Episode 181: The Place That’s Broken is Where the Light Comes In with Kristy Crabtree

Welcome to today’s episode of Living Beyond the Shadow of Doubt. I have Christy Crabtree with me, and I am so thrilled you’re here with me today and for our listeners. So welcome.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

It’s a pleasure to have you and get to know you a little bit more. I feel like I lived multiple lifetimes in the month of January. So I feel like I know a lot of folks, even though we’ve just met. But this is going a little bit deeper, learning more about your faith journey and the joys, the highs, the lows, all of that. So let’s just jump right in.

Absolutely.

I’d love if you could take a minute and just share your background, your origin story with everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m Christy Crabtree. I’m here in Arizona, and I’m a licensed counselor, and that profession has been so much more than a profession for me. It’s been a calling and something that’s almost guided my faith journey. I have two kids and a husband, just a wonderful family. Growing up, I wasn’t a part of any faith, and it was definitely something that was lacking, and it felt noticeable to me. I had a strong curiosity in different cultures and different faiths growing up. And so it was something that I explored. When I studied psychology, I also studied world religion because I was always so fascinated by: How does the world work? What is God? Why do so many people disagree on the answer to that question, and maybe I need to figure it out for myself.

Well, you’re speaking my language.

I remember taking a world religion class in college, and I loved it. It’s fascinating to me as well to learn about how others from faraway lands, other cultures, experience, and the stories, the traditions that they passed down.

Yeah, I felt like our family just didn’t have any of those things. We were just like this American family, and in fact, I’d say we had the opposite of faith. We grew up in a lot of fear. My dad was addicted, and fear dictated a lot of my growing up, which to me is almost the opposite of faith. So it was important for me, as I got older, to learn how to cultivate that.

So how did you do that? And about what time frame was it—in college? And what did you do to cultivate that practice, I guess?

Yeah, you know, I have had health problems growing up throughout my entire life, and so I always felt guided by something bigger. But there was no foundation that that knowing or that understanding was built upon. When I was four I had a spontaneous healing. I was born with a large ventricular septal defect of my heart. Some of those, if they’re small, they heal on their own, but they’re rated by size, and mine was on the moderate to severe side, which was going to require open-heart surgery when I was four. But before I turned four, and before I had that open-heart surgery, my heart healed. And it’s actually in a medical journal, because the doctor—my cardiologist—didn’t expect that to happen.

Yeah. And so I had known that story. And I really feel like that hole in my heart biologically, along with the hole in my heart from the fear that I grew up in, left this longing of: I need to know more. I need to know more. I need to understand. And so I tried Christianity. I tried traditional religions. But the dogma of it had this really rebellious side of me, and it just didn’t seem to fit. I wanted to experience God, and the rebellious side of me didn’t like to be told that because I wasn’t a male or couldn’t be ordained or something, that I couldn’t have an experiential relationship with God. That felt wrong to me, because as a child, I would see spirits in my room, or as a child, dead loved ones would come to me in dreams and tell me things that my family would then validate. And I thought, Well, I can hear God, so I don’t feel like this paradigm fits.

I remember there was a class available through Parks and Rec when I think I was like 15 years old. They were going to teach how to read the Tarot, and I was like, Oh, that’s cool! So I would walk to this class, and some of the women there—they were all in their late forties, early fifties—kind of took me under their wing and wanted to teach me some skills. I would walk around with my “Bible” at the time, which was this book by Anodea Judith about the chakras, because for the first time, that made sense—that our whole body, mind, and spirit were connected, and that there were these wheels that carried our life’s memories and experiences and emotions. And then I could access the wisdom in those wheels, and the chakras just made sense more than anything else that I had learned.

But there was this constant nagging of: That’s not it, that’s not it. And it wasn’t until very recently that I came to realize that I have repressed trauma of sexual abuse. That was the “more.” That was the hole. And it was when I dug into those memories and reconnected back in with my body that my spiritual gifts really started coming on board, and I had a deeper, more experiential relationship with the divine. And so, being a psychotherapist and doing my own work, was really the catalyst for me.

I don’t know. Do you feel comfortable sharing a little bit more deeply about the specifics of that process? And, by the way, the symbolism is not lost on me—you said the fear I grew up with, along with the hole, like a literal hole you had in your heart. It just left you with this longing. How beautiful!

