How do you deal with criticism without letting it change how you see yourself? And what happens when becoming more visible means becoming more open to other people’s opinions of you?

This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to leadership development coach, trainer and author Hannah Wilson about a piece of advice she was given early in her leadership career: when you put your head above the parapet, people will have something to say about you. The important part is learning to choose which bits you hear, which bits you leave, and which you can reframe into something useful. 

It’s a thought that opens up a much bigger conversation about criticism, confidence, women in leadership, visibility, belonging and our desire to be liked. Hannah talks about being the youngest and only woman on a senior leadership team, being described as “emotional” and learning to reframe that as emotional intelligence, and why she eventually adopted the mantra: “I’m here to be respected, not liked.” We also explore why so many women struggle to receive positive feedback as readily as criticism, and what happens when we make room for ourselves — and other people — to be seen. 

Hannah is the founder and director of Belonging Effect and the author of Cultivating Belonging in Schools. Our conversation moves from the personal to the societal as we explore what belonging actually means, why diversity, equity and inclusion still matter within that conversation, and how we can have courageous conversations when we’re frightened of saying the wrong thing. We also talk about psychological safety, allyship and advocacy, taking risks, leaving a successful career at 40, and why sometimes the most important thing you can do is say the thing everyone else is afraid to say. 

If you’ve ever found yourself replaying someone’s criticism long after they’ve forgotten saying it, struggled with being visible at work, worried about being liked, or wondered how to stand more confidently in who you are without becoming closed to feedback, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, we talk about

• How to handle criticism and decide which feedback is actually useful
• Why confident women can attract particular kinds of criticism
• The difference between being “emotional” and emotionally intelligent
• Why Hannah chooses respect over likability
• Women, leadership, visibility and taking up space
• How to receive compliments instead of brushing them aside
• Psychological safety and having courageous conversations
• What belonging really means — and why it’s more than simply fitting in
• Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB)
• Allyship, advocacy and becoming an accomplice or co-conspirator
• Risk, resilience and Hannah’s decision to leave headship at 40
• How we can use our own influence to make more room for other people 

About Hannah Wilson

Hannah Wilson is a leadership development consultant, coach and trainer, and the founder and director of Belonging Effect, formerly Diverse Educators. She is co-founder of #WomenEd and #DiverseEd and has spent 20 years teaching and leading in secondary state schools, including roles as Vice Principal, founding Headteacher and Executive Headteacher. Her work now focuses on leadership development, DEIB, psychological safety, courageous conversations and coaching senior and executive leaders. 

Hannah is the author of Cultivating Belonging in Schools and co-editor of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Her new book explores belonging across society, school systems, staffrooms, classrooms and curricula, with practical ways educators can create more inclusive cultures. 

Find Hannah:
Hannah Wilson on LinkedIn

Books, ideas and resources mentioned

What White People Can Do Next — Emma Dabiri

Radical Candor — Kim Scott · Fierce Conversations — Susan Scott · Daring Greatly — Brené Brown

Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors — Dr Rudine Sims Bishop 

Also mentioned: #WomenEd · #DiverseEd · iAmRemarkable · emotional intelligence · psychological safety · unconscious bias · microaggressions · allyship · advocacy · DEIB.

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

What if fun wasn’t something we earned after we’d done the difficult, serious or important things but part of how we found our way through them?

My guest this week is Anne Ditmeyer, an American writer, creative coach and workshop facilitator living in Paris, whose work asks one wonderfully disruptive question: What if there was another way?

In this episode, we talk about

Creativity, play and why they matter beyond childhood · getting lost and learning to trust yourself · Anne’s grandfather Charles Stark Draper and the Apollo missions · our own “internal guidance systems” · questioning society’s expectations of success · why life and careers rarely happen in straight lines · dancing with discomfort · letting go of timelines · grief and allowing multiple emotions to exist at once · creating a spacious life · connection and community · perfectionism · mapping your own path · and, naturally, drawing maps on bananas.

About Anne Ditmeyer

Anne Ditmeyer is an American writer, creative coach and workshop facilitator based in Paris, France. A designer by training, her work draws from graphic design, design thinking, UX, storytelling and global communication to help people think differently, explore possibilities and find their own way forward.

