Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham

Be Kinder to Your Extra Sensitive Nervous System: Episode 84 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

Struggling to show yourself the same kindness you’d give others? If you have ADHD, autism, or trauma, your nervous system needs extra care—not extra pressure. This episode explores why self-compassion is essential for neurodivergent and trauma survivors—and how to practice it daily.

Topics covered:

• Recognizing when you’re pushing yourself too hard (like working until 3am)
• Understanding your extra sensitive nervous system
• The 20,000 negative messages statistic and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)
• Reparenting yourself with tenderness
• The Feel, Love, Heal framework for self-acceptance
• Befriending your body and mind as they are right now
• Connecting with neurodivergent community

Resources mentioned:

• Workshop at The Yoga Root (Feb 15) - theyogaroot.org
• Sole to Soul Circle membership (from €8/month)
• EFT tap-along for RSD (bonus content)
• Free resources at selfcarecoaching.net
• Book: 365 Ways to Feel Better

You deserve tenderness. You deserved more than you had. Let yourself grieve while you heal.

📧 [email protected] 🌐 selfcarecoaching.net

#ADHD #Autism #AuDHD #SelfCompassion #TraumaHealing #Neurodivergent #RSD #SelfCare #WorldKindnessDay

CHAPTERS

(0:00–0:33) Why it’s still so hard to be kind to ourselves

(0:38–1:26) Discovering autism and learning to slow down

(1:26–3:00) Overworking, late nights, and holding yourself accountable for rest

(3:08–4:16) Understanding ADHD, emotional pain, and rejection sensitivity

(4:16–5:41) Reparenting yourself and honouring what you’ve survived

(5:48–7:04) Working gently with childhood memories and self-compassion

(7:10–8:14) Befriending your changing body and mind

(8:21–9:17) Finding connection and support within neurodivergent communities

(9:40–10:27) Accepting yourself and allowing healing

(10:27–11:00) Expressing your needs without apology

(11:07–12:09) You deserve tenderness and kindness

(12:09–13:31) Grieving what you didn’t have and helping build a kinder world

LINKS

Love Yourself. Warts and All: I Swear inspired Episode 82 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

https://youtu.be/emoPrbHbc2M?si=HIP2MEp0QaD-E1Mt

Shadow Work with Black Cats and Sharks:

Episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/OudSMFHNDEo

Be More Cat: Episode 70 of the Feel Better

Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/ZJQTjy372GY

Love your inner Smelly Cat this Bealtaine and

beyond Episode 56 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/daQopL3K7BY

Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! Episode 48 of

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/atAcj0HtD6U

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Are you still struggling to be even a fraction as kind to yourself as you would be to anyone else, especially if you knew their trauma history or how much they struggle with ADHD AuDHD autism symptoms?

This episode is to, as all of the episodes, helping people with trauma, ADHD AuDHD take better care of yourself, create a life you don’t need to retreat from and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved.

So this is episode 84 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and I’m still in the early stages of processing the fact that I have autism as well as ADHD and again it’s making so much more sense of my nearly 50 years on the planet and having to be extra gentle with myself.

I was kind of crying every day for a couple of weeks there and other stuff going on but recognising it even though all my work is about amping up the self-care and protecting the trauma survivor and neurodivergent extra sensitive nervous system, realising I was still trying to do way too much and really recognising that’s not friendly, that’s not kind.

Even a little thing, like I worked weekends for many, many years. I’ve been self-employed for 21 years but for more than half of that I was constantly doing additional trainings and getting different certifications and so many additional things.

When I started giving myself weekends off (apart from if I’m facilitating a workshop or at a conference or something) it has translated into often working really late on a Friday night in order to have the Saturday and Sunday off.

The last few weeks, with everything going on it’s been like kind of till 1am, 3am. And that’s not kind to myself. That’s not helping in terms of the ADHD medication.

It’s not. If anyone were saying that their boss was making them do that, I love my work so there’s that but also it’s not sustainable. I’m saying it here to keep myself accountable but if I don’t finish by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock at the very, very, very latest I will get up early on a Saturday to do some because it’s better to have it on a Saturday or Sunday than to be becoming a routine late late late.

You might have other things, I mean for me I think it is the over scheduling that is the biggest thing in terms of my nervous system and also really, really, really having to be gentle with myself.

I’m gaining more understanding about ADHD medication having an impact on things like the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and how, apparently, our pain threshold which is pretty high with ADHD goes down.

Neuroscience shows that emotional pain registers in a similar way, in the same way on brain scans, as physical pain. Rather than telling ourselves we shouldn’t care or that we’re too sensitive or anything like that, just recognising we do care, it does hurt. 2025 is an advanced practice living through everything that’s going on, I’m not going to even name the horrors, natural disasters, human inflicted horrors.

But it’s a lot for any nervous system. Just recognising having to be extra tender with yourself so that’s the Feel part, let yourself feel, give yourself permission to self-regulate, give yourself permission to recognise the pain and the grief involved in learning these skills that seem to come so effortlessly to other people (although they probably don’t).

Giving yourself permission to reparent yourself, imagining having grown up without all the trauma you’ve survived, imagine growing up in a world in which your autism, your ADHD was supported. And your gifts were nourished and nurtured. And you were not made to feel wrong.

There’s that statistic that is still kind of playing on my mind from that 2024 study that was cited in Additude magazine around ADHD children receiving 20,000 more negative messages than neurotypical children by the age of 10.

It really helps me recognise of course so many of us have RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. Of course so many of us struggle with lots of things and letting ourselves laugh at ourselves as well, I regularly laugh at myself, have humour around it but honour the struggles, give yourself time to reparent yourself, let something emerge in terms of any memory that feels okay to work with.

Recognising again this is a podcast. You’re not a one-to-one client of mine. You need to take responsibility for what you’re choosing to work with. But something that springs to mind, something, any memory that might be painful from childhood from any earlier time in your life and imagining how you could have been held better, how you could have been protected, how you could have, if not protected, then helped to understand the grief, the loss, the trauma, the symptom.

And how the wider world isn’t set up and that’s not your fault and you’re not responsible for the emotional labour involved. Although I hope you enjoyed the I Swear episode, Episode 82 a couple weeks ago.

Recognise that. Feel free to email [email protected] if you want to share how you’re being extra gentle with that younger part of yourself. Even acknowledging what you, with 2025 hindsight and all the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years, would do differently to help younger you. Beginning the healing process there. And there are other tools and techniques obviously.

For the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, accept yourself exactly as you are right now. Befriend that changing body and mind as you learn more and more about yourself. I’m facilitating a workshop at The Yoga Root which you can find out more about at theyogaroot.org on the 15th so there’s still time for you to book for that and it’s going to incorporate yoga, image work, special yoga nidra, EFT tapping, all sorts just helping people, myself included, stop arguing with reality. You often find it with injury or with illness rather than recognising, “OK this is where my body is right now, this is what I need in this moment, this is where my nervous system is right now, this is where my energy, this is where my chi, my prana is right now, this is what I need.” It’s like, “Aghhh, I should be able to ____” and that’s just adding the suffering instead of just recognising pain as part of life, suffering doesn’t have to be as torturous as we often make it.

Ask yourself what it would take for you to befriend your body and mind exactly as you are right now. Your soul? Your heart? What do you need from yourself? How can you accept yourself more fully?

And as we move to the Heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, how can you connect with others?

I cannot tell you how beneficial it has been for me recognising first of all how many of my loved ones are already neurodivergent and more and more of us discovering that about each other but becoming part of professional and personal groups where we learn from each other. Where we learn about things that work and haven’t worked for us.

Just being able to laugh with each other about some of the horrors as well as support each other through some of the things that other people might not even attempt to pull off because we’re all used to that spiky profile by now. That kind of being really good at some things and terrible at others.

You are also very welcome to apply to join the Sole to Soul Circle and that’s from as little as €8 a month and tomorrow’s special bonus deeper dive content will be an EFT tap along that will help with the RSD, that will help you when you’re rejecting yourself because that’s the most unkind thing.

And it’s World Kindness Day this week so accept yourself. Let yourself heal. Grieve what you didn’t have and be gentle with yourself. Recognise it has been tough, it is tough and it can get easier.

The more you design your life to accommodate yourself, the more you ask for what you need the better. And next week it’s World Vegan Month and next week we’ll be talking a bit more about expressing your needs and wants.

For me, I find eating out still quite challenging but I have found many, many workarounds in terms of both being vegan and anaphylactic allergy to bell peppers which is in so many vegan dishes.

But just noticing in terms again of that acceptance and that sometimes it’s easy to ask for what you need and want, easy to acknowledge you have additional needs, special needs in whatever area and other times it’s that kind of, “Oh I’m being awkward” and I hope that next week’s episode will help you with that.

Thank you for listening, watching, you can find the full transcript and links in the show note wherever you’re listening or at selfcarecoaching.net looking at the blog, the latest blog episode and you can also find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and ways in which you can work with me including joining the Sole to Soul Circle and there are also loads and loads of free resources, libraries around self-care for anxiety, trauma, menopause, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding more purpose, meaning and joy, all sorts so I hope you find that helpful, I hope you find this episode helpful but most of all I really hope you’ll continue even if it doesn’t come easily, even if you’ve had a lifetime of being told that you’re being difficult or too much or not enough or too sensitive that you will get in the habit of giving yourself a hug, even literally a physical hug and like rubbing yourself like you would a toddler or like you would a kitten, you can listen to all the rescue cat related episodes as well, there’ll be links in the show notes but you deserve tenderness, you deserve kindness, you deserve and you deserved more than you had.

Let yourself grieve how life might have been different as you also help heal yourself and turn that into helping to build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved wherever they happen to be born, whoever they happen to be born to, whatever conditions they happen to be born with, whatever they survive, what we’re doing for ourselves, it’s not just self-indulgent, it helps ripple out.

Please share if you think this will be helpful for someone you know or your wider community and if you feel like it and feel free to leave a five-star review or email me with any comments, any feedback and any questions at eve at selfcarecoaching.net and again you can find all those resources at selfcarecoaching.net so being extra gentle with yourself, I look forward to sharing more next week.

Menopause? Perimenopause? Post menopause? A new diagnosis, illness or injury? Any kind of transition? Join me at the Yoga Root on Saturday 15th November at 1pm for a special workshop: Befriending your Changing Body and Mind

Watch here

Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham, and welcome to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

This week we’re talking about why it’s often easier to hold space for others than to let ourselves be held.

I’m joined by Elizabeth Potts, one of my favourite yoga teachers from The Yoga Root in Westport.

We explore what it means to create authentic, nourishing spaces—and how to give ourselves grace when we’re struggling to receive care, even when we desperately need it.

If you’ve ever found yourself crying with gratitude in a yoga class, or wondering why self-care feels so hard when caring for others comes naturally, this conversation is for you.

New episodes every Tuesday morning (Ireland time). Subscribe for notifications. Join the Sole to Soul Circle for deeper dives including bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices and meditations, journal prompts and more. Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please share and leave a ★★★★★ rating and review. Your support helps me reach more trauma survivors and people with ADHD or AuDHD. Learning to care for, love and accept yourself is a radical act. Your healing creates ripples and helps others remember peace and ease is everyone’s birthright too. Míle buíochas (a thousand thank yous).

CHAPTERS

(2:40–3:45) Why it’s easier to hold space for others than to be held ourselves

(6:56–8:37) Teaching with authenticity and not performing on the mat

(9:00–10:53) Creativity as self-care through art, pottery, and connection with her daughter

(11:14–13:29) Finding calm and grounding through breath when there’s no bandwidth

(13:38–15:52) The mindful morning coffee ritual as an anchor through transition

(17:35–19:24) The practice of returning to yourself and allowing imperfection

(21:06–24:57) The need for community support and rebuilding the metaphorical village

LINKS

Peace Begins at Home (with Gina Miltiadou): Episode 81 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

FULL TRANSCRIPT

And I was delighted when you did. I remember you made amazing, was it vegan lemon poppy seed cake when I did a workshop there for you? Oh yeah, yeah. And it’s just that I didn’t know you but it just made me feel so again held and welcome, but I think that’s partly why I felt a bit tearful, now I can drive, now I can be there, like enjoy and just the vision, like how integral it is to Westport, how like it’s just so lovely that it’s taken root and it’s really gorgeous.

Yeah, it really is special, it really is special and I think you can really feel, you know, the intention and the love and the work that’s gone into us, you know, and to make you a really authentic space is what it is, you know, if you come to my class or Derrick’s or, you know, our other teachers, all very unique classes, very different styles of teaching, but yeah, all very authentic, very much us, you know, so you would never catch me floating off the mat.

Hi, you’re listening to episode 83 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I’m your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and I’m here to help people with trauma, ADHD, AuDHD, take better care of yourselves, create a life you don’t need to retreat from, and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome, and loved, able to thrive.

You can access full show notes, the transcript, links, and loads of other resources through thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and selfcarecoaching.net, and I really hope you enjoy my interview with the delightful Elizabeth Potts.

She’s one of my favourite yoga teachers, and I really look forward to hearing your comments and questions, and what you’re going to do to give yourself as much grace as possible as you build community that is nourishing and supportive for yourself, as well as for others. Enjoy.

Welcome Elizabeth Potts, thank you so much for joining me.

As a little bit of background, today’s episode is kind of like why it’s sometimes so much easier to hold space for others than it is to allow ourselves to be held and cared for, and I know, like, I adore the work I do, and I struggle to relax into other people’s space-holding, trauma, ADHD, all the rest of it, and when I joined The Yoga Root a couple months ago now, I think, because I only learned to drive, so I knew you a little bit, I knew Derrick, but your first class I attended, I nearly wept with gratitude.

Seriously, I cannot tell you just how amazing that space felt, and how I hadn’t realised how much I needed it, I hadn’t, like, and I’ve been just going to as many classes as I can, just absolutely loving it, but I wanted to thank you for being here, and to also ask you to introduce yourself, say what you do, I’ve kind of launched in.

Thank you.

Where can people find you?

Yeah, so I’m teaching out of The Yoga Root almost every day, and yoga teacher slash mother slash all around everything, so I’m busy, but I really love the work that I do, you said you’re really passionate about your work, and what you said is why I really love the work that I do, because it’s a very connected type of work, you know, I’m not just sitting and pushing buttons, or something like that, but I’m actually, you know, feeling like the push and pull between my students, my inner, my inner self, as I’m teaching, as I’m practising, and teaching has become very much a part of my personal yoga practice as well.

