Today we’d like to introduce you to Eliah Prichard.
Eliah, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Can I get a high five from any other creative nerds out there?! Perhaps there will be some overlap between your story and mine… My path can be summed up as a push-and-pull journey between my creative side and my scientific, psychology loving side. For instance, I was a super creative child but when it came time to choose a university, I chucked my fashion design school applications in the bin and decided to go a more “traditional” route. In retrospect, I was a free-lunch kid who longed for financial stability and being a “creative” seemed like an uncertain path to take. Of course, the irony is that I eventually learned all paths are uncertain (even the “traditional” ones) and that’s what makes life worth living!
Nonetheless, I obtained a B.A. in Psychology and in 2015 my Master’s in Couples and Family Therapy from The University of Oregon. I learned a TON about human communication and behavior in those years! During grad school, I worked as a behavioral trainer with youth healing from extreme trauma backgrounds, a job that kickstarted a major personal development journey for me (I’ll tell you more about that in a minute). I also led emotion regulation groups in public schools and generally just loved working with children.
My decision to take the traditional path took it’s ironic turn when, after training as a therapist, I discovered that I wasn’t interested in healing people through traditional talk therapy. I’d just spent five years healing children through play, imagination, activity, art, exploration, silliness and genuine love so the common therapy practice felt creatively stifling to me! The great thing about children is that they learn through creativity and experience which is much more in alignment with how I prefer to guide people through transformation. This is actually how adults learn as well, though social expectations often restrict us to our words instead of learning through our mind and body.
Obviously, I needed more creative freedom in my work but didn’t know what that looked like! So I moved to LA and spent two years taking every creative art production job I could find (that’s a whole other story), ultimately ending up working as an interior designer for high-end residential projects! I come from a family of architects and contractors so this wasn’t as big of a leap as it might seem!
It quickly became apparent that almost everyone seeking an interior designer is in the midst of a major life transition: divorce, breakups, children leaving the nest, a second wind, a new career, engagements, you name it. How designers do their job without a therapy degree, I have no idea! In order to effectively design a client’s home, I began walking my clients through the process of creating a new vision for their LIFE so we could then translate that vision to their physical space. This was incredibly creative and intimate work but by 2019, I found I was much more enthusiastic about coaching my clients through their transition than I was about designing their home. No surprise there! I’d flip-flopped too far towards creative work and naturally gravitated back towards helping people therapeutically.
At Last! In March, quarantine hit and I dove headfirst into constructing a business straight from my heart-of-hearts: The Rebound Way, an educational platform where I teach people who feel overwhelmed by change how to CREATE the life they want to live. This company merges my creative brain and my therapist’s brain to perfection– it’s been such a joy to release work that feels 100% in alignment with my true nature! Through The Rebound Way, I support others in learning how to be the architect of their own life by way of self-growth courses, free mini lessons and blog posts!
I love to travel and wanted this platform to be as visually inspiring as it was growth inspiring, so most of my posts and course content are filmed throughout US National Parks or artistically significant locations! Nature is a great teacher when it comes to embracing change and finding empowerment. Plus, the world doesn’t need another conservative coach teaching you about your emotions from the other end of a boring conference table.
Has it been a smooth road?
Not always, that’s for sure! Learning to take up space as a person and actively embrace those life moments where everything falls apart was a major challenge in my early 20’s. I held my feelings in a lot as a kid, shutting myself down in order to give space to other people and so I feel in control of how others perceived me. Sound familiar? Where my fellow People Pleasers at?! I’ve spent the last ten years intentionally figuring out how to redesign the person I learned to be in order to become a much more grounded, authentic and inspired human. Of course, this is a constant work in progress!
In particular, the job I took as a behavioral trainer at 21 was terrifying! The kids I worked with were behaviorally and emotionally intense and as an emotionally avoidant person, doing my job effectively demanded a lot of self-growth! Picture a year-long learning curve full of extreme anxiety and self-doubt (on my end) and extreme anxiety and self-doubt on the end of the children I was meant to be helping!
You can’t teach what you don’t know… Every day on shift challenged me to turn towards my emotions and learn how to regulate them so I wasn’t escalating physically every time I felt threatened by others’ big emotions or violent behavior. This allowed me to finally understand how to set firm boundaries with people (not just children) while remaining compassionate towards their needs, as well as my own.
