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Sophie Messager

Category: growth

  • Finding Calm Within When Everything Feels Too Much: A Story of Hope and Transformation

    Finding Calm Within When Everything Feels Too Much: A Story of Hope and Transformation

    Two years ago, my overwhelm was at its peak. The combination of mothering an autistic teen struggling with severe anxiety perimenopause and undiagnosed ADHD was a killer. The nights were worse. I’d jolt awake at 3am, my mind instantly spinning into an endless loop of anxiety about all the things I wasn’t doing.

     

    In those dark hours, everything felt impossible. The list would spiral: work stuff I needed to do, emails I hadn’t answered, family needs I wasn’t meeting, paperwork deadlines, self-care I was neglecting. Each thought would feed the next, creating an exhausting cycle that left me lying there, heart racing, unable to get back to sleep.

     

    In the morning, overwhelm would crash over me within 5 minutes of getting up. I was so dysregulated, I could not organise tasks in my head, I’d start one then the other, not finishing any, and get more and more stressed. The weight of responsibilities – running my business, being present for my family – felt crushing. Even as someone who taught others about wellbeing, I struggled to find peace in my own life.

     

    The shift began when I realised I needed to fundamentally change my relationship with time and space, and learn to recreate calm within my nervous system. Instead of pushing harder, I started creating intentional pauses in my day. I learned to listen to my body, to notice when I was dysregulated, and do small things to bring peace back. Most importantly, I began putting my own wellbeing first – no longer treating self-care as a reward for getting everything else done.

     

    Most importantly, I started unlayering the weight of society’s expectations on myself, the false belief that my productivity was my worth. I started challenging the voice inside my head that berated me to work harder.

     

    Nature became my sanctuary. Whether wild swimming in cold rivers or simply walking in nature, I discovered that spending time outdoors helped regulate my nervous system in ways no amount of ‘productivity hacks’ ever could.

     

    Finding a supportive community of women who understood this journey was crucial. Together, we created spaces to share about our struggles and celebrate the good things in our lives. These connections reminded me I wasn’t alone and showed me different ways of being.

     

    I experimented with a lot of things, some that worked (microdosing, drumming, a temporary use of HRT, and working with a therapist who is also a shaman) and some that did not (lots of quick fix tools that made things worse, antidepressants, talking therapy). I unlayered so much, including fundamental beliefs about myself. In the end I came to realise that the only way to provide lasting change is to get to the root of the cause of overwhelm, which is complex and multifaceted.

     

    Now, my nights, mornings and days feel completely different. Yes, there’s still plenty to do, but the new spaciousness I’ve created inside myself means that, even in the midst of a full life, I no longer feel overwhelmed. Those 3am anxiety spirals have gone, and I have many tools that actually work to calm my nervous system.

     

    I want to share about my journey and what I’ve learnt along the way. I want to help other women take steps towards bringing more spaciousness and calm into their lives. I want to do this because, if we are going to create a better world, we simply cannot do it alone, nor from a place of dysregulation. Dysregulation keeps us in a state of firefighting, one from which we cannot access our own wisdom nor affect change.

     

    I am launching a 6 month group program for overwhelmed women called The Calm Within Community, and I am going to be sharing the essence of this in a free masterclass this week.

     

    If this resonates with you, join me for my free masterclass, Overwhelm to Calm, on Wednesday the 6th of November at 8pm London time. I’ll share what I’ve learned about moving from overwhelm to calm, blending neuroscience with ancient wisdom to find a gentler way of being.

     

    Because to change the world, you need to feel peace, not just teach it to others. 

  • Is impostor syndrome stopping you from sharing your gifts with the world?

    Is impostor syndrome stopping you from sharing your gifts with the world?

    Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalised fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. The term was coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes, in an article called The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention.

    The article includes this paragraph:

    “ Despite their earned degrees, scholastic honors, high achievement on standardized tests, praise and professional recognition from colleagues and respected authorities, these women do not experience an internal sense of success. They consider themselves to be “impostors.” Women who experience the impostor phenomenon maintain a strong belief that they are not intelligent; in fact they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.”

    And this:

    “Women who exhibit the impostor phenomenon do not fall into any one diagnostic category. The clinical symptoms most frequently reported are generalized anxiety, lack of self confidence, depression, and frustration related to inability to meet self-imposed standards of achievement.”

    While it’s not an official medical diagnosis term, dictionaries define impostor syndrome as a concept describing high-achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalise their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud.

    Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as follow:

    “The persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.”

    In essence, impostor syndrome involves feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, and fraudulence despite external proof of one’s competence. 

    How I see it manifest in my field of work

     

    Because I have spent the last 13 years working in the perinatal field, as an antenatal teacher, babywearing instructor, doula, doula mentor, healer, therapist, and teacher, I have encountered hundreds of women in this field who experience impostor syndrome.

    In fact I’d go as far as saying that the majority of women I have worked with have issues with this, and that it’s rare and refreshing to encounter someone who doesn’t. And that the rare men I have trained never seemed to have this issue.

    I remember at the end of a postnatal recovery massage training, where a female student asked me if it was OK to charge for this work. In the course there was a male massage therapist and he was utterly surprised that she asked this question, and reframed it in a very helpful manner for her.

    I see beautiful, deeply caring professional women who are incredibly nurturing and massively over deliver what they do for their clients, and yet are held back by unconscious impostor syndrome. I see it manifest in the following ways:

    • Doubting their expertise. Despite having the necessary qualifications, training, and experience, women in these professions often doubt their knowledge and expertise, constantly questioning their abilities.
    • Overpreparation and overworking: to compensate for their perceived inadequacies, they spend excessive time preparing for sessions, classes, or appointments, constantly seeking more training or certifications, or working longer hours than necessary.
    • Not being able to charge enough for their services. Feeling that they need to over justify how much they ask for their time. Feeling embarrassed about asking for money.
    • Reluctance to offer services: they may avoid taking on new projects or offer new services due to self-doubt and a fear of failure, or feeling that they do not know enough yet.
    • Fear of being exposed as a “fraud”: They have a constant worry or fear that others will discover they are not as competent or knowledgeable as they are perceived to be.
    • Minimising accomplishments. Downplaying or dismissing positive feedback, compliments, or recognition from clients, students, or colleagues, believing they don’t deserve the praise, or dismissing the praise and focusing only on their perceived lack.

    What saddens me is that it prevents wonderful women from thriving in their work and feeling good about themselves, despite over delivering on everything they do. It also often prevents them from sharing their gifts with the world.

    My personal experience & how I overcame it

     

    I experienced impostor syndrome even when I was still an employed research scientist, especially when I moved from the field of academic research into the biotech industry. I have shared about this in the past here.

    But I experienced it much more deeply when I became self-employed, especially because I often pioneered services that did not exist in the UK yet, for example when I became a babywearing instructor. I’ve noticed it’s often harder for women to justify charging for something that society has no frame of reference for. Nobody would dream of asking say a hairdresser or massage therapist to work for free, but with the modalities I teach, because they aren’t well known, it’s harder for it to feel “normal” and therefore justify prices.

    Over the last 12 years I have managed to bring my impostor syndrome into consciousness, and from something that held me back in my offerings, into something I recognise and can tame, and which no longer prevents me from sharing my gifts with the world.

    For example, the first time I offered an online course, back in 2018, and 115 people signed up, I had a panic attack over it, because I hadn’t expected that many people to signup. I was crippled with worry that people wouldn’t like the course. This was especially ridiculous because I’d only asked for £20 from people as a group of early adopters to help me build the course. But the unexpected signups really shook me.

    6 years down the line I have created 6 online courses, totalling over 800 students in over 30 different countries. I also feel confident enough now to create the course from scratch with my group of students when I offer a new course. This was unthinkable for me only 3 years ago.