The Yoga Root, we’ve been open five years now, and it has been just an amazing space to come into with Derrick and Conor, the owners, and to kind of create this community here that me and Derrick really wanted as teachers previously, who were kind of teaching around at all different places, we really wanted a space that was warm, and ours, and developed, you know, into something that could really nurture people, and so yeah, I feel like we’ve really been able to create that over the years.

Yeah, I remember, so I met Derrick, I covered one of his classes when I first moved to Ireland in 2019, and I was in a studio rental, it was this teeny tiny, like a friend called it a glorified shed, and I had a cupboard, and like not a proper bed, and Rainbow, my cat, was basically, she was so traumatised by the journeys, and all the moves, and the first time I ever met Derrick, he went straight over to my bed to talk to Rainbow, and he was like, I’d mentioned Rainbow to everyone who’d been there, but he was like the first person who made a beeline for her, and it was just like, I remember him saying about wanting to create this space, and being delighted when you did, I remember you made amazing, was it vegan lemon poppy seed cake? When I did a workshop there a few years ago, and it’s just like, I didn’t know you, but it just made me feel so, again, held, and welcomed, but I think that’s partly why I felt a bit tearful, now I can drive, now I can be there, like enjoy classes, and just the vision, like how integral it is to Westport, how like, it’s just so lovely that it’s taken root, and it, yeah, I’m feeling a bit tearful today, it’s really gorgeous.

Yeah, it really is special, it really is special, and I think you can really feel, you know, the intention, and the love, and the work that’s gone into us, you know, into making a really authentic space, is what it is, you know, if you come to my class, or Derrick’s, or you know, our other teachers, all very unique classes, very different styles of teaching, but yeah, all very authentic, very much us, you know, so you would never catch me floating off the mat, I’m definitely, yeah, a real kind of connection person, yeah, so if I’m having a bad day, you know, I like to kind of let people know that, hey, you know, I’m tired too, I’m there with you, you know, and let’s, let’s move, and because I honestly believe that stepping onto your mat, just stepping onto it, is enough action, yeah, to help you through.

Yeah, whatever’s going on, so, and also by not arguing with reality, by acknowledging that you’re tired, rather than trying to perform, right, I mean, you’ve just explained why your classes are, you’re one of my all-time favourite teachers, and it is that kind of, rather than, “I’m going to plough through, I’m going to…” it’s like, yeah, no, everyone is struggling, everyone is suffering, and everyone is joyful, everyone, like, it’s all of it.

It’s well, yeah, we have all the things, yeah, and yeah, being on your mat, doing your practice, you know, like, it’s, it’s meant to be a very personal thing, and so if you’re, you know, feeling like you have to perform, it’s hard to be in your personal space, so, yeah.

In terms of my Feel. Love. Heal. framework, so the Feel bit is the active self-care, when you’ve got the energy, the bandwidth to do something that might help you feel better, regulate your nervous system, whatever that might be, what would be your ideal, and what is realistic with life, hectic life?

I’d be a very creative type of person, you know, so ideally, I would be every day doing some bit of art, yeah, I take watercolour classes from one of my students, I take pottery classes with one of my friends. It’s a really good way of kind of exploring my mind, and my feelings, and stuff like that, through creating something tangible in front of me, so ideally, I’d be doing that all the time.

But of course, child care really comes into play a lot, so creatively, you know, if I can’t go to a class, if I can’t do something like this, journaling, and creating something in front of me that way is very good, watercolour is very good for that as well, because it’s just a small kit, you can just pop open anywhere, you know.

But also, with Ophelia, my daughter, you know, creating things with her, right, so we would bake together, or we really, really like going on little walks, and she makes these little collections, she calls her lections, and we bring back the lections to make art projects, so we would make a little nature scene, or something like that, and it kind of helps me to be in my body and creative while also doing the mommy thing, you know, so yeah, it’s a doable little bit of self-care, you know.

So you have the being held with the yoga student, who’s also your art teacher, or the pottery teacher, and then you’re also sharing that and connecting with your gorgeous daughter, and yeah, that’s, oh, that’s so lovely.

What about when you don’t have the bandwidth? When you, like, I call it Love, and like thinking of the love archetype, so ideal world, when you know you don’t need to do a thing, you’re already whole, you’re already perfect, there’s no need to improve anything, but giving yourself grace when that’s too hard, and you need to do something, like distract, but yeah, that connection with that uppercase Self, that like highest, truest, wisest, most miraculous part of yourself. Would you say anything there?

On like a very small level, when I have no bandwidth, and that could happen a lot, I find like just breath work does a lot for me. Even if, you know, I have a lot going on, I’m stressing out, and I find myself in that moment going, you know, holding my breath, and holding that tension, and everything like that, the simple act of, I like to think it’s just this little reset, going from everything’s falling apart, everything’s falling apart, to being like, OK, stop. Actually, this is what’s going on, you know, it’s kind of a way for me to reset my mind, because I would have struggled a lot in my past with anxiety, and depression.

And it’s easy, especially when that’s kind of in your history, to slip back into those things, you know, it can kind of creep up on you. In my yoga practice, you know, that’s been immensely helpful in that way, because it’s brought me into the space of really noticing small things like my shoulders tensing up my neck getting tight, things like that, where you’re just like, you know, but realise you’re like, Oh, no, this is me taking on this big held breath. Yeah, you know, and in the very small short span of time, that breath out, can actually do a lot to say, I’m OK.

In this moment, I’m OK, it’s OK, you know, and I can take this next step forward. I like to start my mornings, I started doing this, I’m only a single mom this year. So it’s been a huge transition.

And that transition was also kind of in one of the worst ways that could happen. So dealing with, like the emotional fallout of this shocking event in my life, something I just did not expect to happen, but also didn’t expect to, you know, have a daughter in this position either, you know, and so I started just first thing in the morning, setting up Ophelia with her breakfast and whatever else, and, you know, kind of getting her into a little tucked spot.

And then making my coffee and I come sit in my bed. I open the window and I stare at this plant. And at this window. And I just give myself to the end of that cup of coffee.

And I mean, that’s a big goal when you have a five year old. A whole cup of coffee. Yeah. But I give myself, I’m going to drink my cup of coffee, even if I wake up late.

Yeah. Even if I haven’t slept all night, and really, I could sleep 10 more minutes or whatever, it’s become such an important, important part of my routine to sit and mindfully drink my cup of coffee. And I say mindfully, as in I’m not scrolling my phone. I’m not planning my day. I’m noticing the things that are popping up in my head, and then practising not judging myself for that. Yeah, because it will pop up, you only have 20 minutes to do you only and you need to get it ready and you need to get out the door and you need to plan your class and you’d sit, you know, and noticing all that bubbling up.

And then I’m just drinking my coffee. I’m just looking at the leaves. I’m just looking out the window.

You know, it’s been an incredibly powerful, small practice in my life, to the point where I cannot start my day without it. It’s so important to me. It’s fantastic.

That is so lovely. And I also really appreciate you sharing the struggle with it. Like I imagine it’s again, like when you’re teaching yoga, and everyone looks so serene, but you also know from your own practice, that serene people can be feeling really struggly underneath.

Yes. Yes. I noticed like with the classes, because I hadn’t been to classes for so long. And also now knowing I have autism and ADHD and the sensory issues that I just didn’t understand, as well as the trauma.

When I started going to classes in London, and I did my training in London, and there’d be like someone’s foot in your nose, and I’d just be like, and I just thought like, why am I so sensitive? What’s wrong with me? And like, it would be an empty class, and someone would come right next to me.

Whereas training in trauma-informed yoga, doing all the things, all the work I’ve done over the decades, but then in these classes recently, putting on my eye mask and lying down before the class begins. And I never have dreamed of doing that. And I’ll always be on one of the edges. But it’s like, sometimes it’s like, I’m just telling myself, “It’s OK, Evie Cat, you’re safe. It’s OK.”

It’s like, it’s such a gorgeous, safe, nourishing, phenomenal space. And I’m still at nearly 50, having to talk so gently to myself, because it’s like you have those moments of complete ease and connection and peace, and then the fear or the rush or the whatever it is. And I think people don’t understand that about meditation or about anything like that. It’s the practice, the constantly bringing yourself back. Absolutely, it is exactly that.

That’s why you call it a practice. Yeah, it’s always a practice. It’s never a mastery of, you know, because, I mean, this is something that I’ve worked for years and years and years and years to be able to come into a chaotic situation and read myself, simply read myself, has taken so many years.

And it’s very normal for students to step into the room. And we come in with expectations, you know, on ourselves, expecting what other people are going to think as I move expecting what the teacher is going to think when she watches me, you know, and the same with the teacher, you know, looking out, and you come in with these expectations of what people are going to want out of this class. And that took years to say, this is what I offer.

This is what it is. And that’s OK. And that’s enough.

And that’s worthwhile. Yeah, you know, and the same as the student coming in putting on your eye mask, that is enough. And that is worthwhile.

That is an offering as much to yourself as it is to the teacher and the other people around you because you are taking your practice personally. And that is the very core of what we’re trying to practice is taking care of ourselves so that our stability, wellness, realness can reverberate out. Yeah, you know, to the bigger Self.

Yeah. Yeah. And I’m also thinking you’re talking about that coffee being so important.

And little Ophelia is well trained in terms of letting mommy drink her coffee in peace?

Definitely not. She comes in 150 times.

And I and I’m like, “Ophelia, thank you so much for telling me that you know what, I’m just gonna finish my coffee. And then I’m gonna come out to you or whatever...” And a lot of times that’s her rolling in my lap.

And I felt like if she comes and she wants to play and be on me, I will set my coffee aside. And I will focus on this in the moment right here. And then say, OK, why don’t you go brush your teeth? I’m gonna finish my coffee, you know, and really, really just making that effort to try just to try and I mean, most mornings, I don’t get my entire cup of coffee, but I do get, you know, the mental entire cup of coffee.

Because even if I get two minutes, yeah, I’m gonna look, I’m gonna look out that window, I’m gonna sit this and feel the hot coffee on my tongue. Yeah, and know that I’m starting to stay. OK, I’m OK in this moment.

And it would be like, I mean, what you’re doing there, they’re not arguing with reality. They’re like, Hello, I’m gonna rather than I’m going to stay completely focused on my coffee.

And you’re like, it makes it all punitive. Exactly. You’re missing the whole point.

You’ve mentioned like the pottery classes, the art classes, obviously, the community at The Yoga Root, in terms of the Heal element of my framework, that kind of post traumatic growth, the co-regulation, the collective care, what helps you and what would you like others to know or consider?

It helps me a lot, talking to other people, I’m not a very private person, you know, I think, you know, I’ve always really liked working through problems with others, you know, I’m very community driven.

I have, you know, friends, or, you know, I might call home, you know, I talk a lot to my mom, who is retired now, and she has like, the time for me, you know, to go through my little thoughts, but I do like to kind of pick apart. But what I crave, what I feel is missing a lot here is like that village feel, mm hmm. You know, and it’s, and it’s not like Ireland and Westport, it’s our society in 2025. You know, we’re very focused on our own lives, our own stuff, our own things. And it’s like, we kind of...

Inspired by the stunning film “I Swear” about living with Tourette’s, this episode explores why self-compassion is so difficult, especially with trauma, ADHD and AuDHD (autism and ADHD). Discover how acceptance and love can transform shame into advocacy, and learn practical ways to be gentler with yourself.

Using my Feel. Love. Heal framework, I (trauma therapist, ADHDer, only recently recognised AuDHDer - brand new emotional rollercoaster - senior accredited supervisor, Self care coach, author and columnist, Eve Menezes Cunningham) share some self-care ideas the film inspired. You deserve the same compassion you give others.

Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please leave a ***** rating and review for this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed. Your sharing, subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and ADHD or AuDHD (autism and ADHD). You learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you – it creates a ripple effect and helps others. My ultimate dream, in a world in which SO much is coming up for healing and so many people are unsafe, is to do my part to help as many people as possible heal from trauma. To help create a world in which everyone everywhere feels safe, welcome and loved - able to thrive.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Why it’s so hard to have compassion for ourselves

1:10 Understanding ourselves through trauma and neurodivergence

5:11 Using the Feel. Love. Heal. framework

10:25 Learning to help ourselves heal

14:18 Creating a world where everyone feels safe and loved

18:22 Healing through connection and community

21:11 The ripple effect of healing and hope

RESOURCES

Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! Episode 48 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

Be More Cat: Episode 70 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

Shadow Work with Black Cats and Sharks: Episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

https://selfcarecoaching.net/2023/08/07/cattitude-familiars-and-polyvagal-theory/

https://selfcarecoaching.net/2022/10/19/cattitude-life-lessons-from-my-first-9-years-on-earth/

https://selfcarecoaching.net/feline/

https://selfcarecoaching.net/2021/02/17/bring-more-cattitude-to-the-way-you-move/

https://selfcarecoaching.net/2019/09/30/cat-coaching-for-self-care-3-cattitude/

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Why is it so hard to have the kind of compassion and empathy and understanding we so often find so easy to direct towards anyone else, towards ourselves, especially with trauma histories, with ADHD, with ADHD, with autism? Why?

This episode, 82 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast is inspired by the phenomenal film I Swear, based on John Davidson’s memoir about living with Tourette’s and becoming an advocate. I hope you enjoy it.

Hi, you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m a trauma therapist, trauma survivor, ADHDer. Now I’ve heard about the AuDHD, learning more about the autism, that the ADHD medication, it’s a learning curve. It’s a lot. And it’s also helpful, the more we understand ourselves, the better.

I’m a self-care coach, senior accredited supervisor, author, columnist, you can access more information about the Sole to Soul Circle, the book, full show notes and transcripts and links at selfcarecoaching.net and also thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I release new episodes every Tuesday, helping people with trauma, ADHD and AuDHD, take better care of yourself, create a life you don’t need to retreat from and help create a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved, able to thrive.

