Meet Gertie Breffle of Integrating Insights in Boulder

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gertie Breffle.

Gertie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
As someone with diverse passions and interests, I switched my undergraduate studies several times, beginning as a vocal performance major as an opera singer, to outdoor recreational leadership, to a music teacher, to psychology. I knew that I wanted to help people feel inspired to heal and grow into who they are regardless of traumas, wounds, mental illness and adverse life challenges, regardless of the route I chose. I landed in a Buddhism and Western Psychology class where I found more healing through meditation and Buddhist concepts such as loving-kindness and compassion than I’d experienced through any other therapeutic modality up to that point in my life. This fascination and love for Buddhist concepts and psychology propelled me to Naropa University. I can remember at Naropa University, studying transpersonal psychology, I was bursting with ideas and sharing with cohort mates and friends my vision for creating and reforming mental health systems to treat and empower people to have access to health and who they are and their capacities regardless of personal and systemic trauma, oppression and life challenges.

I wanted to reform and create systems that embodied humanity, respect, and compassion within the business structure to empower workers to do their best work and feel valued, to translate into their work and development as practitioners, to then translate to the work done with clients, to foster empowerment and healing. I wanted to create a system that would provide access to services to people in the criminal justice system, struggling with addictions, and trauma, and socioeconomic challenges, as a social justice movement to empower and offer access to each person’s potential, persons so often oppressed by the system. I wanted to do this using methods that are holistic, accessible and curative, and respectful and honoring of the human condition for each person.

I met Lyndsey, serendipitously moving her out of her house, working as a mover for a cohort mate who had started a moving business on the side. She created a practicum position in the criminal justice system program she worked for and we began working together. When she told me her vision for creating a business that mirrored my own, I thought to myself we will probably be doing this vision together. Two years later, Lyndsey called to tell me she’d created the business and asked me to come on as wilderness therapist. That was in 2016, and the beginning was slow with a period where the business folded between 2018 and 2019 and everyone left. I was determined that we’d find a way to work it out, I just didn’t know how yet. I remember crying to my acupuncturist during the period when no clear prospect was in sight, and she reassured me with “these times are to teach us to have faith.” I found a voicemail from Lyndsey, who had called during the appointment to let me know that the business had been accepted to take Medicaid, and we are back in business. We proceeded to get established as a Medicaid provider, part of our original interest in offering access to services. We went from a few therapists to begin with, to now 12 therapists, with diverse backgrounds from Jungian, to Somatic, to Art, to neuroscience, to the wilderness, continuing to build and hone the vision everyday.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
As with many business beginnings, there were certainly struggles along the way. After a year with slow beginnings, the business took off, to the point that I decided to leave my full-time agency job, to join what was then called Mindful Recovery Inc full time. One month in, we ran into an unexpected mistake that derailed the entire business overnight. We rallied to endeavor to salvage the aftermath and make things work but did not have the means at the time to do so. I went back to work as a full-time mover, doing food delivery on the side as well to make ends meet for the next 8 months. Luck and circumstances continued to hit the fan, and Lyndsey reached out just in time to announce our invitation to do a Medicaid contract. We began Medicaid credentialing and went from 3 to 12 therapists within a year.

Please tell us about Integrating Insights.
I am continuously inspired by the masterfulness in which Lyndsey has lead clinicians in supervision as well as in the manner of running this business. She leads in a way that empowers, uplifts, inspires and heals the practitioners. This has created a wholesome system and culture of mutuality, respect, friendliness. Practitioners leave conversations with her feeling more confident and empowered in their work and there is continuous education offered to foster clinical development. This translates to the work done with clients with a foundation of compassion, responsibility, humanity and informed care. We specialize in trauma-informed care, using education from the leading trauma researches using modalities such as EMDR, somatic-based, wilderness-based, art, Jungian, treating with bottom-up and top-down methods, mindfulness, to help integrate fragmented states that come as a result of trauma as well as overwhelming emotional challenges, and build resilience and internal resources to engage in post-traumatic growth. We are also building a business culture that fosters healing and education for clinicians and also access to healing and self-education to clients. This can give access to wellness, and each person’s capacities for healing and pursuing their highest vision for their life.

The vision of social justice through healing is naturally embodied in this business as we blossom and continue to grow and cultivate growth. Our vision is to break down culture paradigms of oppression, injustice, prejudice, and the internalized oppression we harbor as a result of growing up with these paradigms, through relationships built on mutual respect, friendliness, trauma-informed care, and helping each person open up to who they are with empowerment through healing. This work is a social justice movement from the inside out through healing, and the goal is to continue to widen access to services, collaborate with the community, and build a foundation and system from a basis of self-healing, mutual respect, and deep care among the clinical organization, clinicians, work with clients, and work with the community.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck, coincidence, serendipity, synchronicity, whatever one would call it, has been a part of this journey, quite beautifully, every step of the way. I often reminisce the beginnings before the beginning, when I would write and share my ideas with wide eyes with friends, colleagues, teachers, anyone with a listening ear, for this business and excitement for discovering all the surprise ways it would pan out. I met Lyndsey on a moving job, moving her out of her house with a moving business my cohort mate ran on the side. I shared reveries of my career interests, and she said, “that’s what I’m doing.” She offered to create a practicum position where she worked and we began working together. One day she told me her ideas for the business she was interested in creating. It was a double-ganger of the ideas I’d been sharing with friends for quite some time before meeting her, and I thought, well, I suppose we are going to create this together.

Life continued after the practicum, and we stayed in touch. I did an internship at a beautiful location called College Track, graduated and immediately began work at a methadone clinic. When the clinic decided to move locations, several clinicians planned to leave. One said, “Are you leaving? Of course, you are, you’re going to gather nuts and berries and hang out with squirrels in the woods. That’s where you’d rather be.” We laughed. The next day Lyndsey emailed me saying she created the business and wanted me to work for her as a wilderness therapist. The luck in my life interweaved the luck in the business. We had slow beginnings running a couple of groups each week for the first year. I got weary of the dog eat dog world system at the methadone clinic and longed to work with teens and get experience as a family therapist. Soon, my boss recommended an opening with an affiliated branch of the clinic, as a Multisystemic Family therapist working with teens struggling with truancy and addiction. The new experiences offered excitement and a breath of fresh air.

After several months, Lyndsey’s business was beginning to take off like wildfire, and it was time to jump on full time and jump into the dream for me. I left the agency a had worked full time with to begin this business as a clinician. Within a month, we found that the liaison that gave us the ok to see insurance clients was mistaken, and we folded overnight. I spent the next eight months doing moving jobs full time and food delivery as we tried to salvage what we could of the vision we had begun. Every time I’d cry in my acupuncturist’s office about the series of unfortunate events and unclear future, she’d offer words of encouragement and faith, and I’d find a voice message from Lyndsey after leaving her office, saying we’d been accepted to take to on the Medicaid contract, and a next big step in the process of building back the business again. It was uncanny. And of course too many little uncanny incidences of luck and synchronicities to recount in this article.

Contact Info:

• Address: 2503 Walnut St. Boulder, CO 80302
• Website: www.integratinginsights.com
• Phone: 303-872-4077

Image Credit:
Jennifer Macniven photography, credit to the first personal photo

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