An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Radical Self-Responsibility. Choose who you want to be. Choose healing. Choose to love yourself. Choose to trust yourself. Choose to listen to yourself. Know who you are and live into being the best of who you are. Have boundaries. But most of all, take responsibility for your experience of life. We can’t control what has happened or what is happening. Still, we can always control whether we are growing into a version of ourselves that knows who we are, honors who we are, and loves who we are, in the face of any external factor, situation or circumstance.
As a part of my series about the “5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rebeccah Silence.
Rebeccah Silence is an advocate and leading coach in emotional healing and relationships. As a survivor of childhood trauma and abuse and diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer while pregnant, Rebeccah has successfully led countless individuals, couples, and families to process even the most intense traumatic experiences — and heal!
An accomplished TV and radio personality with over a decade of experience speaking to millions about doing the inner work, Rebeccah is a groundbreaking voice in the space of healing and self-development. Her life’s mission is about supporting people in moving through their healing so that they can allow themselves to truly thrive.
Rebeccah is the author of Coming Back to Life, host of the Healing IS Possible Experience and the Tougher Together Breakthrough Podcast, and the creator of the on-demand The Emotional Survival Kit course. Through her coaching, seminars, books and online courses, Rebeccah teaches us how to become our own healer, love and trust ourselves, and be our best for others and the world.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
The belief that “healing is possible” has shaped my life and who I have become. Growing up, there were people in my family that I loved that I sensed were emotionally unhealed and mentally unwell. I saw firsthand the cost of addiction, self-harm, shutting down, lashing out, anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and poor boundaries. And it broke my heart. At a very young age, I wanted to be a helper and a healer.
Then, as an adult, I had a relationship in which I experienced those same issues of addiction, self-harm, shutting down, lashing out, anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and poor boundaries. I had an eating disorder and was clinically depressed — and even suicidal. I fell into abusive relationships and had no boundaries or self-respect. I realized the healing would have to start with me. I knew there had to be a better way. This is how I started my own journey towards healing.
Back then, I didn’t know that my story would become an example of healing as a possibility. Not only did I get my life back, but my experience and my clients’ results have shown millions how to take their lives back.
My education includes bachelor’s and master’s degree programs covering human behavior, psychology, and music therapy. My Master’s in Counseling eventually led to me becoming a certified Integrative Holistic Life Coach and Facilitator.
My professional experience includes working at a psychiatric hospital, inpatient psychiatric center, drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, working in school districts as a school counselor and counseling coordinator, and about 15 years of private practice work.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
At age 31, I was offered a weekly morning radio show on my hometown’s local TOP 40 station. The response was incredible. Called “Confession Tuesday,” the show became #1 in the first two months. For nearly a decade, we aired every Tuesday morning. My voice became synonymous with a way for people to learn and know that they could be more and better.
As the show evolved, it was played on school buses and waiting rooms. I repeatedly heard how listeners would remain in their cars until the segment ended because they didn’t want to miss one word of heartfelt advice.
From there, my private practice, group retreats, couples’ intensive workshops, podcasts, books, and courses were born. Confession Tuesday gave me a platform to reach a community full of people that longed for hope and healing.
As my private practice grew, I was hired by businesses, school districts, couples, families, and individuals seeking more for themselves and their life’s purpose.
Because of my public and private practice experience, I knew I was destined to serve at the highest level; that has been my mission ever since.
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
The most humorous mistake I made early in my career was thinking that it was my job to help people heal and grow. I thought I was a superwoman for years and tried to be everything to everyone. That was not only not my job but inhibited clients from understanding their power and abilities. Cancer at just 34 years old while I was pregnant reinforced that I am not a superwoman. I look back and laugh at my naivety. Today the superwoman myth is happily retired.
After cancer, I let go of thinking that my job was to do the healing work for others; these days, I show people how to become their own healer, in their own way.