And again, back to this amazing film, it’s just so phenomenal. I recognised an enormous, so sorry, I’ve just skipped ahead an enormous amount. I Swear, I’m recording it, it’s out in cinemas at the moment in Ireland. It might be out on one of the streaming services or still in the cinema by the time you see this in a few weeks. His memoir is available, John Davidson.

I sobbed, I howled with laughter, I was shouting at the TV, not the TV, the big screen. It was amazing. I had to leave the cinema at one point and I wanted to leave at other points with the brutality of what he was having to deal with.

And the film shows this young, confident football enthusiast lad starting high school and then developing Tourette’s. So you see him go from confident and like asking a girl out on his first day of school and being like told that a scout is going to watch the football game and then he begins to develop the tics and the outbursts.

I recognised a lot of the impulsivity and self-loathing and also the enormous potential for healing through compassion. But seeing it on the big screen, so visible, so desperate to just give him an enormous hug and move him away from all that pain, that kind of wishing that everyone could see this film and have more compassion for themselves and the differences they struggle with, whether to do with Tourette’s or any kind of physical or mental condition or emotional or any kind of difference.

Like you think about the way people are othering immigrants, refugees, people from other backgrounds, all sorts of gender. It’s incredible how this young man was able to turn so much pain into advocacy for so many people who needed that support and that understanding.

And through doing that, he found more for himself. It’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I wasn’t the only one sobbing in the cinema. And I think it’s, I can’t remember the last time a film ended and everyone just sat there. And one of the people I’ve been telling, watch this film, said, now when you do the podcast, don’t give the ending away, don’t give too much away. So I’m going to try and avoid spoilers.

But it’s based on his true story. We know he survives. We know he wrote a memoir.

We know he told the Queen to fuck off when he got to meet the Queen. They’re not spoilers. They’re all from the very beginning.

Using the Feel. Love. Heal. framework to move through some of the lessons from, I Swear, this gorgeous, gorgeous film. The Feel element of the framework I developed, it’s very much about the active self-care when you have the bandwidth to do things, to help yourself regulate, to help yourself feel better. And he got to the stage where he was able to research Tourette’s as someone with the lived condition.

But it took a long time for him to get there because unfortunately, when the symptoms appeared, his parents were not in a place where they could support him. Instead, they contributed to the shame and the pain and the horror of his young life, which he tried to end at a very early age. And luckily, he survived.

And also, very luckily, when he was a bit older, he meets the friend’s mother, an old school friend’s mother, who they all think is dying and she has six months to live. He kind of has an outburst saying something like, “Ha ha, you’re going to die!” something deeply inappropriate.

It was laugh out loud. It was so funny in parts, and so horrendous, and so relatable in so many ways, because all of us have shame, have fear, have embarrassment, have things we worry about being too much, saying too much, moving weirdly, all sorts of things. He had no control over it. And he learned to live with it.

He learned to advocate for others. But that was through his friend’s mother being the first person really to see him and to accept him and to help him begin to understand himself and come off the horrendous medication and work with life, stop arguing with reality, like kind of they all made mistakes, like everyone’s human. But her attitude, so accepting, so loving, it kind of takes me then to the love element of the framework.

But she was active. It was very active, her inviting this stranger into her home, telling her husband and her son, who was his friend, that she had invited him to stay. She recognised that things were tough for him at his home.

And her argument for doing so much to help him was she only had six months to live. He begins to find acceptance through, for the first time in his life, being accepted, being told to not apologise for anything he can’t help. And he’s had a lifetime of brutal, brutal punishments for things he can’t help, which, of course, we know would trigger a stress response, which would make it much more likely that these outbursts, that these tics would become more amplified, because he’s then terrified.

He’s in a sympathetic survival response, “Hiss!” in terms of the Cattitude [Polyvagal Purrs] way of explaining polyvagal theory. You can find links to the episodes around that in the show notes. It’s so obvious that, had the grown-ups, even not understanding about Tourette’s, just having a bit more care and compassion for a young boy in pain, how different his life could have been, and how he’s able to recognise that he might not have done any differently if he’d been in one of the different positions.

I’m a little bit all over the place. I’ve been so excited about sharing this film recommendation, because it is so beautiful. But my encouragement for you, whatever you’re facing, whatever you’re struggling to accept in yourself, research.

When I was first diagnosed with endometriosis when I was in my 20s, I had daily pain, and I’d had endless hospital appointments and intrusive tests, and they triggered flashbacks from childhood and trauma, blah, blah, blah. It was horrific. But I remember seeing a picture of what happened with endometriosis, like the cells. I remember actually throwing up. I was utterly repulsed by what was going on in my body. Having surgery, but that not working, like being told I’d have to have surgery every couple of years, having that chronic pain for so long, but being determined that I was going to, like I started yoga because certain poses helped.

I trained as a crystal therapist because they helped, and where hospital prescribed painkillers didn’t. I’m a huge fan of modern medicine, but I had to learn to help myself. So I really identified with that part of John’s journey, where he gets a job and his boss tells him that he needs to educate the police, he needs to educate the teachers, he needs to educate the public to help them understand.

I wanted to scream, why does HE have to do the emotional labour? Why can’t people be kinder? Why can’t people just be more understanding and nicer?

While also accepting I would probably have moved away from him on a crowded train, given a chance, because I’d have probably been scared!

I understand more about it now. I hope now I may be putting my loopy earplugs, but smile, or it’s just there are so many opportunities all of us have every day, where we can show that little bit more compassion to someone and to ourselves.

Moving to that Love part of the framework, the acceptance that you are part of the divine, you’re part of nature, there’s no need to improve anything, there’s no need to change anything. But sometimes love and acceptance can be the hardest thing in the world, when you’ve not been raised with love and acceptance, when you’ve been criticised, when you’ve, he was forced to face the fireplace, because he couldn’t help spitting when he ate, and the outbursts at dinner. And like, oh, so many, so many, so many things.

And self-love, self-acceptance is hard. I’m a little bit embarrassed sharing this. But the last time I had a verruca, I was repulsed, just like with the picture of the endometriosis.

With that, I put crystals around a big crystal to just help me send some love, some compassion to the ovaries, to the areas impacted by the endometriosis. I couldn’t look at something like the pictures, the microscopic amplified but I knew that that wasn’t going to help with the pain. I knew it was just going to make everything worse.

I had to learn to accept it and love it in order to transform it, in order to help heal myself. The last time I had a verruca, I did my best every day when applying the treatment to send it love, to say to myself, and this was like not 100 years ago, I’ve been doing this work for a long, long time. But I was saying to myself, “I love myself, warts and all.” And “Ewwww.”

It’s holding the part of me that goes, oh, that’s gross. And also, yeah, I am way more loving, way less self loathing towards myself than I used to be. It’s a practice.

Ask yourself, what would you do in any given situation if you loved yourself more? Like what would a person who did love themselves do in a situation you might be in? Love is transformative. It is so powerful.

This woman, Dottie, his friend’s mum, she changed his life and she changed the world by changing his life, by having compassion for a complete stranger.

And that brings us to the Heal part of the framework. Dottie got him a job. He got the job, but Dottie helped open the doors. Tommy, his boss, was really understanding with the elements he couldn’t control. And he was a hard worker. He was reliable. He did amazing things, but so many people wouldn’t give him a chance before. So many people just judged and punished and hurt. And it was just horrendous.

And just thinking, I would love to live in a world in which everyone was safe, welcome, loved and able to thrive. Like all of us are mammals. All of us have a nervous system that is wired to thrive when we’re safe, welcome and loved. And yet we keep hurting each other. We keep perpetuating trauma. We keep hurting ourselves when we’ve been traumatised.

We’ve learned at some level that it’s safer to hurt ourselves to hopefully avoid pain from outside. But we can all do our part to heal that, to move towards post-traumatic growth with ADHD, with ADHD, with autism, with any kind of neurodivergence, with any kind of difference, to embrace it as much as you can, to love it as much as you can. Speak up when other people are hurting other people.

One of the hardest scenes for me, I don’t think I’m giving anything away. I don’t think it’s too big a spoiler, but it was when he was at school and there was a fight in the playground and most of the school was out yelling, “Fight, fight, fight.” I remembered one of the many schools I went to and every time that would happen there, I would kind of go in the opposite direction, trying to find somewhere quiet and like just feeling despair for the state of humanity that two people or more were having some sort of physical altercation.

And rather than being helped to resolve it, most people were encouraging the violence. And I still find that really hard now. And now I understand more about my brain, more about myself. I can be gentler with myself around it.

But where you are able to speak out against any kind of bullying, any kind of othering and including the bullying parts of yourself, the things that you’ve grown up criticising, being really harsh to yourself around, catch yourself and find that bully part of yourself as well as that bullied part of yourself and just send them as much love as you can. Think of what you could potentially do.

Mentally scan your life, the people you know. I’m not suggesting you take someone you barely know in off the street and pretty much adopt them as a young man and help them transform their lives. But think of how we do heal, we co-regulate in order to heal.

We’re mammals, we need each other and we need to feel safe with each other. How can you make yourself feel safer? How can you help yourself feel safer? And how can you help someone else or a group of other people feel safer?

I again don’t want to be giving spoilers, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, who am I kidding, it probably is a spoiler. He brings together a group of people with Tourette’s at a certain point in the film and most of them have never met anyone else with Tourette’s. They’re very isolated.

We’re now in 2025. Through the internet, I know I’ve learnt so much about ADHD online, I’ve learnt so much about ADHD, autism, trauma recovery, like I began that part of my healing journey before the internet was so kind of big, so kind of used. A lot of that was through books and trainings and things like that. But we have the internet now, which is a wonderful, wonderful tool when used in a way that you choose and curated carefully and moving towards what is nourishing and supportive. Find people who you can help and who can help you build your communities, join your communities.

In the Sole to Soul Circle this week, members tomorrow will be getting a special compassionate body scan, which I hope will be nourishing and delicious for you. You can join via selfcarecoaching.net.

Next week, it’s a gorgeous interview I’ve done with one of my favourite yoga teachers, Elizabeth Potts, at the Yoga Root here in Westport.

I’m really looking forward to sharing that with you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching.

You can find full transcripts and show notes and links and more at the blog selfcarecoaching.net and also at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. If this was helpful, please leave a five-star review. In a world in which so much is endlessly coming up for healing, I really want to reach as many people as possible with these episodes, with my work, to help as many people who are feeling unsafe to feel safer, to feel able to heal from trauma, to befriend their ADHD AuDHD brains, to help build a world where everyone feels safe, welcome and loved and able to thrive and to create lives that they don’t need to retreat from, to feel better every day. With trauma histories, with ADHD, with AuDHD, it can be challenging where there has been so much punishment, getting things wrong.

Growing up, they say 20,000 times more criticised than a neurotypical child. The trauma of living in a world that isn’t built to support you, it takes a lot to connect with the parts that aren’t what they call superpowers, the more special needs elements, the sensory issues, the inability to function in certain situations, to overreact, to have meltdowns, all these things that are so painful. And those parts of you deserve love, they deserve care, they deserve acceptance, and you creating, designing a life you don’t need to retreat from, that is then going to have a ripple effect as you feel better, as you learn to take better care of yourself, it’s going to have a ripple effect on the world around you, contributing to a world in which others feel safer, more welcome, loved, able to thrive, and potentially I’m nearly 50 and I haven’t given up on the idea of world peace.

Míle buíochas, a thousand thank yous, this episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham.

Be really, really gentle with yourself, if you haven’t seen the film, and if you’re anything like me, if you tend to cry in films, if you do get very engrossed and forget that it’s on a screen and not actually happening, although it was his...

Am so delighted to welcome the Peace Begins at Home Summit Director, Gina Miltiadou, for Episode 81 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Access full transcripts, links, show notes, and other resources at http://thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com

The inaugural Peace Begins at Home Summit will take place on Wednesday, 29th October 2025 (and you can listen to the recordings for 30 days so don’t worry if you can’t make that day).

At a time of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and lost hope, the Summit combines lived testimony, research, and practical solutions to reclaim a culture of partnership.

Produced by the Center for Partnership Systems (CPS) and inspired by cultural historian Dr. Riane Eisler’s Partnership vs. Domination framework, the Summit reframes peace not as a distant ideal but as a systems challenge that begins where we live, love, and raise each other: In the home. Confirmed speakers include 26 leaders from 17 countries, among them:

• Dr. Riane Eisler – Holocaust survivor, cultural historian, systems scientist, and author of The Chalice and the Blade
• Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury – Former UN Under-Secretary-General and champion of the culture of peace
• Dr. Richard Davidson – World-renowned neuroscientist and TIME 100 honoree
• Ela Gandhi – Global peace activist, women’s rights advocate and granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi
• Gary Barker & Jackson Katz – International pioneers in reshaping masculinity
• Angela Sterritt – Award-winning investigative journalist and author, serving as MC

Find out more and book at www.peacebeginsathomesummit.org

CHAPTERS

0:00 Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the state of the world

2:08 Introducing Gina Miltiadou and the Peace Begins at Home Summit

2:53 The ripple effect of early trauma

4:10 Self-care when you’re near the finish line

5:41 Purpose as a form of self-care

7:07 Interconnectedness and hope

8:15 Dr. Riane Eisler’s domination to partnership framework

15:19 Peace begins at home

17:30 Turning pain into purpose

20:05 Stories of healing and collective care

25:16 Peace is personal

Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get an exclusive deeper dive each week.

Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please leave a ***** rating and review for this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed. Your subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD. You learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you – it creates a ripple effect and helps others. My ultimate dream, in a world in which SO much is coming up for healing and so many people are unsafe, is to do my part to help as many people as possible heal from trauma. To help create a world in which everyone everywhere feels safe, welcome and loved - able to thrive.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the state of the world

2:08 Introducing Gina Miltiadou and the Peace Begins at Home Summit

2:53 The ripple effect of early trauma

4:10 Self-care when you’re near the finish line

5:41 Purpose as a form of self-care 7:07 Interconnectedness and hope

8:15 Dr. Riane Eisler’s domination to partnership framework

15:19 Peace begins at home

17:30 Turning pain into purpose

20:05 Stories of healing and collective care

25:16 Peace is personal

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Do you ever feel overwhelmed and despairing at repeated patterns of horror endlessly perpetuated by humans, as if we never learn from the past? This episode’s for you. Feel Better Every Day. No, seriously.

