Elli schmeltekopf, LCMHC, SEP
As I was going through my master's program in the late 90s, I knew that they were not teaching the same depth of healing that I was looking for. Diagnosis? Mental illness? Coping skills? It implied that we were all victims to our circumstances and, at best, we could learn to manage the cards we'd been dealt. I am passionate about dispelling that myth. We can change. We can heal. More than that, we can harvest the jewels formed through the alchemy of those experiences. We can come to see the courage, strength and wisdom required to survive as we did. I work at the heart and core of the issue and have pursued extensive training in my ongoing quest to be able to do that well.
In 2006, I began trauma resolution training through the Somatic Experiencing (SE) Practitioner Training. SE was turning the therapeutic world upside down at that time by identifying that experiences are stored in our bodies and can often not be addressed through talk alone. After completing that three-year training, I continued my education by assisting at professional SE trainings in Charlotte and then coordinating the trainings in Asheville in 2010-2011. In addition, I completed advanced training in working somatically with attachment injury through Dr. Diane Poole Heller's Dynamic Attachment Repatterning experience (DARe).
In 2011, I began working with Ray Castellino, DC, RPP, RPE, RCST. Ray specialized in the earliest influences on a person including conception, the in-utero experience, birth and the first few months of life outside the womb. These times are extremely influential and the information is stored only in the body. From Ray, I learned how to help clients come into contact with these early imprints and differentiate past from present. This is incredibly empowering work. Ray also taught me how to create a safe container for clients and groups and how essential it is to let a client's intention guide the work. I completed the Castellino Prenatal and Birth Therapy Foundation Training in 2016 after over 500 hours of training. I continued to study with Ray until his passing in 2020.
Beginning in 2014, my work took a significant shift as I began training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples. This well researched and successful model of couples therapy clearly articulates our need for each other and the crazy (but understandable) stuff we do when we don't feel secure in our connections. I began seeing couples in my private practice and, between 2015 and 2019, taught 42 weekend long Hold Me Tight® Workshops based on the EFT model and supported hundreds of couples to connect in ways they never had before.
The most recent evolution of my training came through the Sophia Code Mystery School, where I was certified in 2022 as a Sophia Circle Leader®. The certificate names one form of a much older practice: before every session, I speak an invocation aloud — creating a sacred container and connecting to Source, to Mother Earth, to our Higher Selves and to specific ascended masters whose guidance I've come to trust. This particular form has been part of my daily practice for about six years, but the trust underneath it — that guidance is available, and worth listening for — is something I've been building for most of my life. I lead every session from that place, listening and following the guidance that arises moment by moment. In the room, this rarely looks explicitly spiritual; what happens is deep, attentive psychotherapy. But that guidance doesn't work in a vacuum — it's the years of clinical training, in the body, in relationship, in the earliest imprints of a life, that give my intuition something to actually work with. Together, they're what make my professional offering something truly exceptional.
In 2006, I began trauma resolution training through the Somatic Experiencing (SE) Practitioner Training. SE was turning the therapeutic world upside down at that time by identifying that experiences are stored in our bodies and can often not be addressed through talk alone. After completing that three-year training, I continued my education by assisting at professional SE trainings in Charlotte and then coordinating the trainings in Asheville in 2010-2011. In addition, I completed advanced training in working somatically with attachment injury through Dr. Diane Poole Heller's Dynamic Attachment Repatterning experience (DARe).
In 2011, I began working with Ray Castellino, DC, RPP, RPE, RCST. Ray specialized in the earliest influences on a person including conception, the in-utero experience, birth and the first few months of life outside the womb. These times are extremely influential and the information is stored only in the body. From Ray, I learned how to help clients come into contact with these early imprints and differentiate past from present. This is incredibly empowering work. Ray also taught me how to create a safe container for clients and groups and how essential it is to let a client's intention guide the work. I completed the Castellino Prenatal and Birth Therapy Foundation Training in 2016 after over 500 hours of training. I continued to study with Ray until his passing in 2020.
Beginning in 2014, my work took a significant shift as I began training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples. This well researched and successful model of couples therapy clearly articulates our need for each other and the crazy (but understandable) stuff we do when we don't feel secure in our connections. I began seeing couples in my private practice and, between 2015 and 2019, taught 42 weekend long Hold Me Tight® Workshops based on the EFT model and supported hundreds of couples to connect in ways they never had before.
The most recent evolution of my training came through the Sophia Code Mystery School, where I was certified in 2022 as a Sophia Circle Leader®. The certificate names one form of a much older practice: before every session, I speak an invocation aloud — creating a sacred container and connecting to Source, to Mother Earth, to our Higher Selves and to specific ascended masters whose guidance I've come to trust. This particular form has been part of my daily practice for about six years, but the trust underneath it — that guidance is available, and worth listening for — is something I've been building for most of my life. I lead every session from that place, listening and following the guidance that arises moment by moment. In the room, this rarely looks explicitly spiritual; what happens is deep, attentive psychotherapy. But that guidance doesn't work in a vacuum — it's the years of clinical training, in the body, in relationship, in the earliest imprints of a life, that give my intuition something to actually work with. Together, they're what make my professional offering something truly exceptional.
On a more personal note, I want to assure you that I understand the courage it takes to step forward onto a new healing path. Throughout my childhood, I was chronically unsafe. I survived it believing I was alone, unable to find protection, and somehow at fault for what happened to me. My adult life has been almost entirely committed to my recovery and coming out of that feels like a resurrection. Through courage, perseverance and commitment to my own freedom I have awakened from the false belief that it is somehow a flaw within me that caused all those bad things to happen. Through that perseverance, I have developed the capacity to sit with others and stay present with them wherever they need to go. I know there is light on the other side of that tunnel because I experience it every day.
I will ask a lot of you if we work together because who you are matters. The unresolved pain of the past and how you cope with that shuts away who you really are. The world desperately needs you to step into who you really are and bring forward your own unique light. So I will be the most loving, "hard-ass", cheerleader you've ever had through the dark forest of your fear and loss. But I will not ask you to go anywhere that I have not already travelled and I will not ask you to go alone.
I will ask a lot of you if we work together because who you are matters. The unresolved pain of the past and how you cope with that shuts away who you really are. The world desperately needs you to step into who you really are and bring forward your own unique light. So I will be the most loving, "hard-ass", cheerleader you've ever had through the dark forest of your fear and loss. But I will not ask you to go anywhere that I have not already travelled and I will not ask you to go alone.