    It doesn’t mean that I don’t encounter uncomfortable feelings around this, I still do, especially when I’m offering something completely new. For example as I write this I’m getting ready to do a drum journey at a midwifery conference, and it sure elicits some mild anxiety about how it will be received, because this is outside of my normal experience. Last year I delivered a talk about the science of drumming to a conference of 150 women drummers, and felt totally in my power, because I knew that my talk would only elicit excitement. Here, I know I’m going to stretch people’s beliefs. However, I see the feelings as they arise, I name them, and I can tap into past experiences of overcoming them to reassure me. Plus I plan to deeply challenge the negative biases as part of my talk and drum experience. Bottom line is: the impostor monster can still rise (bigger growth = bigger monsters), but I can see it right for what it is and tame it.

    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.” Marianne Williamson

     

    I feel called to help other women overcome their impostor syndrome.

    It’s a process of self reflection and bringing it into consciousness which is easy to follow. It includes:

    • Understanding the root causes and manifestations of impostor syndrome
    • Understanding impostor fears and what they are trying to protect you from
    • Identifying and shining a light on these beliefs from a kindness perspective
    • Recognising and defusing impostor feelings as they arise
    • Cultivating self-acceptance and self-belief
    • Embracing your unique strengths and talents
    • Learning to reframe and celebrate your achievements

    If this is something you’d like to explore, I’m running an online workshop about it at the end of April, find out more here

    “There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression.” Martha Graham.

  • Gently Easing Back into Work Mode: Self-Care Strategies After a Break

    Gently Easing Back into Work Mode: Self-Care Strategies After a Break

    Yesterday was my first day at work after deliberately taking the long Easter weekend off.

    Since I became self-employed 11 years ago I learnt the hard way (through a couple of very severe burnouts) that pacing myself and giving myself proper breaks from work was essential.

    I had a lovely, slow, quiet Easter weekend. I enjoyed slow leisurely mornings, I went swimming in the local river twice with a lovely group of people, I went on long walks with my dog, visited the car boot sale, met some lovely people who will look after my dog this summer, I made homemade pizza with my family and watched a funny movie, I binged watched a Netflix series with my son, did an easter egg hunt with my daughter, I read and listened to some books, I ate some yummy really dark chocolate. It was exactly what the doctor ordered. Slowing down and being led by what my heart and soul want to do is very replenishing. 

    Even though I love what I do, I always find the change of pace after coming back from a break, even one as short as this one, quite challenging. I don’t know if my ADHD brain contributes to this but I suspect it does, because what I notice is that I have resistance to getting back into work mode because my brain sees EVERYTHING that needs to be done, and wants to run away. My brain is trying hard to protect me from uncomfortable feelings, so the temptation to procrastinate is huge.

    What I’ve learnt over the years is that the way to avoid this is to ease myself back into work very gently and slowly. I’ve been writing about self-care as a solopreneur for over 8 years, you can read my first article about this here.

    When I come back from a 2 week long summer break especially, I plan to have at least 2 or 3 easy days to bring myself back into working mode gently. I wrote about this in this article. Here I had a shorter break so one day feels like enough.

    Because of the way resistance works, as soon as I give myself permission to take things slowly, my system relaxes, the resistance eases, and poof, as if by magic, I no longer feel the desire to avoid work.

    Another tactic that helps is to plan my return ahead of time, as in writing a list of everything I’ll need to do when I get back from my break, because I tend to forget. Being clear that nothing intense or extra challenging is taking place immediately when I’m back also helps avoid overwhelm.

    I hope this helps and if you have your own tips and ideas to ease yourself back into work mode, I’d love to hear them. Just comment below.

    Here’s a collection of other articles about self-care, gentleness and self-kindness I’ve written over the years:

  • Drumming a New Path: My Journey of Healing and Growth in 2023

    Drumming a New Path: My Journey of Healing and Growth in 2023

    Last year nearly broke me. Join me as I reflect on an epic battle for my child, my own mental health hurdles and ADHD discovery, and how making a drum unlocked deep healing, purpose and exciting new ventures. This is a story of overcoming obstacles through surrender and belief in my ability to steer life’s challenges into growth and meaning. From family struggles to launching a podcast and book, I’m opening up about my most challenging and transformative year yet. If you’ve ever felt lost or close to giving up, only to discover you’re far more powerful than you realised, this one’s for you.

    When I look back at 2023, I feel mostly glad that the year is over and that I’m starting anew. Last year carried a lot of discomfort for me. It was healing but also painful. The coming year feels much more hopeful – it really has a new beginning feel. There were many positive things for me and my family in 2023, but mostly, because things had improved so much from where we were, I found myself grieving and finally processing the hard challenges I’d had to cope with in the previous couple of years.

    My family/personal life:

    2023 started on a dark note for me as my youngest child was still struggling with severe mental health issues, hadn’t been in school for 18 months, and had anxiety so severe they could barely leave the house. Early in the year I battled the local authority to secure funding (EHCP) for the small, holistic specialist school I knew was the only right fit, and key for recovery and healing. It was an epic fight. I had a private advocate’s help but it took months of paperwork, assessments, school visits, report writing and constant chasing. The underfunded, understaffed medical and education systems threw up roadblocks at every turn, but after nearly 18 months we won. It was worth the battle, and I’d do it all over again for my child, but I found it physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting, and soul crushing. I got diagnosed with ADHD last year (more on that later), and one of the issues with ADHD is finding tedious admin tasks REALLY difficult to do. If you want a flavour of what I experienced, read this graphic story about a mother battling getting support for her child with ADHD. It describes the French system but it’s very similar to my experience.

    When the letter came a few weeks later saying we had been successful, I thought I would feel elated, but instead, I felt war torn and weary, like had been a warrior for a long time, and I was finally putting down my armour, sword and shield. I felt exhausted. I booked a much needed family holiday to celebrate, and to act as a transition before my child started in the new school.  But then I got a kidney stone, spent an awful night in A&E begging for pain relief, fainted and gave myself a concussion. Rather than the holiday I’d planned, I spent a week in bed, wallowing in self-pity.

    In April my child started the new school, which was nurturing and supportive beyond my hopes. Three months in, my once housebound child happily went on a residential school trip. I also successfully applied for Disability Living Allowance, which opened up benefits that made attending certain events less stressful for my child. Over the last 3 years I’ve worked with therapists and coaches to stay regulated despite my child’s mental health crises, which used to unravel me. Recently, as my child had an anxiety attack on an outing, I was able to help her re-regulate in minutes. My own regulation was key.

    After the school win, I collapsed, my body giving out after so much chronic stress and survival mode. My health crashed. I was only up for walking my dog and resting and my mood was terrible. My coach invited me for a free restorative yoga session, reminding me my nervous system was fried. She helped me realise that, while perimenopause played a role, there was a lot more going on. Though I’d sworn off medications, she explained that I could try HRT without committing long-term.  I also reached out to holistic menopause mentor Kate Codrington, who shared that some of her clients used HRT to give themselves the space they need to get more holistic practices in place. Shortly afterwards, I started HRT, and within a couple of weeks  I noticed a huge difference in my mood, energy and sleep. Whereas before I felt crippled with anxiety, woke up several times a night with night sweats (which would then trigger anxiety that would keep me awake), and felt completely exhausted, I started sleeping better, feeling calmer and more positive, and having more energy. From that calmer vantage point I was able to look at my life and start putting more positive steps in place.

    I also got an ADHD diagnosis, which explained my paralysis around boring tasks, but hyperfocus when excited. With support, I applied for and secured an Access to Work grant for coaching, decluttering help and more. With all this support in place, I’m sure that my life and business are going to improve massively this year. Getting my older child assessed for ADHD and autism was also a big step. We await the final diagnosis this month.

