“If you have tried counselling or you’ve tried therapy and it has made you feel worse, know that you’re not alone. That, unfortunately, is quite common, but fortunately there are many, many styles and many, many different people who can help you”
This special extended episode of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast was recorded to support you with any mental health issues you might be struggling with by sharing parts of my own journey.
And a) I forgot to mention an enormous part of my own journey – the house fire that led to my PTSD then CPTSD diagnoses and b) I somehow got the date for Mental Health Awareness Week wrong.
I only shame spiralled for a couple of minutes before laughing at my ADHD brain.
With compassion.
And I decided that because this is SUCH a personal episode, I’d share it now in case I changed my mind by May.
Some content warnings:
· birth trauma
· intergenerational trauma
· racism and colonisation
· mixed heritage
· CPTSD
· Insomnia
· PTSD
· misogyny: child sexual abuse and sexual assault
· self-medication (alcoholism)
· trichotillomania (hair pulling)
· suicidal ideation
· disordered eating
· Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
· chronic pain (endometriosis)
· more trauma and
· ADHD
I realise again now that I forgot to mention the perimenopausal and menopausal impacts on my mood, sleep, cognitive function, self image, anxiety etc but because of the horrendous endometriosis symptoms for so many decades, am utterly delighted to be post menopausal – that being said, if you’re struggling with perimenopause and/or menopause, DO get the support and help you need and deserve.
Sending so much love to you wherever you are and whatever you’re dealing with.
le grá,
Evei
Transcript
I love diving. I’m a snorkel member of a
sub-aqua club, but I’ve been going to all the dive lectures and we have a
secondary breathing device for air supply when we’re underwater with our buddy.
And it used to be that if they were in trouble running out of air, you would
give them what’s called the octopus.
Whereas now you simply raise your hands and
allow them to TAKE that help that is available rather than risk getting in
their way or giving in a way that isn’t helpful. So I think when it comes to
mental health awareness, that’s really important as well. You know what’s right
for you.
It’s much more helpful for you to think about,
in an ideal world, what support would be most beneficial for you rather than
anyone, however well-meaning, deciding that you need X, Y and Z. So collective
care is really important.
…
Welcome to this special Mental Health
Awareness Week edition of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. And very unusually
for me, I have a script. I thought I’d do a bit of time travel and share some
love and compassion with my Inner Children and Younger Mes as I reflect on my
own mental health journey from wishing like from 49 now as a trauma therapist,
as a supervisor, as a coach, using EFT, NLP, all the tools I have in my
toolkit, all the self-care I write about and share with groups and that I adore
and that I still see as essential for me.
It’s been really interesting reflecting on my
journey with various aspects of mental health. And I thought by giving some
examples from my own life, it might hopefully help you find some love and
compassion for yourself. And maybe some hope – I’m now the happiest I’ve ever
been.
I have the tools that help me to navigate
life’s challenges. And I’m going to send some of that back to Younger Mes, but
I also hope it will encourage you to get the support that you deserve and can
benefit from. So I won’t share everything.
And again, I’m sharing that because part of
trauma recovery and working with befriending ADHD brains is recognising that
sometimes we can share more than we then feel good about. And I remember in my
early 20s going through a stage where I felt like a raw nerve and I felt
constantly like I’d shared too much. I was living in a new to me city in
Cardiff, and it was long before social media. Even the internet wasn’t even
really in my day to day.
So I’m just sharing that I’m kind of being
careful with myself, I am going to share a lot. And there are some content
warnings around abuse and suicide. So do look after yourself and maybe listen
to this with extra gentleness.
It will be longer than most of the episodes.
But I’m just wanting to encourage you to get the help you need and deserve if
you need and deserve it. I mean, obviously you deserve it, but if you need it,
if you’re feeling in any way, shape or like you could use extra support, you
deserve that extra support.
So make it happen in whatever way is
appropriate for you. I want to share hope. I used to feel broken beyond repair
for as long as I could remember.
I didn’t know then about Complex PTSD (Complex
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and developmental trauma. I didn’t know about
neurodivergence and ADHD. I just, from my earliest memories, felt like there
was something very wrong with me and that things that were easy for others were
a struggle.
We know from Brené Brown and other research
around vulnerability and shame and healing, it’s really important to choose who
we share with. So in your case, it might be a trained therapist or coach or a
loved one who you really trust, but really honouring, like work with your
nervous system, move towards what feels good and away from what doesn’t.
Retrain your nervous system if you were raised in a way or conditioned in a way
as an adult that has taken you away from that inherent inner knowing, because you
deserve to feel good and you deserve to heal.
And we are wired to heal in community. We
co-regulate. It helps us recover from trauma.
It helps us recover from tiny things as well
as big things. But it really is about having those right energies around you,
people who are loving and welcoming and supportive and safe, not who are going
to use your vulnerabilities against you. So collective care is another element
that is really important.
The better we are at taking care of ourselves,
the more we can, from a wholehearted place, support others. It’s the cliche
around putting your own life mask on. Life mask? Oxygen mask, life jacket,
whatever, on first rather than helping.
I love diving. I’m a snorkel member of a
sub-aqua club, but I’ve been going to all the dive lectures and we have a
secondary breathing device for air supply when we’re underwater with our buddy.
