Nobody taught me how to listen to my body. I had to figure it out on my own.
Seven and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, a consequence of the immense stress I faced personally and professionally.
If you had seen me seven and a half years ago, you might have thought to yourself that I was someone who had their life effortlessly woven together. The fixer. The giver. The connector. The person who could walk into the chaos and bring about order, in perfect timing, before anyone else noticed that there was even a mess to begin with. I led, I delivered, and I held space for everything and everyone who relied on me… over and over again. But what most people did not see was that I was continuously giving from a place of depletion.
I frequently overextended myself, performing through the pain and pouring from an increasingly emptier cup. I lived ignorant to the quiet signals my body was sending… until one day… it transformed from a soft whisper to a scream of agony. It began with symptoms I could not quite explain: fatigue, inflammation, brain fog, emotional crashes. I chased a diagnosis, frantically visiting doctor after doctor until it finally came — I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease — which felt like a simultaneous breakdown of everything I once knew and a long overdue reckoning of who I had become.
My body was reflecting a life lived in chronic overdrive. This collapse then became one of the most pivotal turning points in the history of my existence. Something needed to change… I decided to step away from 30 years of my corporate career with a quiet vow to ultimately create the safe place I once so desperately needed, yet could not find — a space for those who have stumbled across the same path as I have and feel lost in their direction moving forward.
For those who look outwardly high-functioning but are silently unraveling within, not just needing short term bandages for their symptoms but a place to identify and treat the source of those symptoms… a place to truly heal. While at that time in my life I did not yet have the physical haven to retreat to, I gave myself the time and space to put myself first by clearing away the responsibilities within my life… even if only temporarily.
This gift I gave to myself allowed me to meet the parts of my inner being that I hid away from the world. They were formed under the pressure of living in survival – growing up in the shadow of addiction, trauma, and unpredictability. I was able to do the deep, often uncomfortable work that many of us avoid… through modalities such as therapy, meditation, journaling, and somatic movement something remarkable happened: clarity, purpose, and direction emerged.
Throughout my journey, my intention was never to become a speaker, but as I have come to understand, storytelling is one of the most influential medicines for the human spirit. I continue to share my story not because it is unique, but because it is common among fellow high-achieving women, caretakers, and those that make the world go round… I want to express to them that rest is a right and not a reward for a job well done. What I bring to Highlands is not just personal — it it is timely.
It is about what happens when we detach our worth from what we produce. When we stop outrunning our bodies, when we move from survival to self-leadership, and how communities, workplaces, and families transform when we do. This is not a story about burnout, It is about what lives beyond it — regulation, repair, and remembering who we are underneath it all.
— Deanna Farnell
Founder, Highlands in Bloom
Your body always tells you the truth, even when you do not want to hear it. Real healing is not about quick fixes, it is about learning how to live differently.
FAQs
Who founded Highlands in Bloom and what is her personal story?
Highlands in Bloom was founded by a woman who had spent years as the person everyone else leaned on. The fixer. The connector. The one who walked into chaos and restored order before anyone else noticed there was a problem. She led, she delivered, and she held space for everything and everyone who relied on her, over and over again, from a place of progressive depletion she did not recognize until her body made the decision for her.
Seven and a half years ago, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, a direct consequence of years of sustained stress, overextension, and the specific pattern of self-abandonment that high-achieving people are rarely taught to identify in themselves. What followed was a journey of forced reckoning, deep self-examination, and ultimately profound recovery. She learned, painstakingly and personally, what it means to listen to the body rather than override it and what the mind-body-immune system connection actually means when it is your life on the line.
She built Highlands in Bloom because that experience changed everything she understood about stress, healing, and the gap that exists in care for people like her. She built the facility she needed and could not find, one that takes the whole person seriously, that understands the autoimmune consequences of sustained emotional stress, and that holds space for people who have spent their entire lives holding space for everyone else.
What did the founder learn from her own health crisis that shaped how Highlands in Bloom treats clients?
