When someone asks how you're doing, you automatically say "fine", because you don’t know how to answer and because things are generally just fine, though you hope and know they could be better.

It’s tough to articulate it all; the words aren’t there. Emotional literacy is not something you were brought up around. Instead, you feel you're supposed to manage privately and quietly. This is frustrating and often makes you feel powerless.

You've read the books, done the meditation apps, maybe you’ve even tried traditional therapy, where you were taught coping strategies for anxiety, to challenge the negative thoughts, and told to practice self-care, but none of it touched the core of it.

It's not sadness, exactly. Not anxiety, though that's there too. It's more like a space within you that feels hollow.

You've learned to function around it. You achieve things. You're capable. People would probably be surprised to see how you experience yourself.

It's like you're living your life in third person, you watch yourself go through the motions while some mysterious essential part of you remains separate, unreachable, protected behind a barrier you didn't consciously build, but also don't know how to dismantle.

Whenever someone gets close, it’s challenging for you. It feels complicated and is really destabilising.

The part that leaves the biggest impact on us is what wasn’t there. Anyone who grew up accumulating moments where their feelings were inconvenient. Expression feels or was unwelcome. You learn that to stay connected to the people you need, you disconnect from yourself. This makes for adults who feel a ton of pressure, feel alone, and are missing those fundamental inner resources to truly thrive the way you deserve.

Growing up without a consistent, psychologically safe environment lands you deeply mistrusting people and trying to figure out the rules to earn the unconditional love you ache for, and that would allow you to truly relax.

These are patterns we do not “grow out of”. Your psyche likely still has the same worldview it did when you were growing up.

What no one tells you about childhood trauma & emotional neglect:

Most therapy focuses on managing symptoms. I focus on transforming the way your entire being experiences the world. To be one of trust, conviction, and relaxation.

I work with:

• Your protective mechanisms - Understanding the protective parts you have that formed from what childhood taught you about yourself

• Your body - The physical ways your nervous system shows itself

• Your unconscious - Uncovering the hidden beliefs running your life

• Your relational frames - Having your experience met with attunement, learning it’s completely safe to be you, can be one of the most transformative aspects of therapy.

• Your wholeness - Recognising that no symptom occurs in isolation.

So you can be who you authentically are, without fear.