Chelsea gets brutally honest about the moment everything shifted - and why your own liberation story is already writing itself, even if you can't see it yet.

How long have you been performing "fine"? Chelsea opens up about her own liberation journey and the exhausting performance of having it all together while her nervous system was screaming for help.

The moment she stopped pretending changed everything. This isn't another healing story - it's a roadmap for what becomes possible when you finally admit the truth about where you really are.

Your darkness isn't the problem - it's the portal. Chelsea reveals how the moments when she felt most small, rejected, and incapable became the exact places where she reclaimed her power.

Every encounter with fear becomes an opportunity for expansion. When you stop running from discomfort and start meeting it with curiosity, everything shifts.

Sometimes the smallest tools create the biggest shifts. Chelsea shares her surprising discovery about how something as simple as colored glasses became a daily anchor for nervous system regulation - proving that transformation doesn't always require massive overhauls.

It's not about the tool - it's about the intention behind it. Small, consistent choices compound into life-changing results.

There's something inside you that's been waiting. Chelsea talks about that restless feeling - the knowing that you're meant for more than just surviving. That fire isn't your enemy. It's your compass.

Your unique gift is trying to emerge. Whether through creative expression, helping others, or pursuing dreams you've kept hidden, your soul has something the world needs to see.

Success without self-worth is just sophisticated suffering. Chelsea gets real about how apparent achievement can mask deeper feelings of unworthiness - and what it takes to break that cycle.

Vulnerability is not weakness - it's the birthplace of authenticity. When she finally embraced being seen in her imperfection, everything she'd been chasing finally became accessible.

✨ Your liberation story is already writing itself - you just need to stop editing it✨ The moments you feel smallest are where your power lives✨ Small, intentional tools can create massive nervous system shifts✨ The fire inside you isn't restlessness - it's readiness✨ Success means nothing if you're still pretending to be someone you're not

What would change if you stopped pretending you were fine? This episode isn't just Chelsea's story - it's permission for you to start writing your own liberation narrative.

The journey isn't linear. It's messy, vulnerable, and sometimes uncomfortable. But on the other side of that discomfort lives the version of you that's been waiting to emerge.

🔥 Regulate&Rise App - Your Daily Liberation ToolkitStop performing "fine" and start building actual resilience. Get access to regulation tools, guided sessions, and a community of women choosing authenticity over perfection.

Start your 7-day free trial: [App Link]

💎 Ready for Deep Liberation Work? Work With Me 1:1If this episode made something stir inside you, that's your liberation calling. Limited spots for private intensive work where we excavate what's been keeping you small and activate what's been waiting to emerge. Apply here

Chelsea gets raw about the real cost of running from your emotions - and why the edges of your discomfort are actually gateways to the life you're meant to live.

Your nervous system is a library of every experience that shaped you. Every time you choose avoidance over feeling, you're adding another book to the "things I can't handle" section. But here's what nobody tells you: that library is running your entire life.

The resistance you feel toward starting something new? That's not procrastination - that's your nervous system protecting you from emotions it thinks will destroy you.

Chelsea breaks down why we live in emotional avoidance and what it's actually costing us:

• Every avoided emotion becomes a limitation in your life
• Your capacity for joy is directly tied to your capacity for pain
• The areas where you feel the most friction are pointing to your deepest growth

Your pain isn't a problem to solve - it's a portal to your power. Chelsea shares how transforming her own struggles into poetry became the gateway to discovering her true purpose. When you stop running from what hurts, it starts working FOR you.

The edges of your discomfort are where your expansion lives. Most people spend their entire lives staying comfortable, which means they spend their entire lives staying small.

Your period isn't just a biological function - it's an emotional processing powerhouse. Chelsea touches on how the cognitive changes during your cycle can actually become your secret weapon for deeper healing and self-reflection.

✨ Your nervous system shapes every reaction you have to the world✨ Emotional avoidance creates life limitations you don't even recognize✨ Pain processed becomes power reclaimed✨ Your resistance patterns are roadmaps to your growth edges✨ Creative expression can transform suffering into purpose

You can't heal what you won't feel. But when you're willing to meet your emotions instead of running from them, they become the very force that transforms your life.

This episode is for women ready to stop surviving their emotions and start using them as fuel for the life they actually want.

🔥 Regulate&Rise App - Your Pocket Emotional Processing CoachGet instant access to regulation tools, guided sessions, and a community of women doing this work together. Plus my exclusive Neuro-Cycle guide to support you through every phase of your cycle.

Start your 7-day free trial: Click me📱$49.99/month after trial

💎 Ready to Go Deeper? Work With Me 1:1If this episode cracked something open inside you, that's your signal. Limited spots available for private intensive work where we excavate the root of your emotional patterns and rewire your nervous system for sustainable transformation. Submit your application see if we're a fit.

