My mental health story & what therapy couldn’t “fix”

When it’s deeper than talk therapy, it needs a mind-body-soul approach. This week on the Modern Phoenix, Gervase shares insights from her mental health journey turned full-blown personal evolution. Listen in as she opens up about how transitioning from mind-based therapy to soul and body-centered practices like focalizing, somatic healing, and nervous system regulation opened new paths to healing and inner transformation. As she recounts pivotal moments that shaped her understanding of herself, she shares the profound power of trauma responses, intuition, inner child healing, and more, inviting you to look beyond conventional therapy practices and consider your own unique path to healing.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The strengths and limitations of talk therapy that led Gervase to explore mind-body-soul healing

• The role of somatic practices and nervous system regulation in mental health

• What it means to understand and address trauma responses through body awareness

• Why shifting from self-fixing to self-tending is crucial for healing

• The importance of integrating mind, body, and soul in any healing journey

• How to embrace the complexity of healing and look beyond conventional therapy practices

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New to the idea of Mind-Body-Soul integration? Start by dropping into your body wisdom with a Somatic Soul Session:

• For the first time ever, current, past and new clients can enjoy a 60-minute session with Gervase to set intentions for the New Year, get clear and focused when you feel stuck and overwhelmed, or address any persistent problems that keep recurring.

• Get unstuck and tap into your body wisdom. On sale through January. Buy it now, use it any time this year: https://gervasekolmos.podia.com/f1c7c21a-5772-4222-bf65-7bac78672c33/buy 

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

My mental health story & what therapy couldn’t “fix”

Episode Full Transcript

Hello, my loves. I want to invite you to grab a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and join me because I’ve got a cup of tea for a little story. I did a post on Instagram this week talking about my journey of healing. And I mean, the word healing gets thrown around—I don’t even know what that means sometimes. It can be so subjective.

I know that when I am getting to know and like and trust other teachers, guides, and mentors, it’s really important for me to know their story. So when I did this post, I felt inspired to go back down memory lane and even remember my own story of how I got here and why I’m so passionate about mind, body, soul healing and inner transformation. Because I did it first. Because it was the thing that healed me.

I said something like, I healed myself back to wholeness. And I stand by that—it feels true. But we know healing is not linear. It’s a spiral of evolution. That’s why the phoenix is the imagery for this podcast. That’s why I want us all to embody the phoenix: to understand that the idea of “how I healed” is actually a falsity rooted in systems we’re going to talk about today—the idea of arriving. Really, what my journey has taught me is constant evolution.

Some of you might relate to my story of starting in the mind with talk therapy, moving into intuition, spirituality, the soul, inner child healing, shadow work, and then ending in the body with somatic healing, nervous system regulation, and my focalizing training. So, grab your tea, and let’s begin.

I’ve shared parts of this before in masterclasses, but never the entire story in one place. I’ll start where I always start: when I was 18 years old, I walked myself into a therapist’s office. I told her I wanted to heal. I said I was there because I didn’t understand why I felt responsible for everything and everyone, and also like it was never enough. Nothing I did was ever enough.

In therapy at 18, I began to unravel and unpack my family of origin, my ways of coping and relating that I had created as a child. The psyche develops between ages seven and nine, and I had created an entire way of relating to others that left me feeling I was never good enough, that I was carrying the world, that I had to mother everyone, and that I still wasn’t doing a good job. Some of you may relate to that.

I think we all come from childhood with unique wounds. The point is, I started where most people begin: in the mind. I began in therapy. I think everyone could benefit from therapy. I’m a huge advocate for it.

Fast forward: when I was pregnant with my second child—so from age 18 to 32—I had been on and off in therapy, taking breaks but having pivotal moments in my twenties. My brother passed away. I was on and off antidepressants. I was grappling with what I’d call chronic depression, though that’s not technically a diagnosis. I’d feel paralyzed in my mind and body, trapped in negative thoughts. I didn’t know to call them intrusive thoughts. I just thought: I’m sadder than other people, I have a more negative view of myself, I can’t get out of bed.

A friend in college once gently said, “I think you might be depressed.” Between 20 and 30, I had big defining moments—motherhood, loss, breakups, life changes. I was still in the clinical world of therapy, antidepressants, mainstream culture’s identity of wellness and healing. It was great in many ways. I really tackled my mother wound then. My relationship with my mother—no secret—was the biggest thing I wanted to figure out. I’m proud of the work and the internal shifts from that time.

