Once each month, I have the honor of interviewing one of our Impact Tribe members as our featured Daring Member of the Month – someone who has gone out of their way to help others, accomplished something huge in their business, been a good business friend, or contributed something exceptionally special to the group.

Today, Janis Dochterman is joining me here on the blog, to share a little bit about how the hardships she went through helped create the person she is today, about what creativity can look like, anxiety and how to relieve it, and some practices for helping you re-frame your mindset. She shares about: 

• Learning the #1 way to release anxiety while taking a bath
• Finding out how preparation, intention and practice can shift the energy of your day in 30 minutes or less
• Discovering the top 4 practices that allow you to feel more confident before starting your day

This month, we celebrate Janis for her presence in the Impact Tribe for over a year! She’s shown exceptional support for other members in the group, has consistently shown up at our events, and has been putting in the work to grow and expand her business. We love the bright energy and deep wisdom she brings to our meetings, and she’s truly an inspiration to our Impact Tribe members!

Meet Janis Dochterman 

Janis Dochterman MA, LPC, ATR, RYT is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado, a Registered Art Therapist (ATR) with the American Art Therapy Association, and a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) with Yoga Alliance.

In October 2017 she founded her private therapy practice, Creative Conscious Connections LLC. Janis is most passionate about working with adult women in her office in Louisville, CO.

She specializes in Expressive Arts Therapy, Meditative Therapy and Empowerment Mentoring. She is also adjunct faculty at Boulder Prep Highschool where she teaches DBT and Expressive Arts Therapy skills to teens. In 2017 Janis also created an art enrichment program for older adults with dementia called “Creative Wisdom”. She facilitated this program in senior living centers up until the pandemic began.

In 2020, Janis created a women’s program called WEWILDE: Women Empowering Women via Intuition, Love, Dance & Expression. It started out as an online program and has transformed into a monthly membership which launches January 1st, 2022. Janis is excited to see how WEWILDE grows in the year to come!

Janis is engaged to Cody Wille and getting married in June 2022. Janis and Cody have many fur babies at home and love art, nature, and music. They plan to open their own Art Gallery/Music venue in the next couple years!

Q: How did you get started in your business?

Janis mentioned that she loves to express herself through spoken word, “poetry that comes to life,” and shared this story with us through spoken word in the interview. It is transcribed below:

I would like to share with you about my personal journey, and my vision of WEWILDE as an expressive arts therapist. I've decided to share this with you as a spoken word. 

Expressive Arts Therapist, yes. I am also an alchemist. I help transmute energy intentionally, creatively into the magic that we all want to be. 

But this gift didn’t always come naturally. Rumi said, “the wound is the place where the light enters you.” I haven’t always understood this clue. Sometimes we are destined to learn the hard way, but how is it that no matter what path we choose, we still end up okay?

Now here is the space where I choose to be vulnerable, not because I want your pity – but instead to inspire you. 

Born in the same bed I was conceived in three years after my dad left and I felt abandoned. I have many siblings, but raised an only child by my mom until cancer took her life and she was gone. Death, loss, abandonment, all within the first seven years. My life began with a lot of tears. 

Except for my own. I held them in, struggling to express, always trying to be my best. However, the challenge with this was the grief I suppressed. Turned into a whole lot of other problems to stress – anxiety, learning disabilities, tic disorder, PTSD. I found myself living in a world where I was perceived as dis-eased. 

My guardian parents got me help, and it’s because of them I found the arts. But my chaos doesn’t end here, really this is where it starts. 

Like many teens, I was just looking for a place to belong, and drugs and alcohol became my song. The most difficult tune to choose is booze, because as some of you know, sometimes it just brings more blues. 

Then college came, unhealthy coping skills plus low self-esteem… I didn’t know how to use my voice, so I used my body instead. The attention I got from others really went to my head. 

How do we feel so invincible until we wake up the next day, feeling strung-out and wondering why my body is in disarray. This is not okay. 

Then rock bottom hit. Coked out, college dropout, my future not looking bright. Here is my wound, God, where is the light?

The Phoenix teaches us we must first burn to rise. If only we were taught at a young age that we are also this wise. No money I moved from Iowa to California to find myself, and this is where it all changed. 

I began building my self-love, and many new skills were obtained. I became fed up with feeling worthy only because of my looks, so I decided to return to the books. There was a new door opening, and it was up to me to walk through. Because as the empowered woman says, “it all begins and ends with you.” 

