Building a Global Model for Conscious Healing – Exclusive Interview with Steven Thistle

Although my business is still in its early stages, just a few months old, I am laying the foundation for a global initiative to bring the Consciously Healing (CHO) Method to people around the world. This innovative, results-driven approach has already been tested with clients, demonstrating its effectiveness in helping individuals release trauma and reprogram unconscious patterns at their core.

My long-term vision is to build an international network of certified coaches trained in the CHO Method, expanding access to genuine, lasting healing for those affected by trauma. The mission is to fill a major gap in the mental health field: the lack of effective, consciousness-based methods for healing relational and attachment trauma. I believe these wounds are among the leading causes of emotional, psychological, and even physical distress, particularly for those who have endured childhood trauma.

As this model evolves, I am seeking aligned partners, collaborators, and investors who share this mission to redefine how trauma is understood and healed. My goal is to contribute lasting value to the mental health field by uniting psychology, consciousness, and energy awareness into one transformative framework that helps people not only manage symptoms but truly heal.

Steven Thistle, Trauma Recovery and Mental Wellness Specialist

Who is Steven Thistle?

I’m a trauma-healing coach and the creator of the Consciously Healing (CHO) Method. This unique approach helps people release deep-seated trauma, reprogram unconscious patterns, and restore balance to mind and body.

My work focuses on helping individuals heal from childhood trauma, narcissistic abuse, relational wounds, codependency, low self-esteem, self-worth challenges, relational difficulties, or any trauma-related mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, stress, complex PTSD, or grief, guiding them toward lasting transformation. This includes energy healing, conscious awareness, and cognitive reprogramming, effectively rewiring the mind and body to shift trauma responses through neuroplasticity. My process brings the unconscious into consciousness, enabling clients to heal consciously and reclaim control over their emotional and mental well-being.

Outside of coaching, I enjoy hiking, creative writing, exploring human behavior and consciousness, and studying holistic healing practices. At home, I value quiet reflection, meaningful conversations, and immersive work on projects that help others. In business, I’m deeply committed to assisting clients in uncovering and transforming the root causes of their struggles, utilizing a combination of practical tools and conscious awareness techniques.

Something interesting about me: I never intended to become a published author or create a healing modality. It grew out of my own journey of survival and self-discovery, and now it’s helping others experience genuine healing and empowerment.

What first drew you to specialize in healing trauma and attachment wounds?

What first drew me to specialize in healing trauma and attachment wounds was my own journey through profound darkness. I reached a point where I was trapped in cycles of despair and suicidal ideation, desperately searching for relief. I tried dozens of talk therapists, pharmaceuticals, and alternative therapies, but nothing brought lasting healing. I kept traveling between deep despair and fleeting hope, unable to find a way out.

In a last attempt to save my own life, I began writing, not with the intention of publishing, but to survive. Through that process, I discovered how my early childhood experiences had created unconscious attachment patterns that shaped not only my relationships but every aspect of my life. My behaviors, thoughts, and emotional reactions were all running on patterns I couldn’t see. I realized that to survive, I had to make my unconscious conscious.

I also discovered that the ego becomes attached to anything we form strong self-identifying beliefs about. This attachment isn’t limited to people, it can include success, career, social status, creative achievements, or even deeply held beliefs about ourselves. When loss, failure, or rejection occurs, the ego experiences it as trauma, triggering intense emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses. Before consciously awakening, I believed my value and identity depended on these external outcomes or attachments. Through conscious healing, I learned to disentangle the ego from these attachments, recognize the illusion, and release the trauma tied to them.

Over time, I also recognized that trauma is not limited to childhood or relational wounds. Trauma can arise from any deeply internalized self-identification. For example, someone who identifies strongly as successful can experience trauma when failure or rejection undermines that identity, triggering feelings of worthlessness or despair. Others may carry trauma from intense professional or creative pressures, societal expectations, or repeated personal disappointments that have shaped their beliefs, thoughts, and emotional responses. Even identity shifts, such as a sudden loss of career, status, or self-concept, can create trauma patterns that unconsciously drive behaviors, stress, and self-sabotage.

My journey through self-enlightenment became a turning point that reshaped how I approach healing. By bringing awareness to my own wounds from childhood attachment to identity-based and situational trauma, I discovered how to transform patterns that once controlled my life. This clarity allows me to see the same unconscious patterns in others, my clients, with precision and empathy. Through the Consciously Healing (CHO) Method, I guide individuals in uncovering, understanding, and reprogramming the unconscious algorithms that drive their symptoms, behaviors, and patterns. This empowers them to reclaim control, shift their internal patterns, and experience lasting transformation, regardless of the source of their pain.