It’s easy to feel helpless and hopeless, to go into that dorsal vagal “Freeze!” response. To feel completely overwhelmed, disconnected. Today’s guest has some hope and inspiration for you. Episode 81, I’m delighted to welcome you to Gina Miltiadou. She is the director of the Peace Begins at Home Summit. I’ll be sharing our interview together.

Welcome! You’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast (in spite of that gloomy intro). And I hope that you will find it helpful. Each Tuesday, I share new episodes, and they’re designed to help you work with the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed.

Today’s episode is very much in that Heal part, the collective care element, the co-regulation, the systemic elements of we’re all connected. The better we take care of ourselves and each other, the better for everyone.

You can find out more about the book, the podcast and older episodes and other free resources around trauma, ADHD, anxiety, sleep, menopause, being a solopreneur, all sorts of things, as well as ways in which we might work together, upcoming events, all of that at selfcarecoaching.net or the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com.

For now, welcome, welcome, welcome to this special episode, which I hope will inspire you.

So welcome, Gina. Thank you so much for joining me. And do you want to say a little bit about the summit and what you’re doing?

Yes, of course. Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to have a chance to talk about this. But yes, I’m organising a global summit, which is happening on the 29th of October. And it is inspired by Dr. Riane Eisler’s work, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about later.

But what it is doing, it’s gathering 26 speakers from 17 different countries around the world. And essentially, we’re examining how early trauma or care experienced in the home ripples out into society and all the systems that we live in. So that’s my current project.

I love that so much. My membership is called the Sole to Soul Circle, like the soles of the feet to the soul. But it used to be called Personal Peace, because it was very much about the more where, OK, whether we’ve been raised in that caring environment, or whether we’ve healed that trauma, that then ripples out the intergenerational healing, all of it.

That’s exactly it. Wonderful.

I’m going to include a link in the show notes, but your summit takes place, this is going to go out on Tuesday.

It’s going to be tomorrow, as far as people watching are concerned.

It’s on the 29th of October. It’s the week after next.

I got the dates wrong! I was like, quick, quick, I really want to include it. Oh, that’s okay.

Yeah. Okay, so that’s fantastic. People have even more time to sort it out.

Exactly, exactly. And the best place to register is just go to peacebeginsathomesummit.org and they can register online.

So brilliant. And there’ll be a link in the show notes. Great. So you are very, very busy at the moment. Really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. How is your self care in terms of the feel part of my Feel. Love. Heal. framework? The kind of active self-care? What are your essential daily practices that you rely on or don’t have time for at the moment?

Oh, goodness. Eve, I do not want to lie to you. I am 10 days away from the summit so my self-care is kind of non-existent at the moment. It is about just getting to the finish line at the moment. This has been a project that has been in the making for the whole year. And it’s wonderful that we’re kind of reaching the finish line. But you know, part of it is, just being gentle with myself and giving myself permission to almost not self-care, not guilting myself into, oh my God, I really should be minding myself better. I know that, but I actually just do not have the time. So I think it’s also just loving myself enough to kind of go, you know what, that’s okay. This is a season. It’s 10 days to go. You’re not getting as much sleep as you need. You’re not eating as well as you can, but that’s what needs to happen right now.

So it’s the odd thing. I think getting outside and getting fresh air when I can has made a massive difference. Even just the little things like taking the dog for a walk or just watching a really stupid, mindless piece on Netflix has really helped as well.

And I’m not going to lie, you know, chocolate and wine has also helped.

Excellent. And I’m also thinking what you’re doing because it’s so meaningful. It’s different to if you were in a job you hated and the grind and like this just, we’ve only just met, but the purpose is a part of self care and like giving yourself grace.

That’s gorgeous. Exactly.

Exactly. And I think that’s the thing is because this has been so purpose led, it’s actually been easy to do. I mean, even though I really am exhausted, but I’m also so psyched about it and I’m so buzzed about it.

And I think, you know, just meeting all of the different speakers and hearing their stories and just the, I suppose, the feeling that this is really going to make a difference at a time when people need it so, so badly. People want hope so badly is enough to keep me going because it’s just bigger than all of us. Yeah.

That leads us beautifully into the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed. Love. You don’t need to do a thing. You are already part of nature, part of the divine. You don’t need to be endlessly improving yourself and giving yourself grace, but also that sense of being part of something bigger, looking up at a mountain or being in the ocean or whatever it might be. And I wondered, would you like to say anything about some of the speakers?

Yes, absolutely. And I think you’ve touched on something so beautiful and important there, the fact that we are all interconnected. And I think if people just realised that they would feel less lonely, they would feel that they could make a difference that every tiny little action does ripple out into the world. Because often we feel so helpless, you know, and we’re not, you know, even a tiny little thing can, can ripple out.

I think, you know, one of the, one of the key foundations of the summit was, so with Dr. Riane Eisler, she’s an incredible woman. She is a Holocaust survivor. She’s 94, which is incredible and still doing keynotes, which just blows my mind. If I could be a fraction as spry as she is, but you know, even when I’m 80, I’d be doing well.

But her whole thing, so she’s a systems scientist, she’s a cultural historian. She has consulted to the WHO, the UN, the World Economic Forum, etc. And she has spent her life developing this Domination to Partnership framework. And one of the things that she really wanted to do (I sit on her board as well), at the end of last year, she said, “Look, you know, it’s no surprise I’m running out of time here. I really want kind of like a last hurrah. And one of the things is, I want to connect the dots. I want to help people connect the dots between that early childhood kind of domination and what we’re seeing in the world today.”

I suppose that speaks to that interconnectedness as well, and just helping people realise that they are part of something bigger. All of the speakers have been, you know, I’ve curated the program very, very carefully and very consciously in terms of what are all of the systems that that early kind of childhood experience ripples out into. It’s everything. It’s from, you know, economy, economics, to story and narrative, to gender relations, to how we treat our children, to all of that.

So I’ve chosen experts in all of those fields from around the world to speak to that interconnectedness, to joining those dots in the areas of expertise. So I hope that answers your question.

And I saw Richard Davidson is on. Oh, he’s amazing. I remember studying him as part of my trauma-informed yoga therapy training years ago. So I can’t wait to see that one. But all of them sound brilliant. And I’m also struck as you’re talking, I remember years and years ago reading Gloria Steinem’s Revolution from Within. Yes. She talked about a Holocaust survivor who was then guarding a Nazi prisoner. And he was filled with hate, because of what the Nazis had done. And after a few days of guarding, watching this man who had been part of such atrocities, this man asked if he could go to the toilet.

And the Holocaust survivor realised that he had been so disconnected from his body, from childhood, from like toilet training techniques that were popular at that time. And that had helped enable the rise of fascism. It wasn’t just Hitler. It wasn’t just one person. And thinking about what’s happening in the world at the moment and how we know better, we’ve seen this before. And yet, children, babies still being dominated, like you say, like rather than nurtured, cared, respected.

You have hit the nail on the head. And that is the entire thing that this is about. It is about that, you know, when a child. I’ll actually preface it by saying that two out of three children in the world experience violence in their life. Two out of three.

Most of my practice is with survivors. But I only work with adult survivors. Only people who have survived childhoods I work with.

But the point is, right, so when a child, so bearing that statistic in mind, so when a child learns domination or sees domination in their home, they learn very early and powerful lessons about how to control others around them. Yeah. And now this is, you know, that doesn’t happen to all survivors of trauma. Of course, you know, they don’t, it’s not automatic that everybody goes into dysfunction, but you know, a lot of people then struggle with, “OK, how do I control what is around me?” And what they’ve been taught in the early foundational years is that you need domination to control that.

And that ripples out into everything. To the way that people vote. That’s why we see the rise of authoritarianism as we do to our nature being in peril, because it is man’s domination over nature that has put us in the situation we’re in. That early domination, you know, you cannot underestimate that that is the most foundational lesson that a child can learn. That is the ultimate answer to peace. Yeah. You know, because peace isn’t just the absence of war. No. It’s not the period in between wars. You know, it is our natural default position, but we’ve almost lost our birthright to peace.

Absolutely. It’s like with the Polyvagal Informed approach, I work a lot with Polyvagal Theory. I use the cats, the rescue cats to illustrate it for people to make it more accessible [selfcarecoaching.net/feline]. But you’ve got the ventral vagal is the most recent, the highest part of the vagus, the, I call it “Purr!”, when you feel safe, it’s that science of safety and connection. So you’re able, there’s that kind of both and mindset. Yes. Both and, yeah, rather than either or. And you’re kind of co-regulating. It’s the collective care, the collaboration, the creativity, the play, the abundance, the all good things. And that is our natural state. That’s what we were wired for.

But then so much of modern life puts us into, I call it “Hiss!”, but like sympathetic survival, that disconnection, that fear-based othering people, or dorsal vagal, the “Freeze”, the collapse, overwhelm. The, “What’s the point? Can’t do anything.” But I keep thinking like if every baby, if every child, if every adult on the planet was safe, welcome and loved, they would be able to thrive. All the problems of the world could be solved by nurturing and nourishing and ensuring safety and shelter and water and love. And it has to start in the home.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with you. And the thing is so much of it is about denial, you know, for babies and children to survive their childhoods that are traumatic.

They have to deny that this is happening to them by people who are closest and dearest to them. And that leads to a scarcity mindset, a denial mindset. So then you get things like denial of reality, denial of election results, denial of all of that.

Exactly. So, you know, you could just see how it’s just dominoes, you know, how it affects and it just has to start in the home. And that’s why, you know, when I came up with the name of the summit, Peace Begins at Home. I just think it so perfectly sums that up because it does connect it all, you know?

Yeah. Well, that is wonderful. And I’d love to hear, like, you said that your self-care has gone out the window, but I’m imagining, like we touched on it earlier, but with the collective care element, the Heal part of my framework, because the Heal part, it’s, I work a lot with trauma survivors and ADHDers, and that sense of justice sensitivity and the desire to break trauma cycles and, like, help heal things to make things safer for future generations and current generations. The idea of turning what hurts people’s hearts into action. At different stages, you might be able to do the active self-care (Feel), you might be able to get yourself to walk or whatever it might be. Or it might be that you have no bandwidth for that, but you are able to give yourself some grace (Love). Or it might be that that’s impossible.

But even the idea of a future version of yourself feeling OK enough to begin to help use your pain to guide others or to ease in some way, but sorry, that’s a really convoluted way of describing it. But I’m thinking, I’m imagining that you’re liaising with all of these amazing speakers that is helping you with your co-regulation, helping you feel more hopeful about 2025 and beyond. And I might be putting words in your mouth, I don’t mean to be doing that. But I wondered, is that the case? Or what does help you turn the pain into hope?

Yeah, I mean, it’s a funny thing, this project started because I was kind of entering a year of yes. OK, so I had sold a part of my business, and I was like, what is next? Right. And when I met Dr. Eisler, it was funny, I met her at a webinar, and she kind of dropped into our breakout room by accident, when she was meant to be kind of like my speaker break. And we got chatting. And she said, Listen, will you help me? I, you know, I, you know, I just, she said what you do. And anyway, she said, Look, can you reach out? I’ve got this project that I want to do.

And can you help me? And I was like, and I had decided that last year was my Year of Yes. So I was like, yes, absolutely. That’s fine.

Anyway, and so it went on. And I have followed the yeses throughout this whole project. It has been I have done many, many projects in my time.

And with this one, I think what has really helped is that I was very conscious of just following my instinct. You know, and when a speaker didn’t feel right, I didn’t pursue it. When something didn’t, you know, it was just like, I kind of really have tapped in to what is needed now.

And have just kind of asked, I’ve kind of gone, “OK, Spirit, God, Mother Earth, Gaia, you know, just use me for the greater good, you know, and I have just followed wherever that has taken me.” And to be honest, I think that has saved me, because I am a team of one.

Yeah, wow.

I’ve had a few. Yes. Yes. I have had a wonderful volunteer who’s...

Stop feeling guilty. Start making a difference.

In Own Your Privilege, Change the World: Episode 80 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, I (trauma therapist, senior accredited supervisor, Self care coach, author, ADHDer etc, Eve Menezes Cunningham) explore why owning your privilege (rather than apologising for it) can support sustainable activism.

Learn how guilt disempowers you while self-care and honest acknowledgment of your advantages can fuel meaningful change. Discover why thriving isn’t selfish, it’s necessary for the resistance.

Everyone deserves to feel safe, welcome and loved and able to thrive and the more you do to empower yourself, the more you can do to help others. So forgive yourself for injustices you have no part in and then speak up to do what you can to fix what’s happening now.

THE FEEL BETTER EVERY DAY PODCAST

Learn from the Self (for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself) and self-care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas through the lens of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework to help you:

• Feel. Regulate your nervous system, work with your energy and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from

• Love. Accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and

• Heal. Collective care to turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large (and to coregulate and accept support from others)

Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get an exclusive deeper dive (these include bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices, journal prompts and more) each week.

Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please leave a ***** rating and review for this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed. Your subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD. You learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you – it creates a ripple effect and helps others. My ultimate dream, in a world in which SO much is coming up for healing and so many people are unsafe, is to do my part to help as many people as possible heal from trauma. To help create a world in which everyone everywhere feels safe, welcome and loved - able to thrive.

CHAPTERS

(0:00) Prioritising your personal priorities

(1:14) Your suffering helps no one

(2:50) Acknowledging privilege

(10:59) Forgive yourself and do better

(15:30) Do more of what helps you feel good

(18:11) Finding balance through compassion and action

(20:56) Ho’oponopono and Metta meditation

RESOURCES: https://ejeancarroll.substack.com/p/grab-him-by-the-wallet

WANT TO WORK WITH ME?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos.

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net

• You can join the Sole to Soul Circle and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme.

• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc

• Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision).

WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say “Hi” and share your questions or comments: YouTube @evemenezescunningham Insta @evemenezescunningham @rescuecattitude @thefeelbettereverydaypodcast Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay TikTok @evemenezescunningham Substack @evemc Bluesky @eveimc

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

And you can find out more by booking your spot, from as little as £25, for Online Events’ Living and Working with Neurodivergence conference where I’ll be presenting on Cattitude: A Polyvagal Informed Approach to Self Care for ADHD and Trauma – selfcarecoaching.net has a link to book tickets)

I was able to own that part of myself that wants to do it all in one go. I can say, “Oh that’s so sweet! So delusional! Let’s not do that this time! Let’s be gentler!”