The most important thing she learned was that the body is not separate from the mind and that it had been communicating clearly for years before she was diagnosed. The fatigue, the low-level inflammation, the depletion she had been overriding with sheer will and professional performance were not signs of weakness or aging or overwork. They were a body under immunological siege, trying to be heard.
She also learned that healing cannot be outsourced or managed from a distance. The tools and strategies she discovered, including understanding nervous system regulation, processing unresolved stress rather than suppressing it, and rebuilding a relationship with her own body, required time, space, the right clinical support, and an environment that made genuine rest possible. None of that was available to her while she continued to perform.
These two realizations are the clinical and philosophical foundation of Highlands in Bloom. Every aspect of the program, from the residential setting to the integration of somatic and body-based therapies alongside evidence-based psychotherapy, to the nutritional approach, to the small program size, reflects what she learned about what healing actually requires. She did not build a treatment model. She built the conditions that made her own recovery possible and made them available to others.
Why does it matter that the founder of Highlands in Bloom has personal experience with autoimmune illness and burnout?
It matters because it changes what gets built. A treatment program designed by someone who has personally navigated the intersection of professional overextension, autoimmune illness, and the specific challenge of asking for help when your entire identity is built around being the capable one is designed differently than one built from clinical theory alone.
The founder of Highlands in Bloom did not build a facility for a market. She built the program she needed and could not find. That origin shapes every clinical decision, every environmental detail, and every aspect of how clients are received when they arrive. It is why the program does not pathologize high achievement. It is why the connection between chronic stress and immune system dysregulation is central rather than peripheral. It is why privacy, individuality, and the dignity of the people who come here are non-negotiable rather than aspirational.
When a prospective client or family member asks whether the people running this program truly understand what it is like to be a high-functioning person whose body has finally said no, the answer at Highlands in Bloom is yes, in a way that is not theoretical.
Is the founder involved in the day-to-day program at Highlands in Bloom?
Yes. Highlands in Bloom is not an investment property or a licensed brand managed at a distance. The founder remains actively engaged in the program, in its clinical direction, its operational standards, its culture, and its continued evolution. Her presence is felt not as a figurehead but as the person who built this place from personal necessity and holds it to the standard that necessity demands.
Day-to-day clinical care is led by our clinical director and multidisciplinary team, who are the appropriate professionals for that work. The founder’s ongoing involvement ensures that the philosophy, the intention, and the specificity of care that define Highlands in Bloom remain consistent as the program grows. When clients arrive, they are coming to a place that is still personally owned and personally cared for, not a facility managed by a corporate structure that has never met them.
What was missing in the treatment landscape that motivated the founder to build Highlands in Bloom?
Several things. First, there was almost no residential treatment option designed specifically for high-functioning adults, the executives, caregivers, professionals, and leaders who are not in visible crisis but who are suffering significantly beneath a composed and capable surface. Most residential programs are built for acute presentations or for addiction recovery. The person who is still showing up to work, still meeting obligations, still appearing fine, and quietly breaking apart, had very few places to go.
Second, the connection between chronic psychological stress and autoimmune illness was nowhere to be found in standard residential mental health programming. The research on this connection is substantial and well-established, but it had not made its way into the clinical design of treatment facilities. The founder had lived this connection in her own body and could not find a program that took it seriously as a clinical framework rather than a peripheral consideration.
Third, she wanted a facility that treated recovery as a process of self-understanding and self-leadership, not a disease management model, not a 12-step framework, not a standardized protocol. A place where the person who came in as the fixer could finally learn what it means to be supported by no one but themselves, with the right clinical team behind them. That program did not exist. She built it.
What does the founder mean by "no one should have to learn the hard way like I did"?
She means that the knowledge she carries about the mind-body connection, about what chronic stress does to the immune system, about how to listen to the body rather than override it, none of that was available to her before the diagnosis. She had to acquire it through a health crisis that could have been less severe if she had had the tools, the language, and the clinical support earlier.