    ADHD is a paradoxical beast. When I get excited about something, my productivity is off the scale (I wrote my first book in 6 months, and wait until you read my work achievements below), and I finally understand why people keep asking me how I do all these things. Whilst exciting things are effortless, boring or difficult tasks can feel insurmountable, and I can procrastinate for months on end, whilst constantly thinking about the task I’m not doing and beating myself up about it.

    My work life in 2023:

    From mid-2022 to March 2023 I had to pause my work to support my child and attend constant medical appointments and tutoring. But with my online courses ticking over, I still managed to keep my business afloat.

    When my child restarted school after so long, I found myself having more time to dedicate to my business again. I had stopped working as a doula a year before, and I felt frustrated that the next “calling” wasn’t still showing itself. Looking back I can see that there just wasn’t the space in my life for it before. But now that space was available I grew impatient and frustrated. Kanan helped me get out of this stuckness by reminding me that often we don’t know what works until we try. She asked me what would excite me and I said teaching drumming to support birth, but I worried this was too niche. 

    In a bid to get myself space to heal and spend time in nature doing stuff I loved, I booked onto Melonie Syrett (aka The Drum Woman) sacred women drum circle facilitator training. I booked this for myself as a retreat because I knew that spending 4 days immersed in sacred work on the land, in peace, away from the hustle and bustle and needs for daily life, would do me a lot of good. The training delivered this and more. I spent 4 days camping at the Clophill Centre, immersed in nature. The weather was glorious and we spent our time inside an roundhouse, or in the woods or meadows. It was everything I had hoped for and more. My nervous system calmed right down.  It was very healing.

    During the training I made a beautiful drum, created with the intention to lead drum circles. When you make a drum it carries the medicine of what you went through when you crafted it. We spent time with each hide asking it if it was the right one for our drum. When it came to the lacing, she explained that those of us who liked things to be perfect could consider making a messy drum. I remember thinking: I don’t want my drum to be messy! But my hide had other ideas. I hadn’t realised how hard it would be to work with horse hide. As the hide was so thick, I had to keep cutting bigger holes for the lacing and then passing the lacing through them was very time consuming. By the time most people had finished their drum, I was only a quarter of the way through with mine. We worked inside a marquee and it was 30 degrees outside and I was sweating profusely. I found it challenging and uncomfortable. In the end I had to finish my drum alone in the evening,  3h behind everyone else. But I wouldn’t stop or give up until I was done. My tenacity  making this drum was the same quality I had used through the fight to get my child support. In the making of this drum I also had to let go of control and surrender to some aspects of it that didn’t fit with my original plan. This was another deep lesson I had over the last couple of years, to learn to surrender, when before my default setting was to try and control everything when things got difficult.

    When my new drum was dry and ready to play a few days later, I did a guided journey to meet his spirit. He told me that its name was mountain rider and that its medicine was to help overcome obstacles. The drum’s medicine kicked things into hyperdrive. I offered a free webinar about drumming for birth and 100 people signed up. I then decided to offer a course to teach people how to drum during birth.  When I started researching the topic of drumming and birth I realised that almost nobody had written about this. This made me incredibly excited because I am a pioneer at heart and there I was in really new territory, and one that also made use of my science and spirituality bridging gift. 

    I was contacted by the International journal of birth and parent education (IJBPE) to write an article about drumming and birth. This was the first time in history that something about this topic was published in a scientific journal. I taught a group of women from 6 different countries how to use the drum to support birth. I wrote 6 blog posts about drumming. I made a drum from amniotic membranes. I ran drum circles and wrote case studies for my course, reflecting and refining my skills and gaining appreciation for what I did.

    I decided to write a book about drumming and supporting women through life transitions, approached a new publisher, wrote 6 chapters in a month to meet the submission deadline, and the project was accepted. I started a podcast, The Wisdom Messenger, to share the wisdom of trailblazing women bridging science and spiritual knowledge. I gave a talk about the science of drumming at the first convention of women drummers and makers. I also wrote another article about drumming and birth for the Green Parent magazine, which is coming out this month, and I’m leading a drum journey workshop at the IJBPE conference in April.

    Beside the above, in 2023 I also:

    • I kept my business going and whilst my income dropped a little, it was still steady
    • I launched a new online course about drumming for birth, bringing my total number of courses to 6. 
    • Over 100 new students joined my courses, bringing my total number of students to nearly 800, from 30 different countries. 
    • I ran 3 in person courses (including a rebozo course for NHS midwives)
    • I taught 4 webinars, the most popular one was attended over 200 people
    • I ran monthly drum circles
    • I did 20 individual healing sessions (Reiki, Drumming, Closing the bones)
    • I supported 3 births (I’m not a doula anymore but when people get in touch for help or friends give birth, I simply cannot leave them without support)
    • I published 25 blog posts and over 200 posts on social media.
    • I was interviewed on several podcasts, and invited to lead sessions in other people’s courses
    • I started reviewing the French translation of my book, Why postnatal recovery matters, which is being published this year.

    A lot of this success was due to having worked with authentic marketing coach George Kao.

    My spiritual/healing/growth work:

    Falling apart starts a death and rebirth process, where we rebuild from the ashes. This has been true for me. The pain provoked proportional healing and growth. My need to understand and better myself continued. I worked with a neurodivergent coach for 9 months and also had human design and MAP sessions. I tried some talking therapies but found the Western approach too cognitive and rushed. A more integrative, somatic approach resonates more. I continued microdosing plant medicine. It helps me identify and change unhelpful thought patterns. 

    I carried on with my weekly dawn woods drum circles with my 2 drum sisters. This feels very sacred and the space for deep sharing afterwards is precious.  As a friend who shared her drum story with me said “Drumming is like church, but better”. Deepening my nature connection through year-round cold water swimming, daily dog walks and wheel of the year ceremonies brought me grounding and joy. 

    I listened to countless audiobooks and podcasts about growth. Some of my favourite books were:

    • How to be the love you seek by Nicole LePera
    • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
    • Radical Wholeness by Philip Shepherd
    • Entangled life by Merlin Sheldrake
    • The soul of money by Lynne Twist
    • How to keep house whilst drowning by KC Davies
    • Your brain’s not broken by Tamara Rosier

    In conclusion

    This has been an uncomfortable year, and also one of tremendous learning and growth. This is the year where I have started healing from the challenges I had in previous years, the beginning of a journey into becoming a happier, more whole self.  2024 truly feels like a new beginning for me, a year where I can really focus on growing myself, growing my business and helping others do the same.

    My word of the year for 2022 was Expansion (in last year’s blog post there is a link for a word of the year meditation). My word for the year in 2024 is Guidance.

    Someone shared this poem with me at a retreat last week and it feels apt:

    For a New Beginning

    by John O’Donohue

    In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
    Where your thoughts never think to wander,
    This beginning has been quietly forming,
    Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

    For a long time it has watched your desire,
    Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
    Noticing how you willed yourself on,
    Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

    It watched you play with the seduction of safety
    And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
    Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
    Wondered would you always live like this.

    Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
    And out you stepped onto new ground,
    Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
    A path of plenitude opening before you.

    Though your destination is not yet clear
    You can trust the promise of this opening;
    Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
    That is at one with your life’s desire.

    Awaken your spirit to adventure;
    Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
    Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
    For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

     

     

  • When It’s Time to Shed Your Skin: Letting Go of What No Longer Serves You

    When It’s Time to Shed Your Skin: Letting Go of What No Longer Serves You

    I’ve decided that it’s time for me to retire from selling rebozos.