Struggling with the overdoing-overwhelm-collapse cycle?

In this episode, I (trauma-informed therapist, Self care, ADHDer, senior accredited supervisor etc, Eve Menezes Cunningham) share a lawn mowing lesson that changed how I approach tasks.

Learn how doing less can actually help you accomplish more. This, like all episodes, takes you through my unique holistic Feel. Love. Heal. framework to help you bring more gentleness and ease into your daily life while getting more done. More smoothly, easily and effectively.

Perfect for anyone who tends to go full speed ahead and then crash.

THE FEEL BETTER EVERY DAY PODCAST

Learn from the Self (for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself) and self-care practices the professionals depend on.

With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas through the lens of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework to help you:

• Feel: Regulate your nervous system, work with your energy and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from

• Love: Accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and

• Heal: Collective care to turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large (and to coregulate and accept support from others)

Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get an exclusive deeper dive (these include bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices, journal prompts and more) each week.

If you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD take better care of their whole selves and create lives they don’t need to retreat from.

CHAPTERS

(0:02) Introduction: overdoing and overwhelm

(0:45) Using the Feel. Love. Heal. framework

(1:44) The lawn mowing lesson: less is more

(3:52) Applying gentleness beyond the lawn

(4:24) Feel: identify one area of overwhelm

(5:33) Love: self-compassion and acceptance

(6:20) The office move example

(9:17) Talking kindly to yourself

(10:33) Heal: co-regulation and collective care

(12:49) Closing reflections and invitation to connect

RESOURCES

WANT TO WORK WITH ME?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos.

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at

https://selfcarecoaching.net

• You can join the Sole to Soul Circle and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme.

• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc

• Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision).

WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say “Hi” and share your questions or comments:

YouTube @evemenezescunningham

Insta @evemenezescunningham @rescuecattitude @thefeelbettereverydaypodcast Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay

TikTok @evemenezescunningham

Substack @evemc

Bluesky @eveimc

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Do you ever overdo things and then find yourself unable to do the simplest of things because it hasn’t worked out?

You’re listening to episode 79 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I’m your host Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m an author, trauma therapist and survivor, senior accredited supervisor, ADHDer and so on.

You can find out more and access lots of free resources and other information at selfcarecoaching.net.

Every Tuesday I share a new episode to help trauma survivors and ADHDers take better care of yourselves and create a life you don’t need to retreat from.

In today’s episode we’re using my Feel. Love. Heal. framework to explore the reality that can be especially hard for us to grasp in terms of less being more. It’s one of those things in terms of baby steps, turtle steps, taking things slower, not launching full speed ahead and then overwhelmed paralysis, all the rest of it.

A few weeks ago I had a visceral experience and I’m hoping that sharing it with you and some self-care ideas will inspire you to go easier on yourself, be gentler with yourself and get more effective in terms of what you’re choosing to do.

I was going to say get more done but it’s like NO, you deserve rest, you deserve peace, you deserve ease. As a byproduct of that you will get more done because there’ll be less chaos.

A few weeks ago I was mowing my lawn. As a bit of a disclaimer, I’m nearly 50 but I’ve only had a lawn to mow the last few years because I lived in tiny little studio flats for so long. It’s been a steep learning curve. I’m still trying to rewild sections, I am rewilding sections but it’s all been a big learning curve. My partner finally convinced me to get a petrol lawnmower rather than the manual lawnmower that I had been using barefoot to get grounding while I mowed.

Obviously can’t do that with a petrol lawnmower because it would be too dangerous but that little manual mower it would take me hours to do this small little front lawn and the petrol lawnmower is much more effective. He saw how I was doing it when it was a bit overgrown because the weather (blah blah blah lots of reasons, not been keeping on top of it and the west coast of Ireland is phenomenal and there’s a lot of rain and that makes it really lush and also it grows really quickly. You can’t mow wet grass, it takes much longer so it had got quite long again even though I was doing my best to keep on top of it so another metaphor for feeling overwhelmed and chaotic).

When he saw what I was doing, he suggested that I do half lines so rather than like side by side redoing half of the line and then the next line redoing half of the line. I had to obviously bite back some of my pathological demand avoidance (PDA) but I tried it because I have been experimenting more and more with gentleness with taking it easy.

And it was like, “Huh! It really does work!”

I didn’t have to stop as often and it was a joy. So it has been something having had that visceral experience that I’ve been applying to other areas of my life in terms of less being more.

Taking the gentler approach feels like it’s going to take much longer but ultimately, actually is not only easier but takes less time than the old overdoing it, collapse, overdoing it, overwhelm, overdoing it, paralysis… I hope this episode will help you.

For the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. Framework, I want you to identify something in your life where you tend to go full speed ahead and end up in chaos. End up feeling overwhelmed. End up feeling miserable and ineffective and like you can’t do anything.

And if you’re anything like I used to be, you might be thinking, “ALL areas of my life!”

List all of them. List everything that comes up. And then pick one. You can do this for the others. It won’t take long but start with one. I still find that hard to do myself because I want to do All The Things at once. But identify one problem one area in your life and know that the others that you’ve listed are there safely for you to return to when you have found some peace and ease and gentleness around this first area.

For the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework it’s more… so the Feel part is the self-care the lowercase s, something you’re doing to regulate. You’re taking action. In this case, emptying your brain. Making it visible externally.

For the Love part, it’s more of that uppercase S Self care. The beyond the person. The Love archetype (in psychosynthesis). It’s about finding affection for that part of yourself that does these things instead of, “Oh why have I done that? Why have I overdone it again? Why am I at the point of collapse again? Why am I…?”

For example, a couple weeks ago, I had the idea to switch offices. I moved from the smallest room in the house to what is actually the main bedroom (I use a different bedroom because I like being able to look up at the mountain).

And I am now indulging in this gorgeous space that I can’t believe is my office. It means it’s much nicer for my in-person clients and supervisees as well but I just moved the webcam around to give you a bit of a view if you’re listening and wondering why that went a bit wonky.

I had the idea on the Monday lunchtime when I was doing a yoga nidra and by the Wednesday evening I had completely moved into this room. It looked and felt amazing and by the Tuesday morning I had it so that I could do my online work. Right behind me it looked great. The rest of the room was in chaos and the rest of the house was in chaos.

The rest of the house is taking shape but this has come from years and years of learning to work (and also the ADHD medication is helping). This time, rather than, “Why do I do this?” when the rest of the house was in complete chaos, I was able to say, “Oops, I did it again. And I’m NOT going to stay up. I’m not going to work through the night. I’m not going to ignore all my deadlines and everything else in order to tidy. Instead, I’m going to take it bit by bit!”

And it’s been a lovely, lovely gentle way. It’s not completely there in terms of the rest of the house but I now have everything far more accessible. And the little room (now named the Everything Emporium) has my clothes horses, my snorkel gear, my suitcase and one of the cat litter trays, all the like big like bulky cat food and coats.

It’s more of a utility room. I’ve got my Christmas and Halloween decorations, all the DIY stuff… it’s been headachy but far less headachy than at any other time in my life. Because I was able to own that part of myself that wants to do it all in one go. I can say, “Oh that’s so sweet! So delusional! Let’s not do that this time! Let’s be gentler!”

I want you to think of that part of yourself with fondness with compassion like you might with a toddler or a small child. Someone like just in a bit over their heads. And just dial it back. Send lots of love. Send lots of compassion to yourself. Remind yourself it’s safe to go slowly. It’s safe to take it easy.

It might not have been when you were younger but it is now. You’re in safety. And it’s constantly reaffirming that to yourself. And even if it feels silly, recognising that your extra sensitive nervous system needs that support, needs that reminder.

You can hold your hand on your heart, one hand on top of the other. And say, “It’s OK [whatever your name is]. I’m safe. It’s safe to go slower. It’s safe to take it easier. It’s safe to be gentle with myself. I’m not lazy. I will get it done.”

Whatever you need to hear. Honour your nervous system and honour Younger Yous who were potentially told that you should be able to do things more easily while not being accommodated in ways that would have helped you actually do things more easily.

Sending so much love to those traumatised younger parts. And let yourself heal.

Moving to the Heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. Framework: The co-regulation, the collective care. It might be about accessing more support. It might be talking to a therapist or a coach. It might be body doubling. It might be joining a group. (In the Sole to Soul Circle tomorrow, you’ll be getting, members will be getting a unique yoga nidra to help with ease and gentle progress, making things more effective, things easier with smaller steps. Helping to programme the unconscious mind to make it easier to not overdo things off the yoga mat (or like if you’re using your sofa or your bed as your yoga nidra nest). Helping to harness the power of the unconscious mind around that temptation to do all the things and overdo it. And instead beginning to create that sense of safety within your nervous system, to create that sense of safety within your home, within your life, within your work, within your relationships. Knowing that you deserve that sense of peace and ease and gentleness.)

I would love to hear how you’re getting on. What problem you’ve identified. How you’re addressing yourself with affection and acceptance of exactly where you are rather than trying to change anything or beating yourself up. And what you might do to heal. Maybe there is someone you can body double with or you’re going to seek out therapy or coaching. It might be maybe you want to join the Sole to Soul Circle (you can find out more at selfcarecoaching.net).

Thinking, again, let yourself be open to solutions that may not exist but just asking yourself, if you were to be able to join or create a community that would really, really help you with whatever it is… list all the things that that community would have. It may be that it already exists. It may be that it partially exists and you can already begin to benefit from some of those supports.

Let me know how you get on in the comments or email [email protected]

Thank you very much for listening or watching. I’d love it if you’re happy to share with someone you think might benefit from this episode.

And like, comment, review and so on.

And just be gentle with yourself. Notice how taking things that bit easier, thinking of your equivalent of doing half a line again in terms of mowing the lawn. Whatever it might be. It might feel like it’s slower. It might feel like it’s frustrating when you think about it but experiment with it. And let me know how you get on. Let me know also what you’d like more of in the future.

And I look forward to sharing more next week. Have a delightful week.

le grá (with love),

Eve

Join me (trauma-informed therapist etc, Eve Menezes Cunningham) as I welcome Alice Tew and Carly Radford, hosts of the podcast “Too Much… Apparently.”

We explore sensitivity as a gift rather than a flaw, sharing practical nervous system regulation techniques and the power of radical self-acceptance.

Discover why tiny non-negotiables work better than perfect routines, how the pandemic became a turning point for Carly embracing authenticity, and why building chosen family through friendship can be transformative.

Perfect for highly sensitive people, those with ADHD and autism, trauma survivors, and anyone who’s ever been told they’re “too much.”

You’ll learn about:

Find Alice at @reparentingwithalice and Carly at @the_sensitivity_therapist

CHAPTERS

(0:00) Introduction and podcast context

(1:00) Guest introductions

(4:00) Sensitivity and self-care

(8:30) Nervous system awareness

(12:00) Tiny non-negotiables

(15:00) Love and acceptance

(19:00) The pandemic as a turning point

(22:00) Radical self-acceptance

(26:00) Collective care and community

(30:00) Redefining family and support

(35:00) Building community through friendship

FULL TRANSCRIPT

I’m delighted to welcome Alice Tew and Carly Radford, who are here to talk about whatever they want to talk about, but I invited them on because I’ve known their names for a long, long time, but I’ve got to know them better online through a neurodivergent therapy group, and they have a gorgeous new podcast, Too Much… Apparently, and it’s so lovely.

Hi, you’re listening to episode 78 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I’m your host and producer Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m a trauma-informed therapist, including embodied approaches, energetic approaches. I’m a trauma survivor. I have ADHD and I’m a senior accredited supervisor with BACP and a supervisor with IACP.

I’m also an author and columnist and a self-care coach where I integrate lots of different ways of working for a really embodied approach, but really all my work is about helping you remember that you already know what you need.

I help people with trauma and ADHD to take better care of themselves and their Self, that highest, wisest, truest, most joyful, brilliant, miraculous part of yourself. It really is remembering you are already whole. You’re already complete. You are worthy. You’re lovable. You’re not too much. You are enough.

And with that in mind, I am utterly delighted to be welcoming today’s guests and look forward to hearing what you think of today’s episode. If you haven’t already, do subscribe and I would love to hear from you, either in the comments or you can email eve at selfcarecoaching.net

You can find out more about the book, the podcast, free resources, all sorts of things at selfcarecoaching.net or thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com.

I’m delighted to welcome Alice Tew and Carly Radford, who are here to talk about whatever they want to talk about, but I invited them on because I’ve known their names for a long, long time, but I’ve got to know them better online through a neurodivergent therapy group and they have a gorgeous new podcast, Too Much… Apparently, and it’s so lovely and I wanted to have them on here.

I’m going to ask Alice and then Carly to introduce yourselves, including any links you want people to go to and they’ll be in the show notes as well.

Welcome, welcome, welcome and thank you.

So shall I start?

Yeah, OK.

I’m Alice Tew. I’m a psychotherapist. I’m based in Cheshire, but I work completely online. I mainly work with people who have kind of harshly critical parents and so kind of dealing with the emotional fallout of that. The best way to find me is on Instagram, where you’ll find me @reparentingwithalice. Yeah, that’s me.

I was admiring earlier your little hello sign because your email is hello at Alice Tew. Do you want to give your website as well?

Yeah, so my website is alicetew.com.

Perfect. Thank you. And Carly?

Yes, hello. My name is Carly Radford. I am a nurse by background before retraining as a psychotherapist and I also work solely online with doing individual therapy and running groups. I specialise in a few areas, but I put those under the theme of sensitivity. I’m known as the sensitivity therapist and I work with either inherent or acquired sensitivity. And essentially what I mean by that is inherent is if you feel you were born a highly sensitive person, neurodivergent, autistic, ADHD. You have always felt like a sensitive person in the world.

And I also work with acquired sensitivity. So if that is through stressful life situations, traumatic events, chronic anxiety, anything that over time has essentially made your nervous system more sensitive and more reactive in the world. That’s ultimately what I specialise in. You can find me on Instagram @the_sensitivity_therapist with underscores between the words. My website is currently being redeveloped, but it will be carlyradford.com. And yeah, email wise, I’m just hello at carlyradford.com.