And it used to be that if they were in trouble running out of air, you would
give them what’s called the octopus.
Whereas now you simply raise your hands and
allow them to TAKE that help that is available rather than risk getting in
their way or giving in a way that isn’t helpful. So I think when it comes to
mental health awareness, that’s really important as well. You know what’s right
for you.
It’s much more helpful for you to think about,
in an ideal world, what support would be most beneficial for you rather than
anyone, however well-meaning, deciding that you need X, Y and Z. So collective
care is really important.
It’s wonderful to keep an eye out for our
loved ones and people who are struggling, communities on the other side of the
world who need support and help. And we are all connected, it goes without
saying, but you can only really control yourself.
Honouring that and recognising that will make
you better at the collective care element because you’ll be helping others then
from that more grounded, resourceful place where you’re able to hear what they
actually need and want rather than potentially making things awkward, if not
worse.
I am wanting to start at the beginning and I’m
also recognising that memory, especially when it comes to complex trauma and
ADHD, all memories are unreliable. There are so many different versions.
One thing I’d like to say up front is some of
this might sound quite miserable. I have reconnected with childhood friends
through social media and I’ve seen old photos of myself and some of them, yeah,
I do look like there was something very wrong and in others I look filled with
joy. So part of my, in my late 40s, healing journey has been recognising that,
yeah, while there was a lot of bad, there was also good and it’s really nice to
be integrating all of that now.
In terms of re-traumatising yourself, it’s
really about knowing, like, even when it comes to choosing a therapist, if you
decide to go down that path, my earlier experiences with therapy, when I was,
probably the first time was when I was at university and they had it free
through the Students’ Union and I just felt like I was failing my therapist,
that I was doing it all wrong.
Then I had some counselling through an Employee
Assistance Programme in my last office job. And it was revolutionary for me,
but again, I had that real sense of not doing it right and feeling afraid that
I was getting it wrong. That I had to somehow, like, compulsively confess
rather than recognising here was a person who was being paid to actually help
me heal in the best way for me.
Like, this is just so radical and I think the
more I’ve gone down the ADHD rabbit hole the past few years and getting that
diagnosis myself last year, recognising how Neurodivergence Affirming Therapy
is so important because of that RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Disorder).
I just again want to flag that now because if
you have tried counselling or you’ve tried therapy and it has made you feel
worse, know that you’re not alone. That unfortunately is quite common, but
fortunately there are many, many styles and many, many different people who can
help you.
Experiment, explore and find someone who you
feel safe to bring your whole self to. So I hope that as you listen or watch
this, listen to or watch this, that you will recognise that you are worthy,
you’re not too much, you are enough and you are completely lovable, that you
deserve care, you deserve to heal and you deserve support and guidance.
Some of what I might suggest Younger Me could
have done with in terms of support that’s coming to me now, with the benefits
of hindsight and decades of working in this field, might appeal to you and it
might prompt other ideas for you where you think, “Oh no that doesn’t appeal,
but yeah I could really use this and that would help me.”
If you’re in Ireland or the UK and you want
to, if my approach appeals, you can fill out the short contact form at
selfcarecoaching.net/contact and we can book a free telephone consultation, no
obligation. I am pretty much at capacity the whole time which is brilliant, but
also I do have some availability, so depending on the kind of time of week that
would be suiting you and also what you’d be wanting support with, I will work
with you if I can because I adore this work and also the more I am feeling better
myself, the more my capacity is expanding. But wherever you are in the UK or in
Ireland, in Ireland check out iacp.ie for the directory of accredited
professionals and counsellors and psychotherapists and in the UK and check out
bacp.co.uk and look for accredited therapists or counsellors. And UKCP are
another organisation for psychotherapy but make sure that you’re working with
someone you feel good with, make sure you feel able to talk to them, that you
feel safe with them, that you feel welcome with them, that you feel cherished
might feel like too strong a word, but we’re working towards ventral vagal
wellness the whole time, we’re working with our nervous systems because we’re
mammals and it’s really important.
I am going to start with the pre-verbal and I
am going to just apologise to my mammy for being such hard work from before I
was born, so she had a terrible pregnancy with me, lost an enormous amount of
weight, nearly died and then a traumatic birth. I was a forceps baby because I
was breech so it was very traumatic for her and it also had an impact on me and
I was ill a lot as a baby, as a small child, in hospital a lot. I think I’m in
a medical textbook for having a classic case of whooping cough that came with
the spots, so that didn’t happen very often so there’s a baby picture of me in
some medical textbook apparently.
Being the daughter of immigrants as well, my
mother of Indian origin but born and raised in Kenya, so she was a double
immigrant, my dad from Ireland to London. Looking back, I really wish that they
had lived in a friendlier, more welcoming climate and I know things are bad now
and I know things were bad then and I think it’s absurd when we’re all human,
we’re all connected, none of us where we’re born or who to.
But it’s something I recognise looking back
would have had an impact on the way they raised me and them not feeling 100%
safe and welcome and cherished in their new home country and them wanting me to
be safe. Potentially some of the criticism was trying to keep me safe in a way
they wish but of course with anything like that and I just wish now, I mean I
wish that racism had never been invented by white people to other people in
order to oppress and plunder and colonise and all the rest of it, that’s a
whole other story and yet it is a part of all of our history and we are all
dealing with the need for reparations, we are dealing with the need to make
things right and to heal and we need to address those very long ago traumas as
well as more recent.