    I never intended to sell them, it’s just that, as I ran a lot of workshops, people kept asking. At first I only brought them to workshops and then through word of mouth alone, I got messages from people wanting them, there was so much demand that I found the process too time consuming (lots of taking pictures and emails). Eventually I had to ask my webperson build me a webshop.

    Fast forward to today, 7 years later I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that the process of importing, taking pictures, putting listings on my website, packaging each rebozo, taking packages to the post office, plus the tallying of countless paper receipts for tax purpose, is not only a very time consuming process, it’s no longer bringing me joy.

    Not only that, but it’s taking me away from what I feel I am really gifted at, which is creating content. Courses, blogs, books etc. These things give me deep joy and feel part of my soul’s purpose.

    Plus the last audit I did of my business showed that the profit I make from selling rebozos represent less than 10% of my income, but it sure takes a lot more time than the things that earn me the most money (my online courses). So it’s time for me to retire from selling them. When my current stock of rebozos is sold, I’ll close that part of my online shop. When I’m ready to close the shop, I’ll recommend another UK seller I trust and who imports from the same ethical suppliers as I do. I may still order a small batch when I run in person workshops (because this is still enjoyable and was less time consuming than online selling).

    Reflecting on cycles of outgrowth and shedding

    I’m sure you are familiar with the fact that some animals, like snakes or lobsters, grow by shedding their skin or shell. The sign that the old shell or skin has been outgrown is tightness and discomfort. I love this reflection about how lobsters grow in particular.

    When I look back at my professional life there has always been a lot of outgrowing and shedding.

    As a scientist, I did my PhD in two different labs, and then 2 postdocs in 2 different research centres. Then I worked for a start-up biotech company for 7 years. I wondered if it meant an unusual break in pattern, however over the course of these 7 years there was enormous evolution to my role, from bench scientist to team leader, with the organisation growing from 12 to 100, moving 3 times, merging with another company then being bought by a big pharmaceutical company. It was all quite exciting, and explains why I stayed so long in this company. Interestingly, when the job became boring after the company was bought by a large pharmaceutical company, and I agonised over leaving because I had a months old baby and negotiated a part time arrangement, I was made redundant and it was actually a big relief. After that I went back to academia for 4 years, and I had two completely different roles in two different departments in a very large research centre.

    The last 4 years of my scientific career, I straddled two worlds. I trained as a doula, antenatal teacher, and babywearing instructor. I did sling consultations on my day off, and taught antenatal classes during evenings and weekends. What precipitated my departure was attending a birth as a last minute backup doula on my day off, and coming back to the office on Monday morning and thinking, what am I doing here? This is so much more exciting. When I handed over my notice, I felt completely elated.

    When people tell me I was very brave to leave a successful scientific career behind to become a doula, I explain that it had nothing to do with bravery, I simply couldn’t not do it. My soul wouldn’t let me. Working in science those last few years felt excruciating; I was chained to something my passion had outgrown. My whole being knew it was time to shed that skin. So I wouldn’t call it brave to walk away. When I left, my spirit soared straight up as if finally set free. I simply had no choice but to change course and follow where my purpose was leading, to work that lit me up from the inside. I was no longer outgrowing that science skin – it had become dead weight.

    For a few years I worked as a birth and postnatal doula, antenatal teacher and babywearing consultant. It was so exciting and rewarding! Never in my scientific career had I cried tears of joy before, and this was a regular occurrence in my new job.

    I went to countless study days and training. I soon found myself offering workshops to birth professionals, and organically grew towards teaching professionals rather than parents.

    As my interests and offerings grew, I soon found myself in a quandary: as a solopreneur, there was only one of me, and too many interests yet not enough hours in the day to meet them all.

    What I noticed started to happen naturally, as my new interests grew, is that some of the stuff I had been doing for many years was no longer giving me joy. When this started to happen, I think I knew straight away, but I pushed the feeling away for quite some time. After all, I had invested significant time and effort in the training, and acquired a lot of experience along the way.

    For example, in the case of teaching antenatal classes, I had trained with the NCT, and this had included getting a DiPhe in antenatal education, complete with graduation ceremony. When only about 4 years after starting teaching I started to get the unmistakable sign that it was time to move on (in my case the sign is always boredom), I really struggled with this, and carried on teaching for a couple of years after that. When I finally told my husband that I was going to stop teaching the classes, he reminded me that I had made the decision 2 years before.

    Still I spent some time agonising over the decision because, whilst it was clear that this was no longer my path, there were aspects of the work I knew that I was going to miss. After stopping when I’d bump into couples who had attended my classes, and they’d ask me if I was still doing it, I would feel a pang of regret.

    The same was true when I decided to stop teaching babywearing. I had started teaching closing the bones and Reiki workshops, and the spiritual element of this made my soul sing. I realised that teaching babywearing was no longer spiritual enough for me. Similar iterations happened over the last few years, some came from my spirit, some forced by circumstances (for instance when the lockdowns forced me to move from offering in person workshops to online courses). 

    There were things I only offered for a couple of years before I felt that it was no longer right.

    Stopping doula work was quite hard even if the message to stop was really clear. The message that came was that, unless I stopped this work which was taking so much time, mental space and energy, I wouldn’t be able to start offering the next chapter of what I was supposed to offer.

    Even if I have no regrets because this is no longer my path, I still miss aspects of this work. This year I have supported a few families on an adhoc basis in one to one antenatal and postnatal sessions. When this happens, I notice two things: my depth of knowledge in this area, and my missing the deeper connection that comes with repeated meetings. This isn’t enough to make me go back, but these are bittersweet moments.

    It feels so linked to the cycle of life, birth, growth, decay, death, and rebirth. There is a time for everything, and we need to let things go if we want to make space for new things. It takes time and acceptance.

    As I walk in my favourite forest spot at this time of year, grateful for how much nature has taught me since I embarked on re-immersing myself in it a few years ago, I look at the trees shedding their leaves, and I think: they aren’t holding on, or scared of letting go.

    To me it’s the natural cycle of life. A time and season for everything. Only by releasing the worn and outgrown shell of the past do we make room for the new growth waiting to emerge. 

    How do you know when it’s time to shed something you have outgrown in your work or personal life? What are the signs for you? Please comment below.

  • Dancing with chaos: my review of 2022

    Dancing with chaos: my review of 2022

    Every year I write a post where I review my year. It is a form of journaling exercise. I realised several years ago that I write deeper stuff if I plan to share it. The exercise has several purposes for me: to give me a deep reflective experience, to give me a chance to review and celebrate my achievements (because I tend to focus only on what I’m not doing otherwise), and finally, to share experiences and stories in the hope that it might resonate, and help my readers feel supported, gain insight and support growth. I also feel that sharing tough stuff can help others feel less lonely. I know that many of us, myself included, have a tendency to believe that others have got their shit together and that we are the only ones struggling, but this is simply not true.

    This is a long and tough read. You might want to make yourself a hot drink and set aside 10 minutes to read and digest it.

    2022 has been a year of extreme challenges and painful growth for me.

    The challenges

    I’m really glad this year is over. It’s been a year of immense transformation and growth but it’s been hard. Really hard. As psychologist Naomi Holdt explained:

    “No one I know began this year on a full tank.  Given the vicious onslaught of the previous two years  (let’s just call it what it was) most of us dragged ourselves across the finish line of 2021… frazzled, spent, running on aged adrenaline fumes…We crawled into 2022 still carrying shock, trauma, grief, heaviness, disbelief… The memories of a surreal existence…” (read the whole post here).

    The biggest theme for me in 2022 was having to adapt to a constant level of change and challenges and struggle to adapt and balance my needs, the needs of my family, and my work. All year long, I felt that I was dancing with chaos.

    I’m going to share about what’s been happening in my family first because that has been the most prominent thing for the year.

