In the insightful second episode of WyzeCast™ Season 2, we welcome Carleigh Burns, a Holistic Mental Wellness Coach dedicated to empowering high achievers on their journey to natural mental healing. Carleigh’s personal triumph over anxiety, depression, disordered eating, substance abuse, and her mastery of living with bipolar disorder have uniquely positioned her as a guide for others seeking self-love, confidence, and a return to their authentic selves.

Armed with honors degrees in Biology and Psychology, Carleigh has crafted the transformative “8 Simple Steps to Naturally Heal Anxiety” program. Join us as she takes you on a step-by-step journey, blending her personal experience, scientific insights, and timeless wisdom. This program is designed to help you build a lifestyle that nurtures your healing journey, free from medication.

In this episode, Carleigh delves into the profound topic of healing from anxiety without relying on medication. Discover practical strategies, scientific approaches, and age-old wisdom that form the foundation of her holistic healing program. From overcoming anxiety to stepping into self-love and confidence, Carleigh’s expertise provides a roadmap for those seeking a medication-free path to mental wellness.

Don’t miss this chance to explore holistic healing with Carleigh Burns on WyzeCast™ Season 2. Gain valuable insights, actionable steps, and a renewed sense of hope as we uncover the secrets to healing the mind naturally.

Watch on YouTube – Premieres November 26th, 10 AM ET

Listen on Spotify – Premieres November 21st, 12 PM ET

Melanie McSally
Welcome to another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive differences they are making in the world.

I am super excited about today’s guest. She is a Holistic Mental Wellness Coach who empowers high achievers to heal their minds naturally so they can overcome anxiety, step into self-love and confidence, and feel like themselves again!

Her personal experience naturally healing from anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and substance abuse, as well as her experience mastering living with bipolar disorder, has led her to her calling of guiding you to heal your own mind.

After graduating with honors with a degree in both Biology and Psychology, our guest today has created a program called: 8 Simple Steps to Naturally Heal Anxiety, where she takes you on a step-by-step journey of healing your mind-medication free.

Using her personal experience combined with scientific data and age-old wisdom, this program is perfectly tailored to help you build a lifestyle that facilitates your healing journey.

My name is Melanie McSally, your host for today, and without further adieu, I would like to give a warm welcome to the inspirational, the talented, and the thoughtful Carleigh Burns. Carleigh is joining us from California but spends most of her time in Australia. Carleigh, thank you so much for being here today. We are so delighted to have you on our show!

Carleigh Burns: Thank you for that awesome introduction. It’s such an honor to be here. I’m so grateful and so pleasured.

Melanie McSally
The pleasure is mine, Carleigh. So, I touched upon your journey in your introduction, but I’d love to dive into that a little bit more. How did your journey with mental health lead you to become a coach?

Carleigh Burns
Yeah, so my journey with mental health began at a very young age. I like to think of my darkest days starting when I was 12 years old. So, very young to be experiencing deep depression and crippling anxiety that really lasted through a lot of my teenage years and into my early adulthood.

Carleigh Burns
So, obviously, that is the path that I chose. I really dove deep into the healing of my mind, finding natural modalities that would work for me and testing out every little thing. I found something that worked. So, I’ve known from the very young age of 20 that it’s my calling to guide people toward naturally healing their minds in the ways that I’ve found healing. I didn’t know what that was going to look like. At the time, I knew that I didn’t want to be a traditional therapist. Somewhere along my journey, I found the career of coaching, and it just felt so right, so that is what I have moved into.

Melanie McSally
Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story. Many years ago, I was hospitalized, the details of which are irrelevant, but as a result of my time in the hospital as well as my illnesses, I found myself suffering from brain fog. I didn’t know what it was at the time. I didn’t even know that brain fog was an actual condition, so I had no idea what was going on with me. All I knew was that I could not perform my work duties. At the time, I was an IT executive. I was known for my intelligence. I was known for my attention to detail and problem-solving skills. And, I remember after being reprimanded, yet again, for a stupid mistake, I found myself home crying, wondering what was going on if I was ever going to heal. If my brain was permanently damaged. I was feeling like, what am I going to do if I don’t have my brain? I was feeling like I’d lost a piece of my identity. I remember feeling so devastated. When the doctors finally diagnosed me, they admitted that they didn’t know how long it would take, but they were confident I would heal. So, that was reassuring.