I’m mentioning it here just for now, all I do
is I send Metta (Loving Kindness) to groups, I send Metta to myself, I send Metta
to my loved ones, to obviously my parents, sending that loving kindness, may
they be happy and healthy, peaceful and at ease, may they be able to take care
of themselves joyfully, may they possess the courage, wisdom, patience and
determination to manage life’s challenges and I know we talked about
Ho’oponopono a few weeks ago:
I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank
you.
That kind of energy clearing, that reminder
that we’re all connected and the more we clear our own energy, the more we’re
helping at least not make things worse by acting out in rage or upset or hurt
or whatever that might be, so moving on to my earliest memory where I was
around three years old.
I don’t have many memories from childhood but
I do remember being burgled coming back from the park and apparently they
didn’t take the soap I noticed and my parents were like, they were clearly
people who had even less than we did and we were in Tottenham in London and we
moved after being burgled several times to Essex but I imagine that would have
had an impact on how safe my parents felt as well as me recognising through
money mindset work I’ve done in like the past decade or so that I grew up with this
sense of it not being safe for me to earn enough or have enough until everyone
on the entire planet had enough because otherwise they might steal it rather
than.
I’m sharing probably possibly too much but
also I just want to share what might be helpful because so much of what we
internalise before we make it conscious and before we take that awareness and
that curiosity and most importantly that compassion to all these beliefs that
are driving us but often without us knowing.
Maybe some of what I’m saying will resonate
for you, maybe some of it will help you and maybe it might make you laugh or
maybe, I don’t know, I’m just sharing in case it’s helpful. So we moved, that
was my first move when I was three nearly four and my second earliest memory
was, this might sound really inconsequential but it came up when I was
preparing for this, meeting a neighbour who became a friend.
She was a year older than me and she was
confident and she came striding down the front drive when the movers were there.
Now I don’t know if it was movers or if we were doing it ourselves but I
remember her asking me my name and me asking her her name and I’d never heard
her name before and I thought oh and she said, “That’s a weird name” about Eve
and I remember at like three not yet four censoring myself already having that
sense of it not being okay to express myself and to say I’ve not heard your
name before either or you’ve got a weird name too or whatever it might have
been. I just remember that kind of it was okay for her to be a little bit rude
about my name but it wasn’t okay for me to do anything that might cause her
upset. So now just sending love to that Little Me.
I think she had a beautiful name I’m not going
to share it now just in case it causes any hurt or upset now but it might be
something again that you resonate with. I changed schools a lot I went to two
different primary schools, three if you count the elementary school in America (we
lived there for a year) and then two different high schools in the UK when we
came back.
There was a lot of changing there was a lot of
kind of reconnecting with old friends, making new friends and feeling like I
didn’t have any friends. There were times, I’m smiling now but I remember not
knowing day to day going into school whether my friends would be talking to me
or if they’d have told the whole class to not talk to me which was really
painful because I again didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
And looking back I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Again with the neurodivergence awareness and with ADHD, it’s that understanding
why I was so vulnerable to that and part of why as well as the trauma history
why I didn’t focus on some of the friendlier people in the class of 30 and put
my friendship focus there. But it does make me quite sad. I’m also sad as I
reflect thinking about when we moved from London to Essex I kind of from a very
early age knew that we didn’t have the money that other people seemed to have. I
remember them being upset at the idea of Santa lists and explaining that not
everyone can afford to buy what children want. I had that kind of sense of, I
think by the time I was in high school, it was like other people wanting
certain I don’t know trying to remember what they were called but certain jeans
certain, shoes I can picture them so clearly and I can’t remember what they
were called.
But I didn’t even want them by that stage it
was just like I by then I was doing my own thing in terms of how I dressed and
it’s not like I mean, it has its plusses as well as its downsides, but I think
sending some compassion to Younger Me recognising that it didn’t feel fair in
primary school in the second one in the UK where everyone else got a lollipop
for recording something and video was a new thing back then and we didn’t have
a video.
Just that kind of awareness of being the only
one in the class without that. And it’s such a tiny thing and it shouldn’t
matter, I’m telling myself even now after all these years all these years of
self-compassion. But I do remember Little Me feeling isolated by some of the
things that we didn’t take part in.
So again, if that’s your experience, and I
think also being Indian Irish it I love my parents I’m so lucky to still have
both of my parents and we’ve done a lot of work I’ve not always been easy
they’ve not always been easy we’re all human but I know they did their best and
I hope they know that I’ve done my best and I do my best.
But I think there’s something about being so
many different things and me and my brother didn’t grow up knowing other people
who were our mix. And we were in England not Ireland so there’s been more
Indian Irish people here or whatever kind of mix that is.
It was again looking back I think quite
isolating and the part of Essex we were in was very white which is I think
still quite strange now. And I’m also aware talking I sound English I look
white and why did this have such an impact?
But it was that always being aware that I was
somehow being protected from some of the racism that other people experienced
more directly but at a very early age hating it and wishing I could do more and
wishing it didn’t exist.