She founded Prêt à Voyager in 2007 to explore the intersection of travel and design and has since created workshops including Mapping Your Path and Write Your Own Rules. In 2024, she self-published her first book, OVERRIDE! What If There Was Another Way? A Pocket Playbook for Possibility, which she also wrote, illustrated and designed.

Anne describes herself as a “creative connector”, and her work is grounded in curiosity, experimentation, human connection and a willingness to shake up the status quo, sometimes by asking people to draw maps on bananas.

Anne Ditmeyer — website & work
Mapping Your Path
OVERRIDE! What If There Was Another Way?

Books & people mentioned:

Priya Parker — The Art of Gathering

Stuart Brown

Tina Roth-Eisenberg / CreativeMornings

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right way to live, work or be but that there isn’t one?

My guest this week is Alice Thompson-Boyd, therapeutic coach, podcaster, psychotherapist-in-training and co-founder of the social enterprise Social Bite. Alice spent her twenties helping build an organisation that went on to have an extraordinary impact on homelessness in Scotland. But alongside the success, awards and recognition, she was struggling with anxiety, burnout, panic attacks and a growing sense of disconnection from herself.

After leaving Social Bite, Alice discovered the Enneagram, a system for understanding the different patterns, motivations and internal worlds that shape how we move through life. For Alice, it offered something she had been searching for: a way to understand herself without making herself wrong.

This is a conversation about understanding the patterns we get caught in and finding a little more freedom to be ourselves within them.

In this episode, we explore:

• What the Enneagram can teach us about ourselves and other people
• Why Alice left Social Bite after a decade of building it
• Burnout, anxiety and losing yourself inside meaningful work
• People-pleasing, resentment and the hidden expectations behind giving
• Why self-knowledge isn’t the same as self-improvement
• Letting go of the idea that we need to “fix” ourselves
• Purpose, fulfilment and Alice’s desire for a smaller life
• Finding conviction instead of constantly looking for external validation
• Why Alice believes doing less can sometimes give us more

Show notes & things Alice mentions

• The Enneagram Institute 
• Truity 
• The Wisdom of the Enneagram, Don Richard Riso & Russ Hudson 
• Sarah Cumings episode of How To Be
• How To Be 
• Social Bite 

Alice Thompson-Boyd co-founded Social Bite, the social enterprise cafe chain supporting the homelessness community and implementing housing policy reform in Scotland, attracting the likes of George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Harry & Meghan as celebrity ambassadors.

But behind the public story was a harder one: burnout that led to a severe breakdown, including a mental health crisis that reshaped how she understands behaviour, motivation and healing. She tells her story warts and all.

Today Alice is a certified Purpose Coach & Enneagram Facilitator with over 2000 hours of experience, working with individuals and teams through periods of change, crossroads, and burnout. Her Deep Work Coaching Programme blends the Enneagram, cognitive behavioural coaching, neurobiology, breathwork, and Internal Family Systems.

She's certified in Applied Neurobiology and Brené Brown's Dare to Lead, and is training as a psychotherapist deepening her expertise in helping people to do shadow work, find meaning, and create positive change.

Website | Instagram 

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

What happens when you spend so much of your life helping, caring for and making a difference to other people that you forget to include yourself?

My guest this week is Nicky Marshall — speaker, mentor, publisher, wellbeing facilitator and author of No One Is Coming to Save You. Nicky’s thought kept is: “To make a difference in this life, I had to put myself in the queue first.”

It’s a thought she came to through experience. After surviving a coercive relationship in her twenties, Nicky had a disabling stroke at 40 following a scuba diving accident. Her recovery took three years and required her to reconsider what resilience really looks like, how much we can ask of ourselves, and what happens when we stop waiting until everything else is done before tending to our own needs.

We talk about the difference between resilience and simply pushing through, why we so often look outside ourselves for the next person, programme or quick fix to make us feel better, and how we can begin to hear what we actually need. We also explore burnout and the small signals our bodies send us before they have to shout, people-pleasing, self-trust, learning to say no, and Nicky’s beautifully practical ways of putting herself back into her own day.

And we go somewhere else too: into spirituality, tarot, intuition, vision boards and the idea that perhaps what we are seeking might also be seeking us. Nicky talks about discovering paganism in her twenties, reconnecting with intuition and finding her own way of holding spirituality alongside a very busy, entrepreneurial life.