    The last couple of years were extra hard for my family, because my youngest child suffered from increasingly severe anxiety and mental health challenges. In February 2022, my youngest was diagnosed with ASD (Austism Spectrum Disorder). I felt both relieved and upset when I heard the clinical psychologist give the diagnosis. Relieved because school had been treating us like we were making a big deal out of nothing. I did wonder at first whether spending so much money on a private diagnosis would be worth it, but as I discovered, you only get taken seriously once your experiences are ratified by a health professional.

    After the diagnosis, we started the epic fight with the education and health systems in order to get the support we needed. This fight has made my doula fights with maternity care feel like a Disney movie in comparison. The school not only did nothing to help, but also threatened us with fines for non attendance. As we felt powerless through lack of specialist knowledge, we hired a private SEND practitioner, Laura, to support us. I call her a SEND doula. Thanks to her intervention (very similar to doula support in terms of reminding people of their rights and quoting the law at the system) from March onwards, the school paid for private tutors to provide education at home. 

    Supported by Laura, we started the process of applying for an EHCP. An EHCP, also known as Education, Health and Care plan, is a legal document which describes a child or young person’s special educational needs, the support they need, and the outcomes they would like to achieve. This document is supposed to get the local authority (LA) to pay for specialist support or provision. As the government has been underfunding education as well as healthcare for many years, the LA simply doesn’t have enough money to support all the SEND children in the area, the local authority does everything they can to make parents fail their EHCP application, or to downplay the issues. We started writing the application in March, submitted it in August, and got our first draft application early December. I spent over 30h (including 5h in meetings with my SEND advocate), to make sure all deliberate mistakes and omissions in the document had been corrected. 

    I have a PhD, I am lucky to be able to afford the support of a private advocate. I am also self-employed and therefore able to take the time off to focus on getting this done. I have the support of a husband who is employed and has a salary. Yet I still found this process extremely challenging and difficult. It was like being buried in paperwork, as well as learning to navigate something you know nothing about. I am so angry when I think about what it must feel like for less privileged parents.

    My advocate tells me that we may have to take the LA to tribunal. A recent article shows that the LA decision was only upheld in 3.7% of tribunal cases, which means that it was found in over 96% of them that the LA had acted unlawfully. But tribunals take time (many months), and LA saves money this way by not having to pay for what a SEN child needs to attend education whilst they wait for the appeal. 

    The fight is nowhere near finished, but at least I managed to get this mammoth task done, and this meant that I could rest during the holiday season, ready to taking the fight back on in January (I’ve now just finished reviewing the second draft, and expecting the final document any day).

    Alongside this process, I visited many specialist schools, and after a lot of heartache, thankfully found an amazing small school that feels perfect. We were able to access it because I had put us on the waiting list a year before. As you can imagine all of these schools are massively over subscribed. After visits and try-out sessions, this school offered us a place, pending government funding. This is for a child who started to be unable to function in mainstream secondary school in early 2021. This is how long it has taken, and this isn’t finished yet. The place isn’t until next September.

    Now the battle is to get the funding, as this school isn’t cheap (22k a year). At first I thought this sum was mind blowing and that there was no way we’d get it funding. However, whilst researching other specialist schools locally, I realised that some of them cost as much as 66k per year!

    As well as battling the education, things got bad enough for my child’s mental health to finally get a CAMH referral, something we had been asking for 2 years. The hardest part when things got really bad was discovering that we had nowhere else to go, as even private psychiatrists who charge eye watering amounts of money, had weeks or months long waiting lists. Despite the referral being successful, we waited for so long for it to be actioned, that I had to write several strongly worded complaints to get the support we needed. 

    Since September we have been under the care of 3 different CAMH teams. There has been an average of 4 to 5 medical appointments every week. Managing this, alongside the private tutors, the paperwork, the constant chasing and complaints, has felt more than a full time job.

    The enormous amount of time and energy I put behind this, however, is paying off, and things are improving slowly and I am cautiously hopeful.

    We also got a puppy in February in February 2022, as part of a process to support my child’s wellbeing, as she reacts very positively to animals. She had been begging for a dog for years, but it wasn’t possible with the unpredictable nature of being on-call. I hadn’t realised how much hard work raising a puppy would be. It is quite similar to having a new baby, and I blogged about it here. Whilst the dog added a lot of joy to our lives, it also added a lot of stress which made an already challenging family life harder. The dog is now 1 and a lot calmer and easier to manage, and he is proving to provide a lot of calming and grounding presence, as well as joy for the whole family.

    I feel that the theme for the entire year was teaching me to become comfortable with the unpredictable.

    My own challenges

    It’s perhaps no surprise that I have found this year extremely tough. For most of the year, I struggled with a sense of overwhelm, where even the simplest tasks felt insurmountable. By the Autumn my mental health was in tatters. To top it all up, in November we all got very ill with the dreaded virus, and I ended up having to care for my family whilst being very unwell myself. It really brought home the idea that it’s not just postpartum women who struggle in the absence of community support, it’s all of us.

    Hitting rock bottom meant that one can only go up. It was then that I realised that I needed the kind of help that the NHS simply couldn’t offer (all my GP offered was antidepressants, and they really didn’t agree with me), I started taking matters into my own hands. 

    The things I’m grateful for

    At some point in 2022 amidst the challenges I started saying that my child was my guru. If you have ever read the book The Conscious Parent by Dr Shefali Tsabary, you’ll know all about the amazing stories about how our children challenge our beliefs and make us grow. It was because of my child’s ASD diagnosis that I discovered that I have ADHD (more on that later), then that my other child has it too, as well as likely being ASD, (and I’m also certain that my husband is ASD too). It has meant another fight to try  and get myself and my son diagnosed (I am doing it through the right to choose route, which is supposed to be quicker than the two year NHS waiting list). My child’s ASD diagnosis ignited a discovery journey on understanding neurodivergence, and meeting people I never knew existed. The knowledge acquired supporting my daughter meant that I knew who to approach to help my son, and what to ask for from the onset. Thankfully, my son’s school has been a lot more supportive and immediately put some support in place for him without having to wait for the diagnosis. 

    Mostly, the way I see it, my daughter’s ASD has been a gift.  After I discovered my ADHD, I read a lot, talked to people, and joined groups, as well as trying various supplements and medication. I am very grateful for discovering this side of myself, because it means that I have been able to understand myself better, and become kinder to myself. I used to beat myself up about not doing enough and procrastinating, but now I understand a lot more about how my brain works and why certain tasks are harder to do for me than for neurotypicals. Many of you have told me they found my sharing helpful so I plan to share more about my ADHD journey.

    I hit an all time low in October, and after trying and hating antidepressants, I started microdosing with a plant medicine. Within a week I started to feel hope, and at times some tiny moments of joy again.

    In the Autumn, I started working with The Aspie Coach, who specialises in supporting neurodivergent families, and I have found working with her both supportive and transformative. It means that not only am I kinder to myself, but also able to understand a lot more about the dynamics in my family, and manage things better.

    I embarked on a course called Doodle your Emotions, and I loved this so much I am now enrolled on the year long course. You may have seen my doodles on social media. They work better for me than journaling. I find the drawing process both fun and healing, therefore it makes doing it pleasurable and fun, as well as giving me a unique chance to look at what’s going on in my head. It makes me feel like I am my own therapist. I have also realised that I can use it to draw people’s energy, combining my Reiki and energy work training with art. I may be offering a handful of sessions to try out a new process where I draw your energy as you bring something that is bothering you to the table. 

    Here are some doodle showing the main emotions I felt in 2022

    My husband and I had two family constellations sessions. Family constellation is something that a therapist uses in order to gain insight and information into a client’s family history, dynamics, and possible dysfunctional patterns. I have worked with this modality since 2019 and found it mind-blowingly powerful. After the second session, combined with the doodling work, the plant medicine, and bringing what was unearthed to my coach, I finally felt that the very heavy burden I had been carrying all year was put down, and the relief was immense. 

