The moment Chelsea stopped making excuses for her financial chaos and started taking responsibility for the patterns she was unconsciously creating.

Chelsea's breakdown wasn't a tragedy - it was her nervous system finally getting loud enough to break through decades of self-deception. Sometimes your body has to force you to face what your mind keeps avoiding.

This episode is about the moment she stopped being a victim of her childhood programming and started being the author of her financial reality.

• Your "money problems" become growth opportunities - Every financial pattern is showing you exactly where you need to heal
• You stop waiting for permission to succeed - Your nervous system learns that your success doesn't require anyone else's approval
• You take responsibility for your receiving capacity - No more blaming the economy, your upbringing, or your circumstances for your financial reality
• You become curious instead of defensive - When money stuff triggers you, you ask "what is this teaching me?" instead of "why does this always happen to me?"

Your Nervous System Responds to Leadership:When you start showing up as the regulated adult in your own life, your body follows. It's been waiting for you to take charge.

Worthiness Is a Decision, Not a Feeling:You don't wait to feel worthy - you decide you're worthy and then take actions that prove it to yourself.

Emotional Maturity = Financial Maturity:The woman who can feel her feelings without making them everyone else's problem is the same woman who can build sustainable wealth.

If you're done with the victim story and ready to become the woman who creates what she wants instead of explaining why she can't have it, Chelsea's Somatic Wealth Code is for leaders who take responsibility for their internal landscape.

This is for women who want to heal AND thrive. Who understand that your past informs your present but doesn't have to control your future.

[JOIN THE SOMATIC WEALTH CODE]

Your financial reality is a direct reflection of your internal leadership. Time to step up.

The woman complaining about her circumstances and the woman creating her dreams are the same person. The only difference is which one you choose to be today.

Danielle couldn't tell if she was hungry or having a panic attack. She'd been living like a ghost in her own body for so long that existing felt like wearing someone else's life. This is what happened when she finally came home to herself.

Danielle walked into my Beyond Survival program carrying the kind of numbness that makes you pinch yourself just to remember you're real. She wasn't just disconnected - she was completely missing from her own existence. Going through the motions of living while feeling absolutely nothing.

If you've ever looked in the mirror and thought "who the fuck is that person, and how did I get here?" - you know exactly where Danielle was living.

Inner Child Work That Cuts Through the Bullshit:

• Not the fluffy "send love to your younger self" garbage
• Real visualization that made her confront why she'd been treating herself like the enemy
• Body-level recognition that she'd been performing her entire life instead of living it

Community That Shattered the Isolation:

• Group calls where she watched other women feel their feelings without apologizing
• The shocking relief of being seen in her complete messiness
• Learning that healing doesn't happen in isolation - it happens in witnessed connection

EFT Tapping That Actually Worked:

• Tools that worked WITH her nervous system instead of trying to override it
• Processing decades of stored numbness without retraumatizing herself
• Her body remembering it wasn't broken - just brilliantly protecting her

The Brutal Truth About Boundaries:

• Learning to set limits without explaining or defending herself
• Discovering that people who can't handle your authentic self aren't your people
• The terrifying realization that she'd been giving everyone else permission to abandon her by abandoning herself first

Your numbness isn't weakness. It's your nervous system's most sophisticated survival strategy. When feeling everything would have killed you, your body chose numbness to keep you alive.

But here's what Danielle discovered: The body that saved you as a child might be suffocating you as an adult.

If reading Danielle's story made something crack open in your chest, that's not coincidence. That's your soul recognizing its own prison.

I have limited spots in Beyond Survival: The Resilience Code - but this isn't for everyone. This is nervous system rewiring for women who are done performing their lives and ready to actually inhabit them.

Book a call with me. No scripts. No high-pressure tactics. Just an honest conversation about whether you're ready to stop being a ghost in your own existence.

We'll talk about whether your nervous system is ready to feel again - because coming back to yourself isn't comfortable. It's necessary.

[BOOK YOUR CALL HERE]

Your body is waiting for you to come home. The woman you abandoned to survive is ready to be found.

You can't heal what you won't feel. But you also can't live what you won't inhabit.

This week, I'm sitting down with Sydnie—a woman who thought deconstructing her faith was the hard part. Turns out, convincing her body that she was actually free? That was the real work.

If you've ever left something that everyone else thought was "good for you," this conversation is going to gut you in the best possible way. Because here's what nobody tells you about liberation: your nervous system doesn't automatically update its software when your mind decides to evolve.