Thank you so much. I’m going to ask you both about sensitivity because you had a lovely episode about it. And I think it’s so important. I think especially with trauma, with ADHD, we grow up, we get so told, oh, you’re being too sensitive, you’re too.

And we can recognise that it is a gift and we can also internalise shame around it. And I’m nearly 50 and I’m like happier than I’ve ever been, but it’s still like, oh God, I’m crying again. And it’s I’ll cry out of joy as well. It’s like fully emotional landscape. It’s the whole, but I just loved what you were saying.

We’ll start with the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. Framework I created. If you tell me a bit about what you would recommend and what you’ve both done in terms of regulating, in terms of that kind of more active self care around sensitivity, when it all feels too much, if that’s OK.

Yes. Yeah.

Or should I go? Or should you go? When there’s three of you, it’s like, who talks first? Who knows, who knows who to go? No, I’m just nodding and you can’t see who I’m nodding at. Yes. So I, I have always described myself.

Well, I say always more in later years, I’ve always described myself as sensitive, but I now very much realised that I am very sensitive, deep, deep in my bones. And what I mean when I say the word sensitive is I can react quite strongly emotionally to things in the world. And a bit like you said, it’s both in a way that can be challenging and also in a way that can be really lovely and beautiful in terms of those strong emotional reactions.

And I also describe it of having quite a reactive nervous system. So seemingly small things, or that may be small to other people are not small to my nervous system. And ultimately can, well, that can respond in various ways, but I would often say that that can translate to like emotional overwhelm or, or feeling, feeling stressed, feeling like things are a little bit too much.

And it’s only in later years that I’ve come to really recognise that and start to embrace that as that is who I am in the world. So particularly, I’d say particularly over the last five years, I’ve more like radically been moving, been moving towards that acceptance. And you mentioned from the field perspective of the framework that you work with, how I, how I regulate, I think that what you were asking me? Yeah.

I regulate my nervous system through various ways, some of it’s not super conscious, it’s automatic. I will sing throughout the day quite a lot as I’m just going about the day. And I think singing just automatically helps to regulate my nervous system.

And there’s a lot of science behind that, actually, which I didn’t say.

The exhalation, so you’re activating the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. And you’re also using your voice. So yeah, helping tone the vagus.

Yes, yes, it’s all related to the vagus nerve. And whether that’s the breathing part, really taking control of your breath, slow, really slowing it down and controlling it. And also through the through the vibrations of your vocal cords, and what that is essentially doing from biofeedback to the vagus nerve. So there are various things that influence singing. So I think singing can be good.

Joining a singing group, for example, but also just even if you’re humming to yourself throughout the day. So I’ve learned that there are things that I just do automatically throughout the day that help. So singing, vocalising things.

And I like to just talk out loud to my dogs in various accents and things like that. Just almost using the voice as a form of play, I think really, really helps. And then there are the more active things that help regulate my nervous system.

And they might be things like just curling up on the sofa, blanket wrapped around me, maybe heated blanket, cup of something warm and a good book or something crafty. If I’m really overwhelmed, the crafty thing won’t be too challenging. It could even just be an adult colouring book, something that doesn’t involve much thought, but that’s something that always helps me.

I love it.

And before I ask Alice, I also wanted to applaud your talking about your nervous system. And it sounded like that acceptance. And we all, all mammals have our nervous systems. And with trauma, with ADHD, we grow up, like thinking there’s something wrong with it. Whereas the minute we accept it, and it’s like, how is it feeling right now? What do I need right now? It’s just like, yep, the nervous system is this.

It’s like, it’s raining outside. It’s like, yep, I just loved the way you said that at the beginning. So thank you for all of that.

That’s wonderful. And Alice?

Yeah, I think I kind of share, you know, some of what Carly’s talking about there. And I think that awareness or that knowledge of your nervous system has been a really important part of it for me.

When I think about what I do to regulate myself kind of on a day-to-day basis, I think keeping things really small is really important for me. Like I can have a really strong perfectionist process. I would love to, and even now when I’m scrolling through Instagram and someone pops up with this routine will change your life, I’m like, “Oh, maybe this is the one.”

But it’s kind of bringing it back to the fact that actually, if I can just keep it small, you know, having some kind of, you know, non-negotiables that are tiny, non-negotiables, like brushing my teeth. I know that if I’m not brushing my teeth, I really need to be kind of checking in again with myself.

But like exercise. So I’ve been really struggling with exercise. I love going out for a walk. I love being in nature, but I’ve really been struggling to motivate myself to get out. So at the moment I’m working on doing 10 shoulder rolls every day and just keeping it, just keeping it tiny and just getting that tick in the box. Just giving myself that message that I matter by doing that tiny little, doing that tiny little piece. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I love it. And, um, oh, that’s so gorgeous.

So, um, moving to the Love, that’s so funny. A second ago, it’s like, oh, and I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say. Um, if it comes back later, it will, if not, that’s fine. But moving to the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed that uppercase Self care that recognition.

I realised I always feel a bit like I help people self-care, but it’s like, not a, you have to do this because you’re already whole. You’re already like everyone. If only we could just know that we don’t have to perform, we don’t have to do anything to be, but that can take in psychosynthesis. There’s the Will archetype and the Love archetype, and there are different types of Will. And Love is that kind of supportive, accepting energy.

And like with EFT, you start off with the, whatever the issue is, “I deeply and completely love and accept myself”. Without that love, without that acceptance, any kind of change is so, so challenging. And yet we’re constantly trying to like, oh, like you said about the routine, I just realised that was it. I was up again till 3.30 last night because, I’m on the ADHD medication now, which is much better, but I had been meaning to delete thousands of photos for months and months and months, years, even.

And I’m putting together a couple of presentations, which involve finding pictures of my rescue cats, because it’s using them to explain Polyvagal Theory. And naturally I had like thousands of pictures of the cats. And when I finally figured out an easy way to delete them, it was like, I’ll do this for all the underwater pictures as well. And all the donkeys and all. And then it’s like 3.30 in the morning and it’s like, Evie Cat, come on, like ten shoulder rolls. It’s like, I love the kind of micro projects and I love the idea of being that person. But it’s like last night, it’s like, I know if I don’t do it now, I’ll forget this system that has suddenly made it easier. So applauding micro and wishing I could do better.

Don’t get me wrong. I also go all in on the macro regularly, you know, kind of preparing for the podcast. I really had to pull myself away from, you know, creating and creating. It’s just exciting.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, again, I think for me, the diagnosis has really helped with that Love part that like ADHD brain. It’s OK. It’s OK. Whereas before it’d be like, why? Why? Why? Anyway, the two of you, what helps you with that love part, that acceptance? Yeah.

Should I go first this time? Yeah. OK. So I feel like this is a massive part of my work and it’s the thing that I really love the most. And so what I’ve been thinking about sort of as you’ve been explaining your framework and all of that is really kind of focused in parts work, which is what I do. But really that looking at I think it often comes down to parts that feel like you don’t deserve it in some way. And I see there being two parts to this.

One is the kind of defeated part that I would see as like a wounded child. I don’t deserve it. But also the kind of more critical parent parts that might say you don’t deserve it.

And so having to sort of kind of having to navigate both of those almost. Yeah. Almost like a kind of it feels like it’s a negotiation sometimes like a mediation between different parts of you that are really kind of holding a lot of strong energy and having to find a way forward that works for all of the parts.

You know, like when you say you’ve got this photo system and you know, you’re just you’re on it. You know, I couldn’t just go in there and just be like, right. Time’s up. Time to go. You know, there has to be that that negotiation of that. But I think the skill of doing that involves a lot of self-compassion, a lot of compassion for these parts, a lot of willing to be curious about what’s going on for these parts, a lot of compassion for whatever comes up and a lot of courage to change because it’s hard.

It’s hard to change and scary to change, particularly for a lot of these parts that are holding on to these ways for really good reasons. Yeah.

This wasn’t meant to turn into a therapy session, but I’m realising it very much was a fearful sub-personality that was that like when I worked in an office and everyone would laugh at my handover notes because they’d go for pages because I was worried if I took a week off, I would forget how to do my job.

And it’s that it’s that what happens if you do forget? It just means you have to remember you have to. But that compassion and that acceptance and that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just recognising that there’s a really good reason behind, you know, the things that we do. You know, I’ve mentioned it on the podcast, but one of my favourite quotes is, you know, something looks like it doesn’t make sense, look closer because it makes sense. It makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you.

And Carly? Yeah, it’s an interesting one. I was talking to Alice on the podcast. I can’t remember which episode it was, but I realised that any time I was talking about when things have really shifted for me, I kept saying five years ago, five years ago, five years ago.

And I made a comment. I said, why do I keep saying five years ago? What was it about five years ago? And Alice just went, the pandemic? And I was like, oh, yes, that was it. And I’ve worked on a lot of this stuff for most of my life.

But a massive shift happened during the pandemic because it was a time when I realised so many things about myself that the pandemic, well, to be fair, not the pandemic, the lockdowns actually showed me and made me just learn a lot of lessons about myself. And in learning those lessons, I guess you kind of presented with a choice when life went back to sort of normal. Do I go back to how I was living before? Or do I start to accept that actually, I need to change the way that I’m living in the world in a way that is going to actually suit and benefit me? And that means having to accept certain things about myself that I might not want to accept.

But what’s the alternative if I don’t? And so I’d say over the past five years, and I’m going to use the word radical, because I think I’ve always been working on it. But the lockdowns and the pandemic led me to radically start to work on these things. And it was also the pandemic, where I started to realise that I was autistic.

And then I realised that I’m also ADHD. I’ve always described myself as a Highly Sensitive Person. So putting all of those things together, just meant that I am going to have to start treating myself differently and changing the way in which I behave that’s less about what I feel I should do or need to do to be accepted in the world.

And actually, what I need to do for myself. And I like what you said earlier, Alice about, you mentioned about what small, what smaller things, you know, how can I, how can I make this smaller, where I’m still doing something that feels that feels good, but is what I need. And I would say I’ve definitely applied that to myself.

And I’ve also leaned a lot more into the idea of slow living. I’ve realised that the fast pace world is not for me. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to live slowly and more gently.

I think the word gentle has just been so, so present for the past couple of years. And it’s not, it’s not just creating like a slower, more gentler way of being that honours the different parts of me and what they need. But also then learning to tell myself, and that’s OK.

And that’s the harder part. And the part that I would say, still crops up and I’m still working on. Also just knowing that and it’s OK to be that way in the world, because there are so many messages that say, it’s not or you’re or you’re less than or you’re incapable.

That’s not fun. That’s not exciting, like so many different things. So I think the heart part that you’re speaking to, makes me think of, yeah, makes me think of that phrase, this, this and this and, and that’s OK.

Yeah. And it is, I mean, like you’re saying that it’s like, yeah, but we’re mammals, we’re wired to only be in sympathetic modes, a very short percentage of the time, like we’re not, yeah, a lot of...

Ever wonder why you automatically say "yes" to everything, even when you don't want to? You're not broken - you're responding from a place of survival. In this episode, we explore the "tend and befriend" stress response, why it's so common in women, other minorities, and ADHDers, and how it kept our ancestors (and us when we were younger) alive.

You'll learn:

• Tend and Befriend v the better known Fight or Flight stress responses
• Why people-pleasing is actually adaptive survival behaviour
• How ADHD masking connects to this trauma response
• The difference between Tend and Befriend and Fawn
• Practical steps to start setting boundaries without (well, with less. Progress not perfection) guilt

Remember: Your nervous system was wired this way to keep you safe. Now you get to choose how to move forward. 💙

Resources mentioned:

• Feel Better Every Day Podcast: feelbettereverydaypodcast.com – especially the Purr! Hiss! Freeze! ep which goes into greater detail around Polyvagal Theory and adaptive survival responses
• Sole to Soul Circle membership
• Self Care Coaching: selfcarecoaching.net

#TraumaHealing #ADHD #PeoplePleasing #TendAndBefriend #TraumaResponse #Boundaries #NervousSystemHealing

Chapters

(0:00) What is the Tend and Befriend Response?

(0:38) Meet your host: Eve Menezes Cunningham

(1:11) Feel. Love. Heal. – A framework for self-care, Self care and collective care

(1:34) People pleasing and survival instincts

(2:16) Survival of the kindest

(2:36) The science behind Tend and Befriend

(4:24) Fawn and Freeze: Trauma in the body

(6:22) How early trauma shapes us

(7:00) Why we people please (and what we’re really seeking)

(8:27) The power of saying No

(9:28) Spotting red flags early

(9:37) Practising safe boundaries

(11:19) Remember: You have the right to autonomy

(12:27) Moving from survival to love

(13:21) Healing through support and connection

(14:54) Learning to honour your preferences

(16:29) The Runaway Bride egg question

(17:16) It’s never too late to get to know yourself

(18:04) Final thoughts and resources

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Tend and befriend response. So if you were to imagine being very, very under stress, under threat, and if you think about the most powerful people in society, if you think about like the white men, it's safe for them to fight, it's safe for them to run away. Women, minorities typically have to placate, have to be appealing, have to be pleasant, all these things with tend befriend when it's a trauma response, when it is also very common with ADHD.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and I'm a trauma therapist and survivor and ADHDer, a supervisor, supervisor, supervisor, Self care coach, author and columnist. And you can access full show notes and links and free resources through the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com or selfcarecoaching.net.

In this episode, we'll work through my Feel. Love. Heal. Framework.

Feel, which is about the active self- care, Love, which is about that uppercase Self S for the highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, miraculous part of yourself. And the Heal element is the collective care.

We're talking about the “tend and befriend” stress response today. I was interviewed for a UK national paper recently and the interview went 45 minutes, and which was longer than I think either of us were expecting. And I still have so much more to say, I thought I'd do a podcast episode about it. (I’ll share the link when it’s published.)

Tend and befriend is something that can lead to people pleasing. And when we say people pleasing, no one's like, “Woohoo, I'm a people pleaser.”

There's some judgment there. There's some, like high functioning codependency again, a bit tend befriend even. It's how humans survived.

Everyone knows most people know about Darwin's idea about survival of the fittest. But it's also that caring, that empathy that has kept humanity going all these, however long humanity has kept going. Typically, so Shelley Taylor coined the term “tend and befriend.”