And I was terrible in terms of insomnia which
had a huge impact on my mood and my capabilities and my ability to navigate
life. And I remember in primary school, I later read that Marian Keyes used to
do this as well, but getting dressed for school the night before in the middle
of the night because I couldn’t get to sleep and just thinking any time that
saved me in the morning that would help.
Trying to sleep in different parts of the room,
like on the floor, like head to like just doing all sorts of things to try and
get to sleep. But looking back, between the trauma history and the ADHD brain
constant rumination and not knowing how to manage that in terms of the trauma
history. The not realising until I did the crystal therapy training in 2001.
I began it because I was having flashbacks
from loads of internal tests at the hospital and doctors for what was
eventually diagnosed as endometriosis so that was triggering a lot of early
childhood fragments of memory that had to come up for healing. And it helped
explain why I started drinking heavily at such an early age.
My first experience of alcohol was around age
seven where I was given whiskey by an adult but I didn’t start drinking heavily
until my early teens. I was regularly passing out drunk and I at one point
wanted to become a drug addict because it felt like it would be easier to
navigate life if all I had to worry about was drugs and coming up and then
coming down.
And of course my entire past decade plus of
work has been about nervous system regulation and helping people do that and
myself do that in a much safer way. And I’m really fortunate that we grew up in
Essex in a part where I did experiment but I didn’t get addicted I didn’t get,
I mean I did drink too much and I have been sober since 2001 but I it could
have been a hell of a lot worse.
I’m really, really fortunate that it was bad
there are still consequences I deal with from that time but again understanding
more about the early childhood understanding more about why I made myself so
vulnerable so repeatedly and I still remember finding a book when I was doing
my counselling training, the psychosynthesis training, and it was a bit of an
explanation for me around counterphobic behaviour.
And how when something traumatic happens it
can be an unconscious attempt to make sense of what you’ve been through and
somehow do it differently so you might think someone gets drunk and passes out
and bad things happen why would they continue to get drunk and pass out I used
to really beat myself up about how many years it took me to stop drinking
whereas recognising that and that there was that healthy drive behind even the
most negative unhealthy behaviours there’s always some sort of positive
intention behind it and getting that understanding that I in my clumsy way was
trying to save myself over and over and of course making it worse.
I don’t remember why but I do remember wanting
to be dead a lot from childhood until my 20s so especially from childhood until
my early 20s. But I had a lot of joy there as well but I kind of flirted with
anorexia when I was like 12 we’d come back from America started at my first
school in the UK high school in the UK.
I remember being aware of it from like
watching the Karen Carpenter story over and over and I think that I had an
awareness and it didn’t fully like get me. I know my classmates were worried
about me my teachers were worried about me my mum was worried about me but I
somehow again it didn’t take which was lucky.
But it also wasn’t good and I did not eat well
I took myself out of kind of family eating by becoming a vegetarian very young
and refusing to eat vegetables so kind of I was terrible in terms of what I
would eat for many years and then I had a growth spurt when I went back to
eating meat for a while when I was 17 because I had been like not eating at all.
I also started tearing my hair out so I still
have some kind of really thin patches which I’m self-conscious about so showing
you here but like I used to have so much shame around that just the fact that
I’m showing you here makes me happy.
I shaved my head entirely during lockdown
partly to have a fresh start and let it all grow back there are occasional
times where I’ll wake myself up and I’ll be tearing my hair out but I will wake
up after like a few and stop whereas it used to be every day between 11 and 36
and 36 when I was doing my counselling training. No it must have been younger
than that. I think 36 it was a certain part I think quite maybe late in the
counselling training where we had done some work with the body and some
internal dialogue and I, in expressing my thoughts around it just hearing the
self-loathing when I thought I had already done a lot of healing around it.
Having my words reflected back to me it was so,
“Oh my God! Because I was already a life coach by then, I was already an EFT
practitioner, a crystal therapist, I was doing yoga I was doing all these good
things as well but recognising that my default self-talk was just still so so
negative.
That stopped me overnight. So all these
decades by that point where I’d been punishing myself in my head like stop it
stop it yelling at myself wishing I could afford some sort of expert help but
not knowing how to go about it.
And being so ashamed. I remember reading about
it. It was in an Encyclopaedia Britannica at the library in Essex. Reading the
name trichotillomania the first time. Finding out what it was I was doing and
that it had a name and just being absolutely disgusted with myself.
And also really relieved that it wasn’t just
me but not understanding and of course as I’ve grown up, as I’ve done the
trauma recovery work, as I’ve learned more about ADHD, it could have been a
form of stimming.
It could have been a trauma response. I wish I
could go back to 11 or 12 Year Old Me and like when it began or any stage in
between then and 36 and give Younger Mes the love and compassion and ultimately
the acceptance that helped me stop.
Even though there are still the odd times
where I say it happens because I can’t control when I do what I do when I’m
asleep but now I’m able to recognise, ‘OK.” I can be curious what’s going on in
my life. Am I putting myself under a lot of undue stress?
But basically now when I do it, it hurts
whereas when I was growing up it hurt to not tear my hair out at the root I
can’t believe I’m sharing all this but if it helps even one person then I am
happy to be doing it.
So I tried to end my life when I was 14, I
think 13 or 14. I took an overdose of paracetamol and not knowing what I was
doing, with hindsight, I see that I took way too many, which was really
fortunate because I was immediately very, very, very sick. And I threw it all
up.