We're diving deep into:

The aftermath nobody warns you about – How panic attacks became Sydnie's daily reality after leaving high-control religion, and why her body felt more unsafe in freedom than it ever did in captivity

When your protector becomes your prison – The specific ways religious trauma wires your nervous system to equate visibility with danger, and why speaking your truth can literally make you feel like you're dying

The purpose awakening – How Sydnie finally felt safe enough in her own skin to stop hiding her gifts and start sharing what she was actually meant to bring to the world (spoiler: your nervous system has to give you permission before your purpose can fully emerge)

Obsessive thoughts as survival strategy – Why your brain creates elaborate worry scenarios and how to recognize when your "anxiety" is actually your system trying to predict and prevent the next trauma

The mother wound meets the God wound – How Sydnie's relationship with her children transformed when she stopped parenting from fear and started parenting from her own regulated nervous system

Reciprocity as revolutionary act – The game-changing moment when Sydnie realized that giving and receiving aren't transactional—they're relational, and her nervous system had to learn the difference

This episode will hit different if you:

• Left a religion, relationship, or situation that had everyone convinced you were "throwing your life away"
• Feel more anxious now that you're "free" than you did when you were conforming
• Have been told you're "too sensitive" when really, you're just finally feeling everything you've been suppressing for decades
• Find more peace in nature than you do around most humans
• Know you're meant for something bigger but your body keeps hitting the brakes every time you try to expand

The hard truth nobody's talking about: Your mind can leave. Your body stays hostage until you do the specific work to liberate it.

Sydnie's story isn't just about religious deconstruction—it's about what happens when you stop trying to think your way out of trauma and start having conversations with the parts of you that are still scared shitless of being seen.

Key Takeaways:

• Healing isn't linear, and it's definitely not pretty—but it's the most important work you'll ever do
• Your nervous system doesn't care about your spiritual growth—it cares about keeping you alive
• Sometimes the medicine finds us in the most unexpected places (like a fucking herb garden)
• The goal isn't to never feel anxious again—it's to develop a different relationship with the anxiety

Resources mentioned:

• Herbalism as nervous system medicine
• Somatic work for religious trauma
• Parenting from a regulated nervous system

Connect with Sydnie: @iamhealingwithher

Ready to interrupt your own patterns? If Sydnie's story is lighting something up in your chest, your nervous system is trying to tell you something important. It's saying: I'm ready to stop running this same exhausting program.

I'm offering a limited number of Pattern Interrupt Sessions designed to break the patterns keeping you locked in survival mode. These aren't therapy sessions. They're precision interventions that target the exact places where your system learned to protect you in ways that no longer serve you.

Book your sessions here: [link]

In this gut-punch of an episode, Chelsea rips open the veil between trauma and your money story, showing how your nervous system's grip might be strangling your financial freedom.

• The brutal reality that seeking help isn't weakness—it's fucking courage in its purest form
• How your constricted nervous system is like a rubber band pulled to breaking point, stealing your capacity for life's demands
• The suffocating weight of parentification—when you were forced to be the adult long before you had the emotional tools
• Why your childhood money wounds are bleeding into your adult financial decisions, keeping you trapped in scarcity

• Your body remembers every time you had to be the responsible one while adults around you collapsed
• Financial stress triggers the same fight/flight/freeze response as actual physical danger
• The visceral pattern of overgiving, overworking, and undercharging stems directly from your trauma response
• Healing happens in your tissues, not just your thoughts—your body must feel safe to release old patterns

Chelsea is offering three deeply intimate 1:1 sessions at an accessible rate for those ready to excavate the root causes of their financial struggles. This isn't surface-level coaching—it's a guided journey into the trenches of your money wounds to build resilience from the ground up.

📆 ⁠Book your Pattern Interrupt Sessions here⁠

If your gut clenched while listening to this episode, that's your body recognizing truth. Honor that reaction by taking one small step toward healing today. Grab ⁠Chelsea's limited 1:1⁠ slots to begin untangling your nervous system from your financial reality.

The path to thriving demands facing what hurts. Chelsea creates a container where that facing becomes your liberation, not another trauma.

You weren’t meant to grieve in silence. You were meant to be witnessed in your return to wholeness.

In this raw and reverent episode of the Start Thriving podcast, Chelsea Bartell-Smith shares her personal journey with grief as a sacred threshold—not something to move on from, but something to move with. Through the loss of her cousin and the grief that followed, Chelsea reflects on what it means to hold pain without becoming it—and how grief, when fully felt, can unlock unshakable love and deep internal resilience.

Grief isn’t just sorrow—it’s sacred proof of connection.
And when you stop bracing against it, something remarkable happens:
You begin to come back to life.

Inside this episode, you’ll explore:

• Why grief is a form of love that deserves space, not suppression

• How unprocessed grief gets stored in the body—and how to gently release it

• The hidden link between emotional avoidance and survival habits like people-pleasing, overworking, and emotional numbness

• Somatic initiations that reconnect you to the wisdom beneath the weight—because your body remembers how to come home

• The importance of being witnessed in your healing (because we rise together, not alone)

Chelsea doesn’t just talk about grief—she models what it means to meet your inner landscape with grace. She holds the space for you to return to the parts of yourself that felt too tender to touch, too painful to hold—and bring them back into your body with reverence.

If you’ve ever whispered:“I’m too much. I’m not enough. I want to feel... but I don’t know how.”

This conversation is your permission slip to begin.

💌 If this episode resonated, it’s because you’re ready for deeper work.

Beyond Survival Mode: The Resilience Code is not just a program—it’s an initiation. A 3-month journey into your fullest expression. A space where pain becomes portal, and resilience is built not through bypass, but through brave embodiment.

This is where women come to sit with what hurts—and rise with what heals.