My process begins with somatic and bodily awareness, helping clients identify the sensations and energy tied to their trauma responses, such as anxiety, sadness, overthinking, confusion, as well as trauma-related personas, masks, and coping strategies that were once adaptive but now keep them stuck in old survival patterns. Through this awareness, clients are guided to detach from their automatic reactions, creating a safe space to observe previously unconscious patterns with clarity and objectivity. By consciously witnessing these responses in the present moment, clients begin to recognize the thoughts, beliefs, and self-identifications driving their behaviors, emotions, and habitual reactions. This awareness enables them to gradually reclaim control and reshape the patterns that once unconsciously controlled their lives.

This combination of detachment and present-moment observation empowers clients to re-route their symptoms and address the root causes of their trauma, often experiencing relief and transformation far faster than traditional approaches. By bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness, clients break free from patterns and conditions that have long controlled their lives, reclaiming their authentic self, emotional clarity, and lasting balance, such as mentally, physically, and energetically.

What began as a desperate act to save my own life has become a path to help others heal at the deepest level. The CHO Method does more than manage symptoms, it transforms unconscious trauma patterns rooted in any deeply internalized identity, belief, attachment, or life experience, giving clients the power to reclaim control, clarity, and lasting peace.

How does your Consciously Healing/Mind Surgery Method differ from traditional therapy? What sets the CHO/Mind Surgery Method apart?

• Present-moment awareness as the foundational tool: While therapies such as Somatic Experiencing and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) utilize present-moment awareness to process trauma, the CHO Method employs it as the foundation of healing. Clients are trained to consciously observe and detach in the present moment, thereby fostering awareness without attachment or unconscious identification. This detachment creates space for higher consciousness to emerge, allowing clients to identify and transform unconscious patterns in real time, often altering trauma pathology and enabling symptom relief after the first four of the Twelve Golden Keys.

• Somatic energy healing with neuroplastic reprogramming: The CHO Method transcends conventional somatic therapies by combining somatic energy healing with neuroplastic reprogramming. This dual process releases trapped trauma energy while simultaneously restructuring neural pathways, producing measurable and lasting shifts in behavior, emotion, perception, self-identifying beliefs, thought patterns, automatic reactions, and even one’s sense of reality and identity. Whereas most somatic modalities focus solely on bodily awareness, the CHO Method actively rewires the mind–body feedback loop, healing the physiological, psychological, emotional, and energetic responses to trauma stimuli simultaneously.

• Conscious healing through energy awareness: Unlike traditional therapies that center on emotional processing or symptom management, the CHO Method emphasizes conscious transformation. Clients learn to identify, feel, and release the energetic charge of trauma responses, shifting from reactivity to conscious awareness. Through this deep inner work, the wounded self begins to dissolve, giving rise to the conscious observer, one rooted in self-love, inner command, and authenticity. Rather than coping with pain, clients transmute it into awareness, permanently changing their emotional and energetic baseline.

• Holistic integration of mind, body, and energy: The CHO Method provides a comprehensive and holistic system that integrates the mind, body, and energy field into a unified, coherent framework. Trauma is approached not just as a psychological or emotional event, but as an energetic and neurological imprint. By simultaneously engaging cognitive awareness, somatic intelligence, and conscious energy healing, clients experience transformation at every level of being. These changes are not only felt within the body but are reinforced through new neural and energetic pathways that sustain long-term healing.

  
  

In summary

While other modalities incorporate elements of mindfulness, somatic awareness, and neuroplasticity, the Consciously Healing (CHO)/Mind Surgery Method is the first structured system to unify these elements into a single, comprehensive conscious healing process. By teaching clients to observe and detach in the present moment, release stored energy through somatic awareness, and reprogram unconscious beliefs through higher consciousness, the CHO Method alters trauma at its core.

It doesn’t simply manage symptoms, it transforms the unconscious trauma pathology itself, enabling lasting relief and visible change, often within the first four of the Twelve Golden Keys.

What are the most common core issues you see clients bring to you?

I believe that the vast majority of mental health issues are trauma-related, often stemming from harmful or painful relationships in childhood or adulthood, as well as from attachments to identity, achievements, roles, or deeply held beliefs about the self. I assist clients in becoming consciously aware of their ego and the patterns that unconsciously arise from the past, including ego-driven trauma responses, masks and personas, and maladaptive coping strategies. By bringing into consciousness what they cannot otherwise observe in themselves, clients gain clarity and agency over patterns that have long controlled their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.

