THE GPI STORY

WHY OUR FOUNDER IS BUILDING SOMETHING BETTER

Welcome to the Gravity Point Institute! My name is Dr. Ashley Anne.

For most of my life, I had one simple question ringing in the back of my mind:​​

“Why am I so sick?”​​

As a toddler, I suffered from intestinal parasites that severely damaged my gut.​

In fourth grade, I'd stand at the sink pretending to wash my hands until my friends went back to class so I could gulp handfuls of Ibuprofen to cope with blinding headaches.​

As a high school freshman, I sat in the back row of my 9am Civics class shifting in my seat, desperately trying not to poop my pants until I could sneak into the bathroom to have my daily dose of diarrhea. If you struggle with IBS, colitis, or Crohn's disease - you know exactly what I'm talking about!

Years later, I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor of my one-bedroom apartment, staring at my knife set seriously considering using them to take my own life.

To prevent others from experiencing this same pain… and in an effort to heal my own, I pursued a career in counseling. I hoped that by understanding the human condition, I could not only heal my own wounds but also support those grappling with their own. 

Turns out, getting a mental health degree only made them worse.

The High Cost of Helping

After spending 4 years getting a bachelors degree in Communication at a private (read: expensive) liberal arts college, I went on to get a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Northwestern University. The program was one of a kind. Within months of starting the academic learning, I started seeing real, paying clients. Their learn-by-doing model made me an excellent therapist because I found out early on that book-learning has nothing to do with actually working with real people.

We worked with so many clients and the academic experience was so time-consuming, there wasn’t any room to do much else but get my degree. While I am proud of getting such a stellar education, the problem with this model is that I wasn’t paid for seeing these clients. And not only was I doing work for free, I was so busy I couldn’t work for pay. This meant that just getting the degree put me $150,000 in debt (probably more). When added to my bachelor’s degree, that put my student loans at about $250,000... and I wasn't done yet.

The thing about getting a mental health degree that no one told me is that you can’t just graduate and then run your own practice right after. Since that’s all I really wanted to do, you can imagine my disappointment.

I was even more disappointed to find out I had to do two additional years of supervised training as an entry-level counselor. For better or worse, I stayed at my alma mater, worked full-time with a full caseload and also taught full-time in the masters program I had just left. I basically worked two full-time jobs for a paycheck of about $30,000 a year.

To say the least, realizing the financial reality of having to pay $250,000 of debt on a counselor’s salary hit me hard… but the work itself hit me harder.

As a trainee, I had specialized in neurocounseling and somatic trauma interventions, so my colleagues at the agency knew me well. As I built my own caseload, I found that everyone was extremely eager to offload their toughest cases to me.

While the recognition was flattering, it quickly became overwhelming. Within six months of starting my career, I found myself sicker than ever. I did my best to heed the advice of my supervisors and took my self-care seriously. I practiced yoga, meditation, and journaling. I saw my own therapist and even went on medication to manage my mood. Despite my best efforts, I was completely stuck in a cycle of despair.

A Quest for Answers

Through this research, I realized what vicarious trauma actually is. It’s not just some ethereal experience that happens when you’re overloaded with other people’s emotions. It’s a specific neurological process that happens when energy gets identified and stuck within your system. This was a game-changing insight and I taught it to anyone who would listen - my students, my supervisors, even the presidential-level therapists at my agency.

This realization shifted my perspective entirely. When we connect with others, our bodies can sync up in ways that create shared emotional experiences. However, when we fail to differentiate between our emotions and those of others, we can become overwhelmed. While we can’t stop the process of taking on others’ emotions, we can teach our nervous systems how to differentiate. But this requires us to master emotion.

Emotion is just energy in motion. Energy manifests as sensations in your body, stories in your mind, and signals in your relationships. My studies into yoga and quantum physics also helped me understand how subatomic, quantum, and even sub-quantum energy manifests as visions, spiritual experiences, and even the binary code operating computers.

Confronting a Broken System

My discovery of the Gravity Point System made it very difficult to stay inside the box of conventional health and academia, because I started to see a lot of things my colleagues and supervisors couldn't.

My journey revealed that some of the theories and techniques in the mental health industry were fundamentally at odds with how being human actually worked, like its focus on an illness-for-profit model and its emphasis on pathology instead of recognizing that if a system is sick, it's for a very good reason.

The requirement to pathologize clients for insurance reimbursement felt fundamentally wrong to me. At the same time, I saw my students were being underserved as well.

During my time as a university professor and administrator, I was determined to shake things up in mental health education. I wanted to prevent others from experiencing the same burnout that had nearly derailed my career. 

I tried everything - updating curricula, introducing cutting-edge research, and pushing for more practical, hands-on training. But at every turn, I hit walls. Accreditation requirements, outdated policies, and long-standing university cultures all stood in my way. It was like trying to turn a massive ship with a tiny paddle. 

Despite my best efforts and countless hours of work, I found myself frustrated and disheartened. The system seemed designed to resist change, even when that change could save lives and careers.

At the same time I was trying to help my students, my own financial burden was overwhelming.

Despite holding a full-time position at a university, I found myself drowning in debt from student loans and being grotesquely underpaid in proportion to my investment. To make ends meet, I juggled three jobs: teaching full-time at one university, working as an adjunct professor at another university, and providing online therapy whenever I could. This exhausting routine left me with little time for a personal life and I was constantly stressed about my finances.

As I struggled to keep up with my responsibilities, it became clear that the traditional mental health system was failing not just its clients but also its practitioners. The disconnect between the cost of education and the meager compensation for our work was staggering. This disillusionment fueled my desire to find a better way—not just for myself, but for others caught in the same relentless cycle.

GPI Is Born

I loved coaching my clients, but I still felt a sense of responsibility to do something more.

With some serious self-reflection, I realized that one of the most fulfilling experiences I’d ever had was coordinating the launch of Northwestern University's online counseling program - Counseling@Northwestern.

In that role, I wore many hats - designing curricula, writing client role plays, filming and producing courses, working with the marketing team, training faculty, establishing admissions processes, and interviewing prospective students. I also prioritized embedding neuroscience into the curriculum, wrote the entire curriculum for the online Reflective Practitioner Program, and then taught and supervised for a couple of years.

The quality of the curriculum we created at Counseling@Northwestern is unparalleled, and if students come to me with goals aligned with getting a masters in counseling, I still send them there.

However, I learned the hard way that if your only goal is to run your own practice, the financial and time investments of a masters program simply don’t make sense. It’s far more cost and time efficient to launch a life coaching business.

Launching Counseling@Northwestern was an intense boot camp in building my own program, so I wondered: What if I could create something of equal quality for life coaches?

That’s how the Gravity Point Life Coach Certification was born. 

Which path is right for you?

You don’t need to invest decades of your life or go into debt to run your own practice.

So, if you’re considering getting a masters in mental health, let’s chat first. I promise, I’ll use everything I’ve learned in both counseling and coaching to help you make the choice that’s right for you.

Book a call with me today.