Some self compassion around my own journey with mental health issues

Feel Better Every Day

‘If you have tried counselling or you've tried therapy and it has made you feel worse, know that you're not alone. That, unfortunately, is quite common, but fortunately there are many, many styles and many, many different people who can help you’

This special extended episode of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast was recorded to support you with any mental health issues you might be struggling with by sharing parts of my own journey.

And a) I forgot to mention an enormous part of my own journey – the house fire that led to my PTSD then CPTSD diagnoses and b) I somehow got the date for Mental Health Awareness Week wrong.

I only shame spiralled for a couple of minutes before laughing at my ADHD brain.

With compassion.

And I decided that because this is SUCH a personal episode, I’d share it now in case I changed my mind by May.

Some content warnings:

· birth trauma

· intergenerational trauma

· racism and colonisation

· mixed heritage

· CPTSD

· Insomnia

· PTSD

· misogyny: child sexual abuse and sexual assault

· self-medication (alcoholism)

· trichotillomania (hair pulling)

· suicidal ideation

· disordered eating

· Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

· chronic pain (endometriosis)

· more trauma and

· ADHD

I realise again now that I forgot to mention the perimenopausal and menopausal impacts on my mood, sleep, cognitive function, self image, anxiety etc but because of the horrendous endometriosis symptoms for so many decades, am utterly delighted to be post menopausal – that being said, if you’re struggling with perimenopause and/or menopause, DO get the support and help you need and deserve.

Sending so much love to you wherever you are and whatever you’re dealing with.

le grá,

Evei

Transcript

I love diving. I'm a snorkel member of a

sub-aqua club, but I've been going to all the dive lectures and we have a

secondary breathing device for air supply when we're underwater with our buddy.

And it used to be that if they were in trouble running out of air, you would

give them what's called the octopus.

Whereas now you simply raise your hands and

allow them to TAKE that help that is available rather than risk getting in

their way or giving in a way that isn't helpful. So I think when it comes to

mental health awareness, that's really important as well. You know what's right

for you.

It's much more helpful for you to think about,

in an ideal world, what support would be most beneficial for you rather than

anyone, however well-meaning, deciding that you need X, Y and Z. So collective

care is really important.

…

Welcome to this special Mental Health

Awareness Week edition of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. And very unusually

for me, I have a script. I thought I'd do a bit of time travel and share some

love and compassion with my Inner Children and Younger Mes as I reflect on my

own mental health journey from wishing like from 49 now as a trauma therapist,

as a supervisor, as a coach, using EFT, NLP, all the tools I have in my

toolkit, all the self-care I write about and share with groups and that I adore

and that I still see as essential for me.

It's been really interesting reflecting on my

journey with various aspects of mental health. And I thought by giving some

examples from my own life, it might hopefully help you find some love and

compassion for yourself. And maybe some hope - I'm now the happiest I've ever

been.

I have the tools that help me to navigate

life's challenges. And I'm going to send some of that back to Younger Mes, but

I also hope it will encourage you to get the support that you deserve and can

benefit from. So I won't share everything.

And again, I'm sharing that because part of

trauma recovery and working with befriending ADHD brains is recognising that

sometimes we can share more than we then feel good about. And I remember in my

early 20s going through a stage where I felt like a raw nerve and I felt

constantly like I'd shared too much. I was living in a new to me city in

Cardiff, and it was long before social media. Even the internet wasn't even

really in my day to day.

So I'm just sharing that I'm kind of being

careful with myself, I am going to share a lot. And there are some content

warnings around abuse and suicide. So do look after yourself and maybe listen

to this with extra gentleness.

It will be longer than most of the episodes.

But I'm just wanting to encourage you to get the help you need and deserve if

you need and deserve it. I mean, obviously you deserve it, but if you need it,

if you're feeling in any way, shape or like you could use extra support, you

deserve that extra support.

So make it happen in whatever way is

appropriate for you. I want to share hope. I used to feel broken beyond repair

for as long as I could remember.

I didn't know then about Complex PTSD (Complex

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and developmental trauma. I didn't know about

neurodivergence and ADHD. I just, from my earliest memories, felt like there

was something very wrong with me and that things that were easy for others were

a struggle.

We know from Brené Brown and other research

around vulnerability and shame and healing, it's really important to choose who

we share with. So in your case, it might be a trained therapist or coach or a

loved one who you really trust, but really honouring, like work with your

nervous system, move towards what feels good and away from what doesn't.

Retrain your nervous system if you were raised in a way or conditioned in a way

as an adult that has taken you away from that inherent inner knowing, because you

deserve to feel good and you deserve to heal.