"Your pain isn't a problem to solve - it's a portal to your power." - Chelsea

Chelsea sits down with Sarah, creator of the Soul Rehab Project, for a conversation that will make you question everything you think you know about authenticity, healing, and what it actually means to live your truth.

How much of your life is actually yours? Sarah drops truth bombs about how most of us build entire lives on lies we tell ourselves about who we need to be. From family expectations to societal conditioning, we've been performing a version of ourselves that was never authentic.

The pursuit of happiness is keeping you miserable. Sarah reveals why chasing happiness as a destination is the very thing that's stealing your peace. Real fulfillment isn't about feeling good all the time - it's about living in alignment with truth, even when truth is uncomfortable.

Why "doing the work" can become another performance. Sarah gets honest about how personal development can become just another way to avoid facing who you really are. You can't heal your way into happiness while living someone else's version of your life.

The terrifying silence of authenticity. When you stop filling your life with other people's expectations, there's a deafening quiet where your actual desires are supposed to live. Most of us are so afraid of that silence, we'd rather stay busy being the wrong person.

How toxic relationships teach us to abandon our truth. Sarah shares her experience with narcissistic dynamics and why we keep repeating patterns that require us to disappear ourselves. These relationships are training grounds for self-abandonment.

Breaking free from survival mode. Sarah's mission to help bold, badass women stop living in constant reaction and start living from authentic choice.

Why healing in isolation keeps you stuck. Sarah emphasizes that truth-telling requires witnesses. You need people who can see you as you really are, not as who you think you should be.

The importance of being honest with ourselves. This honesty isn't just liberating - it's essential for true emotional freedom. But it requires courage most people aren't willing to access.

✨ You can't build genuine fulfillment on a foundation of lies✨ Happiness is fluid and must be rooted in truth, not performance✨ The discomfort of authenticity is the price of freedom✨ Community support is essential when dismantling the lies✨ Small steps toward truth create massive life shifts

Your authentic life is waiting for you to get honest enough to claim it. But first, you have to be willing to face the lies you've been telling yourself about who you need to be to survive.

This conversation is for women ready to stop pretending their way through life and start living from the truth of who they actually are.

🔗 Soul Rehab Project - Sarah's platform for badass women breaking free from survival mode🔗 Connect with Sarah - Instagram

Ready to stop living someone else's version of your life?

🌟 Private 1:1 Coaching - Deep rewiring through parts work, subconscious reprogramming, and somatic healing. Apply here.

"You can't heal your way into happiness while living someone else's version of your life." - Sarah

Chelsea's Croatia revelation: Standing in paradise while her nervous system threw a tantrum because comfort felt more dangerous than chaos.

Picture this: You're in one of the world's most beautiful places, but your body is vibrating with discomfort. Not because anything's wrong - but because everything's right. And your nervous system doesn't know what to do with "right."

Chelsea discovered something most people won't admit: She was in love with her own chaos. Her body had learned to metabolize instability like a drug, and peace felt like withdrawal.

Your nervous system can become addicted to what hurts you. When chaos has been your normal for long enough, stability feels like danger. Your body literally rejects the very thing you claim to want because familiarity trumps fulfillment every time.

Every area of your life mirrors this pattern. Money, relationships, health, opportunities - they all reflect your unconscious comfort level with receiving good things. If you're not wired for peace, you'll sabotage it every time.

Recognize the Addiction:Your drama isn't happening to you - you're creating it because some part of you needs it. The chaos serves you until you're brave enough to admit how.

Rewire Your Receiving:Peace isn't the absence of feeling - it's the presence of choice. Your body can learn to metabolize stability the same way it learned to crave chaos.

Alchemize the Pattern:The emotions you've been avoiding aren't your enemy. They're your compass pointing toward exactly where you need to grow.

30-Day Emotional Reset Program:For women ready to stop rejecting the peace they claim to want and start rewiring their nervous system for actual stability.

This isn't about managing your chaos - it's about evolving beyond the need for it.

[JOIN THE EMOTIONAL RESET]

Ready to Go Deeper? Work With Me 1:1:If this episode made something crack open inside you, that's your signal. I have limited spots for private intensive work for women who are done performing their healing and ready to embody it.

We'll excavate the root of why your body rejects peace and rewire your nervous system for sustainable transformation. This is for women who want to heal at the speed of trust, not trauma.

[BOOK YOUR 1:1 INTENSIVE]

Your body will always choose familiar over fulfilling until you teach it that peace is safe. The question isn't whether you deserve stability - it's whether you're brave enough to stop rejecting it.

Chaos feels like love until you remember what peace actually is.

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]