My focus is now on helping people help themselves create their lives from a healed place. There is an end to the pain and our unhealed emotional wounds. There is life on the other side of trauma, but it is not my responsibility to get anyone there. Instead, I show anyone that wants it how to get themselves to their own healed place — a new way of living!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
In 2019, I participated in a small yearlong Mastermind group with Brendon Burchard. I learned the power of building out an authentic message into products. Brendon took time with me to listen and encourage my vision that I could be a leader in emotional healing for anyone willing to set themselves emotionally free. His guidance gave me everything I needed especially as the pandemic hit. I needed to reach out to the masses in a whole new way: I expanded my private practice, created an online community, built on-demand courses, began writing books, gained media appearances, got a new radio show, started my own Youtube show, and a paid podcast. I had no idea that the Mastermind and Brendon would significantly change my life. Still, I have expanded my team, my first book is being published, I am on local television where I live in Colorado, and my podcasts continue to serve beyond my private practice and retreat work.
What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?
Serve people and enjoy every minute of it. Every new client is precious and needs you at your best.
And don’t forget that you are your most important client. Know how much you deserve all the good you pour into others. The more you pour into yourself, the better you will pour into the world. Your commitment to service and impact can go as far as your commitment and service to yourself. You will inevitably burn out if you don’t pay attention to and listen to your soul, body, needs, and wants.
What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?
Show gratitude every day. You must want your team to have a great experience working with you, each other, and the company. It’s so important to care about how everyone is experiencing themselves and the culture they come to work in every day.
Also, make sure they understand the mission and vision of the company. Put people in roles where their unique skills make a noticeable difference to that mission and vision. Encourage ongoing communication about what’s working and what could be better about their job experience. When I do this with my team, the feedback I get about their job satisfaction is exceptional.
Work can and should be enjoyable and an experience that enhances the lives of everyone on the team. When people are expected to have a great experience at work and are given the space to communicate and thrive, the culture becomes such that people not only want to be there but enjoy being at work.
On a related note, I also encourage couples to pay attention to what they model for each other and their communities. Our work is so much more than the results and deliverables on the table at any given moment.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. Mental health is often looked at in binary terms; those who are healthy and those who have mental illness. The truth, however, is that mental wellness is a huge spectrum. Even those who are “mentally healthy” can still improve their mental wellness. From your experience or research, what are five steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness. Can you please share a story or example for each.
Mental wellness is not possible without emotional wellness. I have included five pieces of my daily routine that have allowed me and my clients to stay emotionally well, promoting and providing for true mental wellness. (This topic is critically important because we have many silently struggling with anxiety and depression — trying to pick up the pieces of living through a global pandemic.) We always have control over emotional wellness in the face of any circumstance. When we are emotionally well, we automatically have better mental wellness, which means we can live and lead our lives happier and healthier.
- Radical Self-Responsibility. Choose who you want to be. Choose healing. Choose to love yourself. Choose to trust yourself. Choose to listen to yourself. Know who you are and live into being the best of who you are. Have boundaries. But most of all, take responsibility for your experience of life. We can’t control what has happened or what is happening. Still, we can always control whether we are growing into a version of ourselves that knows who we are, honors who we are, and loves who we are, in the face of any external factor, situation or circumstance.
- Remember that you are always a choice. You are choosing all the time. Every choice is either powerless, draining, and stressful or powerful, energizing, and empowering. Starting now, choose powerfully — and then notice how often your mind tells you that you can’t do what you want, get what you want, or have what you want. None of that mental chaos must be real or true. That’s just fear trying to convince you that you don’t have a choice. Choose powerfully, for you, as your own greatest ally and advocate because no one else can do that for you.
- Practice Impeccable Self-Care. Create your own personalized impeccable self-care plan. Give up all forms of self-betrayal by deciding what 1–3 ways you will take care of yourself, in your own way, every day. Maybe it’s journaling, meditating, or creating art. Perhaps it’s moving your body, adding in naps, experiencing nature, or cooking your favorite meals. Create your own self-care combination of your favorite ways to care for yourself. Deep down, you do know what takes care of you and what honors your highest and best self.