And I was really lucky to not have any kind of
long term damage from it. What came from it was a recognition that I was so
grateful that it hadn’t worked. And no matter how bad it got, and I was very up
and down in terms of, I didn’t know how to regulate my emotions.
I didn’t know how to regulate my mood. And I
now understand it was that impulsivity with ADHD that led me to that bottle.
And I also recognised that the experience is what stopped me ever, ever, ever
doing it again.
Because no matter how bad things got, and
things got worse when I was like 16, when I was 18, when I was 19, other times,
I would have been successful potentially.
It’s one of those things that really frightens
me: How precious people are and creatures and everyone. And how little it takes
to do so much permanent damage. So I am actually grateful that I tried that
then because I think I would have succeeded later had I not.
And I am happy to say that I’ve not felt
actively suicidal since my 20s, which is wonderful. I’m happier now than ever
before. But I also very vividly remember how it was to just have that eternal
monologue in my head, “I hate myself and want to die” and then reading a Kurt
Cobain book later and realising he had it as well.
And so many people and of course, now with the
yoga with the meditation with the knowledge about how what we tell ourselves is
so important and like choosing a Sankalpa that helps you improve your life. Working
with what you want to draw into your life rather than creating those neural
pathways that go so deep with such a powerful but such a hateful message to
yourself.
I really wish I’d had some sort of meditation
practice that would have helped me like even the Ho’oponopono. That: I love you.I’m
sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.
But it could have been any goal I was working
towards.
Like last year, one of my Sankalpas was, “I’m
becoming an excellent driver” and I got my driving license, but using that with
each yoga nidra. But thinking all those times, all those times being stuck in
assembly at school or stuck in other situations, you just have to endure going
somewhere else in your head. If I could have gone somewhere more helpful…
So I guess if you’re having thoughts that you
wish you weren’t having, one way to deal with it is to replace it with a
thought that is going to be more beneficial to you. So I mean, there’s the old
classic, “Every day, I’m getting better in every way.” Can’t go wrong with that
one.
But thinking about whatever it is you want to
improve in your life and letting yourself create something positive in the
present tense, that just becomes something very quickly to retrain your mind
away from damaging, punitive, heartbreaking thoughts.
I mean, to think how much I hated myself and
wanted to die and how lucky I was in so many ways and how much I had going for
me and how much I do have going for me. But it was just a record groove going
round and round and round.
So I am grateful for that. And I also am
grateful for nature and remembering at an early age, just even when I was being
really down, like walking back from the station, like after being out all night
drinking and seeing the stars in the sky or the moon and just feeling that
sense of being part of something bigger, although I wouldn’t have been able to
name it back then. Just that sense of awe, which we know has physiological
benefits when we feel it.
And when I moved to Ireland, I wanted to be by
the sea and mountains so that I could deliberately experience that awe on a
regular basis. And that healing power of nature and getting out in it as often
as possible. But I think first becoming really aware of that when I was around
17 and in a lot of pain and then being taken out of that pain by looking up at
the sky and just feeling like, wow, it’s a big world we live in.
So by 18, I kind of pulled my finger out at
school and started studying for my A-levels because I’ve been planning to
emigrate to the other side of the world with a by then ex. So it was like, ah,
I need to work. I’m very lucky that I got to university and I somehow got
through my degree, even though I was drinking far too much. And I made some
lovely friends and I had some lovely experiences.
And I also had no idea how to take care of
myself in the most basic of ways, let alone the bigger ways. So sometimes I
learn things now, like I just added spinach and beetroot and tomato to a vegan
burger that I was having, like a vegan chicken burger. And I’ve been doing that
with vegan beef burgers for ages.
But this was my first like adding it to it’s
like instead of crisps. And at 49, I’m like, wow, that’s amazing, like creating
crunch in food, not through crisps. So when I think back to me at university
and how much I had to learn.
I did a lot of good stuff and I got through
it, but I was going to say I made life really hard for myself. And I think that
is something I had a lot growing up that I made life really hard for myself.
Whereas, again, looking back with more compassion for myself and understanding
more about my differently wired brain and thinking I wish things could have
been easier and I can send that younger me some love now.
I really wish I’d understood more about
impulsivity, like something that stood out around A-level results was a friend
who was like a straight A student, just being freaked out that she’d failed
everything she didn’t, she got straight As. And her kind of grabbing me for a
hug when we were like looking for our results and her saying, “It’s OK, I’ve
told myself if I fail, we can go and live in a Kibbutz.” Like she was just
expected me to drop everything and go live in a Kibbutz because we’d learned
about communal living in Sociology.
And I remember that kind of striking me as
odd. Like, what does she just think that I’m the kind of person who just pack
up my life and move to the other side of the world, which I realised I had been
planning to do. But there was that part of me, I think, other people saw as fun
and spontaneous, which I didn’t identify with.
And I now recognise the impulsivity again with
ADHD. I only found out I was impulsive with that diagnosis last year when I was
48. So that was really helpful.
The diagnoses I had as a teenager in my late
teens, a GP telling me that I had Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), but me
not knowing what that meant or how to deal with it, only knowing that I
couldn’t wait the six weeks I was being told it would take for the
antidepressants to kick in and me recognising I needed to find something that
would work faster.
