THE FULL TRANSCRIPT IS TOO LONG FOR EMAIL BUT YOU CAN READ IT ALL IN YOUR BROWSER
‘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, 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 Shavasana 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 evemc.substack.com.
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 Jane 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.
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