Oh, absolutely. And they say that the place that’s broken, that’s where the light comes in. And I kid you not—it makes me emotional—but that’s where I feel God, right in my heart. I literally feel like some of the spiritual gifts I got are the abilities to heal people, right, on an emotional level, sometimes even on a physical level. And when I feel this kind of vibratory energy that comes out through my hands, the catalyst just shoots to the heart. So that’s always played an important role.

But for me, I tried traditional therapy as an adult, and it was always like, Gosh, I just feel like I’m not to the bottom. I’ve processed my dad’s addiction. I’ve processed some other things that have happened to me, but it’s like more, more, more. There was this incessant need for more. I tried all the modalities that I’m trained in, like internal family systems therapy. I tried EMDR, and none of it seemed to get to the bottom. Or I thought, Maybe I’m just so broken. Maybe I did get to the bottom, and I still just feel like something’s missing, and I don’t know what that is. I was frustrated and feeling kind of lost.

It was during 2020, when the whole world was feeling frustrated and lost, that I tried plant medicine for the first time. And when I dipped my toe in plant medicine, I had an experiential knowledge of God. It felt like a cold drink of water after walking through a desert my whole life. I never took medicine as anything other than a sacrament, because that’s what it meant to me after that experience—it was a sacrament that I took to know the divine and to know myself. I always took that very seriously.

As my relationship with plant medicine developed, there was this feeling of terror that I would start to dip into. It was so hauntingly familiar, and also something that felt so deep down there—like, that’s not somewhere we go. Unfortunately, those memories ended up being memories of sexual abuse, memories of incest.

When I got the confirmation that it was true, when I got the validation that that was true, everything in my life shifted, because I could, for the first time, connect back into my body, which had felt so incredibly unsafe. And the body is where we connect to the divine—it’s through the senses of the body. It was after discovering and really alchemizing the trauma into my gifts, back into my power, back into really knowing myself, that changed everything for me.

Wow. What an exquisite journey. I can tell you are a warrior spirit—you have been through a lot. What a bittersweet gift, I guess, just where you are at now versus younger Christy years.

You know, it is bittersweet, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I know that I was put on this earth to pull women out of the darkness. And who would I be to do that, had I not been able to do that for myself first?

And that is one of those moments of bliss—actually an ongoing one, not just a single moment—but one of those joyous realizations that you would not have had otherwise. You had to step into that unknown. You had to be brave, be courageous, try something new, something different, and be available to confront, deal with, and be curious about whatever it was that came in your path from that point on.

Yeah, it’s crazy. Your liberation literally comes from looking in the places that you want to avoid the most. The stone you don’t want to unturn—that’s the one where you’re going to find your path, your truth.

Share with us some of the gifts, the blessings, the beautiful things that have come for you, and by extension, I’m sure for those with whom you work, because of this journey of yours—because of this spiritual journey, spiritual awakening.

In my office with my clients, I’m trained and able to take them through ketamine journeys, which is legal here in the State of Arizona, and I have a doctor on staff to medically supervise the whole thing. What’s really beautiful is it’s been spirit who’s taught me how to guide people. I wasn’t usually one to journey with a guide. I kind of liked to journey alone, and there were times later on where I opted to journey with a guide because some of those places were so scary.

Keeping that real, by the way—that you’re human, too. Just because something is a gift for you doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be human in unveiling or discovering and learning about it.

Yeah, no, for sure. But I feel like I’ve learned the most from my non-human, disembodied guides. They’ve showed me symbols to use, modalities to use, energy work to use with my clients to help safely prepare them to go to these places, to explore their trauma safely, and then to be able to really activate their gifts.

They gave me these triangles—like a triangle pointing down, and then an overlapping triangle pointing up. They’ve shown me through these symbols that you have to bring clients down to the lower energy centers into the depths of their experience and their traumas before you bring them into the higher, exalted places and help them activate their true gifts. Because it’s in our trauma that we learn the paradigms or belief systems that hold us back from truly aligning with Source Creator and becoming who we were meant to become.

When we’re stuck in fear, when we’re stuck in needing to play small so we don’t get in trouble, or whatever those things are that we learned, you can’t activate yourself to that highest timeline. So I’m able to use a blend of traditional psychotherapy to safely help people prepare for these journeys, and then use more spiritual techniques when we get into the medicine sessions, which has profoundly changed clinical outcomes and client experiences.

