Amber Tolbert, LCSW, LISW-CP, Owner and Founder

How I support you in your recovery

“Together We Can Do What We Cannot Do Alone.”

Hi, I’m Amber. I love supporting people stuck in the grips of addiction, those who have lost sight of themselves, those ready to take back their power, those who want to know what peace feels like. Originally, I specialized in family systems, conflict, relationships, identity (sense of self), self-worth, numbing, anxiety, depression, and codependency. As the Founder and Chief Operating Officer of The Healing Collective, I love supporting our team to grow and better serve our valued clients. I walk with you in transparency and integrity, honoring my belief that I teach what I need to learn the most. Sometimes that looks like upholding boundaries of loving from a place of honoring your process rather than becoming your friend. My role requires me to walk a path before I can guide someone else down it. I love the freedom I get in no longer requiring perfectionism, and therefore walking out transparency for my inner child when I make mistakes or wish I did something different. A key component I use in my role of support is educating from my lens and my understanding to allow others to apply the dots that fit for them. One of those components is language and the energy associated with the language I use with myself in my head, about myself when I'm referring to self with others, or the rigidity in my self compassion. The words I use are powerful and carry many messages beyond the literal meaning. I try hard to model that which is a benefit to my fellow travelers, but a requirement and a guideline with my inner child. 

How I support you in building a relationship with self

Our role as clinicians is to shine the light in places that are too scary to go alone. We walk with you as the carrier of hope and believer in recovery. At times, we loan the courage we have earned until you have your own courage to keep going. We believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself. I personally believe (and know) that recovery is something that every human can access and that stepping into your own recovery is the most powerful tool you have to change the world around you. 

I help you to step into..."I didn't cause this, and it's my responsibility to heal it because I'm worth it." I guide you on a journey into your backstory to discover the little person that was left, forgotten, passed away, or abandoned. I support you in transforming your forms of numbing and medicating into forms of survival, thematically supporting the awareness of "until I go back and rescue me, I'm reaching outside of myself to fill a void hoping to be rescued by anything I can put in the hole."  The process of integration happens when I can stay in my body and feel the hard feels with the awareness that I will be ok. The journey to that process is gruesome and can't be done alone as our body has mechanisms to override pain (emotional or physical) in an attempt to survive emotional unavailability - much like a surgeon can't do surgery on themselves. As a fellow traveler, I hold space and sit in the shit with you, honoring the excruciating pain of debriding all the armor that once kept me "safe" and is now no longer serving me because it keeps me stuck and disconnected. 

My personal recovery journey

I am a Fellow Traveler since 2007 - ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families), Perfectionism, Codependency.  I had access to 12 step meetings long before I started using them. I avoided the option for years because it used the word "God". In my story I was exposed to beliefs that I was not in alignment with, and behaviors that I chose not to walk out. The consequences of my resistance was religious shaming from the leader of the church in a public way. This experience affected my relationship with my higher power. However, ACA taught me I could believe in anything I wanted, not just what was put on me. Today I am connected and guided daily by my higher power and I am never alone. 

My experience

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in North Carolina and a Licensed Independent Social Worker, Clinical Practice, in South Carolina. I am a supervisor in both states. I have been in the field in different capacities for 24 years in a variety of settings. I obtained dual master’s degrees in Social Work and Public Health from the University of South Carolina in 2011 and founded The HC in 2012. I obtained my undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina in () majoring in Sociology. I am an experiential psychotherapy practitioner and an energy healer trained in Holy Fire Reiki. While building our incredible team at The HC and supporting hundreds of systems in pain, I developed The HC’s proprietary model to include aspects of inner child work, experiential psychotherapy, polyvagal theory, systems theory, and energy work, among other components. When you work with a member of The HC you experience the full continuum of healing - Mind, Body, Spirit, Recovery.

More about me

I am a boy mom to 2 precious boys, wife to a Fellow Traveler, believer in the Universe, and an animal lover. 

Recovery is always an option.