Hidden Gems: Meet Brooke Seiz of Evolve Wellness & Counseling

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brooke Seiz.

Hi Brooke, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi, I’m Brooke Seiz, licensed professional counselor, and IFM Certified Functional Medicine Nutrition Practitioner. My life with food started off with a rough start. The first bite of food my mother gave me was plain yogurt around 7 or 8 months of age. In her words, every orifice started streaming with fluid; water from my eyes, nose, and mouth, and I was taken to the hospital, where the doctor told my parents I’d likely have a lot of allergies and to avoid milk completely for the time being. We know a lot more about allergies and food sensitivities now than we did back then, but that doctor was certainly right that I did grow up with a lot of food allergies.

We also know a lot more about trauma, and how trauma lives in the nervous system. What did my body remember about the experience of struggling to breathe after the first bite of food that went into it? What memory lived in my nervous system every time I ate something and my body reacted poorly? I can tell you that in my thoughts was a fear of food, a mistrust. And years later when I was in therapy dealing with an eating disorder that had gone on without improvement for far too long that I would tell you there were sensations and images I could explain that didn’t make sense, but that showed up for me around my urges to binge on food.

What ultimately treated my anxiety, trauma, and binge eating was a combination of functional nutrition and finding a trauma therapist that happened to do Somatic Experiencing. Learning how addictive certain foods were for me, learning the gut problems I had and treating them with functional medicine, mixed with processing the trauma in my body, and finding other coping mechanisms aside from food to cope with my stress were a combination that led to my being in recovery.

This was a long journey for me and led to my going through holistic nutrition school in Denver, then going through three years of functional medicine training, and eventually back to school to get my Master’s in Counseling Psychology. And of course, Somatic Experiencing. For me, it took an integrative approach, and I spent a long time trying to piece all of this together through various people. My mission is to help people make the connections they need and provide those tools or at least identify the resources they might need to put the pieces of their puzzle together and provide appropriate referrals with ease. I now have a private counseling and functional nutrition practice in Prairie Village. My main areas of focus are anxiety, PTSD, and trauma, along with gut problems like IBS and IBD. I see people for hormone issues including PMS and PMDD. The other area of my counseling practice is with couples using Gottman Couples therapy, and sex therapy for both individuals and couples.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
In my personal health journey, it often felt like an uphill battle, but once I started looking for help, there came relief and the sense that although I had a road ahead of me, I was not alone (and it was not all in my head!).

In my business, I am grateful I’ve had support from my spouse and support in helping with my children as I pushed through additional schooling and studying. My undergrad degree was in musical theatre and I did this for about a decade before I had kids and went back to school for holistic nutrition. I worked in nutrition for 6 years before deciding I wanted to go through 18 months of functional medicine training and soon after that complete my Master’s in counseling. I also completed 3 years of Somatic Experiencing trauma therapy training. It is certainly challenging to do all of this while Mom-ing and working, but I have my parents and my spouse to thank for helping with my kids as I worked through all of this.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I own Evolve Wellness & Counseling which may one day grow into more practitioners, but for now, it’s a solo practice. I provide comprehensive functional nutrition services to people dealing with gut, mood, and hormone issues. I also provide body-based psychotherapy services for a range of needs. These include anxiety, PTSD, trauma, sexual dysfunction or trauma, and disordered eating. I also work with couples.

I love to teach, and enjoy going into companies to provide lunch n’ learn talks, and provide various groups with wellness classes. I lead a cleanse every January called The Vibrant Health Reset which is always a really enjoyable group program.

What sets me apart is that I’m an integrative and holistic counselor. I see people only for counseling or only for functional nutrition work, or both. I’m happy to help fill in gaps in care wherever that can be helpful within those two scopes of practices and enjoy working with other counselors and functional medicine folks in this way. I also do Somatic Experiencing which helps people to understand where they’ve gotten stuck in the fight, flight, freeze process and helps them to process through this to find healing in both bodies and also in the mind. This is different from talk therapy in that we bring the body into the conversation and work through this avenue as well.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I remember in high school taking a career questionnaire that said my ideal career would be in healthcare. I scoffed at that because I was already focused on a musical theatre career. I was a super shy young kid, and my Mom put me in dance and music classes. I learned to be confident in myself and lots of other important life skills, and I fell in love with singing, dancing, and acting. This is what I went to undergraduate school for, getting a BFA in musical theatre.

So, I spent a lot of time singing and was at dance multiple nights a week. I loved theatre and most of all, theatre people!  The performing arts community was a source of joy, excitement, and comfort for me. I was always interested in wellness, but this came later in my adulthood.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.evolvewellnesskc.com
• Instagram: @brookeseiz
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/evolvewellnessandcounseling
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9W1fCg9OgPmmpQfIsR7_Q