And where Herbert, no, Walter B Cannon identified the Stress Response, the Fight Flight Response. Later, Herbert B. Benson identified the Relaxation Response and the opposite in terms of the parasympathetic activation of the nervous system in that same Harvard lab. Shelley Taylor in 2000 identified this Tend and Befriend response.

So if you were to imagine being very, very under stress, under threat, and if you think about the most powerful people in society, if you think about like the white men, it's safe for them to fight, it's safe for them to run away.

Women, minorities, typically have to placate, have to be appealing, have to be pleasant. All these things with tend befriend, when it's a trauma response, when it is also very common with ADHD, we're masking a lot of allies, we often don't know ourselves, we have it.

We just think we override how we're feeling in order to accommodate the needs of others. I hope that this episode will help you have more compassion for any people pleasing tendencies and recognising that the Tend and Befriend response, where it's a trauma response, where it's out of a sense of fear, even though you might consciously have nothing to be afraid of, your nervous system may have been wired to immediately go into offering more than actually genuinely feels good for yourself. We're going to work through some ways.

You might also be interested in the Fawn Response, which again, it's a kind of blamey word, but I know when I first came across Peter Levine's work like 15 years ago, I think, in Waking the Tiger, and he talked about the impala, and how it would play dead when it sensed the lion.

And after the danger had gone, it would get up, shake it off and get on with its day. I used to shake uncontrollably as a teenager, I would sometimes have to stand against walls because I would shake so much. I didn't know then it was a trauma release. When I did my yoga therapy training, and some of the people were doing TRE training as well. I know a lot of people know that kind of is basically learning how to shake it off me personally, not for me, because I shook so much already. But it is connecting with the body, it's letting it go.

The fawn response is that dorsal vagal collapse we've talked about in the Purr! Hiss! Freeze! episode. You might want to go back to and other episodes as well. I'll link in the show notes.

And it's really about recognising that whether you recognise you sometimes going to Tend and Befriend or Fawn, or people pleasing or high functioning co-dependency. It's all just adaptive survival. You are here now, you have survived.

You get to watch this or listen to this and choose for yourself moving forward, what do you want to do? That bit of awareness will help you. And when I say like Fight Flight, people generally aren't delighted with themselves after they've fought or after they've fled.

But when things are stressful, we tend to fall back into those ways in which we were wired, the ways in which we kept ourselves safe, when we potentially didn't even have language, some of this conditioning is pre verbal, it's so young.

Especially with complex PTSD, interpersonal trauma, you think about babies who would have been abandoned or neglected and had to learn to be extra appealing in order to survive, like if their parents were unable to care for them properly.

They didn't know that they were utterly divine and deserving of all the love and care in the world. They grew up believing they were too much. And so we're wired to thrive when we feel safe, welcome and loved. We need that safety and connection. People pleasing can be a way of trying to get that. It's also a way of denying it. Because if we're working from a trauma response, if we're living from a trauma response, we're not showing our whole selves if we're so viscerally terrified of being abandoned.

Abandonment would have meant death when we were little, and also for our ancient ancestors as adults. It's not about shame or judgement, it's just having reasons and extra compassion for yourself so that you can recognise that the reconditioning can be challenging, it can be an advanced practice, and it's very much worth it.

If you see yourself in this, give yourself a mental hug right now. Your nervous system was conditioned this way. And again, it helped you survive, you can learn to heal it, you can learn to rewire it with practice. It's retraining yourself to seek and find safety with the people you can express your whole self with.

There was a gorgeous post that I've been telling quite a few people about recently. I can't remember who to credit, if you know, please let me know so that I can credit them. It was something about going on a first date and saying no to something before she met up with any potential man.

Nope, like no explanation, no excuses, just, “Nope, can't do Wednesday, how about Thursday?”

And a lot of the men in the comments got angry, “Why is she testing us?” And it's like, this is how deep the conditioning goes that women and other minority groups are supposed to be available and appeasing and not make a fuss and low maintenance and all these things.

For the woman who said this is her technique, it was basically showing red flags. If a stranger isn't going to hear your no before you've met them, if they're going to demand an excuse or a reason for something as innocuous as wanting to change a day or go for tea rather than coffee or something insignificant, how dangerous might that person be when the stakes are higher?

As we move into the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, I want to encourage you to think of someone in your life that it feels safe enough to say no to, without excuses, without explanation, without defending your no.

It may be that there's no one in your life that feels safe to do that with. This is information, it's all good. It may be a therapist, it may be a coach, it may be a good friend, but even imagining saying no and not giving a reason, just notice how that feels in your body.

How does it feel to realise that you could actually, with practice, become quite adept at setting boundaries, at showing up as your whole self and being happier, giving your loved ones a chance to love all of you rather than just the parts of yourself that you think are appealing enough, are acceptable enough.

Notice for yourself who feels safe to experiment with in terms of that and also think about the tools you might already be using to soothe your nervous system when you are in any kind of stress response.

You might want to go back to the Relaxation Response episodes, you might want to, and again I'll link to that in the show notes, I don't want to be overwhelming you with self-care tools.

I think what I've suggested, it can be transformative and it's an advanced practice. It varies day to day, sometimes it feels more possible, other times not at all, different people, different scenarios, but I want you to remind yourself that you have the right to say No.

You have the right to assert yourself. You have a right to want all the things you want, not to like demand that anyone else meets all those needs, but you have a right to your own autonomy.

In the Sole to Soul Circle tomorrow, you'll be getting, for members of that, you'll be getting a video with a special breath practice that was developed by Peter Levine to help soothe the nervous system and come out of Tend and Befriend, and also to regulate from Fight Flight, the Sympathetic Survival responses (Hiss!) basically. It's helping, and it's also, it helps come out of dorsal vagal (Freeze!), it comes out, it helps us to come more into ventral vagal (Purr!). I'll be going through that with the Sole to Soul Circle members.

As we move into the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, I want you to remember that this response was a survival response. I want you to look in the mirror and tell your reflection, “I survived”.

You're safe, you're here. You might not be thriving yet, but you are safe and you are here. Your survival responses kept you alive, all of those adaptive responses, and by looking at them now you can have a happier, more fulfilling, easier life moving forward.

Honour that. Accept yourself. Love yourself. And thank your whole self.

As we move into the Heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, you might want to explore therapy, you might want to explore support groups, you might want to think about your loved ones and being honest with maybe one of them, and saying something like, “Look, I'm beginning to explore this, I didn't even know I was doing it, but sometimes when you ask me if I want to do do do, I actually would like some time to think about it and really get a sense of how I'm feeling before I automatically agree.”

Again, on, I don't know, TikTok or Insta or something, I saw a really sweet thing by an ADHDer who was horrified that she'd been in a relationship for years and she thought that her partner loved the kind of crispy tiny fries, whereas she loved the long and kind of, she described them as soggy fries. After several years together she asked him and he was like, “No, I wasn't eating them first”.

She'd observed him eating them first and thought, “Oh OK, I'll save them for him and I'll have the others.”

But he'd been eating those so that he could save his favourite to the end. And she was like, “All this time I really liked the others!” They were both trying to please each other, they'd both made assumptions based on what they'd observed in terms of sharing fries, and luckily they checked in with each other after a few years.

There could be all sorts of scenarios like that in your life, in your relationships, where when you actually begin to question what you've been assuming, you might be pleasantly surprised. It's all, it's building this wonderful muscle of recognising that you have a right to your preferences, you have a right to your needs and wants, so practising pausing, practising to check in with yourself about how you really feel before going along with things.

And support groups can be helpful, you might want to find, I've got the Sole to Soul membership for you, but you might want to find something in person, you might want to find something more formal.

Whatever works for you. As I mentioned, I'll be sharing in the Circle this simple breath practice to soothe the vagus nerve, and I am hoping that you are being kind to yourself as you consider your own potential for going into that response. And that you recognise that all of us have stress responses, the more we know about ourselves, the more we know about how we react under pressure, the better we can support ourselves.

And also, we can remind ourselves that there are a lot of times where it's actually, it might be triggering, but it's still safe enough for you to be your whole self, it's safe enough for you to get to know your wants and your needs and your preferences, and I am thinking a lot lately of that old Runaway Bride film with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.

He challenges her after observing her ditch several fiancés at the altar, he challenges her to find out how she likes her own eggs, because in each interview she's given it would be scrambled or fried. I feel really funny as a vegan going on about different eggs, I kind of miss fried egg.

If you don't know, if you've grown up accommodating everyone else to the point where you don't even know it, it can feel really sad to think, “I don't even know how I like breakfast, I don't even know this really simple thing”,

But it's an exciting adventure to take yourself on. Remind yourself that you are really worth getting to know, even though it may be decades after in an ideal world you would have learnt these things about yourself, it's never too late. You deserve love from yourself as well as from others. You deserve that curiosity.

I hope that you will let me know how you're getting on, you can email [email protected] or you can comment wherever you're seeing this or listening to this.

If you haven't already subscribed and would like to, feel free to. And thank you very much for listening, thank you for watching. As I mentioned you'll find out more with the show notes with any links and also you can go to selfcarecoaching.net to find out more about the book and the Sole to Soul Circle and my other offerings.

Wishing you a delightful week and I'm looking forward to sharing more next week.

JOIN ME (AND OTHERS) FOR THE LIVING AND WORKING WITH NEURODIVERGENCE CONFERENCE ON 10th OCTOBER. I’ll be presenting Cattitude: A Polyvagal Informed Approach to Self and Self-Care for ADHD and Trauma and you can book here

EPISODE 76

Do you constantly forget your accomplishments while ruminating on what’s gone wrong? You might be experiencing "success amnesia" - the tendency for trauma survivors and ADHDers to completely forget positive achievements while remembering every mistake.

In this episode of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, I (trauma therapist and ADHDer, Eve Menezes Cunningham) explain why success amnesia is so common in ADHD brains and share a simple daily practice to counter it.

Learn how to build authentic confidence by remembering what you've actually accomplished, even the small things. Using my Feel. Love. Heal framework, I share how to:

• Recognise and welcome your current feelings without judgment
• Connect with your inherent worth beyond achievements
• Use success tracking to support your efforts at collective care and empowerment

This isn't about fake positivity - it's about training your brain to remember the full picture of who you are and what you've done. Perfect for anyone struggling with low self-esteem, imposter syndrome, or feeling "not enough."

Timestamps, resources, and show notes available here

Feel Better Every Day!

Learn from the Self (for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself) and self-care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes I (your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) share trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas through the lens of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework to help you:

• Feel. Regulate your nervous system, work with your energy and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from

• Love. Accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and

• Heal. Collective care to turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large

Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get an exclusive deeper dive (these include bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices, journal prompts and more) each week.

WANT TO WORK WITH ME?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices

• You can join the Sole to Soul Circle and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme

• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can

• Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision).

WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

You can find me almost everywhere. Say "Hi" and share your questions or comments: YouTube @evemenezescunningham

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CHAPTERS

(0:00) Countering Success Amnesia

(0:39) Welcome to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

(1:25) The Feel. Love. Heal. Framework

(3:04) Autumn Equinox and International Day of Peace

(3:27) What Is Success Amnesia?

(5:27) Why Acknowledging Your Achievements Matters

(6:23) Feel: Active Self-care and Processing Emotions

(10:28) Love: Accepting Yourself as Enough

(12:38) Heal: Collective Care and Post-traumatic Growth

(14:34) A Daily Practice to Overcome Success Amnesia

(16:18) Coming Up Next Week: Tend and Befriend

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

As in, I'm going to recommend a daily practice you can do to counter “success amnesia”. It's a wonderful way for building confidence in a really authentic way. It's not like, “Wow, I'm brilliant!” or anything like that.

It's just like, “Oh, wow! I did these things today that I had forgotten. And, yeah, that makes sense as to why I was working late or why I was tired or why...” Whatever it might be, it's helping you take a breath, pause before you move on to the next thing and how you need to just do, do, do, do.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. I'm a trauma therapist and survivor, a clinical supervisor and supervisor's supervisor. An author, columnist, self-care coach, where I integrate the psychosynthesis counselling, the yoga therapy, EFT, NLP, crystals and more, NLP. And I'm also an ADHD-er.

And I'm also Rainbow Magnificat's human. She was really shy for all the cat episodes, but here she is now.

Every Tuesday, I share new episodes of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. And in each episode, I go through whatever the theme is, using my Feel. Love. Heal. Framework. This makes it something that's accessible for yourself to work with. Whatever you're working with. The Feel element is to do with active self-care. That's that lowercase s, self-care.

The Love is the acceptance, the connection with Divine Love, loving yourself and recognising you are part of the divine. That connecting with your miraculous Self, that highest, truest, wisest, the uppercase S. That remembering you don't need to do a thing. You're already enough. You're not too much. You're worthy. You're lovable. You're part of the divine. You're all made of stardust. Connecting with that around whatever issue you're facing, it can help you.

I don't know if you can see little Rainy here. Connecting with that divinity within yourself and everyone can be really transformative and a peaceful way of going through life.

The Heal element is the collective care. The co-regulation. The, when you've had enough time to deal with things, to let yourself just be, to regulate all those things. It can be then that post-traumatic growth, that co-regulation. The looking into ways to turn what's hurting your heart into a way to improve things for yourself, your family, your communities, the world at large.

For today's episode, episode 76, we're celebrating the Autumn Equinox, a time of balance and harmony, on the 21st September. We're also celebrating the International Day of Peace.

That might sound quite strange because of everything that's going on in the world so I'm going to share a resourcing technique today around “success amnesia”.

Of all the things I've learned as an ADHDer, the term “success amnesia” explains my entire life. And like kind of having low self-esteem for so long and self-loathing for so long and all the rest of it. And then realising how that is so common with ADHD and trauma, with working memory issues. We can do good stuff and completely forget it. I forgot I wrote a book. I've forgotten I've edited journals. I've forgotten columns. I've forgotten huge pieces of work or other things that were tough in life. Success amnesia is the phrase that explains why it's so prevalent for ADHDers.

By working with your own success amnesia, and I'll share some ways in this episode, it can not only boost your own self-esteem and confidence, or at least start chipping away at some of that self-loathing and internalised ableism, but it can also empower you to feel better, able to speak up, to help others. To navigate so much of the insanity we're facing in the world and things that we thought everyone had agreed were bad things left in the past, suddenly rearing their heads again in order to stand up, in order to be able to resist, in order to help make the world a better place for yourself, your communities and others.