You’re not here to just cope. You’re here to transform.

If you felt cracked open by this conversation, it’s because your healing has already begun.
Welcome to the women who rise differently.

Ever feel like your brain is running a marathon with no finish line? You replay conversations, analyze every decision, and convince yourself that this mental spinning is productive. But what if I told you it’s not?

In this episode, we’re exposing the truth about overthinking — it’s not problem-solving. It’s a survival response. A sneaky form of emotional avoidance dressed up as analysis.

We’ll dive into:

• Why overthinking is actually under-feeling — and how your body holds the key to real healing.

• The neuroscience of emotional loops — understanding why your brain won’t let go.

• The childhood connection — how unhealed wounds keep you stuck in survival mode.

• Practical tools to disrupt the cycle — because clarity doesn’t come from thinking harder; it comes from feeling deeper.

  
  

If you’re exhausted from the constant noise in your head and crave emotional freedom, this episode is your permission slip to stop overthinking and start healing.

🎧 Listen now and learn how to reclaim your power.

👉 Ready to take this work deeper? Join me for my free live workshop, "How to Reclaim The Woman You Were Before The World Taught You to Play Small." We’ll dive into the patterns that are keeping you stuck, and I’ll show you how to break free — once and for all.

🔗 Save your spot now: Show Up Big Sis [Click Me]

Register for the workshop here📆

In this raw and revealing episode, I pull back the curtain on one of the most damaging pieces of advice in modern therapy: "just sit with your uncomfortable feelings." What happens when this well-intentioned guidance collides with a nervous system that's primed for survival? I share the heartbreaking story of a woman whose OCD symptoms intensified dramatically after following this common therapeutic recommendation.

• Why "feeling your feelings" without proper nervous system regulation first can actually deepen trauma patterns rather than heal them
• The neurobiological reason why developmental trauma makes traditional exposure techniques feel impossible (it's not your fault!)
• The missing step between activation and processing that changes everything
• How proper regulation creates the essential container needed to process difficult emotions without retraumatization
• The neuro-somatic approach that works with your biology instead of against it

I break down the biological reasons why so many women struggle with traditional anxiety and OCD treatment approaches. When trauma has altered your brain's regulatory centers, "just sitting with feelings" isn't just difficult—it can reinforce the very patterns you're trying to break.

This isn't about willpower. It's about working with your nervous system's unique wiring—not against it.

Discover the critical step that transforms emotional processing from overwhelming to empowering. Learn why creating a regulated state first allows you to:

• Process past survival energy without becoming retraumatized
• Create new neural pathways for managing difficult emotions
• Break free from the shame cycle of "not doing it right"
• Find freedom from symptoms that have felt immovable

"I felt so broken before, like I couldn't even do the ONE thing my therapist kept telling me to do. Learning that my nervous system literally wasn't wired to 'just sit with' these feelings without regulation first changed everything. Now I have tools that actually work for MY body." - Recent client

If this episode resonates with your own struggle to "sit with feelings" successfully, know that your nervous system is likely doing exactly what it was designed to do. The key isn't trying harder—it's shifting the approach to work with your biology, not against it.

Ready to experience proper nervous system regulation and transform your relationship with difficult emotions? Book an Emotional Alchemy session to discover the difference proper regulation makes: [Click to book]

• Polyvagal Theory and its implications for emotional processing
• Neuro-somatic regulation techniques
• The window of tolerance concept and why it matters for emotional healing
• Research on developmental trauma and brain development

Remember: Your struggle to "feel your feelings" isn't a character flaw—it's a biological response to past experiences. Healing is possible when we work with our nervous systems instead of against them.

Ever feel like you’re just going through the motions — stuck in the same old patterns, knowing you want more but feeling too exhausted or numb to make a change? If you’re nodding along, this episode is for you.

In this week’s episode of Start Thriving, I’m getting real about what it takes to break free from survival mode. If you’ve experienced complex trauma, you know that constant cycle of anxiety, emotional overwhelm, and feeling disconnected from your body all too well. But here’s the truth: You don’t have to stay stuck there.

We talk about:

👉 The sneaky signs that you’re stuck in survival mode — and why you might not even realize it
👉 How tiny acts of courage and spontaneity can help you break free from emotional autopilot
👉 Why your nervous system craves new experiences (and how to give it what it needs without overwhelm)
👉 The real reason change feels so hard — and how to make it easier
👉 My own story of how small shifts, like changing my routine and getting out of my comfort zone, helped me rewire my brain and reclaim my life

If you’re tired of feeling stuck and ready to step into a life of more ease, presence, and joy — this episode will give you the tools and hope you need to start moving forward.

And if you’re ready for more personalized support, my Fuck Survival Mode group program and 1:1 coaching are designed to help you get to the root of your patterns and finally feel safe, regulated, and fully alive. In these containers, we use measurable tools tailored to your unique nervous system so you can create lasting change — no more guessing, no more getting stuck in the same cycles.

📲 Ready to go deeper? Grab an Emotional Alchemy call with me to close a survival loop for good! Click here to book 📆

With love and resilience,
Chelsea