Be your true Self – YOUR way

Feel Better Every Day

Trauma and/or ADHD? Stop worrying you're 'too much' and be more you

It's easy to feel overwhelmed when navigating ADHD and trauma recovery. You might constantly receive messages to tone it down or conform. But what if your unique sensitivities and intensity aren't something to suppress, but an expression of your Self?

This is where psychosynthesis and its concept of The Ways offers an empowering perspective. Developed by Roberto Assagioli, psychosynthesis is a transpersonal approach that honours your inherent wholeness and the unique ways your soul seeks to express itself. Instead of shaming you into being less, it celebrates the diverse paths individuals have taken throughout history to live authentically.

The Ways – seven types of soul expression – provide a framework for understanding not only yourself but also your loved ones. Imagine gaining self-empathy for your sensitivities, like experiencing misophonia on the Way of Beauty, or recognising your drive to make a difference on the Way of Action.

It’s not about fitting into a box but about recognising and giving yourself permission to fully embody your unique gifts and interests. For ADHDers especially, who often hear they are too much, The Ways offer a powerful reminder that your full, whole self is exactly what's needed for personal growth and to contribute to the world.

Exploring The Ways can help you:

• Connect with your unique purpose and potential
• Find greater purpose, meaning and joy in your daily life
• Develop deeper empathy for yourself and others and
• Integrate all parts of yourself for true wholeness.

Are you ready to support your soul as it unfurls and blossoms? Listen to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or watch here.

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Full transcript

In a world in which so many of us, especially with trauma histories and ADHD, get so many messages shaming people into being less, to tone it down, to homogenise, and one of the things I love most about The Ways is it really respects seven different ways. Very different ways in which people throughout history that have been researched, their souls were expressing themselves.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and I'm here to help you create the life you don't have to retreat from. I'm doing this by helping you take better care of yourself. That's the lower case self care and also that upper case Self, that highest, wisest, truest, most brilliant, joyful and miraculous part of yourself. I do this by sharing trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas and I would love to hear how you're getting on and what questions you might have.

In today's episode, we're working with one of my favourite elements of psychosynthesis known as The Ways. It’s the different ways in which our souls express themselves. So in a world in which so many of us, especially with trauma histories and ADHD, so many messages shaming people into being less, to tone it down, to homogenise and one of the things I love most about The Ways is it really respects seven different ways, very different ways in which people throughout history that have been researched, their souls were expressing themselves. And it helps us have more empathy for whichever resonates most for ourselves and also to better understand loved ones and others in our lives. Now I'm not suggesting that we're up there with the geniuses that Piero Ferrucci studied for his gorgeous book, Inevitable Grace: Breakthroughs in the Lives of Great Men and Women, Guides to Your Self-Realisation.

I talk about The Ways in 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, but if you have a chance to read Piero's gorgeous book I highly recommend it.

Welcome to episode 62 and it's an introduction. My core counselling training was in psychosynthesis and it was developed by Roberto Assagioli who was an Italian who had been massively influenced by Eastern philosophies as well as through his work with Freud and Jung.

Probably best known for his parts work in psychosynthesis (it's known as subpersonalities), psychosynthesis is a transpersonal approach so we're working with the parts of ourselves that are beyond the personal.

We're always, anytime I'm working with a client, I'm looking at what might be trying to emerge at a soul level as well as whatever the actual issue is, whether it's about boundaries or whatever it might be. All of our parts are ultimately trying to help us. By getting curious about them and befriending them rather than trying to annihilate them, we can properly integrate.

Another way in which we integrate psychosynthesis, it sounds so jargony, but the idea is that synthesis, it was initially called bio-psychosynthesis, so very influenced by yogic philosophy for example, that union between body and mind, everything coming together. One of the ways in which we can synthesise is by working with our inherent wholeness and by connecting with the ways in which our unique soul is trying to express itself in this lifetime in the world.

We're all different. By connecting with our own unique gifts and interests we can not only live more in line with our potential and purpose, finding joy, purpose and meaning as we develop, but we can also better support others and contribute to the world at large by being our full whole selves.