I loved where this conversation eventually landed: not on achieving some perfect state of balance, but on bounce. The possibility that our energy will change, life will change, we will sometimes lose ourselves a little — and we can learn how to come back.

If you’re someone who is very good at knowing what everybody else needs but finds it harder to put yourself into the equation, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, we talk about: self-care and putting yourself first; burnout and recognising your own warning signs; resilience after a major life change; self-reliance and asking for help; people-pleasing and saying no; intuition and self-trust; spirituality, tarot and paganism; vision boards and creating a life that actually feels like yours; and what it means to rediscover your bounce.

Books mentioned in this episode

No One Is Coming to Save You — Nicky Marshall
How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body — Dr David R. Hamilton
A Witch Alone — Marian Green
Tabby Turns the Tables — Nicky Marshall
If Lost, Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain — Claire Fitzsimmons & Amanda Sheeren

Listen next

Nicky’s book No One Is Coming to Save You makes an interesting companion to my earlier conversation with Edwina Jenner, whose thought kept was also “No one is coming to save you.” Two women, the same words, and different ways of exploring what they might ask of us.

Find Nicky

Nicky is an award winning, international speaker and best-selling author, born in Bath and now living in South Glos. Nicky is a mentor, workplace facilitator and keynote speaker, inspiring people to discover their own brand of Bounce. She has helped thousands through her books and keynotes, wellbeing and leadership development in the workplace. Nicky is also Editor In Chief at Discover Your Bounce Publishing, helping budding authors to write and publish their books.

Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Website | Substack | Writing Courses | Reclaim Live

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

Are you burnt out, exhausted by work, or wondering whether the life you’ve worked so hard to build is actually making you happy?

This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to career and life design coach Selina Barker about burnout, energy management, career change and what it really means to create a life that makes you feel alive.

Selina and I talk about why burnout and exhaustion have become so normalised, why women in particular can become caught in patterns of over-giving and self-sacrifice, and how easily we can find ourselves pursuing someone else’s definition of success.

We also explore:

• Why managing your energy can be more useful than managing your time
• The five types of energy: physical, mental, emotional, motivational and spiritual
• How to recognise when work, a career or a business is no longer working for you
• Why burnout can be a sign that something needs to change
• Career change, uncertainty and finding the courage to do things differently
• Letting go of external validation and redefining what success means to you
• Why rest, creativity, pleasure and presence matter
• What it really means to thrive — rather than simply cope

Selina also shares what’s happening in her own life right now as she questions the business she has spent years building, lets go of an old version of success and makes more space for reading, drawing, playing the piano and simply being.

If you’re feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, stuck in your career, depleted by work or unsure what you want from the next chapter of your life, this episode offers another possibility: perhaps the goal isn’t to become better at keeping up. Perhaps it’s to pay attention to what makes you come alive.

Selina Barker is a coach, author and founder of the Project You journals. She has spent the past two decades making it her business to help people break free from the daily grind and create lives and careers they love. She has coached a long list of clients from Google, Apple and UN Women, to recording artists, best-selling authors, and leaders in the tech, finance, creative and music industries.

Her book Burnt Out: the exhausted person’s six-step guide to thriving in a fast-paced world was published in April 2021 and has been translated into multiple languages. She is creator of the Audible Series The Career Change Coach and founder of the Project You journals.

Selina and her work have been featured in the Telegraph, Independent, Sunday Times Style magazine, Red, Psychologies, Stylist, Grazia, Metro, BBC and many more. She lives in London with her husband and their 10 year old son.

https://selinabarker.com/

Project You Pep-talks 

Another Way with Selina Barker on Substack

Also mentioned on the show:

The Success Myth by Emma Gannon

 The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

What if confidence isn't where we begin? What if courage comes first?

This week on A Thought I Kept, I'm joined by women's leadership and career development coach Sadia Ghazanfar, founder of Slay Your Dragons, to explore the thought she has carried with her for years:

"Be brave enough to suck at something new."

Together we unpack why so many of us wait to feel confident before we start, how perfectionism keeps us stuck, and why learning, making mistakes and asking for help might be the very things that help us grow.