That work opened up so much room for me to breathe and figure out who I really was! At the time, I didn’t think it was ok to set boundaries with other people or trust my intuition when I was being disrespected or manipulated. I feared people would perceive me as non-compassionate and non-supportive if I set limits around the energy and time I gave to them. I felt guilty saying “no” and I had to let go of everything I’d learned in regard to being quiet, small and avoidant so I could connect firmly to my sense of Self. Without doing so, I wouldn’t be able to effectively teach children (who’d also learned to self-abandon to survive trauma) how to take control of who they were going to be in the future. That time of my life is so meaningful to me, for it taught me how to accept my challenges and intentionally grow past them!
On a separate but related note, once I landed in LA, I found it emotionally challenging to be financially unstable as I explored creative careers! It took lots of inner work concerning my fears around scarcity and abundance for me to feel confident enough in myself to focus on creative work between jobs. Finally finding my own emotional stability during major transitions was what allowed me to launch The Rebound Way this year! Despite its challenges, 2020 has been a perfect year to embrace the unknown and dive into constructing something brand new.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Rebound Way is my platform for helping people turn towards their opportunities for growth and feel empowered navigating major life changes. I’m feeding everything I’ve learned over the last 15 years directly into affordable online courses and written teachings.
The idea for the company started when I realized that I still believed the social narrative that people WANT to resist change instead of leaning into it. Picture someone classically “on the rebound” embracing dysfunction, being a jerk and generally messing things up. Contrary to that, in my own journey and during my work as an interior designer, I found that literally ALL my design clients (many of which society would deem as classically “on the rebound”) wanted to embrace change and learn to navigate it effectively!
This experience handed me a new perspective: people don’t want to embrace chaos and avoid change during a rebound, they just don’t have the tools to intentionally leverage that opportunity for growth! The Rebound Way is my way of reframing that old narrative and offering high-end therapeutic coaching tools to people who are ready to level up their own ability to guide themselves through a process of intentional self-expansion. High Fives all around!
I spent May-thru-Sept developing The Compassionate Boundary Setting Course to fill a gap in the boundary setting education available online.
If you don’t already know, boundaries literally define your identity (who and how you are in the world). What’s more, common emotions like anxiety, anger, guilt and shame get in the way of you leveraging boundaries to your benefit! Unlike other boundary setting courses, the course I created teaches you how to get yourself mentally and physically into a place where you CAN set boundaries, instead of just teaching you what boundaries look like and sound like. What’s more, it’s really an experience (not just a lesson) that incorporates writing assignments, grounding practices and video lessons to develop your relationship to your emotions and connect you to your unique sense of Self. Why? Because boundaries will flow naturally when you feel grounded and empowered from the center of your being!
I’m really passionate about this course, not only because it authentically represents who I am as a creator, educator and coach but also because it effectively teaches others how they can self-empower instead of self-abandon! It’s colorful, adventurous and as I’m being told by the people taking it, deeply transformational. Courses to come will focus on teaching how to listen intuitively, shift family dynamics and intentionally use parenting techniques to create vibrant, capable children (just to name a few)! Come join me and the Rebounders! It’s good fun and such a supportive community.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I LOVE Los Angeles for so many reasons, but the primary one is that it’s SO creatively supportive! Not only do you have access to any and all kinds of creative training here (ceramic studios, welding shops, production work, design schools, etc.) but the majority of the city is full of independent contractors running their own creative businesses. I’ve found that people here not only value paying for creative services (finally!) but encourage authentic creative expression. That’s pretty unique compared to other communities that embrace linear career development and let’s just say…working for “the man”.
When it comes to my journey, I couldn’t have created The Rebound Way without all the support I’ve received from this city over the last 5 years! It’s been the perfect place for me to learn how to embrace change, explore what’s possible for my life and learn to show up in the world as my most creatively-nerdy Self!
Pricing:
- The Compassionate Boundary Setting Course – $89
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thereboundway.com/courses
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_rebound_way/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReboundWay
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_rebound_way
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-SogBNsizyC1ixAI3q764w/featured
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