Meet Kristina de Bree | Licensed Mental Health Professional and Trauma Therapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kristina de Bree and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristina, what’s the most difficult decision you’ve ever had to make?
Shortly after I was born in March of 1986, I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a catastrophic, progressive, and terminal genetic illness. The first five years of my life were spent in a hospital where I witnessed a myriad of traumatic events and had to endure some as well. I wasn’t expected to live past my teen years. During this time I had extensive PTSD, which remained undiagnosed for over 20 years, despite seeing and being evaluated by medical and mental health professionals. Regardless of the terminal diagnosis and hospitalizations every 8-12 weeks of my life, I always excelled in school. When I approached my 20s, things got more dire and I progressed from moderate to end-stage cystic fibrosis. I knew that I wanted to help people heal from PTSD because my unique vantage point and subsequent healing provided me with valuable experience to be able to help others. It was pivotal that I didn’t just find ways to pay my bills, I also truly wanted to make a difference and feel a sense of purpose in life. I built my business while undergoing treatment and being hospitalized every 8-12 weeks from birth to 33 years of age.

There is a shortage of mental health professionals and beyond that, there is a shortage of truly trauma-informed professionals. Being trauma-informed seems like quite the buzzword that many influencers utilize and claim to be “trauma-informed” When in fact, very few have the depth of training, expertise, and ability to clinically finesse the complexity of one’s trauma diagnosis.

It was a lot easier for me to take risks when I thought my life was going to end. I felt that I had nothing to lose and the silver lining was that I took a lot of very calculated risks and because of this, I excelled. Even the risk of pursuing a clinical trial for myself helped pay off because it stabilized my cystic fibrosis (for the first time in my life) and because of the success it had with me (and 120 people worldwide), it became FDA-approved and helped the entire Cystic Fibrosis
community live with medical stability for the first time in history. Paradoxically as my life stabilized over the past 5 years I have been more adverse to taking risks because I feel that I have a lot to lose. I have had to learn to find that new balance to feel safe enough to take risks when there is something to lose because you can potentially gain so much more. I am living the proof that taking a risk truly saved my life.

What contributed to my success is the awareness that I have one life to live and that it doesn’t matter how messed up or complicated this life is, but I know that it’s my only chance to live my life to the fullest in all dimensions.

My survival method has been fine-tuned over nearly 4 decades and I call it “The de Bree Method”. A method that I have developed consists of 4 components: (1) “GET GOING” – Get up to go and get it done, (2) “REST & RECOVER” Knowing when to take breaks, refuel, regenerate, (3) “INTEGRATE INTERFACE” Develop a self-awareness and self-reflection about the different parts of oneself and what the needs, strengths and weakness, and opportunities are and knowing how to make it work, and lastly (4) “TAKE TIME” to ask for help when you need it. That’s what I call GRIT -“The de Bree method”

While pursuing my career as a licensed mental health professional, I was also pursuing my career as a musician. As my illness progressed and time began to unfold, I realized that if I continued to pursue both I was sabotaging the success of one. So I had to make the painful choice to let go of one or the other. I chose to let go of pursuing my music as my career. However, the choice allowed me to excel as a licensed mental health professional
and trauma therapist. Over the years, I have learned to create space and find joy in the musical side of me without it being a career choice.

One of the challenges with the work-life concept balance is that it changes over time based on what stage of life one is at, what challenges one may be facing, and what’s going on in the world. My work-life balance looked very different from 2019-2020-2021. Being able to regularly assess the grit method that I spoke about earlier is crucial. Stepping back and analyzing what your goals are, what’s going on, any outside differences, and being able to be flexible, adjust, and finetune things. And even being able to ask for help from friends and colleagues with assessing oneself and situations to better understand what works best with the often unpredictable dynamics of life as things come.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” Carl Rogers. I have learned there is value in accepting myself just as completely as I am and the fact that no one can exactly be me, just as no one can be anyone else. Life has offered me the gift of embracing the profound value of just showing up for myself and others just as I am.

Before deciding to pursue the art of being a trauma healing professional, I had the plan to become a certified public accountant and found the work to be dull, and lacking passion and life energy. Perhaps for someone else, it may not be that way, but for who I am at my core I needed to pursue a career that made me feel alive and able to just be me.

I want people to remember life is not black and white and that there is the possibility of joy in every circumstance in life. There is also the possibility of healing in every wound that this world creates. The world tried to treat me like I was a lost cause, but I was never a lost cause, and neither are you. That is what I want the world to remember and that is what I want my legacy to be. You are a gift just exactly as you are.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Kristina de Bree is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) with a private practice in Valencia, California. She is an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and Approved Consultant, meaning she is certified at the highest level to both practice and teach EMDR. She specializes in trauma and trauma-related disorders.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
As a licensed mental health professional and certified trauma therapist, Kristina teaches and inspires audiences while blending storytelling with an explanation of psychotherapy, science, art, and healing. She shares how it helped her recover from her own PTSD after a lifetime of medical interventions, and how she is now devoted to bringing and teaching healing and resilience to people worldwide.

With over 20 years of experience in public speaking, Kristina is skilled at engaging, motivating, and inspiring a crowd. Her audiences range from celebrities to high school students, business owners to doctors, international audiences to charitable donors—and for many years, she has been invited to speak as an ambassador for the Cystic Fibrosis community, sharing her own story and experiences with medical trauma and chronic illness.

Kristina’s particular skill for storytelling actually universalizes her unique experiences, allowing her audience to feel seen and understood, even when their story differs from hers.

Kristina’s personal experience with a lifelong progressive genetic disease and consequent trauma spurred her desire to teach how to become resilient and find success amidst life’s seemingly impossible to overcome obstacles.

Website: https://www.kristinadebree.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristina.debree?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinadebree/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093980337265&mibextid=PtKPJ9