Managing Big Life Changes at Christmas: Coping with Divorce, Family Estrangement, or Bereavement

Managing Big Life Changes at Christmas: Coping with Divorce, Family Estrangement, or Bereavement

The festive season is often portrayed as a time of joy and togetherness, but for many, it can be a time of deep emotional stress. Particularly when big changes like divorce, family relationship breakdown, or the loss of a loved one happen, the holidays can feel like a...
Understanding Trauma: How the Freeze Response Affects Healing and Recovery

Understanding Trauma: How the Freeze Response Affects Healing and Recovery

Understanding Trauma: How the Freeze Response Affects Healing and Recovery When your survival brain interprets your experience as too much; when you can’t communicate or take action, this is known as the freeze state. Your survival responses (fight/flight/freeze)...
Why Yoga and Meditation Could Make Trauma Symptoms Worse

Why Yoga and Meditation Could Make Trauma Symptoms Worse

You are feeling stressed and anxious so you try to “do the right thing” and go to a Yoga class or do Mindfulness meditation, but it just seems to make you feel worse and more anxious. If you’ve had this experience, please know there is nothing wrong with you.  It...
Trauma and How to Handle Panic Attacks

Trauma and How to Handle Panic Attacks

It’s all about the nervous system. Our nervous system is designed to help us survive and keep us alive. That is its whole purpose.    It has certain built in mechanisms to respond to danger and it triggers the release of...
What is Medical Trauma?

What is Medical Trauma?

Medical trauma can have lasting effects on the body and mind. Many years ago, before training to be a Psychotherapist, I worked as a Medical Secretary supporting various Consultants around the world and as a Fitness Professional helping people to rehab and recover...
4 Breath-Work Exercises to Support Your Nervous System

4 Breath-Work Exercises to Support Your Nervous System

Trauma is physiological. It is a highly activated incomplete biological response (fight, flight, freeze). Anxiety signals that your nervous system is lacking safety and we constrict. This impacts our nervous system, muscles and tissues.  Constriction in the body...