    Here are some doodles representing my feelings then

    Finally, this year is also the first time in my life where I am in a community of people who do not shy away from you when you go through hard times. It is also the first community where how much I give is really seen and returned in spades. In the autumn my friends organised a healing intervention for me, giving me the rebozo wrapping ritual I had taught them and I felt incredibly loved and supported. It was a defining moment for me, learning to receive (and realise how difficult this had been until now for me). I talk about this in my blog post ADHD and the kindness boomerang.

    When I was ill at the end of the year, I reached out to those friends for help. It felt vulnerable to do this, but I couldn’t leave the house and didn’t even have enough energy cook, and my kids and husband were in bed. This brought home a new dimension to understanding the message in my book, Why Postnatal Recovery Matters, where I explain that asking for help in the postpartum isn’t a weakness. My friends were just amazing. One took my dog for a week, another delivered me homemade soup and stew, and many friends offered similar help. It really warmed my heart in a dark time.

    In 2022 despite the challenges I kept my weekly practises of shamanic drumming at dawn in the woods, wild swimming, and 5 rhythm dancing. Whilst I wasn’t always feeling it, these kept me grounded amidst the chaos.

    My work

    This hasn’t been a mild year workwise either, because there have been so many changes, and fluctuations, and I have struggled to be comfortable with that. And, as you can imagine after reading the above, most of my time and energy have been directed towards my family.

    In April I attended my last birth as a doula after 10 years working in this role. The decision to stop this work was mostly driven by an inner knowing that I was no longer meant to do this, and that until I stopped I wouldn’t be able to fulfil my new calling. My new calling is to help people lead from the heart instead of the mind, and look out for new offerings from me as this unfolds. Other factors impacted the decision to leave : the pandemic had made this demanding job even harder, the level of fight required to support women in a broken system was harming me, and the difficult circumstances in my family made the demands of being on-call too stressful. I wrote a long blog post about why I decided to leave doulaing behind.

    After I stopped working as a doula, rather than feeling relieved, I felt a lack of direction and a sense of loss. I entered what I called the blank slate stage, or the void, and I shared several blog posts about how I felt throughout the year. I felt like Indiana Jones in the Quest for the Holy Grail, having to take a leap of faith and step over the void for the bridge to appear. Thankfully, having been there before, I was able to recognise the process for what it was. This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t uncomfortable, but at least it gave me a sense of acceptance.

    Despite all this, amazingly I still managed to keep my business afloat. Apart from towards the end of November when the illness combined with the EHCP review process meant that I had to drop the ball completely. Until I wrote stuff down, in my mind 2022 felt that I had not done much work wise. Yet I achieved the following:

    • I earned a similar amount of money as the previous tax year
    • I launched 3 new online courses, bringing the number of courses I offer to 5. I now have over 500 students from 10 different countries, and the feedback is amazing.
    • Held 5 free webinars, attended by around 100 people or more each
    • I published 40 blog posts and over 200 posts on social media.
    • I was interviewed for several podcasts and instagram lives, asked to train NHS midwives, and invited to lead sessions in other people’s courses
    • My book was published in German.
    • One of my videos on Youtube had 13k views.

    A lot of this success was due to having worked with authentic marketing coach George Kao and learn to create something that feels both true and sustainable.

    Before 2020 my main source of income was face to face workshops, which I loved but it meant a lot of energy, travelling, and time away from home and my family. My 52 year old self craves a quieter life. Creating online courses not only means that I can do what I love the most, which is sharing empowering knowledge with others, it offers transformation to professionals and the families they serve, and most importantly it means that it frees up my time to create more content, articles, and courses to share.

    In 2022 my biggest business lesson was discovering that I do not have to hustle or work every hour of the day to earn a living. As an ADHD person I tend to focus only on what I’m not doing and beat myself up constantly about this. Writing achievement lists is something I need to do to counter that. I write a Ta-Da list at the end of each week to help reset my mind. Even before writing the list above I kind of felt that I hadn’t done much in 2022.

    In conclusion

    2022 was a year of intense discomfort and tremendous personal growth for me. But is growth ever comfortable? As a wise mentor once told me, if it was comfortable, you would stay where you are.

    I like to choose a word for the year. If you’d like to have your own word of the year for 2023, I love healer Rebecca Wright’s Word of the year guided journey. 

    My word for the year in 2022 was opening. This year I’ve chosen a word for the year which is a quality that I’d like to embody. In a session with my coach in December 2022 I had a sense that I had been having a tight ball of control where my heart is. Releasing it gave me a felt sense of what it feels like to be expansive and limitless. I want to embody this feeling and state of being in 2023, so my word for this year is Expansion. 

     

  • Why I’m not doing new year resolutions

    Why I’m not doing new year resolutions

    Every January, I used to feel a sense of pressure and unease. I used to feel this inside pressure to “be done” with the previous year and have made my plan for the new one.

    Seeing other people take on the “new year new you” challenge with gusto, used to add to the pressure and make me feel inadequate.

    This year it felt different. I still heard that voice in my head that said I ought to be further along, but I was conscious of it, and it was less present than before.

    Over the last year I’ve been on a journey of trying to become kinder to myself. Part of this journey has involved becoming more aware of my inner voice. Discovering that I have ADHD, and hyperfocusing on the topic, has led to a deep new understanding of the way my brain works, and why I tend to put so much pressure on myself.

    So when January rolled on, I noticed the voice in my head that said I ought to have reviewed the year and already entirely planned the new year. Except I haven’t reviewed 2022 yet and I haven’t even made a start on planning 2023. There is a very logical reason for this.

    Over the last couple of years, having spent a lot more time in nature, wild swimming, doing shamanic drumming in the local woods at dawn on a weekly basis, and hanging out with people who celebrate the Celtic wheel of the year, I have become more aware of the cycles of nature.

    Right now, in the Celtic wheel of the year, we just passed the Winter Solstice, where the days were the shortest of the year, and are still in the depth of Winter. The Spring energies will not start to rise until Imbolc, which is on the 1st of February. Spring itself doesn’t start until the 21st of March.

    If like me you feel at odds with the frenzy of planning that occurs in January, this is biologically normal. 

    The depths of Winter aren’t the time to do goal setting and planning. I wrote about this in 2019 already, but I want to talk about it again because my understanding of it is different.

    Midwinter is a time to go inwards, for deep rest and for dreaming. Whether you resonate with this spiritually or not, scientific evidence agrees with this. I spent my PhD and 2 postdocs studying our innate biological rhythms and how day length affects the reproductive cycle. Not that long ago, when we were still in tune with natural daylight, winter was a time when we slept more and worked less. It makes so much sense to wait until the days get slightly longer and the Spring energies start to rise, to plan things. February or March seem like much more logical times to do this.

    I find it interesting that culture that follow a lunar calendar like the Chinese, have their new year at the beginning of February. It makes more sense to me.

    If right now is a time of going inwards, rest and dreaming (and I really have to remind myself of this to tame my inner critic from telling me I should be further along), how can you best use the energies of this time? 

    Reviewing the previous year is a good start to the dreaming. Try to you look at how you grew, instead of beating yourself up with what you didn’t achieve. Here are some questions to ponder which may help you do this from a place of kindness (set a timer for 3 to 5 min, and think about writing just 3 things):

    • What are you grateful for?
    • What gave you joy?
    • What made you grow?
    • What did you learn?
    • What do you want to take forward?