The clients I work with often present with patterns and symptoms rooted in early trauma and relational wounds, whether from childhood or adulthood. Common issues include childhood trauma, narcissistic or relational abuse, codependency, low self-esteem, challenges with self-worth, and difficulties in intimate or professional relationships. Many also struggle with mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, stress, complex PTSD, grief, or compulsive behaviors, all of which are frequently driven by unconscious trauma patterns rather than solely biological factors.

Beyond these symptoms, a deeper, recurring core issue is that clients are unknowingly repeating unconscious attachment and belief patterns. These patterns influence their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses in ways they cannot see or control. They often feel stuck, powerless, or trapped in cycles of suffering, relational conflict, or emotional reactivity.

Through the CHO/Mind Surgery Method, I guide clients to bring these unconscious patterns into conscious awareness, enabling them to transform the underlying trauma, release limiting beliefs, and shift their internal programming. By addressing the root causes rather than just the symptoms, clients experience lasting change across their emotional, relational, psychological, and energetic lives.

Can you walk us through a turning point moment when your method transformed someone’s life?

One of the most unforgettable moments in my work happened when a woman called me out of the blue using the Facebook phone icon. I had never received a call that way before, but something told me to answer, and I’m grateful I did. She was suicidal, caught in the middle of a trauma response. Nothing dangerous was happening externally in that moment, but inside her mind, it felt like a crisis was unfolding.

I listened as she poured out her pain, walking her back from the edge, a place I had been myself and deeply understood. She didn’t need a lecture, she needed reassurance and tools to help her anchor. I guided her to observe and detach from the dark emotions rather than be consumed by them. Using present-moment awareness, reprogramming, and perspective shifts, she began to see her experience differently. By learning to observe her feelings consciously rather than identify with them, she found solutions where she had seen none before, including choosing her life over ending it.

Another client, a nurse who worked alongside psychologists and psychiatrists for years, had been in therapy for over 13 years without lasting relief. Within her first four sessions using my method, she experienced a profound shift, gaining clarity, emotional relief, and the ability to make decisions and move forward after being stuck for years.

These stories remind me why I do this work. When clients are taught to bring unconscious patterns into conscious awareness and learn how to detach and reprogram them, transformation can occur far more rapidly and profoundly than most people believe possible.

What misconceptions do people have about healing trauma that you often correct?

The most common misconception is that trauma can’t be healed, that people must simply learn to cope. Many of my clients come to me feeling hopeless after years of traditional therapy, medication, or alternative treatments that provided only temporary relief. They often believe nothing can truly change, when in fact, trauma is absolutely healable, often significantly or even entirely, once its unconscious patterns are brought into awareness and resolved at the root.

Another widespread belief is that symptoms like anxiety, depression, chronic stress, or relational struggles are purely biological or “hardwired.” In reality, these experiences often stem from unresolved trauma, especially from early childhood, painful relationships, or attachments to identity, achievements, and deeply held self-beliefs. Even long-past experiences can leave unconscious imprints in the mind, body, and energy system, shaping emotions and behavior until they are consciously addressed.

Finally, many assume that talk therapy alone can resolve deep trauma. While it offers valuable insight, it typically works at the cognitive level, not where trauma is stored. The Consciously Healing Method goes deeper, combining present-moment awareness, somatic energy work, and neuroplastic reprogramming to transform trauma at its core.

By bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness, clients gain a new level of self-command and emotional freedom. This process doesn’t just manage symptoms, it creates lasting transformation and genuine healing.

What’s the first step someone should take if they want to work with you, and why that matters?

The first step is to schedule a complimentary Discovery Session. Most people who come to me are in pain and have tried traditional therapy, and often even alternative methods, without finding real relief. In this session, I begin by listening deeply and with empathy, creating a safe space where clients can share their experiences without fear of judgment. I pay attention to both their words and the subtle physical and emotional cues that reveal underlying trauma patterns.

Using the CHO/Mind Surgery Method, I relate my own experiences to theirs, illustrating how similar unconscious patterns and ego-driven responses operate. This allows me to give an honest and genuine assessment of whether I can help them on their healing journey. Clients are guided to become consciously aware of patterns and behaviors that have been operating unconsciously, including trauma responses, coping strategies, and self-identifying beliefs tied to relationships, achievements, roles, or personal identity.

By the end of the session, clients no longer feel hopeless or trapped in cycles of pain and old patterns. They leave feeling truly seen, understood, and confident, with clarity not only about the healing process but also about how they can apply this method to overcome similar struggles. For many, it is the first time they experience real relief and the sense that lasting change is possible.

This first step is crucial because it opens the door to transformation and demonstrates that clients have a clear path forward, guided by a method that genuinely works.

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