How many times as ADHDers do you hear that you're too much? You're not. It's time to shine. I'm recording this a little bit in advance but we've just had a Full Moon which is always a reminder to shine.

I was really fortunate to interview Piero Ferrucci who'd continued Assagiolie's work on the ways in this beautiful book I mentioned, Inevitable Grace, and pre-internet he had done enormous research looking at these phenomenal people that most of us will have heard of even if we're not familiar with them. His other books include the beautiful Power of Kindness and so many more.

When we disown negative parts of ourselves, so I say that as if like negatives in air quotes, we project them onto others. I don't think anyone is looking around at 2025 thinking it's idyllic. It is pretty grim, it's certainly very interesting and by working with the parts of ourselves that we so often project onto others and owning them we're contributing to personal peace and world peace.

I know that sounds a bit grandiose but we all have so much more power and responsibility than we often believe. Especially in the face of such an onslaught of horrors.

I love the way, I don't want to like spoil anything and this is very much an introduction, but there are seven ways in which the soul expresses itself and, in all of them, the transpersonal experiences, their breakthroughs, the self-actualisation.

It's not easy but it is possible. By familiarising ourselves with what those who've come before us have done – and I'm aware like as I've been working on this episode I'm thinking of people I would fit into The Ways in modern times (eg, Simone Biles, the Way of the Will, AOC, Way of Action) because the book was written a good while ago.

As you find out more, I hope that you will give yourself permission to imagine your own soul unfurling and blossoming.

If you're a subscriber to my free newsletter you'll receive some journal prompts to help you with that.

And if you're a member of the Sole to Soul Circle (which you can join for less than two euros a week) you'll be receiving a recording of one of my favourite guided imagery practices from Piero Ferrucci's book to help you connect with your own sense of purpose, meaning and joy.

Access additional resources to support your own purpose, meaning and joy at selfcarecoaching.net/home/purpose-meaning-and-joy or look at selfcarecoaching.net/services/psychosynthesis.

I go into more depth into the ways in the book and of course Piero's book is phenomenal and I highly recommend it. I recommend all of his books.

We're going to start with the Way of Beauty and some of the examples he uses for this are Chekhov, Schuman, Van Gogh, Gaughin and Kafka. It's very much about learning to set aside stereotypes and worn out attitudes and to learn it all over again without fear of hesitation of being ourselves. So personally when I realised that my soul is like I adore music, I adore art, I'm a writer and I adore harmony.

One of the ways in which people on the Way of Beauty could potentially be overdoing it would be in keeping the peace at all costs because we like harmonious lives. It's about, for me, that self-empathy. If, for example something like misophonia, I didn't understand that years ago, but learning about the Way of Beauty and recognising OK, so I am especially sensitive to noises and smells and what have you. Giving myself permission to change train carriages for example or like before I came across the Ways, I would force myself to endure what felt like assaults (visual or auditory or other sensory).

I'm imagining that many ADHDers and neurodivergent listeners will identify with this but it's about giving yourself permission to pursue beauty not at the expense of everything else.

All of these Ways have their wonderful transpersonal qualities and they also have a danger of going too far but even recognising that beauty is how many souls express themselves, giving yourself permission to surround yourself in stunning nature, great art, whatever it is that stirs your soul.

And also giving yourself permission to create without being too traumatised by the gulf between the vision of what you're hoping to bring into the world and the reality.

Then we move on to the Way of Action and his examples include the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, the activist Mary Carpenter, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Florence Nightingale. And he's explaining that through action we can become more capable, stronger and freer. And I'm reminded also of Mr Fred Rogers’ words after any horror show in the world, that his mother would always advise him to ‘look for the helpers’.

The helpers are those on this Way of Action but all of us can not only help others and be of service and make the world less of a horror show and create a more equitable, just, free, peaceful world for all its inhabitants.

It's inspiring to notice the people who even now are working tirelessly to be of service and to improve things for all and also taking action ourselves to whatever degree that is possible.

It's empowering and it helps to counter some of the despair.

Then we move on to the Way of Illumination which is also known as the Way of Universal Love. Some of the people he explores in this aspect are Saint Francis of Assisi, the Buddha, Gopi Krishna, Aldous Huxley, Assagioli, Tolstoy (not for his writing but for his educating.

