Meeting of Minds

In this episode I talk about my childhood experience of Christmas and how that has shaped a lot of my adult Christmases. Like a lot of other people, it's not a time I looked forward to and I'd go as far as to say I dreaded it for a long time. The dread was mainly about the inevitable disappointment that it would be rubbish, again. I also talk about how my experience of the festive season has changed over the last 5 years and how I have come to not exactly love it but at least not dread it. Like most things, it's a work in progress.

If, like me, your experience of Christmas is not what we see on the TV and in films, this episode may sound familiar. I also hope it brings you some comfort to know you're not alone at what can be a difficult time of year for many.

I finally remembered to add a link to sign up for my newsletter and here it is: safeandsupported.co.uk/sign-up

To buy the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/See-Me-Philippas-journey-enough/dp/1399909339/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638357934&sr=8-1

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

My self-published book, I See, Me, went live on Amazon on 30 November 2021. It has been 12 months in the writing, rewriting, beta reading, formatting and cover designing. It has been a rollercoaster of emotions as I really felt into my childhood trauma and looked at it again from my perspective now as an adult. It has helped me enormously and I have released the story into the world so it can help whoever else needs to read it.

To celebrate I invited Luisa back to the podcast (remember Luisa from Series 1?) and she asks me some deeply personal questions about my experience writing this book. It was a joy to talk about this work with Luisa and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

If this episode stirs stuff up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To buy the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/See-Me-Philippas-journey-enough/dp/1399909339/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638357934&sr=8-1

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

I believe that finding the truest version of ourselves (or versions as we can all adopt variations of our true self depending on the situation - there will always be the same core elements of us in all these version) is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. In this episode I'm talking about how I found the truest version of myself (so far - the journey continues) after I came to terms with my childhood trauma, growing up as a COA (Child of An Alcoholic) and understanding how my wounded inner child was driving my adult behaviour. It has been quite a ride over the last 5 years.

I talk about the two people who have inspired me in my liberation of this truer version of myself and helped me embrace that I am a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person). I am not too sensitive. I process information deeply. Learning to calm my nervous system helps me avoid the severe overwhelm I frequently experienced before I embraced my sensitivity super power. This episode is mainly about these two amazing people and the challenges they face daily. I don't want to spoil the surprise of who these people are!

If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

In this episode I'm talking about how things can change. I recorded this episode on what would have been my mum's 74th birthday and it's an example of how things have changed for me. I have compassion and love for her now which I seldom felt whilst she was alive.

So far in this series I have talked about some of the individual things I have learned on my healing journey. Today I talk about the big picture of my healing and tell you two little stories that perfectly illustrate what it has done for me.

I also talk about the difference between emotions and feelings and getting stuck in a loop. "Humaning is a complicated experience and we all get stuck in those loops." We make up a story that might not be true and we then get stuck in that story.

If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

In this episode I'm talking about another impactful wounding, this time it's the mother wound. It will come as no surprise to regular listeners that I have personal experience of this too. I talk about how we all have a mother wound, at a personal level, to some degree and at the society level all women have this wound as the patriarchy, which largely finds women "less than" their male counterparts, distorts the mother-daughter relationship and leads mothers to help their daughters survive in a world where women are not valued as much as men. Discovering this was a tough thing to take in but it also made perfect sense to me. It's an interesting time to be a woman, I think, as patriarchal beliefs are showing themselves to be dysfunctional and they don't work for women or men. Times are changing, albeit slowly.

I talk more about the mother wound from the personal level and how it isn't just people like me, who had an alcoholic mother, that experience this wound but many other people for whom it is a less obvious wound. If you feel low after seeing your mother, feel pressure to speak to her or spend time with her or you dread seeing her, these are all signals that something is off. I also talk about that no matter how hard we try to change ourselves, make ourselves small, be compliant or try to please her, it we will never be enough as it's her wound to heal not ours. It becomes our wound too if we get stuck in it.

This was a powerful episode for me to record and I hope you take away that your life is yours to live to it's fullest potential rather than playing small to appease a mother wound, if that is what is happening.

If you found this episode useful please share it with anyone else you think might benefit from it. If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

In this episode I'm talking about the wound of abandonment. Like everything I've talked about so far on the podcast, I have personal experience of this wound as my father left, and was persuaded to stay away, when I was about 6. All I knew was that my dad had gone, I didn't really know why and I really missed him.  Life carried on and it is only relatively recently that I have been able to see how much this abandonment affected me. It has shaped who I was and who I am now ,every bit as much as my mum's drinking.