For me personally, I think antidepressants are
wonderful for lots of people, but I couldn’t wait that long. And each time I
was prescribed them over the next few years, it kind of forced me to dig deeper
and try myself.
But again, if I understood even a fraction of
what I know now about how much we can work with the body and the breath, how
much we can work with the nervous system, how much we can do, like we don’t
need to understand where the anxiety comes from. A lot of it in my case was
complex trauma. So I didn’t know.
I mean, it’s easy to say Generalised Anxiety Disorder
when you’re scared of everything and anxious about everything. But recognising
[BUZZ] I forgot to turn my activity tracker off. So I will do that now. I clearly haven’t been moving for that long.
But yeah, I really wish that the GP had given
me more information. And I also remember someone else I was taken to see saying
I was, “Riddled with anxiety” and then, “Oh, I shouldn’t have told you that.”
And I remember that being exquisitely
unhelpful because I felt shame about feeling so anxious and afraid and
hypervigilant and exceedingly strong startle reflex and just generally on edge.
Like a raw nerve walking around the planet.
Looking back, I mean, I think it helped me be
a better practitioner myself because it gives me more compassion. But I really
wish more had been known about anxiety when I was younger.
I’m grateful that more is being learned and
understood and shared now. So I made bad choices and I made good choices. And I
moved from north Wales to south Wales. To Cardiff because my Welsh wasn’t good
enough to stay in north Wales after my degree.
So I’m living in a city I didn’t know anyone
else in at first. I became more careful with alcohol. But I do remember getting
a lift home from the police one night because I was in one of my “nature’s so
beautiful!” moods, coming back from town, where I’d been drinking with friends,
but I didn’t have any money.
It was a relatively rare thing that I was
drunk at that point, but I was drunk. And I was kind of, I guess, leaning over the Taff at
the bridge and just thinking how beautiful it all was. But the police stopped
by me and asked what I was doing and kind of insisted on giving me a lift home
to my little studio flat.
I was placed on beta blockers, put on beta
blockers when I was 22, for anxiety, for heart palpitations, which looking back
is utterly insane. I’m pleased that a part of me was healthy and whole enough
to recognise that it was utterly insane that I was working for so little money
in such a high stress job and that I was being put on medication that was aimed
at people decades older than me for heart conditions. And because, yeah, I had
a bullying boss, it was ridiculous.
I started applying for jobs back in London and
moved back there. And that was amazing. But then my bad period pain, which I
thought every woman and girl had, because it had always been my experience,
became daily pain.
A year of tests then led to minor surgery and
the endometriosis diagnosis. I began to become more embodied then because my
body coached me and forced me to pay attention to it. I stopped drinking
alcohol because that made the pain worse and I was still not the healthiest of
drinkers.
I had been abusing alcohol for a long time,
but I was coached by my body with the pain to get sober and I quit smoking as
well. So that was both 2001. And I began, I guess, the trauma healing then
because so much began to come up for healing.
I started attending yoga classes and I’d be
sobbing in Savasana at the end. Absolutely mortified because everyone else
looked so serene. I knew it was a psycho-spiritual practice, so I knew that
stuff was coming up for healing. And my crystal therapy training. My tutor had
been so helpful when I was basically like, “I want to kill myself, but I’m
scared of reincarnation. I’m scared of having to survive childhood and teens
and early twenties again.”
I was basically encouraged to ground, ground,
ground, ground, ground. This was long before I trained as a counsellor and a
trauma therapist and learn about the importance of grounding from a
physiological and neuroscientific perspective.
I’m so grateful for that advice and grounding
and resourcing. And yeah, it began the healing process. I began swimming again.
I went to New York City for a VDay.org
conference because it was before social media, but I had found a lot of support
reading other survivor stories on the VDay.org website.
VDay was an organisation that was started by
Eve Ensler, who now goes by V. She had been performing The Vagina Monologues
that she had written as a one woman play all around. And she was being
overwhelmed by all the horror stories she was hearing at each venue by so many
women and girls telling them about their own experiences.
And she felt that she could not continue to
perform and not do something to hopefully help. So she created VDay as a way to
fund grassroots organisations around the world that were supporting women and
girls, eliminating violence against women and girls. And yes, ideally, like
there’d be no violence towards anyone, but they do amazing work.
They did amazing work. And I went to their
Women and Power conference in 2004 at the start of my self-employment. So I had
to hand in my notice in several months earlier when I’d been signed off work
for anxiety. I’d been walking around the open plan office in London, in Swiss
Cottage, sobbing, because I couldn’t bear that my taxes were being used to bomb
people Afghanistan and Iraq.
I’d been on so many peace protests, and they
hadn’t worked. I just couldn’t bear the idea that I was complicit in hurting
others. Looking back, obviously, I was projecting my own trauma outwards as
well as still being really sad that we are all unable to stop what is horrific
in the world.
But the more we look after ourselves, the more
we can identify ways in which we can help in even little ways. Back then, I was
just a raw open wound. When I eventually went to my manager, who is still a
friend, and said, I think I need to see my GP, she was like, “Gooooo!”