He set up a school where people were free to come and leave freely and he considered the teachers as assistants helping the kids learn rather than the kind of very ‘power over’ approach that too many of us are familiar with from school), Montessori and just really thinking about that sense of Universal Love.

And thinking about maybe the teachers, the educators who've inspired you and how you can connect more with that Universal Love, that Illumination, that being guided.

Then we move on to the way of dance and ritual and it includes acting. It includes the ways in which actors would perform like he talks about Laurence Olivier’s kind of performing (like I did theatre studies A level and I remember the whole Stanislavski approach but that's a ritual). Reading the paper every morning if people still do that, I know people who still do that, is a ritual. Having a cup of tea outside or whatever rituals help ground you.

Dance. He points out that dance is found in all cultures and it's a form of recreation, it is a form of self-expression and it's also a way to release surplus energy. It can also be a way to connect with the divine as with the Whirling Dervishes, Isadora Duncan's work, he talks about tai chi and yoga, Rudolf Nureyev, Merce Cunningham, Mary Wigman and Black Elk.

Think about your own experiences with dance. It doesn't have to be anything public, it can be you connecting with your body.

Maybe you've tried Five Rhythms and Gabrielle Roth's beautiful therapeutic dance where it'd be five different types of music to express different types of emotion. You might want to draw the curtains if you're shy and just dance around your home or think about the rituals.

I know I share loads in these podcasts and in the book and on my site and everything but think about rituals, think about routines, think about dance, things of ways that help you feel more connected and more embodied and more connected with that transpersonal, with the Divine.

Then we move on to the Way of Science and I was laughing reading his talk about that kind of before the breakthrough and the slow demanding slog really with periods of despair and I was thinking while science is a rigorous discipline, writing has similarities.

He talks about Albert Einstein, Candice Peart, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie and I hadn't remembered this from reading it initially but he says that Thomas Edison was so lost in his experiments that he forgot to attend his own wedding.

Again the Way of Science with all of these Ways: hyper focus. I'm imagining many of these people that he studied would now be considered neurodivergent but I don't think I've come across anyone else forgetting to attend their own wedding because they got so caught up in scientific experiments.

We then move on to the Way of Devotion and he talks about the great mystics including Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Rumi, Hafiz, Narada, Kabir, Saint Catherine and also I think especially in 2025 when some people use religious beliefs to try and oppress others, all of the ways in which our souls are trying to express themselves have their dangers if taken too far but I think with some of the persecution we see going on today it's especially important to remember that it's not Divine to be oppressing anyone.

And then we move on to the Way of the Will. This is the final Way and he talks about pioneers, politicians, athletes who push beyond the limits of what is considered possible and all who risk their lives for some worthy cause. I'm thinking emergency services, activists who are putting their bodies on the line to protect the vulnerable.

He talked about Charles Lindbergh and his flight from Boston to Paris knowing that he might die, talks about Joan of Arc, Mahatma Gandhi and really taking the yogic philosophy principle of Ahimsa, non-violence, to change the world through non-violence and he points out that non-violence isn't just not committing violence but confronting injustice and fighting it until it's eliminated.

In the Circle there's going to be a special meditation and there'll be journal prompts for subscribers but you don't have to do anything else. Just ask yourself if any of them resonate for you. Which? Explore the book, go into more detail and get in touch if you'd like to through the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com or you could comment on any of the posts and give yourself permission to connect with even the possibility that your soul is trying to express itself in every given moment, any given moment.

That any problem is an opportunity for your soul to develop and evolve. Thank you for listening. For deeper dives into each podcast episode and bonus interviews with the guests plus access to the complete archive including the Love Your Whole Self Chakra Journey, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle and you might also enjoy the book 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and you can also find out more and access free and other resources at selfcarecoaching.net or sign up at evemc.substack.com. Thank you again for listening and if you haven't already subscribed and would like to that would be delightful, feel free to share with someone you think you might enjoy it, rate, comment, review, whatever feels good for you and this episode like all of them was produced by me your host Eve Menezes Cunningham.

I look forward to sharing more next week.