Abandonment wounds, left unaddressed, can significantly impact adult functioning and interpersonal relationships. Abandonment is a primal fear and the anxiety that originated from my early abandonment experience left me feeling like I couldn't count on others to take care of me or be there for me in the way I needed. It resulted in me disconnecting from others, not asking for support, not accepting support when it was offered and not letting people get too close (amongst other things). Healing the wound has allowed me to step into a much truer version of myself and experience meaningful connections. I also talk about other ways the abandonment wound shows up. 

If you found this episode useful please share it with anyone else you think might benefit from it. If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

It's another hefty episode this week as I'm talking about codependency. This is at the heart of any family or relationship involving alcoholism or other addiction. Discovering codependency was the start of my healing journey. 

I was introduced to the book "Codependent No More" by Melody Beattie and it changed my life. It was painful to read as it shone a light on a lot of what I had avoided looking at but by the end of the book it made me realise how much I had been affected by my mum's drinking. I used to talk about my past in a glib way and brush it off with "but it wasn't that bad really" and I now know this is very common for the children of addicts.  When I realised that what I had experienced was not ok and it was in fact a codependent relationship, I could start to heal.

In this episode I talk about how I experienced my path to better understanding my relationship with my mum as well as how I have dealt with starting to put boundaries in place in my life, starting with my teenagers! 

If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

In this episode I am continuing to talk about trauma and today I talk about my experience of generational trauma in my family of origin.

If we experience a trauma response (such as anxiety, sleeping issues, disconnection, disordered eating) but can't seem to understand why, it may be that it is generational trauma, a trauma response passed down to us from our parents, grandparents or other family members. We may not directly experience the trauma response to some harm that happened to us but the behaviour was passed down to us, often subconsciously.

I talk about the many way this can happen as well as my personal experience. How I realised, eventually, that some of my mum's behaviour wasn't because she didn't love or because I wasn't a good enough child but because of her trauma response to her upbringing and also the behaviour passed down to her parents by previous generations.

If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

In this episode I talk about why we might choose to go through the healing process after experiencing trauma. It was a big shock to realise that what I experienced in my childhood was trauma and neglect, after a lifetime of brushing it off and down playing the experience. Like many other people who grow up in similar circumstances, I learnt to abandon my own needs in favour of pleasing my caregivers because I relied on them to stay alive. The reality, though, is that it was not ok and my reaction to what happened had stayed in my body for decades.

I talk about how I came to start my healing. After years or running away from jobs and relationships, when I got married and had children I found life getting more difficult instead of better. My body tried hard to get me to slow down and heal but I refused to listen so my body gave me something I couldn't ignore.  So began my healing journey and discovering that there is so much more to life than I had experienced so far. I finally feel free to be me and I can't put into words how great it is to be able to say that.

If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware

I am fascinated how as human beings we are multi-faceted and in this episode I talk about how different people know us in different ways. Our parts play a bigger or smaller role in our lives over the years. I was reminded of this recently by a friend who was telling me about the different parts people knew of his mum and it took me straight back to my mum's funeral 3 years ago when people were telling me how fabulous and kind and sunny she was when all I felt was anger. Angry for many reasons but my complicated relationship with my mum certainly played a part. On the whole, I failed to have a relationship with my mum as an adult as we were estranged for much of the time and that came with a whole range of emotions, then and now.  I talk about how I hated looking in the mirror and seeing her staring back at me (we looked very similar) and during the episode I had a realisation of probably how similar we were.  

Acceptance of my parts and understanding them more has helped me a lot over the last 5 years. The main way is the awareness that my big reactions come from a very young part of me and I now know to give that part love and compassion. I also talk about how my frozen inner child has played a massive part in my life over the years and the unfreezing and integration with my adult part has been transformational. So much so that my highly critical inner voice has now become kind and soothing as I found out recently limping around a 10k course. 

If you have any questions about therapy please get un touch. If anything in this episode stirs anything up for you that you want to talk about, please get in touch. Or just get in touch anyway. I'd love to hear from you.

To get in touch:

Email: [email protected]

Instagram @safeandsupportedcoaching

Website: safeandsupported.co.uk

Production: Jay Herbert

Original music: Jay Herbert and Alex Ware