At 30, after having my first child, I discovered life coaching as a career. When I understood coaching was helping people untangle challenges, family dynamics, stuck situations, I thought: oh God, I’ve spent a decade doing that in therapy. I’ve always been fascinated by it. I thought I’d be a therapist or psychiatrist in college, considered majoring in psychology, but I didn’t love school and didn’t want more years of it. Now I see my intuition was guiding me elsewhere.

So, with ten years of therapy experience as a client, realizing those same things made me uniquely qualified to hold space for others, I began life coach certification. Then I got pregnant with my second child and felt that familiar weight of prenatal depression. I had a knowing: what got me here won’t get me there.

Many women come to me from therapy. They say, “Therapy was amazing—we worked on the mind, the stories, the beliefs. But I wasn’t progressing. I was circling the same stories.” That was my experience too. I felt depression again but also felt: there’s more out there.

At this time, I had entered entrepreneurship, joined a mastermind, done a program full of self-help and spirituality, met friends who thought differently, not from mainstream therapy. I connected with a now-dear friend, Cora Poash, a life coach trained in spiritual psychology. My first interaction with her on a retreat was like a meeting with my intuition, a deepening into my soul. Something mystical became tangible. I knew I had to work with her.

So at 32, for the next five years, I went on a journey of the soul and intuition. Spirituality light. I have a rich inner spiritual world, but I also know spirituality can turn people away who actually need it. So listen with discernment: this part of my journey was about the universe, manifesting, soul, spiritual psychology, earth lessons. I dove into a deeper understanding of life, gained a higher perspective, a higher meaning.

The biggest thing happening then was my intuition coming online. The deepest work with Cora was inner child healing, which was so therapeutic. I learned how much I had shamed myself for depression. I saw the ways it was normalized yet still stigmatized for me. I did soul work, intuition work, and asked: what if depression is partly a symptom of paralyzing beliefs? Of disconnection from spirit and intuition? What could I learn from it?

I began creating a next-level relationship with my intuition. It became an obsession because I started seeing evidence—times I zagged when the world said zig, and my life actually made sense when filtered through intuition. The old filter—dominant culture, external metrics—had been causing suffering. Freedom came when I made my inner knowing the authority.

This was radical. Easier to gaslight yourself when using the world’s rules. But once you decide your discernment is the authority over what’s “normal” or what other moms are doing, you feel intoxicating freedom. Of course I had pain before—I was trying to fit into wrong-shaped boxes. But releasing that pressure, I felt lighter, freer, with less inner friction.

At this time I also explored human design. My intuition screamed at me to do a reading. I learned I’m a 5-1 Splenic Projector—20% of the population. My authority is my spleen. I started making the intangible tangible, aligning my life with my energy. Energy is in the realm of soul and spirituality: you feel it but can’t see it.

This second part of my journey was the intangible, the mystical. It made everything make more sense, with or without the spiritual lens. For me, intuition is sometimes interchangeable with God, sometimes its own thing. It doesn’t matter—try it on for yourself. Take what resonates, leave the rest. We’ve been brainwashed to think we must accept entire religions or else it’s flawed. But life is nuanced.

Down the intuitive path I went. But another thing was happening: even as I healed and felt lighter, sometimes I went into trauma responses—fight, flight, freeze, fawn. I got curious about trauma: big T, little t, childhood trauma. I realized my childhood experiences, though not “big” enough to label trauma, still shaped my nervous system.

When faced with failure, financial instability, relational rupture, my body shut down. Freeze: I’d get depressed. Fight: I’d attack. Flight: I’d disappear. Fawn: I’d perform, pretend, abandon myself.

This tied into my sober curiosity journey. Had I been drinking to numb, freeze pain, or to fawn and fit in? Yes. Was it bad? No. But now I saw it. Healing is seeing deeper layers—like more of the Matrix online. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

So even as things improved, I saw my nervous system pattern. I remember one scenario: relational uncertainty with someone, talking it out with my husband, and I went into a panic attack. Hysterically crying, on the floor: why do I feel things so deeply? That’s always been my story. An ocean inside me, painful, scary, big emotions. I thought nobody else felt this way.