- Know that your best is enough. Your best is and always has been enough. You’ve done your best with what you knew and had available to you at the time. Give yourself permission to grow and reinvent yourself any time life feels stressful or when you start noticing that your mental health and wellness are not as strong and straightforward as you desire them to be. Have compassion and demand that you do not let fear or stress get the better of you. The good news is that you can keep progressing, committed to becoming a better version of yourself that is happy and free, that you are proud of.
- Let yourself feel. Use your voice. Let’s face it, taking on our mental health can feel scary, even terrifying. It doesn’t have to be complicated and facing it won’t make things worse if you get out of resisting how you feel and what your truth is. You know how you feel in every single moment, and you can be brave enough to feel. Communicate that truth first with you and those around you. You are being honest about how you feel, what you want, and what you need to be in healthy leadership role of your life. And when the emotions come, they are not bad or wrong and don’t mean something is wrong with you. Feel fully. Tell your truth unapologetically. From there, you will get more clear, more relaxed and more confident.
I explain these 5 Steps to Achieving Optimal Mental Health on my Youtube channel as well-
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVkgK5D0BapdRpLyO4l1J4Q
How about teens and pre teens. Are there any specific new ideas you would suggest for teens and pre teens to optimize their mental wellness?
To every child and teen, please know that nothing is wrong with you — no matter who you are or what you are experiencing now or this year.
You are a miracle. Decide that you deserve the best out of life and that you have everything you need to create a wonderful life for yourself. Don’t fear becoming an adult. You can “adult” and live your way if you know your worth, follow your truth, and take the time to care for yourself emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Know that nothing outside of you is more powerful than your ability to lead yourself through challenging and even immensely painful times. You can start to heal from past pain and trauma starting now. You can become the leader and creator of your life and your life experience no matter what you’ve been through.
I hope you will own your worth and make that your #1 priority for the rest of your life.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
The first personal growth book I read was “The Celestine Prophecy” when I was 17. I read the book for English class and had to write a book report on it and then presented the book and my experience of the book to the class. Until then, I believed that life would be hard and that I would have just to make the best of it. The book opened a window into my soul’s longing for adventure, particularly spiritual adventure. I learned that there was more possibility available to me beyond the lessons I was learning growing up in my family and that there was so much world to see and endless learning about how the world and life could work for me.
My two favorite teachings from the book were, first, about having children and giving each child the experience of getting the full attention of one parent. I loved being present with my children and learning from them as much or more than I could ever teach them. The second lesson was about coincidences. My interpretation of this lesson in the book was that there are no coincidences. This meant that everything is an opportunity to experience a miracle which is another rule I have lived by through all of my seasons, challenges, and growing pains.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The Healing IS Possible movement, and the teaching of my Emotional Survival Kit is my life’s work and greatest passion. When people connect to their own inner healer, believing that healing IS possible, they can reinvent themselves repeatedly, and they are forever free.
As an Emotional Healing and Relationship coach, I teach people how to connect to their own inner healer, sourcing from their own guidance and wisdom, because everyone deserves to believe that Healing IS Possible. My promise to humanity is that healing IS possible not just for some of us, but for all of us. Everyone deserves to live free and inspired, knowing who they are, where they are going and why. We can be free of our past and live the life of our dreams once we become our own healer with our own answers. And this movement is one that I truly believe will change mental, emotional, marital, family, community, and global wellness.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
Jim Rohn says, “I used to say, I’ll take care of you if you take care of me. Now I say, I will take care of me for you if you will take care of you for me.”
As a recovering co-dependent and as someone who loves fiercely, this quote hit me hard and allowed me to set a new standard of how I want to operate in all of my relationships. This quote is a game-changer in a world where so many are programmed to be co-dependent, believing that love means sacrificing ourselves for other people, and in a world where mental un-wellness is normalized.
Optimal mental wellness requires us to be responsible for how we live, who we are, and our impact. When we choose to be our best, we know we do our best no matter what happens. When I take responsibility for my self-care, including my mental wellness, I have more strength to create the life I want. And my relationships are more fun because I choose to live free, no matter what.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
The best way to stay on top of my latest material is to subscribe to the Rebeccah Silence YouTube channel.
You can watch my 5 steps video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbhqygr60g4
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
Rebeccah Silence: 5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.