    Another gentle intention setting activity I like to do at the beginning of the year, because it feels good and not pressured like goals, is choosing a quality I want to embody in the coming year by choosing a word for the year. I like Rebecca Wright’s free word of the year guided journey. I also like to make an altar, and I I wrote a this post about making altars.

     

  • Becoming undone: a normal part of growth

    Becoming undone: a normal part of growth

    Are you struggling with the feeling of becoming undone? Like everything you know no longer feels true, no longer relevant, like you no longer know who you are, like you have just become a blank slate?

    If you do, I’ve been struggling with the same for months. If you follow me you’ll know that I shared about this in this post recently. I remember having the same feelings when I was a teenager, and when I became a mother. In this post, I want to share analogies and tools that help me, and I hope they help you too.

    During my first year as a new doula I suffered quite severe burnout. I reached out to my mentor who told me that the self care practises I had put in place in my job as a scientist were no longer adequate, as I was now suffering from spiritual burnout, as well as physical and emotional. I wrote about how I had to develop a new way to care for myself.

    This has the same energetic flavour. And I need, yet again, to grow new ways of caring for myself. I recognise what it feels like, and I know the power that may come from the other side. I know on some deep level that, like the caterpillar that becomes goo inside the cocoon, I have to dissolve to reform. I tell myself, I am goo now. There is not much to do but be goo. You cannot fight against the dissolution as it only makes things harder. 

    The dissolution makes us vulnerable and soft for a while. Animals that need to cast their shell to grow new ones, like lobsters, hide under a rock to shield themselves from predators whilst they wait for their new shell to harden. For these animals, the sign that they have outgrown their old shell is discomfort. As Dr Abraham Twerski says in this video, if lobsters went to the doctor, they would be prescribed antidepressants for the discomfort, and would never grow.

    If you are struggling, remember that the discomfort is there for a reason. If you were comfortable, you would stay where you are.

    When we come undone, even if we understand on an intellectual level that it is a necessary transformational process, it can be very hard to navigate and stay in a place of trust, vulnerability, and surrender. And it is doubly hard as life doesn’t stop and we still need to care for others as we undergo this process. I cannot help but wonder what it would feel like if we still had the rituals that indigenous cultures have to support such tremendous life transitions, and how lost at sea we are  in a culture that does not witness or support times of metamorphosis.

    Nascence is the term that describes a coming into being. As women we have many obvious nascences in our lives: Adolescence (the beginning of our menstrual cycle), Matrescence (becoming a mother), and Cronescence (I’ve made up this word to represent entering perimenopause and menopause). There are other times of course, with every big life change, but these are the ones who share a process of death and rebirth that is not only happening on a visible physical level, but in the mind and the soul too. These times share is the undoing of who we were to allow who we are to become to be born.

    The film Inside out is an anime movie about the emotions in the brain of Riley, a young girl as she enters adolescence. In her brain, as well as characters representing 5 major emotions who rule her behaviours (joy, sadness, fear, disgust and anger), there are islands that represent different aspects of Riley’s personality. As she goes through the beginning of puberty some of these islands are destroyed, much to the dismay of the characters in her brain who try and do everything they can to stop them from crumbling. Eventually, new islands emerge, which the characters are delighted with.

    The crumbling is scary because it feels like everything we have worked for is being destroyed. And we then find ourselves on barren ground, where there are no landmarks. It can feel very disorientating, and frightening. There is no path ahead. Things no longer make sense. 

    Science tells us that the crumbling literally happens in the brain during periods like adolescence, matrescence and cronescence, as neurons and neuronal connections are pruned, and what is no longer relevant is removed, and the brain is remodelled.  

    So what can we do to support ourselves through the challenge of becoming undone?

    I am on the exploratory path of this myself once more, and  sharing what I find helpful. I hope you may find some aspect work for you too. Remember because it works for me, it may not work for you. We are all unique with unique brains and bodies. If you try things, though, you’ll quickly know what helps and what doesn’t. Start with what you feel excited about trying.

    Body stuff

    • Find ways to be present and ground in your body. It can be a simple of feeling the weight of your body on your feet, or where you are sitting. Or try the trick of noticing 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
    • Develop a regular movement practice. Start small, even just 5 minutes can make a huge difference. It doesn’t matter whether it’s yoga, or a walk, a run, or putting some music on and having a quick dance. When you feel in a funk it’s quite amazing what 5 min of movement can do to help you shift your state.
    • Have some bodywork, like a massage. Bonus if a somatic massage. It can really help re-teach your body to feel calm.  I’ve also found working with a holistic herbalist, an acupuncturist, and an osteopath helpful. Read what I wrote as for my doula colleagues in the past.
    • Give yourself self care practises like a warm bath (I like to use salt and essential oil), or some gentle self massage (a few minutes massaging your feet feels great, especially with a magnesium balm). You can also try my Rebozo self care massage routine.
    • Try a 5 rhythms dancing class, which is like meditation in movement. It ticks the body, mind and spirit boxes all at once. It’s one of my favourite practises, and so much fun to do, and I also now belong to a large community of fantastic people. There are online as well as face to face classes.

    Mind stuff

    • Meditate/practise mindfulness. It’s easier than you think and you can also start with just a few minutes. Watch this cool animated video which debunks a lot of myths. There are free apps like Insight Timer, which offer guided meditations of various lengths to get you started.
    • Connect to your breath. Three mindful breaths is often all it takes to shift your energy.
    • Listen to drumming tracks, it slows down your brain and allows more spaciousness of thoughts. Or even better, take up drumming, and/or join a drum circle. Search for shamanic drumming on youtube or spotify. Read this short post where I explain more, complete with a link to a drum journey.
    • Singing is also a beautiful way to uplift both mind and spirit. Join a local community choir and enjoy both the vocal and community support experience.

    Spiritual stuff

    I have 3 favourite practises because they tick all 3 boxes at once (mind, body and spirit). I do these weekly or more.

    • Year round swimming in my local river. I took this up in 2018 years ago and I’m now entering my 5th winter of swimming. Read more about that here.
    • 5Rhythms and other forms of mindful movement/dancing meditation. I’ve tried 5rhythms, Freedom dance, Open floor, Ecstatic awakening dance, and Zero one. 

    “Conscious dance is a free form of dance that anyone can do, whatever their age, shape, gender, mobility or fitness level. No prior knowledge is needed, there are no steps to learn and nothing to get right. It allows you to connect your body to the music, and, if you like, to connect with others in non-verbal communication of common movement. Let go of your mind, let the music move through your body to awaken your heart, find richness and openness in your life” . This quote is from the Cambsdance community website. There are similar practises all around the UK and the world.

    Despite these practises, I am currently experiencing major challenges. The practises still serve me, and I am also learning to develop micropractises during the day when I notice I am feeling triggered, or overwhelmed (this happens often). The trick is not to try and chase the feelings away, but to feel them deeply and allow them to pass through you. Remember: the only way out is through, and the only way through is to be with whatever wants to be expressed of felt.

    Finally, be gentle with yourself. Becoming undone is deep, hard work, and it can take a long time. It is especially hard to do in the culture that doesn’t recognise it as “work” and want you to only be “your best self” at all times.

    Don’t waste energy beating yourself up wishing that you were further along the journey. You are exactly where you need to be. 

    I take solace in this quote from Brene Brown’s book, Braving the Wilderness, where she quotes Joseph Campbell : “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” 

     

  • My ADHD treatment journey : why I hated taking antidepressants

    My ADHD treatment journey : why I hated taking antidepressants

    A few months ago I shared about my experience of trying ADHD medication and the difference it made, and how it convinced me I should get diagnosed and treated.

    The experience led me to start the process of getting a formal ADHD diagnosis, in order to access treatment. I soon realised that it is another lengthy, hard, and time consuming process. 