Flipping back over to you, I find it incredibly inspiring that you took it upon yourself to find alternative ways of confronting your illness because the brain is so unknown. I love that you didn’t settle for the treatment proposed since it wasn’t working for you or you didn’t want it. I love that you instead searched for what would work for you. It’s amazing to me that you’ve taken it even a step further and are now helping others do the same.

Carleigh Burns: Exactly. Umhmm

Melanie McSally: So, have you noticed any common trends or challenges that people face when trying to find this sort of healing?

Carleigh Burns
Yeah, something that I noticed is really common, especially in our Western culture, is that people like to think of the mind as a separate thing. Like, the brain is functioning apart from the rest of the body. This is such a common thing when it comes to pharmaceutical medication, as it tends to target one aspect of our minds. It tends just to target the chemical imbalance that might be happening in our minds. Whereas in reality, to find true healing, we need to look at the body, mind, and spirit as all parts of this one entity that makes up you. So, the thing that I find that people often struggle with is thinking about how the body actually affects the mind.

How our digestive system and our mind are so interlinked. How exercise affects the mind. How all of these different parts of our lifestyle and of what we’re doing to ourselves as a whole are actually impacting our mental health. When we bring it back to that piece of connectivity and start to recognize that every moment in your day has the potential to be healing and to lift you up or to be hurtful and bring you down. Then, we can start to really recognize what it actually means to be on a healing journey.

Melanie McSally
That makes total sense. We know our mind, body, and soul are all connected, so why not look at the whole when looking to heal the parts? So, how did you ultimately manage to find healing despite all of the challenges you were facing in your mind?

Carleigh Burns
Looking back, it feels like everything along my journey has just happened so naturally and just really effortlessly fallen in place. When I had that experience, that pivotal moment when I found that I had bipolar disorder, it was at a time in my life when I was about to go down to New Zealand and have this university exchange for my third year of study, and it was a really opportune time for me to essentially reinvent myself. Because I had just faced this huge fear of mine, which was that I did have bipolar disorder. That was my biggest fear at the time; it showed me that I had nothing to be afraid of. I had just faced my biggest fear, and I was totally fine. So, I went down to New Zealand, and I started really embracing adventure. I learned how to ski I started whitewater kayaking. I started going on multi-day hikes every weekend. These activities that I was finding myself immersed in were combining exercise, time in nature, time in community, all of these things that are so naturally healing. I didn’t realize at the time that was going to have such a huge benefit on my mental health, but ultimately it did. That year, I also went and did my yoga teacher training, which again combined the exercise piece with mindfulness, which are two more things that I really uphold as my priorities for my mental health journey. It just really felt like everything was so effortlessly connecting for me. I understand that it’s not necessarily like that for everyone’s journey. That’s why I know it’s my duty to share this medicine, to share this wisdom, to share my experience with the world. Because when you find these pieces, and you start to put them together to build a lifestyle that facilitates healing, you can find true happiness without using medication.

Melanie McSally
That’s awesome! It is so true that everything is absolutely related, and what I’ve learned throughout my years of being a competitive athlete and spiritual person is that when you are in tune with your body – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, then you can truly listen and know when something is wrong or needs tweaking. I can’t even tell you how many injuries I’ve prevented by listening to my body and taking preventative action. So, I noticed earlier you said that you didn’t want to become a traditional therapist. What is the difference between a therapist and a mental health coach?

Carleigh Burns
That is such a great question and, actually, one that I love to speak about. So, a lot of clients that come to me have actually been seeing therapists for years, and they’re saying, I’ve been in therapy, and it’s helpful to some degree, but I still feel stuck in the same place. Essentially, the difference is that therapy looks backward. Therapy looks at what has happened to you, what’s happened throughout your family history and in your life, to get you to where you are today. And how can we help you be okay with staying where you are today? The difference with coaching is that we say, Okay, here’s where you are, here’s where you want to be. How can we take tangible steps to get you where you want to be? It’s not that the stuff that happened over here is irrelevant. Of course, it’s important in what made you who you are, but with my program, we spend a week or two out of four months talking about what’s happened to you. Asking, how can we expect this, and now, let’s move forward. How can we actually get you to where you want to be and to a place of thriving and true happiness and feeling?