And actually, you can listen to that Martine
Henry episode of season one of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. She was my
manager, and she’s still a friend. And just thinking about like those, I think
it was two or three weeks, I was signed up, but I realised, okay, go self
employed.
I felt so badly that I was needing time off
work every month, because I was on the floor in pain with the endometriosis. And it was really impacting my mood, because I
didn’t have any energy. I was working full time, living in London, living in a
tidy studio flat, and I didn’t have the energy to go out at all.
I wasn’t seeing friends, I was just in so much
pain so much of the time. So I decided to go self employed, and to start as a
writer and a crystal therapist and life coach. Because I trained as a crystal therapist, because the crystals helped
me, when I was in so much pain, where hospital prescribed painkillers didn’t.
And I wanted to learn more about it. And there was an enormous amount that was
really helpful.
They were something that helped me ground
myself and helped me focus more on what I wanted to be doing. And I developed
for my like kind of final project, it was three years training, Crystal Coaching,
so using them as meditative support, and also letting people working with me
know, even if they didn’t believe in the energies themselves, every time you
see one that you’ve chosen, or every time you feel it in your pocket, or by
your computer, or wherever it might be, you’re reminded of that intention of
that goal. So it was just a helpful way for me to get more aligned with what I
wanted to be doing.
Because I was coaching while starting out as a
writer with no experienced bar, some time as Arts Editor on the student
magazine, and three thankfully unpublished novels that I’d written, when I
didn’t have the money to be going out. I say thankfully unpublished, because
they were too autobiographical, but I didn’t know it.
And it was really life changing, because it
began to give me those resources. Everything I trained in initially was to
support myself, but going freelance as a writer, I’d initially hoped to be
writing about all the amazing activists in the world, working towards making
the world a better place, a more peaceful place, a more just place for
everyone, a kinder place, but I didn’t get that kind of thing commissioned.
It was more self-care stuff, which I wasn’t at
that point, calling self-care. But I realised increasingly that the more we
were aware of our own needs and wants and able to look after ourselves, the
more we watched our personal piece, the less likely we were to act out, and the
more likely we were to contribute to wider piece. So I was really lucky that I
was coaching writers.
I was also coaching myself. I learned an
enormous amount about resilience and rejection and being really grateful for
rejection, because it meant that you could move on and you could re-jig the
idea for that editor if they’d been encouraging, or you could send it to
someone else. But whatever it was, there was that sense of action being so much
better rather than just shame spiralling and thinking, “I’m never going to get
anywhere”.
Because I was already coaching other writers,
it really helped me to become a freelance writer with no contacts or experience
in any real way.
I then trained in EFT, emotional freedom
technique, and was alarmed at the concept of connecting with what was wrong.
And it was like, “But why? Why would we be so negative?” And learning, well,
these unconscious beliefs are driving us the whole time. Why not make it conscious and release the
energy around it?
That was really helpful for me. And since
then, I did additional trainings and became an Accredited Advanced EFT Practitioner
and Mentor, and also NLP, doing a lot of training in NLP, becoming a Master Practitioner
in 2008, and deciding that was it. I was done with all the trainings until I
woke up one day and decided I wanted to become a psychotherapist.
I didn’t become a psychotherapist, I became a
psychotherapeutic counsellor, psychosynthesis, but I would have had to do the
extra two years for the MA. I did the Postgraduate Diploma, but it felt like
four years in an emotional washing machine. I had to have personal therapy,
which is what had put me off training as a counsellor before, but it really was
life-changing in terms of me beginning to heal that spiritual part of me that
had been brought up in organised religion, and that didn’t work for me, the
whole “banished children of Eve” thing, the whole idea of original sin.
But the idea that we can always connect with
the earth’s supportive, nourishing energy, that we can always remember that
there’s more to us than whatever it is we’re dealing with, and that there is so
much support available and opening up to it, that no matter what, we had one
module called Pain, Crisis and Failure, and I always used to imagine it like in
big lights on Broadway, like Pain, Crisis and Failure: The musical!
And the idea which was already familiar to me,
with me, from watching a lifetime of Oprah, of what is any problem
trying to teach us? How is any problem trying to help us?
That reframing, but also not spiritual
bypassing, not ignoring the issues that needed compassion and dealing with.
I got through that training eventually, and I
attended a day as a journalist where I was going to learn about yoga therapy
for the mind, and around anxiety and trauma, so I was really intrigued, and I
thought I’d write a feature about it.
And I ended up signing up to do the whole
training, and that was life-changing as well, because although we’d done some
embodied somatic work on the psychosynthesis, and the yoga therapy was very,
very body-based, and working with the nervous system, working with polyvagal
theory, working with, we had amazing guest lecturers like Dr. Pat Gerberg and
Dr. Dan Siegel, and just even hearing the trainer talk about her journey with
her own anxiety and her own trauma history.
I think by that stage there was more of an
awareness of depression in terms of mental health awareness, but not many
people were talking about trauma, not many people were talking about anxiety,
and I was like, “Wow, she’s amazing, like she seems to have it all together,
like she’s developed this training.”
It just really gave me hope seeing someone own
what they had been through, and using the post-traumatic growth element of it.
So after that, my training in Integrative Counselling and Coaching, and then
Clinical Supervision, they were the first two trainings that I didn’t undertake
in an effort to save my own life, which was really interesting.