    I spoke to my GP, who after making me answer the questionnaire, confirmed that it was very likely I had ADHD (I scored 22 out of 24, but already knew this), but that the waiting list for NHS diagnosis (let alone treatment) would be 18 months to 2 years. I requested a right to choose referral with Psychiatry UK, which should reduce the wait down to a few months. I also investigated going private, but the psychiatrists I was recommended also had months long waiting lists.

    Most of my time and energy are currently being used battling the education and health systems to get support for one of my children, who is also neurodivergent. I tried to get the ball rolling for myself, but gave up because I just didn’t have the time or energy to do it. I had to chase my GP surgery weekly for 6 weeks, just for the right to choose referral forms to be filled in (and this is despite being present in person at my local surgery on a weekly basis or more due to my child’s situation).

    My family circumstances and my ADHD compounded by perimenopause (it can make ADHD and anxiety worse; and it certainly did for me), meant that my mental health suffered. I was feeling stressed, anxious and overwhelmed, at a level that made managing everyday life impossible. I was falling apart and begging for anything that would help. Because it was the only thing that my GP was was able to offer without having to wait for months, and I was desperate, I accepted a prescription for SSRI antidepressants. Having researched what seemed to be most helpful for ADHD people, I asked for Paroxetine.

    I started taking Paroxetine mid September. It didn’t seem to help my mood, and I hated how it made me feel. I felt numb, disconnected from myself, joyless. When I went to my weekly 5rhythms dance session, something I used to always look forward to, I couldn’t connect to the dance, or to myself, and ended up spending a large amount of the session sitting on the floor, feeling unhappy, and wanting to go home. To make things worse, within a week of taking the antidepressant, I discovered that I was no longer able to have an orgasm.

    From my scientific career and having attended conferences that talked about SSRIs and sexual health, I remembered that those side effects were common for this type of drugs. The impact on sex life are rarely explained to patients prior to prescription (informed consent anyone?), yet it is a common reason why people stop taking them. In a review paper, I found the following data  “SSRIs may cause sexual dysfunction in 40% to 65% of individuals, these side effects may exacerbate depression and create a barrier to medication adherence”. No kidding!

    I was not hugely bothered about the lack of sexuality per se, because my mental health was so dire that if the drugs had made me feel better I would have put up with that. The straw that broke the antidepressant’s back was the fact that this was another example of how this drug was making me disconnected from life itself. I wanted to be able to cope better with life’s ups and downs. The SSRIs not only didn’t achieve that, it made me feel like a narrowed down version of myself.

    Interestingly, when I had taken the plant based version of SSRIs, St John’s Wort, for several months when I suffered from depression in 2019, I had never experienced this numbing and disconnection feeling, and it had helped me climb up from the bottom of the pit I was in at the time. 

    My experience taking SSRIs felt both numbing and sharp, like a knife, cutting me from myself. Since taking St John’s wort had felt supportive in the past, I had an insight that this is because synthetic drugs are extremely narrow in their target, only hitting one process in the brain, whereas plant medicines contain many different substances, which act in synergy. As a spiritual and energy sensitive person, I also felt that synthetic drugs are disconnected from the web of life, because of the way they are produced in the lab, separated from their source of origin, whereas plant medicines are more connected, because the plant carries its own energy and the connection to the energy of the earth.

    I spent some time meditating on the different medicines, writing them down, putting them on my altar, to see how they suited me. Having considered switching to St John’s wort, however, from trying the ADHD meds, I also knew I would need something different if it was to support my symptoms. I had wondered about microdosing with a plant medicine for some time because several of my friends were doing it and reported amazing effects on mood and wellbeing. In fact that medicine sat in my house for 6 months but I felt scared to try it. It really is quite fascinating to me that I had to experience what pharmaceutical drugs felts like to free me of my fear.

    The week I considered trying, the universe sent me very clear signals, because for a few days, everywhere I went I ended up speaking someone new who told me how life changing it had been for them. I sat at a diner party next to a psychotherapist  who wanted to blend psychotherapy and this kind of medicine. I went to a survival skills workshop in the woods, the teacher had some interesting tattoo and they turned out to be replica of this plant medicine carvings found in Algeria, which he had done after an experience with the medicine cured him of PTSD. A friend of mine shared that she was embarking on a 18 months long training as a microdosing coach, it just went on and on for days until I finally said : OK universe, I think I got the message.

    I stopped the SSRIs after about a month, tapering them off slowly, then I started this new medicine journey, supported by a couple of experienced friends. One of them even came to my house to hold me through my first dose of the medicine, and it felt very safe. I am a month into this new experience, and my life has been transformed. I plan to write another post telling this story when I am ready.

  • ADHD and the kindness boomerang: a lesson in appreciating your gifts.

    ADHD and the kindness boomerang: a lesson in appreciating your gifts.

    Since I discovered that I have ADHD a few months ago, I have started the steep learning curve of understanding what it means for me. I have read many books, listened to many podcasts, and been in various support groups online. This exploration is showing me something very clear: that I am, and have always been, very hard on myself. I am starting to see more clearly how this pattern plays up in my life.  

    One of the ways it manifests is that it makes me blind to my gifts (what comes to me easily), and hard on myself I could do better, work harder, do more etc.

    For example, in the summer I attended a friend’s birthday.  As it was fairly short notice I didn’t have the time to craft the gift I would have liked to make for her (a shamanic rattle). Instead I collected some items in my house I knew she would like, and gifted them to her. She was delighted with them but I couldn’t help but feel this wasn’t quite what I wanted to give. I attended a dance retreat last month. I had planned to bake a cake but I ran out of time so I made a chia chocolate pudding instead, because it was quicker. Many people approached me asking for the recipe, as they found it incredibly delicious. I was amazed as I contemplated the contrast between my standards (how I was judging myself for making what felt like a cop-out, versus the reaction people gave me).

    For as long as I can remember, I have been a nurturer. It’s no wonder I became a doula, and it’s no wonder I became a healer. Because these things come to me easily, I tend to forget about the many caring acts I have done for other people. Because it comes to me so easily that I don’t think it’s a big deal. I wrote about this in my blog post Do you confuse productivity with effort?

    This week-end I had an even deeper learning moment about this in the most beautiful touching way. Knowing how much I am struggling with my mental health at the moment, a group of friends from my local conscious dancing community got together and organised a healing ceremony for me.

    When I arrived at my friend’s house, the first thing I saw was a massage table laid with several rebozos on top of it. I asked “where did you get all these rebozos?” and they reminded me that I had gifted them to them over the last couple of years.  I had completely forgotten that I had done that. I also noticed deep discomfort at the idea of being at the receiving end of such love and care, like somehow I didn’t deserve it. I noticed how I am more comfortable in giving than in receiving.

    My friends had made an altar. They held me as I cried, they invited me to pick a couple of beautiful tarot cards, which were placed on the altar. They held me, wrapped me with the rebozos, massaged me, and drummed over me as I laid on the massage table.  Nobody has ever done anything like this for me before.

    After the ritual I felt soft and warm and deeply loved and cared for. Then we read the tarot cards, and we had tea with a cake they had baked for me. I left my friend’s house with a deep sense of joy and gratitude. I felt loved, and belonging, and deeply cared for.

    It felt like such a beautiful example of a kindness boomerang. An example of how blind we can be about the love we put into people, and how it can come back to us in the most beautiful and unexpected way. My friends also reminded me that they were able to give me this ritual because I had taught it to them (I taught it for free as part of the dance retreat, the one where I didn’t bake a cake…).

    Does this resonate? Do you too notice that you are blind to your gifts, that you dismiss them as not being a big deal because they come easily to you? If so I invite you to share stories in the comments, and also to notice this pattern in your life, so you can be more gentle on yourself.