How I moved from overgiving to overflowing through embodied gratitude

By Chelsea Horton, MA, BCDMT

Founder/CEO of Healing Embodied

When I started graduate school for Dance/Movement Therapy & Counseling, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I was so inspired by how healing movement could be, and I couldn’t wait to share this with others.

I graduated in 2017 and dove headfirst into full-time work in traditional community mental health settings. Two years later, I was experiencing a level of burnout that can barely even be put into words.

I was exhausted, overworked, and underpaid, and my love for this profession was dwindling fast. Each morning, I'd fight back tears while pulling into the hospital parking lot. The question haunted me: Was it possible to do the work I loved without inevitable burnout? Could I make a good living and help others in a way that created real change for them?

It was the same old story that so many people in the helping professions experience. I was devastated…And, I refused to be another statistic. I refused to be another therapist that the System could chew up and spit out.

I went into this work because it felt like a calling. I was meant for this work and this work was meant for me, but something had to shift...

In 2019, I took a leap of faith and founded Healing Embodied.

Leaving The System wasn’t enough. I needed to unlearn the harmful narratives it had embedded in my mind and body over many years of training and practice. This transformation wasn't only about running a business; it was also a reimagining of my relationship with my work, my clients, and myself.

I made a commitment when I started Healing Embodied that we were going to do things differently. I wanted the way we approached our work with clients to be radically different. I didn't want to recreate the dysfunctional System we had exited.

When I worked in traditional community mental health systems, I felt like a cog in a machine. It felt like any other practitioner could sit in my seat and fill my role. The System didn’t care who I was. They just needed someone who would show up every day and do the job.

Gratitude from the people I worked for was almost non-existent (except for the occasional “staff appreciation pizza party”). Where I DID feel gratitude was from my clients. From the humans I had the honor of holding space for every day. Seeing the shifts in their faces and hearing them say, “Thank you, these groups changed my life,” was what kept me going.

When I started Healing Embodied, I knew that gratitude needed to be at the foundation of everything. I wanted my clients to always know how grateful I was for their trust in me, I wanted my staff to never wonder if they were appreciated, and I wanted my husband to know how grateful I was to him for supporting me in taking this crazy leap.

I don’t mean the sunshine and rainbows, rose-colored-glasses gratitude. I mean profound gratitude you feel in your bones. The kind of gratitude you feel when you are deep in the muck of life, but turn to the person next to you and say, “Thank you for being here with me, I’m so grateful to be in this together.”

This is what I founded my business on, and this is how I live every day. It’s what I teach my clients and the students I train in our certification program. It’s something that can never be taken away from me, and I’m so grateful to past Chelsea for taking the leap of faith she did in 2019.

Connect With Chelsea

www.healingembodied.com

@healing.embodied @healingembodiedpractitioner