I discovered expressive arts as a healing tool, and that reaching out for help is actually cool. I learned about others by travelling and immersing myself culturally, which inspired my passion for psychology. 

I chose my mission. To continue growing and healing through creative expression – and became a student of my own intuition. 

Nearing 40, I’m a different kind of wild – a woman who lives in her intuition. Love, dance, and expression, I now use my voice, my art, and my story to empower other women. 

My vision for this community is to create a sacred space, so you can be your wild, sensual self without sacrificing your health. So that you can share your innate wisdom, decrease suffering, and not feel alone. 

WEWILDE was birthed from my own journey of suffering to resiliency. Being isolated, to finding community. Feeling blocked, to tapping into my creativity. From being sexualized, to tapping into my sensuality. 

I still struggle sometimes with anxiety. My fear of failure and not being good enough sometimes take over – and I need just as many reminders to just be. 

So together, let’s step into a creative, conscious connection. This is your invitation. 

I feel so inspired, speechless, that Janis has gone through these experiences in her life and used them to bring so much light, wisdom, and conscious connection into her being. 

Q: Who do you specialize in working with? Who does your heart lead you to, and what is the most common problem or challenge that you help them overcome? 

Janis is passionate about working with women who have gotten so busy – with work, family, or life – that they forgot how to care for themselves. Women who feel disconnected from their joy, their love, their sensuality, and who want to step back into their confidence. 

One of the biggest blocks that comes up is anxiety. Which also happens to be one of the biggest problems that she’s dealt with in her life. 

There’s so much anxiety these days, with more and more people experiencing it every day – we hold it in our bodies, built-up energy that wants to be expressed, but most of us learn to suppress it or deflect it. 

Q: How does creativity enhance our lives?

If you follow the chakras, our creativity lives in our sacral chakra – which is our center of sensuality, flow, creativity, sexuality – if we’re feeling blocked there, then the creative flow gets blocked as well. 

Janis has found that once you open one door, then the others open up and they’re all connected. Once we get in tune with our creative side, the more we'll be able to connect and truly fall in love with our life.  

Q: How do you define creativity – can you help us bust down the box it’s typically defined within?

You don’t have to be an artist to be creative. 

Janis mentioned that she invites people to think about how they like to express themselves – sports, media arts, visual arts, dance, our businesses or anything else. Part of her passion is helping women find that expressive part of themselves. 

Looking back to when we were children, we were always doing something to express ourselves – playing in the mud, finger painting – but, this is something that we lose as adults. Our perspective of creativity or the arts can be really narrow until we realize that anything and everything we do is an art, is a way of expressing ourselves. 

When you think about mental health challenges, a lot of it is destructive. Bringing creation into destruction is where a lot of the healing happens. 

Q: For our readers who are experiencing anxiety, a lack of connection from their authentic expression, joy, sensuality, confidence – what can you share with them to help?

Although her work goes so deep, Janis wants to share something small that can make a huge difference in your experience. 

Because she’s struggled with these challenges for her entire life, she’s been working on a new tool called, “how to take a bath.” 

To step more fully into ourselves, we can go back to the basics. How present are you, really, when you take a bath? If you’re someone who experiences anxiety, you’re likely running on auto-pilot and not fully being present. This guide she’s working on can help you align more fully with your thoughts and your spirit, which in turn will help you thrive more in your career or your life – and can help you turn your entire day around.

You can get your copy of “How to Take a Bath” when it launches on her website. 

Q: What does it mean to you to be daring?

Being daring means showing up fully and authentically, no matter what, for yourself first. Being daring, for Janis, means honoring what she needs and setting boundaries that help nurture what you’re really needing. She feels that showing up as a daring woman, and doing her own work, is what really allows her to show up for the women she works with. 

At the end of our interview, Janis shared with us another spoken word she’s created, called “The Alchemy of Art Therapy.” You can watch her perform this in the video. 

Q: What are you most excited about in your business right now?

Janis has been working on WEWILDE through the past couple years. Initially functioning as an online program, she felt the program was misaligned with her mission and who she is. So, she’s completely reworked the program to create a monthly membership. This monthly membership allows her to foster connection, express herself creatively, and bring more opportunities to members such as guest speakers and an open art studio. 

Email Janis at [email protected] and learn more about her WEWILDE membership here. 

If you want to join Janis and other amazing members in the Impact Tribe, we would love to have you! When you join the Impact Tribe, you get access to a library of biz-booming courses, next-level coaching, and an inspiring, uplifting community of women on a similar path as you. Learn more and join us today at this link.