She means that the high-achieving person who gives everything to everyone, who overrides every signal in service of performance and productivity, who mistakes depletion for ambition, does not have to wait for a health crisis to learn a different way of living. They can come to Highlands in Bloom before the crisis, or in the middle of it, and receive what was not available to her: a place specifically designed to teach those tools in a clinical environment that understands their specific experience.
It is also an acknowledgment of accountability. She did not know what she did not know. And she made it her purpose to make sure that the people who are walking the path she walked have access to something she did not.
How did the founder's personal recovery inform the clinical philosophy of Highlands in Bloom?
The clinical philosophy of Highlands in Bloom is not borrowed from a theoretical model. It emerged directly from her lived experience and from the clinical understanding she developed through her own healing process. Three core principles run through everything the program does, and each of them traces directly to something she learned in her own recovery.
The first is that the body always tells the truth. Before her diagnosis, she had been systematically ignoring what her body was communicating, not out of negligence but because the professional and personal demands of her life left no room to listen. Learning to interpret the body’s signals rather than suppress them became the foundation of how Highlands approaches treatment. Every somatic modality, every nervous system regulation practice, every nutritional support in the program exists to teach clients that same skill.
The second is that healing requires the right conditions, not just the right information. She could not heal on a schedule, in a weekly appointment, while continuing to live in the environment that had produced the illness. The residential model, the time, the space, the structure, the environment, is not a luxury. It is a clinical necessity for the depth of work that her population requires. She knows this from experience, not from evidence reviews.
The third is that the person who arrives at Highlands in Bloom is not broken. They are a person with exceptional capacity who has been operating without the tools and the knowledge to sustain that capacity without cost. The program is built to return those tools, not to fix a defect, but to complete something that was always there.
What is the connection between the founder's autoimmune diagnosis and the way Highlands in Bloom approaches stress and physical health?
It is direct and foundational. Her autoimmune diagnosis was not a coincidence or bad genetic luck. It was the consequence of years of sustained psychological stress operating on the immune system in the specific ways that clinical research has documented, including HPA axis dysregulation, elevated cortisol, chronic inflammatory signaling, and the gradual breakdown of the immune system’s self-regulatory capacity.
She experienced firsthand what the research describes: that the mind and the immune system are not separate systems. That the emotional weight of chronic overextension, unresolved stress, and sustained self-sacrifice has a physiological address in the body. And that addressing only one dimension, either the mental health or the physical health, produces incomplete results.
This is why Highlands in Bloom is among the very few residential mental health programs in California that explicitly treats the intersection of mental health and autoimmune conditions as a core clinical framework rather than an afterthought. It is not a positioning decision. It is a reflection of what the founder learned about her own body and then saw confirmed in the experience of the clients who came to her. The connection between chronic psychological stress and autoimmune disease is central to how this program understands its clients and designs their care, because it was central to her.
What would the founder say to someone who recognizes themselves in her story but is not sure they are ready for residential treatment?
She would say that the recognition is enough. You do not need to be at the end of your rope. You do not need a diagnosis or a crisis or an event that finally makes the decision obvious. If you are reading her story and something in it feels familiar, the overextension, the giving from depletion, the body sending signals you have been overriding, the sense that the strategy you have been using is no longer sustainable, that recognition is your body doing exactly what she learned to pay attention to.
She would also say that the question of whether you are ready is less important than the question of whether what you are currently doing is working. Most of the people who come to Highlands in Bloom have been trying to manage their way through something that is not manageable on the current terms. The readiness comes from deciding that the cost of continuing as you are is higher than the cost of doing something different.
She built this program so that the answer to that question could be something other than a health crisis. If you are not sure, the first step is simply a conversation. Our admissions team offers a confidential, no-obligation consultation and no one who calls is expected to have already decided. That is what the call is for.
How is Highlands in Bloom different because it was founded by someone who has been through the experience her clients are going through?