We talk about what happens when we're overwhelmed, burnt out or at capacity, why women often struggle to express anger, and how courage, rather than confidence, can become the foundation for meaningful change. Sadia also shares her own experience of burnout, career change and learning to stop carrying everything alone.

Whether you're navigating a career transition, feeling held back by self-doubt, experiencing imposter syndrome, or simply wondering if it's too late to try something new, I hope this conversation offers a compassionate reminder that confidence is something we build—not something we need before we begin.

In this episode we explore:

• Perfectionism and the pressure to get everything right
• Confidence vs courage: what really comes first
• Burnout, overwhelm and emotional capacity
• Women in leadership and navigating uncertainty
• Why asking for help is an act of courage
• Emotions, self-compassion and learning to begin again
• How to stop waiting until you feel ready

About Sadia Ghazanfar

Sadia Ghazanfar helps women in leadership stop abandoning themselves to lead others.

She is the founder of Slay Your Dragons and a PCC-accredited coach (ICF) and Certified Positive Intelligence® Coach. She came to this work the way many of her clients do: leading others while forgetting herself, navigating workplaces not built with her in mind, unable to see the conditioning that was causing her pain. Burnout forced her to stop, and what she found on the other side became the work. 

Sadia doesn't teach women to be more confident or palatable. She works with what's underneath; the conditioning that runs so quietly most women mistake it for their personality. Her work doesn't add more to a woman's experience, it removes what was never hers to carry. She believes courage comes before confidence, and that when a woman changes, nothing around her stays the same.

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Substack 

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

What happens when you spend so long supporting everyone else that you begin to lose sight of yourself?

In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I talk to coach and charity co-founder Lois Jackson about caregiving, identity, emotional wellbeing and learning to matter in your own life too.

In 2017, Lois’s fiancé, former professional rugby player Ed Jackson, suffered a life-changing spinal cord injury. Lois threw herself into supporting his recovery, repeatedly telling herself: “It’s not about me.” Her thought for this episode turns that belief around: “It is about me.”

We talk about what it means to care for others without losing yourself, the pressure of being “the strong one”, and why acknowledging your own emotions and needs can feel so vulnerable. Lois shares how honesty helped her reconnect with herself and her relationship, and what she has learned about self-trust, identity, boundaries and finding your way forward when life changes unexpectedly.

We also explore trauma and recovery, grief, hope, the healing power of nature and community, and why progress is often measured in millimetres rather than mountains. This is a conversation about the people who hold everything together, the gap between being fine and feeling fulfilled, and the possibility of caring deeply for others while making space for yourself too.

If you have ever wondered where you have gone in your own life, this conversation might offer a gentle reminder: perhaps it gets to be about you too.

Lois Jackson is a resilience and identity coach who works with people who've spent a long time being everything to everyone and are quietly wondering who they actually are underneath all of it.

With an ICF certification and an NLP Practitioner qualification she brings genuine depth to the work. But what she brings more than anything is lived experience of caring, of losing, of rebuilding, and of learning, later than she'd like to admit, that she was also allowed to be in the story.

Lois co-founded Millimetres 2 Mountains with her husband Ed, a charity that helps people discover what they're capable of through outdoor challenge and community. Which tells you something about how she thinks identity is best rebuilt: not just in a therapy room, but moving through something hard, preferably with good people and a decent view.

Lois’s website | M2M Website | Instagram

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

Motherhood is often talked about as something instinctive, natural, or inevitable. But what if the stories we've inherited about mothering tell only part of the story?

In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I sit down with feminist cultural historian and bestselling author Elinor Cleghorn to explore the hidden history of motherhood and the women whose experiences have so often been left out of the historical record. Together, we talk about caregiving, identity, freedom, resilience, and what happens when we begin to see mothering not as a private experience, but as a force that has shaped history itself.

Elinor's thought kept is a beautiful one. What begins as a reflection on writing, research, and creativity soon opens into a much wider conversation about motherhood, care, legacy, and the unseen labour that shapes both our lives and the lives of those around us. 

Dr Elinor Cleghorn is a feminist cultural historian and the bestselling author of Unwell Women. Her latest book, A Woman's Work: The Radical History of Mothering, traces the history of motherhood across centuries, revealing the women, stories, and acts of care that have helped shape the world we live in today.