And we are wired to heal in community. We

co-regulate. It helps us recover from trauma.

It helps us recover from tiny things as well

as big things. But it really is about having those right energies around you,

people who are loving and welcoming and supportive and safe, not who are going

to use your vulnerabilities against you. So collective care is another element

that is really important.

The better we are at taking care of ourselves,

the more we can, from a wholehearted place, support others. It's the cliche

around putting your own life mask on. Life mask? Oxygen mask, life jacket,

whatever, on first rather than helping.

I love diving. I'm a snorkel member of a

sub-aqua club, but I've been going to all the dive lectures and we have a

secondary breathing device for air supply when we're underwater with our buddy.

And it used to be that if they were in trouble running out of air, you would

give them what's called the octopus.

Whereas now you simply raise your hands and

allow them to TAKE that help that is available rather than risk getting in

their way or giving in a way that isn't helpful. So I think when it comes to

mental health awareness, that's really important as well. You know what's right

for you.

It's much more helpful for you to think about,

in an ideal world, what support would be most beneficial for you rather than

anyone, however well-meaning, deciding that you need X, Y and Z. So collective

care is really important.

It's wonderful to keep an eye out for our

loved ones and people who are struggling, communities on the other side of the

world who need support and help. And we are all connected, it goes without

saying, but you can only really control yourself.

Honouring that and recognising that will make

you better at the collective care element because you'll be helping others then

from that more grounded, resourceful place where you're able to hear what they

actually need and want rather than potentially making things awkward, if not

worse.

I am wanting to start at the beginning and I'm

also recognising that memory, especially when it comes to complex trauma and

ADHD, all memories are unreliable. There are so many different versions.

One thing I'd like to say up front is some of

this might sound quite miserable. I have reconnected with childhood friends

through social media and I've seen old photos of myself and some of them, yeah,

I do look like there was something very wrong and in others I look filled with

joy. So part of my, in my late 40s, healing journey has been recognising that,

yeah, while there was a lot of bad, there was also good and it's really nice to

be integrating all of that now.

In terms of re-traumatising yourself, it's

really about knowing, like, even when it comes to choosing a therapist, if you

decide to go down that path, my earlier experiences with therapy, when I was,

probably the first time was when I was at university and they had it free

through the Students' Union and I just felt like I was failing my therapist,

that I was doing it all wrong.

Then I had some counselling through an Employee

Assistance Programme in my last office job. And it was revolutionary for me,

but again, I had that real sense of not doing it right and feeling afraid that

I was getting it wrong. That I had to somehow, like, compulsively confess

rather than recognising here was a person who was being paid to actually help

me heal in the best way for me.

Like, this is just so radical and I think the

more I've gone down the ADHD rabbit hole the past few years and getting that

diagnosis myself last year, recognising how Neurodivergence Affirming Therapy

is so important because of that RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Disorder).

I just again want to flag that now because if

you have tried counselling or you've tried therapy and it has made you feel

worse, know that you're not alone. That unfortunately is quite common, but

fortunately there are many, many styles and many, many different people who can

help you.

Experiment, explore and find someone who you

feel safe to bring your whole self to. So I hope that as you listen or watch

this, listen to or watch this, that you will recognise that you are worthy,

you're not too much, you are enough and you are completely lovable, that you

deserve care, you deserve to heal and you deserve support and guidance.

Some of what I might suggest Younger Me could

have done with in terms of support that's coming to me now, with the benefits

of hindsight and decades of working in this field, might appeal to you and it

might prompt other ideas for you where you think, ‘Oh no that doesn't appeal,

but yeah I could really use this and that would help me.’

If you're in Ireland or the UK and you want

to, if my approach appeals, you can fill out the short contact form at

selfcarecoaching.net/contact and we can book a free telephone consultation, no

obligation. I am pretty much at capacity the whole time which is brilliant, but

also I do have some availability, so depending on the kind of time of week that

would be suiting you and also what you'd be wanting support with, I will work

with you if I can because I adore this work and also the more I am feeling better

myself, the more my capacity is expanding. But wherever you are in the UK or in

Ireland, in Ireland check out iacp.ie for the directory of accredited

professionals and counsellors and psychotherapists and in the UK and check out

bacp.co.uk and look for accredited therapists or counsellors. And UKCP are

another organisation for psychotherapy but make sure that you're working with

someone you feel good with, make sure you feel able to talk to them, that you

feel safe with them, that you feel welcome with them, that you feel cherished

might feel like too strong a word, but we're working towards ventral vagal

wellness the whole time, we're working with our nervous systems because we're

mammals and it's really important.