It’s a little on the fringe, because in psychotherapy we’re not allowed to talk about spirit guides. But in my own practice, I consider myself a holistic practitioner, so I can lean into all the themes available to us.

You mentioned that even as a young girl you could see those in a different spiritual dimension—you could see those that had passed on. Did it take you long to acknowledge that within yourself before you could share it with others? How was it received?

That’s the one area where I feel lucky that I wasn’t raised in a traditional religion. When I was little, I just thought everybody could see that. As children, the experience we’re having is the experience we assume everyone is having. So I would share with my mom or dad, and they were open and receptive. My dad actually has some of these gifts as well, which you might not expect considering the addiction, but it runs on his side of the family.

They would ask, “Oh, what did they say? Tell me more.” But they struggled when I saw scary things. I would scream, hide, or tell them about dark entities, and they didn’t know how to help or make me feel safe. Looking back, I realize those dark things were connected to my dad and his addiction. Interestingly, when my parents divorced, they all went away.

Over time, I learned that spirits who die addicted often still want to feel the dopamine hits of their addiction, so they hang around people engaging in those behaviors. People in a lower vibrational state attract like energy—there’s resonance and a place for those spirits to land. But when you’ve dealt with your trauma and you vibrate higher, darker entities have nowhere to land. My guides have taught me a lot about coherence and resonance and why people have different spiritual experiences.

For someone new to these concepts, I’d explain vibration like this: Everything is frequency. High vibrations are fast, light, and expansive—like joy, freedom, celebration. Low vibrations are slow, dense, and heavy—like shame, fear, judgment. Our “baseline” vibration can shift based on our emotional health. Trauma, if unprocessed, is like emotional constipation, weighing us down. Kids are great at releasing emotions quickly; adults tend to hold grudges and rationalize them, which lowers vibration.

That makes sense. I’m sure no one will forget what high versus low vibration means after that example.

So, tell us about your book.

Yes, I’ve written my book. I’m meeting with Kira tomorrow to submit it for editing. I’m hoping “Sacred Revolution” will be released to the world in late April or early May. It details my healing journey as an example of the principles spirit has taught me, including some of my psychedelic experiences.

Healing is contagious. When one person in a family takes radical responsibility for their life and starts to heal, it can disrupt established patterns. Some family members may resist; others may join in. This ripple effect can be beautiful, but also challenging, because it sometimes changes relationships.

You do have to tolerate discomfort.

Yes, and that muscle can be strengthened.

You’ve mentioned plant medicine several times. My understanding is that it’s like reformatting an old computer disk—clearing the old programming and writing new, healthier programming. Is that right?

Yes. Trauma responses were adaptive in unsafe environments, but once we find safety, the brain sometimes doesn’t realize it can tone down fear. Plant medicine can help reset that. Different medicines work differently—ketamine, for example, works on NMDA receptors, calming overactive responses so trauma can be processed without reactivating the fear as if it’s happening again. It also boosts BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which helps create new neural connections—like a learning window—so new perspectives can take root.

Other medicines like MDMA have shown excellent results for PTSD, and psilocybin can be used in micro or macro doses for various benefits. These aren’t for everyone—contraindications include a history of psychosis or certain mental health conditions. And safety is key: you need a safe home, safe relationships, and support for integration afterward.

I agree. I also think God or the universe created natural medicines for us, but big pharma altered and monetized them.

Exactly. SSRIs can be life-saving for some, but they numb both highs and lows, leading to emotional flatness over time. Plant medicine, when approached responsibly, doesn’t create dependency and can even help with addiction, since addiction is often rooted in trauma.

Wow, Christy. I didn’t know where this conversation would go, but I’m so grateful for it. I’ll include your contact info in the show notes so listeners can connect with you.

Thank you. My website is innerlightcounseling.org. I can only serve Arizona as a licensed counselor, but I’m building coaching and retreat programs for people worldwide. My Instagram is @christy_sacredrevolution.

It has been such a pleasure to chat with you. One last question I ask all my guests: What does living beyond the shadow of doubt mean to you?

It means trusting that even if you can’t see the end result or big picture, the next step will be revealed if you live in alignment with the divine. It’s walking in faith until the bigger picture unfolds.

Beautiful. Thank you for being here today.