Part of me saw maybe this wasn’t balanced. Another part of me saw I was gaslighting myself. It’s actually okay to be emotional.

Then came focalizing—a somatic, nervous-system-based trauma training created by Dr. Pacucci. I trained with Nick Werber and Joanna Miller (both have been on this podcast). I learned about the body, the limbic brain, trauma responses, how trauma stores in the body. In the animal kingdom, trauma organically releases. Humans can too, but conditioning gets in the way.

I dove deep into somatic healing for my big emotional bursts. I also realized I’d been addicted to fixing myself for two decades, convinced I’d solve the riddle of what’s wrong with me and then I’d change forever. Subtle, unconscious, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

I shifted from mind—“Why is this happening? What’s wrong with me?”—to body: “What resource is needed?” I started stabilizing and regulating my nervous system sustainably. At the same time, I was unlearning systems of oppression, strengthening intuition and soul as authority, practicing not making any parts of me bad, incorporating parts work and family constellations.

You can see why I now can’t encourage healing that doesn’t include mind, body, and soul. Where I stand today: I’m still not perfect. I still spiral sometimes. But I have deep safety in my bones. My nervous system feels safe. Because of that, everything else is manageable. Life will keep life-ing. It’s never about perfect conditions. That’s the lie from the mind.

Exclusively solving problems in the mind leads to binaries: good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure, good mom or worst mom. Black-and-white processing. But healing includes nuance, intuition, regulation in the face of chaos.

I also reflect on generational patterns. Have we swung too far in blaming the generation before us and trying to make things perfect for the next? That pursuit of perfection is internalized patriarchy, white supremacy—even in healing.

So it’s complex. It deserves an integrated mind-body-soul approach to get to the place where you feel safe no matter what. Where you can resource yourself, meet discomfort with intention, and try—even if it’s messy.

Many clients realize “trying” is itself a strategy. It’s nuanced. It doesn’t promise outcomes. It just says: I’ll do my best. And the truth is, there’s an intelligence moving through the world creating conditions we can’t control. Each person is responsible for themselves. You can try, but you can’t predict or control their response.

That is the beauty of relationship. That’s why the phoenix inspires me—it’s constant evolution. Ego death after ego death, identity crisis after identity crisis. Parts of you die—parts that gave you validation or value—and you rebirth again.

For me, my identity was being good at fixing. But sometimes things don’t need fixing; they just need tending, love, compassion, safety. I used to picture “digging out the rotten part” of myself. I don’t do that anymore. There’s a gentler way, which has led to less self-shaming, less depression, fewer trauma responses, more authenticity, more trust in myself and my intuition.

I went from vacillating between fight-flight-freeze-fawn to a steadier nervous system. From loud negative mind chatter to: “Oh, that’s programming. That’s your American individualism, your colonizer mindset. That’s your body needing sleep. That’s you trusting someone else over your intuition.” Seeing it clearly.

This has created a beautiful life. Am I “healed”? Probably not. I hope to always have mentors and guides. But I’m always seeking support to see my blind spots, to resource myself, to keep evolving.

If you feel ready for your own inner transformation, I’d be honored to support you. Your first step is to book a Soul Shift Intensive. You can still book a Somatic Soul Session (a 60-minute one-on-one) through the end of January at $299. We can focus on a sticking point, do coaching, somatic healing, visualization—whatever you need.

Remember: dominant culture will tell you there’s no time, that you don’t deserve healing, that it’s selfish or irresponsible financially. As someone who’s prioritized healing for two decades, I can say: the only investments I’ve never regretted are those tending to my mind, body, and soul. They change everything. They give clarity, calm, and control no matter what. Because you know who you are. You know your tendencies, your mind’s patterns, how to tend to your body. You don’t freak out at mistakes or setbacks. You keep building what you want, inside and out.

Knowing yourself, having the resilience to honor her, changes every relationship and your mental health. And I know I could never have gotten here with therapy alone. I needed to go deeper, to tend the roots, prune the old, grow new shoots.

It has been such a gift, a joy, a pleasure. And I’d love to invite you to give it to yourself.

Thanks for sharing tea with me. If you love this podcast or find value in it, please give it a five-star rating on Apple. Share it with a fellow Phoenix going through her unlearning so she can rise. I’ll see you in a couple weeks. Thanks. Bye.