Tiger. Sloth. Alpaca. Pick Your Healing Mascot.
Episode 18 of Wellness Me Up — Wellness Me Up Diary Entry with NLP Practitioner & Success Coach Darcy Burtch
Written and hosted by Amanda Reece, founder of Wellness Me Up.
Darcy Burtch has crawled through some serious basement level rock bottom moments in her life. Now she helps others do the same — faster than they think possible. This episode goes everywhere. Trauma. Accountability. Change. And somehow ends with a sloth. You're welcome.
🎧 Listen to the episode here:
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There's a Basement to Rock Bottom. Darcy Has Been There.
Let me just give you the overview so you understand who you're listening to.
Darcy put herself in foster care at 17 because her upbringing was that bad. She emancipated herself and was paying bills before she was old enough to vote. She went through alcoholism in her early twenties because she was numbing the raw feelings of her childhood. She went through corporate betrayal. She is the oldest of nine children and has been a second mom to her siblings for most of her life.
And then in 2019 her dad was shot at work. Traumatic brain injury. Two years in rehab. Four years living with Darcy and her husband as a 24 hour care individual. And then recently Darcy found him deceased.
She has been through some stuff. And she's still here. Still showing up. Still helping people. And she brings every single one of those experiences into the room with her when she works with clients.
That's not a marketing angle. That's just the truth.
You Are Doing the Work. She Is Just the Guide.
This is how Darcy frames what she does and I love it so much.
She's an NLP practitioner, clinical hypnosis practitioner, success coach, time technique practitioner, and emotional freedom technique practitioner. That's a lot of tools. And she uses all of them depending on what each person needs.
But she's very clear — she is simply the guide. You are doing the work. As long as you're open to receiving it and actually willing to show up for yourself... the results are there. But if you're not ready? She can't do it for you. She tried working with her husband twice on quitting smoking. He won't quit because he doesn't actually want to.
You have to want it. You have to want it. I repeat, you have to want it.
Thirteen Therapists. One Right Fit.
One of the things Darcy said that I keep coming back to is about being the right fit.
She talked about a woman who had been through thirteen different therapists before finding one that worked. Thirteen. And the problem wasn't therapy — it was the fit. Feeling heard. Feeling like the person across from you actually gives a damn about your outcome.
Darcy gives a damn. You can feel it in how she talks about her clients. She messages them three days after a session just to check in. She doesn't take your money and wave goodbye until next time. She is genuinely invested in your change because she knows what it feels like to need it yourself.
And when it's not the right fit? She'll tell you. She's not going to take on someone who needs clinical mental health support and pretend she's the person for that. She'll help you find who is. That's just who she is. Why does this remind me of that Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street where the Santa Clause sends them to another store to find the better deal? Darcie knows this journey is about you, and wants you to find ways to get healthy with the tools you need, and that starts with finding someone you can be your ugly self with.
The Moment the Light Comes Back
This was the moment in this conversation that really landed for me.
Darcy was talking about what it looks like when something clicks for a client. And she described watching a man — who came in very angry, very closed off — take a breath partway through their session. And then smile. And keep smiling.
She said she went downstairs afterwards and cried. Because watching someone take that part of themselves back — the part that got buried under trauma and pain and life being life — is one of the most moving things she gets to witness.
And I jumped in because I know exactly what she means. You can always see it in the eyes. The light and life coming back into them. That moment when someone's whole system shifts and you can see it happening in real time. That's why people do this work. That's the whole point. Goosies.
Healing Is Not Linear. And Accountability Is Not Optional.
Darcy doesn't sugarcoat this part and I'm here for it.
She said staying stuck in trauma is a choice. And she knows that pisses people off. But her whole philosophy is built on the idea that at some point — no matter what happened to you, no matter how real and valid your pain is — you have to take accountability for where you go from here.
You cannot be 46 years old and still blaming your childhood for the conscious decisions you're making today. She said it directly. She means it.
And she said this comes from her own journey. She spent years protecting everyone around her from the truth of what she'd been through. Hiding it. Not talking about it. And then she got tired of it. She created her podcast the School of Hard Knocks because she was done hiding. Done acting like she had done something wrong. Done letting shame keep her stuck.
Getting grounded in your healing means life is still going to throw things at you. It always will. But when you're grounded you handle it differently. You look at what's coming and you go... I got this. I've been through worse. This isn't taking me down.
That's the goal. That's where Darcy wants to get you.
The WTF Wheel Question: If Your Healing Journey Had a Mascot What Animal Would It Be?
THE BEST WHEEL QUESTION THIS PODCAST HAS EVER PRODUCED. I said what I said.
Darcy's immediate answer was a tiger. Full force. Rawr. Let's go. We've got this.
And then she paused. And the healed version of her showed up and said... no. Actually it's a sloth.
Because healing is slow. Anyone who thinks they're jetting through it is not healing — they're rushing past things that are going to come back in a year or five years and demand to be felt. The sloth is right. The sloth is wise. The sloth knows you have to sit in every single disgusting uncomfortable feeling until it moves through you. Because once you feel it properly you don't have to feel it again.
She compared it to a tattoo. You don't go back and have the artist recreate the same tattoo. It's there. It's done. Move forward.
And I jumped in with my own mascot — the alpaca. Because alpacas spit back when they need to. They have incredible boundaries. They're nurturing but they're not pushovers. And honestly that's exactly what healing looks like when you're doing it right.
Tiger to get started. Sloth to move through it. Alpaca to hold your boundaries while you do.
You're welcome. That's your healing journey right there.
What Wellness Me Up Means to Darcy
Love yourself. All the time. No matter what.
She said she could walk into any wellness-focused person's home and find at least three mindset books. Guaranteed. And that's great. But if you're not loving yourself none of it is going to stick. You won't apply it. You won't do the work. You won't show up for yourself.
Wellness Me Up is a lifestyle shift. It's correcting who's in your circle. It's doing the inside out work. It's becoming the authentic version of yourself and building your whole life around that person.
And it starts with loving yourself. All of it. Even the parts you've been hiding.
Want to work with Darcy? Darcy Burtch is an NLP practitioner, clinical hypnosis practitioner, success coach, time technique practitioner and emotional freedom technique practitioner who has been through the basement of rock bottom and crawled her way back out. She's waiting for you to be ready. When you are — go find her.
👉 darcieburtch.com 📱 All platforms — just search Darcy Burtch or School of Hard Knocks
If this one lit something up in you... share it with someone who's ready to stop being stuck. And subscribe to Wellness Me Up wherever you listen.
🎧 Listen to the episode here:
→ YouTube
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