What I want you to know about your counselling journey with me..

When your scrolling at 2am looking for help...

This is me.. When I look back over my career, it still stops me in my tracks to think how one seemingly random decision altered the course of my life. For years, I was a hairdresser. Not because I chose it, it was chosen for me when I was still young and at school. The fear from parents and pressure from school about not "achieving anything" was real.....but I had other dreams. If life had gone to my teenage plan, I’d have been on stage, dancing backup for Janet Jackson or Fi

Take A Seat...Your Welcome here.. Welcome to my online space, a warm, inviting corner where I share insights, reflections, and tools designed to support your journey toward healing and self-awareness. As a professional Somatic Trauma Psychotherapist, I’m deeply committed to providing a space where we can explore the intricate dance between the mind and body. I write these blogs not only to reinforce the themes discussed in session but also to extend that conversation into you

Masking Ourselves.. Masking is something many people do without realising it, the subtle shaping of ourselves to fit into the spaces we move through. But while masking is a universal human behaviour, the depth, intensity, and cost of masking is not universal. For some, it’s a light social adjustment. For others, it’s a lifelong survival strategy woven into every interaction. Masking is sometimes described as ‘camouflaging’, ‘social camouflaging’, ‘compensatory strategies’, or

We talk a lot about “being capable” as if capability is the whole story. But capability is only half the picture. The other half, the one most people never learned to honour, is capacity . Understanding the difference between the two can soften shame, reduce self‑blame, and help you make sense of why some days feel impossible even when you “should” be able to cope. Capability: What You Can Do in Theory Capability is your skillset, your knowledge, your experience, your strengt

The human nervous system Most people try to heal by thinking their way out of pain. They tell themselves: “I know I’m safe now.” “I understand why I react this way.” “I’ve talked about this so many times.” And yet their body still: tenses freezes panics shuts down feels small reacts as if the past is happening now This can feel confusing or frustrating, but there’s a simple reason for it: Your nervous system doesn’t learn through logic. It learns through experience. You can

Understanding the younger parts of ourselves

Do you know who you are really?

Most people have heard of fight, flight, and freeze, but there’s a fourth survival response that often goes unnoticed, even by the person doing it. Fawning. Fawning is the instinct to appease, please, smooth over, or shrink yourself to stay safe or keep the peace. It’s not a personality trait. It’s not “being nice.” It’s a nervous system strategy, one that often develops in childhood, trauma, or environments where your needs weren’t welcomed. If you’ve ever walked away from a

When we hear the word grief , most people think of losing someone we love. And yes, that kind of grief is real, deep, and life‑altering. But grief is so much bigger than death. It’s something we move through again and again across a lifetime, often quietly, privately, and without language for what’s happening inside us. If you’ve ever felt a heaviness, a hollow, a sense of “something has gone” even when no one has died, you’re not imagining it. You’re grieving. Let’s talk abo

Feeling misunderstood can land in your system like a quiet ache or a full‑body shutdown. You might walk away from conversations thinking, “That’s not what I meant at all,”  or “If they really knew me, they wouldn’t see me like this.” This isn’t “just” about communication. For many people, especially those with trauma histories or who are neurodivergent, feeling misunderstood can touch very old, very tender places in the body. This blog is for you if you’ve ever thought: “Why

There are days when you move through the world feeling like you barely take up space. Days when life feels like too much. Days when you’re tired in a way sleep doesn’t touch. Days where you feel forgettable, replaceable, or somehow “less than.” Days where you wonder if anything about you really matters at all. Days when you look at yourself and think, I don’t know how much more of this I can do.   And if you’ve spent years feeling misunderstood, masking parts of yourself, or

Believe in yourself! There are days when you look at yourself and quietly wonder, Is this really me forever? Will I always feel this overwhelmed, this lost, this different?  And if you’ve spent years carrying heavy things, adapting to impossible situations, or trying to make sense of a mind and body that don’t always match the world around you, it makes complete sense that you sometimes believe you’ll always struggle. My heart aches to know you feel this way, because I’ve kno

co-dependency and enmeshment

Co-dependency and its meaning

Unconditional love is something every child needs, not as a luxury, not as a bonus, but as a biological requirement . When we talk about unconditional love, we’re not talking about perfect parenting or constant calm. We’re talking about something much simpler and much deeper: a child’s nervous system knowing, “I am safe with you. I don’t have to earn your closeness.” When People Say “Love Has Conditions” When adults say “love has conditions,” they’re usually talking about bou

Why am I feeling stuck?

Attachment versus authenticity..how we are shaped

People often imagine therapy as a place where you turn up, talk about your problems, get some advice, and leave with a neatly packaged solution, but the real heart of therapy isn’t the techniques, worksheets or clever insights, it’s the therapeutic relationship, and when that relationship is trauma‑informed it is intentionally built around safety, choice and pacing, with the practitioner attuned to how stress, loss and past experiences show up not only in thoughts but in the