The difference shows up in every detail that a clinical framework alone would not have produced. It shows up in the insistence on a small program size, because she knows what it feels like to be one face among many when you are used to being the person who manages everyone else. It shows up in the privacy protocols, because she understands the specific fear that a public-facing professional carries about what seeking residential care might mean for how they are perceived. It shows up in the way the program does not pathologize the drive and the capability that brought clients to this point, because she knows those qualities are not the problem. They are the resource, once properly supported.
It shows up most fundamentally in the program’s refusal to treat mental health and physical health as separate systems, because her body taught her, in the most direct way possible, that they are not. The research confirms it. Her experience lived it. And the program she built reflects both.
When clients arrive at Highlands in Bloom, they are coming to a place whose founder has asked the same questions they are asking, has carried the same fears they are carrying, and has built something specifically in response. That is not a claim that other residential treatment facilities in California can make in the same way.
Is Highlands in Bloom a founder-led treatment center or is it corporately owned?
Highlands in Bloom is independently owned and founder-led. It is not affiliated with a corporate treatment chain, a private equity group, or a multi-facility network. The founder built this program from her own experience, owns it, and remains actively involved in its direction, standards, and culture.
This distinction matters practically. In a corporately owned facility, clinical decisions, staffing, program length, and operational standards are often governed by financial and administrative structures that are physically and organizationally removed from the people providing care. At Highlands in Bloom, the person who designed the program is the same person accountable for its quality. The founder’s investment in the outcome of every client’s experience is not institutional. It is personal.
For prospective clients researching residential treatment in California, the question of ownership is a meaningful due-diligence question. We encourage you to ask it of every facility you consider. At Highlands in Bloom, the answer is straightforward: this program belongs to the person who needed it most and built it herself.
What is a burnout treatment center and how does Highlands in Bloom approach burnout differently?
A burnout treatment center is a residential or intensive program that provides structured clinical care for individuals experiencing the profound physical, emotional, and cognitive exhaustion that results from sustained chronic stress. Burnout at the level that warrants residential care is not simply tiredness or overwork. It is a state in which the nervous system’s capacity for regulation and recovery has been significantly depleted, often producing co-occurring anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, and in many cases, physical health consequences including immune dysfunction and stress-related illness.
Most burnout treatment programs address the symptoms of burnout through evidence-based therapy, rest, and structured programming. Highlands in Bloom does all of that and goes further in one specific direction that our founder’s personal experience demands: we treat burnout as a condition with a physiological address in the body, not only a psychological one. The chronic stress patterns that produce burnout do not live only in the mind. They live in the nervous system, in the immune system, in the hormonal and inflammatory pathways of the body. Our clinical approach addresses all of those dimensions.
Our founder did not recover from burnout and autoimmune illness through a wellness retreat or a vacation. She recovered through the kind of sustained, whole-body clinical work that Highlands in Bloom now provides. That is what makes this program specifically suited to the clients who arrive carrying both the professional identity and the physical cost of years of sustained overextension.
How does having a female founder who experienced autoimmune illness shape the culture of Highlands in Bloom?
It shapes the culture in ways that are both explicit and woven into how the program operates at every level. The majority of autoimmune conditions disproportionately affect women, and the specific pattern of self-sacrifice, caregiving from depletion, and performance through pain that our founder lived is a pattern that many women in high-achieving roles recognize immediately in her story. The program was built with that recognition as its foundation.
The culture at Highlands in Bloom does not require clients to perform capability in order to feel worthy of care. It does not frame the exhaustion and the breakdown that brings people here as a weakness or a failure. It treats the arrival as the beginning of something important, not as evidence of something wrong with the person. That cultural posture comes directly from a founder who arrived at her own crisis without a roadmap and had to build her understanding of what it meant to stop performing and start healing.
Highlands in Bloom serves both men and women, and the program is designed to hold space for the full range of presentations its clients bring. But the founding voice, the clinical philosophy, and the specific understanding of what it means to be the high-functioning person nobody worries about carry the particular clarity that comes from someone who lived that experience, in a female body, in a high-demand professional life, with an immune system that eventually recorded every bit of it.