family coaching, and recovery coaching. She provides individual counseling, family sessions, and counseling, both for clients in Wisconsin’s Northwoods and virtually for people anywhere in the country.
Belle is the author of two published works that reflect her commitment to making recovery accessible, honest, and human.
Her personal narrative of addiction, survival, and recovery. It is an unflinching, deeply honest account of what it actually looks like to come back from the worst moments of your life and build something meaningful on the other side. It is not a sanitized recovery story. It is the real thing.
Tools, Truths and Tiny Steps to Start Your Healing Journey. A practical, interactive guide for people working through codependent patterns. It provides exercises, prompts, and frameworks for building boundaries, practicing self-awareness, and celebrating incremental progress.
Belle built Progress Is Progress because she saw firsthand how the traditional system fails people: the clinicians burning out, the clients falling through cracks, and the fear of documentation keeping good people from getting help.
She created a practice where privacy is a choice, where the counselor actually understands what addiction feels like from the inside, and where progress is measured in real terms, not clinical abstractions.