Melanie McSally
Ok, so you’re saying the difference is shifting the focus from how did we get here to how we will get there and pulling from the past as needed to help inform, but not necessarily focusing on it. So I keep hearing you use the word journey, your mental health journey, which to me implies you’re still traveling. What are your thoughts and feelings on the subject? Do you feel this is a journey that you’re still on, or have you reached your destination?

Carleigh Burns
It is absolutely a journey. It’s a journey that lasts a lifetime and then some. When it comes to healing, there really is no destination. But, it’s ultimately about when you reflect and look back on the day, the week, the month, the past few years, and think about how I am genuinely feeling. I can now say that I am genuinely happy and in love with myself, and confident. And 12 years ago, 15 years ago, when I was deeply in the thick of it, no way could I say that. So, to me, that’s the evidence that this healing journey is working, and it’s still something that I prioritize every single day. My mental health is absolutely my number one priority because I know that my brain has the capacity to experience a very broad range of emotions. I have felt as high as it goes, and I’ve seen the deepest darkness. I know I’m never going to be in either of those places again because I uphold my self-care, which is my number one priority. So, I have what I like to call my pillars of mental health, that I take into account every single day when I’m planning my day or my week. These are exercise, nutrition, sleep, meditation and mindfulness, time in nature and connecting with nature, connecting with good humans that I love and that love me, and properly taking self-care time and time for myself. When I have a look at different times in my life, when I maybe wasn’t feeling my best, or I maybe noticed a bit more anxiety coming up or any of these emotions, but I’m kind of like, you know, something’s not right. I have a look at these seven pillars, and normally it’s, oh, well, maybe I haven’t exercised in a couple of days, and then I wasn’t sleeping as well because I haven’t exercised, and then I chose to eat some junk food, and you start to really recognize that all of these things are so connected. When you’re on top of them and acting from a place of self-love to uphold these pillars in your life, it really does create such a beautiful, transformational healing journey that just ripples into every facet of your lifestyle.

Melanie McSally
Yeah, I get that and love that you’re doing this video from nature. I mean, it looks so beautiful and peaceful there. I remember during the early months of the 2020 Covid pandemic, I was working diligently because, at the time, everyone needed technology, and one day, I realized I was irritable, I was restless, I wasn’t motivated, I was drastically overweight for the first time in my life, and I wasn’t happy. What I realized was I was feeling like if I took any time for myself, I’d be letting somebody down, but in all actuality, I was letting myself down. Now, I prioritize self-care because, honestly, I’m more effective, more efficient, more compassionate, intuitive, innovative, and creative when I’m fully nourished, and honestly, that’s what my family, friends, employees, and clients deserve.

It has been such a delight having you here with us today, Carleigh. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

Carleigh Burns
Ultimately, the most important thing that I can tell you is that you are worthy of healing, and you can do this work. It’s not always easy, but it is so simple. And if you’re not sure where to get started on a natural healing journey, download my free guide to get you started. To start cultivating some self-love. To start moving past your anxiety and insecurities. I promise you can do this. And I know that because I’ve done it.

Melanie McSally
How incredible, Carleigh. Folks, as you’re likely aware, anxiety is nothing to be ashamed about. We all feel it at one point or another. It can come up in the smallest of things – am I going to make it to my appointment on time? To something more serious – is my worst fear coming true? Do I have X health condition? To anything in between – will they like me, will I be able to pay my bills on time, etc… No matter what you might be anxious about, Carleigh’s has a free gift to help you take The First Step Towards Overcoming Anxiety. I highly suggest you take her up on this amazing offer and take that first step towards overcoming any anxiety you might be feeling. Just click here to download this free gift today.

Carleigh, it has been such a delight, honor, and blessing having you with us today. Thank you for all of your wisdom and for showering us with your light and words of inspiration.

Carleigh Burns: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Melanie McSally
I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you like what you’ve heard here today, please do like, share, and comment. We are trying to get WyzeTribe™ to be a hot new release. So if you feel inspired, if you feel moved, if you feel called, if we earned it, please do like, share, and comment. It is free for you to do so and really helps the podcast grow. And we really do love your engagement.

This was another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive difference they’re making in the world.

If you want to learn more about WyzeCast™, you can visit our wyzecast.com. We dropped ten episodes every month on the 21st, so you can binge-watch or spread them out over the month. Whatever suits your mood and lifestyle.

Once again, my name is Melanie. It has been my pleasure being your host today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, thank you for your engagement, and I invite you to come back and join me once again for our next episode of WyzeCast™.