Meet Yeliena Theofilatos

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yeliena Theofilatos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yeliena below.

Yeliena, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

Throughout my 20s, I was hiding behind the label that I had assigned myself long before: “introvert”. I successfully avoided drawing attention to myself in my social circles. I had a message to share but I was hesitant about sharing it because of the immense pressure I was putting on myself to sound crystal clear, eloquent, and smooth. I simply did not think I was worthy of being listened to unless I sounded perfect!

Looking back, I realize how unrealistic this expectation was for someone who was born and raised in Russia and lived there until she was 20 years. I did not really start speaking English until I moved to the US but there I was, thinking I was supposed to jump on the stage and deliver it like a native speaker on the first try! Unfortunately, by having such high expectations, I deprived myself of opportunities to practice and get better, hence I did not get better or develop any confidence. I was stuck and it was of my own doing.

But everything changed when the Covid pandemic hit and I started meeting with my hypnotherapy clients 1:1 online. Mind you, by then I was in my early 30s and my English had drastically improved but my confidence level was still super low.

I was a therapist who was terrified of public speaking, avoiding presenting like a plague throughout my grad school. But in those 1:1s I finally started to find my voice. Then on Instagram I started to share my message about Anxiety, first hesitantly but with more and more conviction with every post I made.

I was having conversations with various people online that told me how much my message and way of sharing it resonated with them. In the beginning, I was in a total disbelief, of course! I thought they must have been making fun of me. But slowly but surely I started relaxing into knowing: “I am an ok speaker after all”. I then also started venturing into in-person conversations in my social circle which was probably groundbreaking for my friends because they were so not used to hear me talk.

My skill of communicating my point of view and my confidence has been increasing ever since to the point of me now leading group meditations and preparing to facilitate an in-person retreat where I will be the center of attention as a facilitator….and you know what? I am ok with that:)

I realized that I was not as introverted as I thought. I was just lacking confidence and that is different from being a true introvert.
Hence, the bottom lime/moral of this story is: “Do it imperfectly, do it anyway!”
There is no other way to discover and develop your natural capacity until you allow yourself to, like Nike says, JUST DO IT!

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am a social worker by creed, who had to shift gears, very reluctantly, and became an entrepreneur because the COVID made me do it!

The year 2020, the world had shut down, and I found myself jobless with a big jungly garden to take care of and my fiance in Hawai’i where I had moved in the Fall the year prior. The HI state put a hiring freeze on all social work positions due to the quickly ensuring pandemic so I decided to spend my time plugging away on our land and studying.

The graduate school (that I graduated in May 2019) left me feeling discombobulated: I had all kinds of theories about how to help people but I did not have one solid method to get behind and excited about sharing it. Luckily, in late 2020 I got introduced to the Dr Yapko’s work, a psychologist who teaches hypnotherapy to therapists and social workers.

The course I took with him changed it all. It made me fall in love with my profession all over again and gave me such greats tools of helping people that I absolutely had to share them with the world! At the same time I focused on studying how to heal Anxiety because it was still lingering with me since my graduate school years. In my studies, I found two great anti-Anxiety modalities that not many people seemed to know much about then: Polyvagal Theory and mindfulness-based teachings by Dr Judson Brewer.

I decided to turn my IG account where I had been posting pictures of my pumpkins and cats into an educational channel and then a business page. Again, I encountered a tremendous amount of anxiety when I decided to open a business instead going back to the workplace when jobs started becoming available again.

This is how My Blooming Heart Hypnotherapy and Coaching was born to specialize in helping women just like myself who had dreams of running their own businesses but struggled with Anxiety standing in between them and their deepest aspirations.

And you know what is the best part?!

Ever since starting my business in 2022 I have lived through many life and work ups and downs, but thanks to my trainings I know what to do with my mind and how to regulate my nervous system so that I always come back to a feeling of safety and calm presence inside. This inspires me to keep working so that every woman, especially those of them who are entrepreneurs, can learn the skills to find inner peace and create their business from a place of joy and uncompromising self-belief!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Knowing how Anxiety is born in the brain so that I avoid inadvertently perpetuating it while I think that I am healing it. (and helping others to do the same)

2. Nervous System Regulation is my jam #1.

3. Self-hypnosis is my jam #2.

The advice: Know Yourself! Read the books, apply the information, and notice the change. Find what works, and use it! No therapist can use it for you.
But if you can afford working with the therapist who specializes in Anxiety, feel free to consider that option as it will save you time and lots of mental energy and effort trying to figure it out on your own.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

The book that I love to pieces and want everyone to know about, even if they are not struggling with Anxiety, is “Unwinding Anxiety” by Dr Judson Brewer. It will blow your mind because the perspective it shares on Anxiety is not found anywhere else yet it is firmly grounded in Dr Brewer’s scientific studies, his work with clients, and his own mindfulness practice.

The most important insight that I personally got out of it is that because our brains dislike Uncertainty so much, it is normal to have Anxiety from time to time and our job is to basically avoid making it worse by trying to make it better.

And how do we try to make it better?
By trying to THINK our way out of it.

Thinking your way out of Anxiety does not work.
It only digs you deeper into it.

What we really need to do is to to regulate our nervous system FIRST.
This is why the motto that I teach my clients is “Regulate First, Think Later”.

May your heart be in Bloom!
xoxo
Yeliena

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mybloomingheart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybloominghearthypnotherapy/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mybloominghearthypno/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MyBloomingHeartHypnotherapy
• Other: Insight Timer https://insig.ht/VJYcCt7RlKb