Heart Solutions Counseling, PLLC       469-589-4793

My Story

​​Breaking The Pattern of A Chronic Issue

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Stress Induced Chronic Illness

When I was in my 30s, I was in a stressful relationship and living in a moldy house. The combination of the emotional and environmental stress manifested in hypersensitivity that started with the mold and then spread to pretty much everything in my environment.

Like most people, I tried different things to see if I could solve this problem and calm down the reactions I was having: prayer, meditation, dietary restrictions, positive thinking and more - all beneficial things, but none of it actually solved the problem.

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​The Power of Neuroplasticity

Then, I learned about a woman who had developed a brain retraining program specifically for people with my condition. I brought her to Dallas and went to the training. We learned to create new associations with environmental triggers through exercises that used sight, sound, touch, and movement to interrupt the well-worn neural pathway that connected anything with a smell to a barrage of debilitating symptoms.

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Believing I Could Be Well Again

This helped calm down my system a lot, but I didn’t get all the way well until I worked with a coach who practiced principles of unconditional love and acceptance.

He told me, “you believe you have to be sick, but you don’t, you get to live life and be happy.” I still feel a rush of warmth well up in my chest when I remember him saying that to me because I was so miserable and what he said gave me hope. He told me that my hyper-reactivity was a fear response that had spread to more and more things to the point that I felt like I needed to control everything and everyone around me to feel safe.  

His unconditional acceptance of me with my fear-based symptoms had a calming effect on my nervous system and my emotions and created an ideal mental environment for brain retraining. I was able to reteach my brain that smells from normal things in my environment like dryer sheets, perfume, or cleaning products weren’t going to harm me. 

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After years of suffering, I was able to get completely well within a few short months, and I was able to start working again.

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Discovering Accelearted Resolution Therapy​

The position that impacted me most powerfully was at a nonprofit working with cancer patients. Because of my own experience with life-altering illness and having to depend on government programs to meet my basic needs, I found I was uniquely qualified to bear witness to the fear and pain of the patients I worked with. I was humbled and moved by people's willingness to trust me when they were at their worst and put their hearts in my hands. 

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While I was there, I learned about and got trained in ART, an approach using eye movements to help clients relax and permanently change the images associated with distressing experiences. I began using it with my clients, and the effects were profound. The first client I did ART with had witnessed the traumatic death of loved one to cancer and had lost the ability to hear their loved one's voice. I saw my client go from being curled in on themselves in devastation, to literally bouncing in their seat with joy like a child at the end of their first session. I witnessed the power of how eye movements and creative visualizations could help people rewire their brains quickly and effectively.

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This is what led me to start a private counseling practice. I want to get ART out there to as many people as possible to help them feel more present, resilient, and emotionally equipped even in the midst of serious illness.