Instagram | Substack

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

What happens when movement stops being something we measure, earn, optimise or squeeze into a busy day, and becomes something much simpler?

In this episode, I’m talking to Wendy Welpton about the idea that everyday movement matters just as much as exercise. It’s a conversation that begins with movement, but quickly becomes one about trust, self-compassion, ageing, wellbeing, and our relationship with our bodies.

Wendy shares her own experience of living with chronic pain, the fear and frustration that came with it, and how it led her to rethink everything she thought she knew about movement and exercise. Together, we explore what happens when we become disconnected from our bodies, why so many of us have absorbed limiting messages about ageing, and how we can begin to rebuild confidence in ourselves through small, everyday acts of movement.

Whether you’re navigating chronic pain, feeling disconnected from your body, wondering how to stay active as you get older, or simply tired of wellbeing becoming another thing on your to-do list, this conversation offers a gentler way of thinking about movement, health, and everyday life.

Wendy Welpton is the founder of Reclaim Movement, host of the Make Movement Matter podcast, and author of Move Well for Life: Unlock the Life-Changing Power of Everyday Movement. Through Wendy's coaching, writing and teaching, she helps people rediscover movement as something that supports wellbeing, confidence and freedom throughout life.

So if you've spent the morning sitting at a desk, if your shoulders are somewhere near your ears, or if you've ever wondered whether movement could feel less like a task and more like a companion, I hope you'll stand up, walk around and join us.

Mentioned in this episode

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.

There are times in life when trying to be a good person can become exhausting.

A good daughter. A good mother. A good friend. A good employee. A good partner. A good citizen. So much of our lives can be shaped by trying to meet expectations, keep the peace, and make other people comfortable. But what happens when being good starts pulling us away from ourselves?

In this episode, I talk to Alice Bramhill about the thought she has carried with her from Carl Jung for decades: "I'd rather be whole than good."

Alice is a psychotherapist, mental health nurse, writer, podcaster, and advocate for deep feelers and big-hearted people pleasers. Together, we explore the hidden cost of constantly trying to get things right, and the relief that can come when we stop treating parts of ourselves as problems to solve.

We talk about people-pleasing, self-trust, sensitivity, boundaries, burnout, and the long process of learning to listen to ourselves again. We explore why so many of us struggle to know what we really want, how assumptions shape our lives and relationships, and why acceptance may be far more powerful than perfection.

Along the way, we discuss late-diagnosed neurodivergence, creativity in midlife, visibility, rejection sensitivity, motherhood, and the everyday work of becoming more fully ourselves.

What I loved about this conversation is that it isn't really about self-improvement. It's about self-acceptance. About letting go of the exhausting performance of being who we think we should be, and making room for who we actually are.

Alice Bramhill is a registered mental health nurse, psychotherapist, writer, podcast host, and creator of a thriving community for deep feelers and big-hearted people pleasers. Diagnosed with ADHD at 47 and autism at 50, she specialises in supporting late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults around relationships, boundaries, self-trust, masking, rejection sensitivity, and burnout. Her first book, I Need My Space But I Like You Too, is out later this year.

Whether you're navigating anxiety, emotional overwhelm, people-pleasing, or simply wondering how to feel more at home in yourself, I hope you'll find something in Alice's thought that stays with you too.

Pre-Order I Need My Space (But I Like You Too!) | Community & Newsletter | You Tube | Podcast on Spotify | Podcast on Apple | Instagram | Website 

Support the show

This is A Thought I Kept — Weekly conversations about the ideas that stay. Listen every Monday morning for a new thought to hold onto this week.

About Claire Fitzsimmons

Claire is the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer, author and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here. As a Certified Coach and Emotions Coach Practitioner, Claire helps people navigate the everyday lost moments and all the feelings, from anxiety to grief, overwhelm to disconnection. 

Buy Claire's first book, If Lost Start Here: Wellbeing for the Anxious, Disconnected or Uncertain here.

Subscribe to Claire's Substack newsletter here.

Find out how to work with Claire here. 

Like what you heard? Follow, rate or review this podcast. 

The music for all episodes from August 10th was made by Leon in the Wilderness.