Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Carlee Krichmar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Carlee, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Before starting Explore to Heal I worked in the field of education and early intervention and used a play-to-learn approach to teach children all kinds of skills. I couldn’t help but notice how rarely, if ever, we use that approach to teach adults new skills and so I’ve always wanted to do something to change that. I took that thought and combined it with my passion for self-growth and healing to create a way for families who, like mine, have experienced dysfunction caused by addiction and mental health disorders to speak openly and honestly about their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Using play as a tool, the experience of speaking vulnerably becomes less stressful and even fun to practice. I am a pretty playful person and love games, so it came naturally to me to create the gamified communication technique that we use in Explore to Heal to help families learn and practice using healthier, more effective ways of communicating with each other which results in cooperative healing.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Explore to Heal is a program that is for people who truly care about improving their relationships. For years I have worked to improve my own mental health and reverse the effects of having adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). I know firsthand how difficult it can be to retrain your brain to have self-control during conflict, be cognizant of the experience of others, and to own your actions and behaviors. My personal healing is continuous, but having a supportive social network and healthy relationships helps tremendously. Explore to Heal is an innovative, gamified communication program that helps families affected by substance use disorders relearn how to communicate and rebuild their trust and connection in the process. We guide family members in using empathy, active-listening, self-expression and self-control to playfully connect and support one another,
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Society has a way of pushing us to choose a career path at a pretty early age, and when we do that it can be difficult to make the decision to transition to something different if that career ends up not being what we are called to do, or that there is a different way we want to do it. Something I have had to unlearn is that we are not limited to the specificity of our college degrees. I thought I would be a school counselor with my master’s in educational counseling, but my one way path diverged after moving to San Diego. At first, I used my degree to acquire jobs that were indirectly related to school counseling, but that still utilized skills I learned from education in addition to my personal skills and interests. While creating Explore to Heal, I really had to do a lot of self-talk to remind myself that I’m “allowed” to do this, I am qualified to do this, and that just because this didn’t exist before, it doesn’t mean it isn’t possible for it to succeed now. I finally reached a point where there was no denying that what I created was a powerful tool that deserved to be shared with others and that just because I went to school to be a school counselor, it’s still possible for me to be an awesome business owner that gets to combine my personal and professional knowledge and experience to change how we approach healing.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
As a child I experienced a lot of adversity because of substance abuse and mental health disorders within my dysfunctional family. These things inevitably affected how I functioned as an adult and how I learned to cope with and manage stress. Starting and operating a business is the epitome of stress, so it has been quite the emotional and mental roller coaster. I have to intervene with self-talk when even after years of self-care practice, my confidence wavers and that voice in my head tries to convince me that what I’m doing won’t succeed and that I should just give up. I so strongly believe in what I am doing and that it is truly the gift that I am meant to share with the world. The natural resiliency that helped me survive adversity throughout my childhood and come out as a determined, self-motivated and exceptionally compassionate person is what gives me the strength I have today to overcome any challenges that may present themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: exploretoheal.com
- Instagram: @exploretoheal
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlee-krichmar/