I am going to start with the pre-verbal and I

am going to just apologise to my mammy for being such hard work from before I

was born, so she had a terrible pregnancy with me, lost an enormous amount of

weight, nearly died and then a traumatic birth. I was a forceps baby because I

was breech so it was very traumatic for her and it also had an impact on me and

I was ill a lot as a baby, as a small child, in hospital a lot. I think I'm in

a medical textbook for having a classic case of whooping cough that came with

the spots, so that didn't happen very often so there's a baby picture of me in

some medical textbook apparently.

Being the daughter of immigrants as well, my

mother of Indian origin but born and raised in Kenya, so she was a double

immigrant, my dad from Ireland to London. Looking back, I really wish that they

had lived in a friendlier, more welcoming climate and I know things are bad now

and I know things were bad then and I think it's absurd when we're all human,

we're all connected, none of us where we're born or who to.

But it's something I recognise looking back

would have had an impact on the way they raised me and them not feeling 100%

safe and welcome and cherished in their new home country and them wanting me to

be safe. Potentially some of the criticism was trying to keep me safe in a way

they wish but of course with anything like that and I just wish now, I mean I

wish that racism had never been invented by white people to other people in

order to oppress and plunder and colonise and all the rest of it, that's a

whole other story and yet it is a part of all of our history and we are all

dealing with the need for reparations, we are dealing with the need to make

things right and to heal and we need to address those very long ago traumas as

well as more recent.

I'm mentioning it here just for now, all I do

is I send Metta (Loving Kindness) to groups, I send Metta to myself, I send Metta

to my loved ones, to obviously my parents, sending that loving kindness, may

they be happy and healthy, peaceful and at ease, may they be able to take care

of themselves joyfully, may they possess the courage, wisdom, patience and

determination to manage life's challenges and I know we talked about

Ho'oponopono a few weeks ago:

I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank

you.

That kind of energy clearing, that reminder

that we're all connected and the more we clear our own energy, the more we're

helping at least not make things worse by acting out in rage or upset or hurt

or whatever that might be, so moving on to my earliest memory where I was

around three years old.

I don't have many memories from childhood but

I do remember being burgled coming back from the park and apparently they

didn't take the soap I noticed and my parents were like, they were clearly

people who had even less than we did and we were in Tottenham in London and we

moved after being burgled several times to Essex but I imagine that would have

had an impact on how safe my parents felt as well as me recognising through

money mindset work I've done in like the past decade or so that I grew up with this

sense of it not being safe for me to earn enough or have enough until everyone

on the entire planet had enough because otherwise they might steal it rather

than.

I'm sharing probably possibly too much but

also I just want to share what might be helpful because so much of what we

internalise before we make it conscious and before we take that awareness and

that curiosity and most importantly that compassion to all these beliefs that

are driving us but often without us knowing.

Maybe some of what I'm saying will resonate

for you, maybe some of it will help you and maybe it might make you laugh or

maybe, I don't know, I'm just sharing in case it's helpful. So we moved, that

was my first move when I was three nearly four and my second earliest memory

was, this might sound really inconsequential but it came up when I was

preparing for this, meeting a neighbour who became a friend.

She was a year older than me and she was

confident and she came striding down the front drive when the movers were there.

Now I don't know if it was movers or if we were doing it ourselves but I

remember her asking me my name and me asking her her name and I'd never heard

her name before and I thought oh and she said, ‘That's a weird name’ about Eve

and I remember at like three not yet four censoring myself already having that

sense of it not being okay to express myself and to say I've not heard your

name before either or you've got a weird name too or whatever it might have

been. I just remember that kind of it was okay for her to be a little bit rude

about my name but it wasn't okay for me to do anything that might cause her

upset. So now just sending love to that Little Me.

I think she had a beautiful name I'm not going

to share it now just in case it causes any hurt or upset now but it might be

something again that you resonate with. I changed schools a lot I went to two

different primary schools, three if you count the elementary school in America (we

lived there for a year) and then two different high schools in the UK when we

came back.

There was a lot of changing there was a lot of

kind of reconnecting with old friends, making new friends and feeling like I

didn't have any friends. There were times, I'm smiling now but I remember not

knowing day to day going into school whether my friends would be talking to me

or if they'd have told the whole class to not talk to me which was really

painful because I again didn't know what I'd done wrong.

And looking back I hadn't done anything wrong.

Again with the neurodivergence awareness and with ADHD, it's that understanding

why I was so vulnerable to that and part of why as well as the trauma...