You can listen to other episodes of the
podcast to find out about my own daily Self* care, and how that’s evolved, and
I’ll continue to share how it continues to evolve, but it really has always
been.
Since I stopped smoking and drinking in 2001, Self*
care has been essential to help me function, and at times to keep me alive.
Thinking about my 40s, there’s been a lot of
stress, but there’s also been so much more integration of my whole self. In the
bonus content for Half Moon members (free subscribers), I’m going to explore
some of the transpersonal approach of psychosynthesis that really helped me
from the time I began my training in 2008.
Connecting with that part of yourself that’s
so much more than whatever it is you’re dealing with, or worrying about, or
have survived.
For the Full Moon and Super Moon members’
deeper dive, there’ll be a brand new yoga nidra, designed to support you in
helping all the parts of yourself that have been in or are in any kind of pain.
When you think about any kind of mental health
issue that is coming up for healing for you, it’s not appropriate for
schizophrenia, but there are no contraindications other than that if you want
to become a Full Moon or Super Moon member, but if you’ve got any questions let
me know.
I’m gonna just leave you with a quick little
encouragement to support your own mental health today by starting with your
mind. Thinking about any ruminating thoughts, especially any unhelpful ones,
any that you struggle with.
If you were to imagine anyone else saying them
to you, you’d be like, “How would I get anything done?!” because it’s so
painful to be talked to in that way? So really encouraging you to find a mantra
or create a Sankalpa or a positive intention that you can memorise and have reminders
of everywhere so that when you start spiralling you catch yourself.
I’m changing my computer password today again
because I use it so often to help me really integrate a new Sankalpa into my
daily life. Every
day when I log on, I’m typing in that Sankalpa or a reminder of that Sankalpa,
reminding me where I want to be moving in my life.
So thinking about something you can use for
your mind to help cultivate your mind in a way that’s sustainable and enjoyable
for you. And again, if you want any help with that, I’ve got loads of resources
on the site, selfcarecoaching.net and the Substack – the Sole to Soul Circle on
selfcarecoaching.net/sole-to-soul-circle/.
Also checking in with the body and getting
used to being more embodied in terms of noticing when do you feel at your best?
When do you feel happiest?
When do you feel most at ease, at peace in
your own skin?
How can you do that more often?
How can you even imagine it?
Or how can you schedule some of that in if it
involves being somewhere else?
But how can you make it as daily a practice as
possible?
And how can you get into the habit of really
listening to your body and drinking when you’re thirsty and getting to the loo
when you need to and going for a walk and getting to bed at a good time and
eating well and just honouring that beautiful, beautiful body that houses your
beautiful, beautiful spirit and soul and befriending it and being kinder?
Yoga has been so healing for me and swimming
has been so healing for me. Initially, it was like the idea of being out in the
ocean, but increasingly, I’m just so lucky. Every time I swim in a heated pool,
even, it feels like medicine and getting to be in the steam room afterwards and
knowing now that I deserve it.
But I think from early on in my days of being
sober, it was like it was much, much easier to pour myself a whiskey than to
cycle miles to get to the swimming pool. But I got that underwater and building
on that.
So really encouraging you to do the same. To
think about where you feel happiest, where you feel most at peace, most at
ease.
And thinking about your heart as well,
thinking about using joy as a GPS. And we do this a lot with the yoga nidras.
I’ve got loads on the site and we do special ones in the membership in the Sole
to Soul Circle, which align with that week’s theme.
Tt’s helping you connect with that part of
you. Joy is your birthright. Whatever mental health condition or conditions you
have struggled with or are dealing with now or have survived, joy is your
birthright.
Just let that sink in for a minute.
Joy is your birthright.
Joy is everybody’s birthright.
Paying attention to the things that make your
heart sing, the things that bring you joy, that is helping you rewire your
nervous system, retrain your nervous system, and helping you be more guided to
opportunities and ways in which you can thrive.
It’s not self-indulgent. It will revolutionise
your life.
And finally, thinking about supporting your
soul. Thinking,
like for me, I’ve mentioned nature a few times. It’s huge for me, enormous for
me. The sea, the mountains, connecting again with that part that’s so much more
than whatever little trivial things feel enormous.
And that’s not to diminish them, because any
kind of pain is pain. But let yourself think about the kind of situations that
support your soul and ways in which you can make more time and space in your
life for those things.
This has been a much longer episode than I had
anticipated!
So I really appreciate you sticking around.
And I would love to hear from you if you’ve any questions or comments. And I
really, really hope that you will recognise that you’re not too much. You are
enough. You are completely lovable. And you deserve all good things.
I hope that you will get whatever support is
best for you. And also to encourage you to get whatever support is available to
you, rather than psyching yourself out thinking it has to be the best possible,
and then not getting any.
Something is always better than nothing.
Thank you for listening. If you haven’t
already and would like to like, rate, review, comment, subscribe, engage in
whatever way feels good for you, that’s very much appreciated. And I look
forward to seeing you next week.
Next week, I’m be delighted to be welcoming
the lovely Jayne Leonard back. We’re talking about ways in which we can amp up
the love in our own self care for Valentine’s Day.
Thank you again, really appreciate your
support, and just really hope that you know that you are worthy and deserving
of all the support you need.