It's important that you are doing so from a place of safety, from a place of wellbeing. By acknowledging your accomplishments, I know we've talked about the Dragon's Tail, which is a gorgeous somatic coaching exercise I talk about in the book and I've talked about in another episode I'll link to in the show notes.

But success amnesia is a daily practice, as in I'm going to recommend a daily practice you can do to counter success amnesia. It's a wonderful way for building confidence in a really authentic way. It's not like, wow, I'm brilliant, anything like that. It's just like, oh, wow, I did these things today that I had forgotten. And yeah, that makes sense as to why I was working late or why I was tired or why, whatever it might be, it's helping you take a breath, pause before you move on to the next thing and how you need to just do, do, do, do, do. So I hope you enjoy it.

As always, we'll start with the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. Framework. And I want to encourage you here to feel all the rage, all the fear, all the everything. Not act on it, but just recognise however it is you're feeling, getting it out of your body if you need to.

Thich Nhat Hanh has a beautiful meditation helping to recognise the temporary nature of so many emotions, even really strong emotions. When you feel yourself being hooked into clickbait headlines or news, if you can respond in a thoughtful, empowering, loving way, great.

But if you're just getting yourself stressed out and kind of feeling despair for humanity and the state of the world and all of that, it's not helping you.

You get to discern, you get to choose. But by recognising your rage, by feeling all your feelings, you're going to be in a better position to do all the work.

Sorry, little Rainey knocked the, oh bless her. She took the webcam with her little paw. Oh bless her. So think about, actually don't think, FEEL. Notice the most prominent feeling in your body right now.

The Feel part of the framework is about active self-care and feeling better. That kind of the things we can do to regulate. Identifying where you are, noticing what you're most conscious of. It might be a prominent body sensation. It might be a prominent emotion. But notice whatever it is you're feeling right now and say, “I feel…” whatever that is. It might be I feel despair. I feel rage. I feel hope. I feel love. I feel joy. I feel pride, whatever it might be.

Recognise, think about it when you're caught by a post online or something on TV or something someone says. And when we're trying to live, we're trying to be peaceful, loving beings ourselves in a world in which there's so much going on. That is so challenging and so polarising.

And it's trying to navigate doing what we can to help. But also staying sane and recognising where you are in any given moment, noticing the somatic sensations in your body, noticing the energy, noticing your charge, your life force, your prana, your chi. Just “I feel…” whatever it is.

And then, “I welcome…” whatever it is. It's going to help you recognise, “Is now the right moment to continue with this conversation for that International Day of Peace?” If someone is saying something quite provocative, there might be times where you're like, “Yep, I can ground, I can centre myself and I can speak up in a loving, respectful way that might actually help.” Like not just further polarise people or “Nope, I'm just getting angry here. It's going to make it worse. I'm going to do something else instead.”

Identifying how you're feeling is a very powerful thing. And I think you will also enjoy how quickly all feelings go. It makes us less likely, any kind of mindfulness practice, to hold on to joy, hold on to the good things because we recognise that everything is temporary.

Let me know how you get on with that. I do love hearing from you. Moving on to the Love part of the framework, it's that uppercase Self-care. That you don't have to do a thing. You are a wonderful part of the Divine. You deserve love. You deserve acceptance. That reminder alone can transform whatever issue you're working with.

When we stop resisting, when we stop trying, when we stop arguing with reality, that love, that acceptance, that support, it's just really transformative. And that doesn't mean that it's easy. It's a practice. Notice how it feels. If you want to be a force for love in the world, if you want to help make the world a better place.

I love the idea of helping making the world a better place where everyone, wherever we're born or live, is safe, welcome and loved and able to thrive. And love can, in this case for me, mean loving that kind of grandiose idea like, who am I to think that I can help make a difference? But I believe everyone can help make a difference.

It's not about taking it all on yourself, but thinking what is important to you and how can you make what you're doing as loving, as peaceful, as harmonious for your nervous system, for your body, for your life, for your loved ones as possible.

It might mean sending love to the parts of yourself that may be tempted to hate other people for what they're saying and doing and posting and all of that. It's like Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

It's really hard when things are so charged and the more you can remember that you're not just a human, you're not just a body. You are a soul as well. And you have that beyond the person energy and remembering that connection.

Which then moves us to the Heal element, that collective care, that encouragement to speak up, to connect with others, to co-regulate, to heal in community. There is so much to be so outraged about. Community is what will help you feel better, to heal and also to care for others as well as them helping care for you.

We're living in a world in which so many of the most powerful people on the planet are using that power against people. It's too easy to forget that you have so much power within yourself. You can connect with that ventral vagal energy as much as you can. You can feel empowered by the idea of post-traumatic growth to just, I mean, again, with the success amnesia log, by noticing at the end of every night what you've done.

It might be who you spoke up for. It might be things you did at work. It might be having had a loving discussion with your partner instead of, ah, it might be taking a breath and hugging your toddler instead of feeling impatient or whatever it might be.

Success amnesia is very worth overcoming because it will help you rise to the challenge of 2025 and all that we are dealing with personally, professionally, globally, in our communities.

When you remember all the things you have already accomplished, all the things you've already done and you build on that, it's from a much more grounded and centred energy and it makes it much more sustainable. There's not a huge gulf between what you're trying to do and feeling too tiny to make a difference.

I hope that gives you some ideas. Do email [email protected] if you want to let me know how you're getting on or comment wherever you're listening to or watching this.

I read them all and I do love to hear from you.

In the Sole to Soul Circle tomorrow, there'll be an EFT tap along to help you really integrate some of this and feel empowered to take even five minutes a day to do this simple, simple, simple and enormously effective practice to help you change the way that you feel about yourself and any challenges that you're up against.

Just making a list. It might be that you make a list with pen and paper or in your diary or on your phone, or you might just even say it to your reflection as you're brushing your teeth. I did. “I'm proud of myself for…” whatever it might be.

A tiny, tiny, tiny tweak to your life and it will help you make bigger steps in terms of what you're doing for yourself, for your communities and for the world at large.

Thank you for listening. I love sharing these. Next week, we're going to be talking about the Tend and Befriend response and people pleasing. I've just been interviewed about “extreme people pleasing” for a UK national paper so I think by the time that publishes, I'll be able to link to the show notes for the episode.

But I got so excited talking to the journalist, I thought this needs a podcast episode of its own. If you would like to subscribe, please do so. You can access full transcripts, show notes, links and all the rest of it through the show notes wherever you're listening or watching on YouTube. And you can also get it through selfcarecoaching.net and the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com.

You can find out more about joining the Circle and the book and you can potentially book a free telephone consultation if we have a mutually convenient time and you're interested in any of my Self care coaching or trauma informed therapies or supervision.

And I hope that you will keep a list. If you really want to ground this, it's really helpful not just to list what you're proud of yourself for having accomplished every day. And when I say accomplished, that sounds quite grandiose again. It's not like big things. It could be the tiniest thing, but it's building again. We retrain the nervous system with these micro moments and just taking a moment to acknowledge the things that you've done. It's powerful. Reading them back also really powerful.

It might be that you just write one thing you're proud of yourself for, but make sure you read it back every night. So you're building this long list and it will change the way you feel...

Celebrating 21 years as a professional writer and in practice, I (Self care coach, supervisor and trauma therapist, Eve Menezes Cunningham) share 21 lessons I've learned in hopes of saving you years or even decades in your own trauma and ADHD recovery journey.

From my early days discovering "you're not broken" to advanced insights about nervous system regulation and embodied healing, I reveal what really works (and what doesn't), why your body's wisdom trumps any technique, how trauma healing can be gentle, and why following your life force is the ultimate GPS.

These aren't just textbook theories. Whether you're a practitioner, on your own healing journey, or simply curious about what actually creates lasting change, this anniversary episode offers ideas to help you transform how you approach your own self-care, wellbeing and personal growth. And, if you have one, your own practice.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

It might be joy, it might be gratitude, it might be anger, it might be pain, it might be sadness, it might be jangly anxiety, it could be anything at all, but the more you get into the habit of connecting with your life force, connecting with your energy, connecting with your charge, connecting with your prana, your chi, it makes everything much easier.

You don't need all the theory, you don't need all the tools, all you need to do is connect with yourself and ask yourself, what do I need? What will help me right now? What am I feeling? What is that an indication of?

And it becomes a beautiful, exciting language, learning your own body, learning your own energy.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and I'm your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham.

To find out more about the podcast, access free resources, find out different ways in which we might work together, events coming up, the book, full show notes for each of the episodes, including transcripts and links, you can go to thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com or selfcarecoaching.net and let me know if you've got any questions.

There's a lot there, but I hope that all the resources are easily accessible for you. Whether or not you get in touch with me there's loads and loads you can do yourself. And with that in mind, I want to start today's episode, which is celebrating my 21st business birthday today.

And essentially, you don't need me or anyone else to remember how to trust yourself. That being said, I can help. I love doing these podcast episodes. I love sharing through my writing, through all the different ways in which I work, sharing some of the things that have helped me as well as many of the things that I work with in my private practice and with groups. Because we have access to a world of resources and ancient wisdom being proved by modern neuroscience.

We have so much available to us. And I thought with that in mind, I would share 21 of my lessons and blessings from 21 years in business. I hope it helps you, but I also never want you to forget that you already have everything you need within you.

You don't need me. You don't need anyone else. And what we listen to, what we watch, what we pay attention to, it helps us. It can, where we put our attention has quite a big impact. So I am hoping that my work does help you, even if we've never met or I've never heard from you.

1) I want to start with number one, which is something I wish I'd known when I was starting out. I had a suspicion and everything I initially trained with was to save my own life. But the fact that you're not broken, no matter how much your trauma history or your ADHD brain tries to convince you otherwise, you are not broken. You are worthy. You are lovable. You're not too much and you are enough and you deserve all the goodness life has to offer. So if you stop listening now, I hope you remember that.

2) I've made a note of Cheryl Richardson, who was, she still is one of my favourite authors. She was booed on Oprah decades ago for having the temerity to suggest that the audience should be taking care of themselves. She kind of popularised the idea of self-care and yeah, she was booed by lots of mums who had been conditioned to say, No. Now, everyone talks about the oxygen mask and on an aeroplane, you sort yours first, you make sure you're OK. You can breathe before you look after any dependents. Great.

Of course, everyone wants to make sure that other people are safe as well. But I want you to also consider the fact that you, even if you don't have dependents, even if you're just getting your oxygen mask for yourself, you are worthy. I love Cheryl Richardson's approach and she was an enormous inspiration to me early on.

I wouldn't have believed that I'd still be doing this and I'd be loving it even more 21 years later. But I just had a bit of a flicker of the light behind. So yeah, easily distracted ADHD brain.

She is such a gentle presence. Her books are so lovely. And I think for me, even though she was on Oprah, and obviously I was starting out as a coach and complimentary therapist back in 2004, it was her gentle approach. I didn't have the words for it then, therapeutic coaching. And I trained as a coach before I trained as a therapist. So I wasn't doing that yet.

It became what I call self-care coaching. Where I integrate all my offerings, including the yoga, the NLP, the EFT, all of it. But back then she was the only one who... I thought I knew that my coaching was working. I knew it was helping me. I knew it was helping my clients. But when you'd see coaches in the public eye back then, they tended to be very Tony Robbins, who I also love, but very much not my vibe. So yeah, I just wanted to name her as an enormous lesson and blessing.

And also Martha Beck, who I later got to interview, which remains one of my favourite interviews, but just their gentleness and their wisdom. And I'm not suggesting that the more dynamic coaches weren't like that. But I think Martha Beck also was my introduction into working with the body long before I actually started working with the body, because...

This is Mighty Meadbh. I don't know if she's going to say Hello.

I remember her having me and other people in the group identify a really simple, basic way, I'll go into it with the Sole to Soul Circle. To just listen to the body's wisdom, which is always there. This was before I trained as a yoga therapist, before I did any of the somatic work that I do, but it was a real revelation.

So definitely there.

3) And that's what I'm saying, really, when I say number three, you know yourself best, you can trust yourself, you may well have, especially with trauma, especially with ADHD, have been conditioned into believing that you need outside information and outside dictators, like kind of didactic, telling you what to do, how to do everything. Learning how other people have done it can be really helpful, checklists, body doubling, all sorts of things, all of this can be really helpful.

But you don't need it, you know yourself, you know what feels good, you know what doesn't. And the more I've learned, and the more... can you hear her purr?

The more I understand about the nervous system and Polyvagal Theory and how we're wired to thrive when we feel safe, welcome and loved. And with trauma, with ADHD, you may well have been conditioned out of it, but it's never too late to relearn, to notice what feels good, move towards that, what doesn't, move away from that.

4) Feel Better Every Day. I liked the name because it had my name in it, Eve, and it just felt positive.

But I was always careful to avoid toxic positivity, encouraging people to welcome the full emotional landscape. And recognising it's a bit like when you go to the gym, or if you're doing anything fitness-related. As we build muscle, we're breaking muscle down. With personal development work, with trauma recovery, with the Self Care Coaching, with befriending your ADHD brain, a lot of the time you'll feel better after watching a video, or listening to a podcast, or doing one of the exercises I shared, or for people who work with me one-to-one or in groups. But it's not always the case. Healing isn't linear.

It's not like Woohoo! But I think for me, even knowing that I was learning things that were helping me enjoy life and want to be alive, Feel Better Every Day just felt like a lovely name.

5) Following your life force, your charge, your prana, your chi. Again, it's so body-based, and it's energy-based, and it's recognising, in any given moment, where you feel most alive. And it might be joy, it might be gratitude, it might be anger, it might be pain, it might be sadness, it might be jangly anxiety. It could be anything at all.

But the more you get into the habit of connecting with your life force, connecting with your energy, connecting with your charge, connecting with your prana, your chi, it makes everything much easier.

You don't need all the theory. You don't need all the tools. All you need to do is connect with yourself and ask yourself, what do I need? What will help me right now? What am I feeling? What is that an indication of? And it becomes a beautiful, exciting language, learning your own body, learning your own energy.

6) The embodiment, the embodied wellbeing element. And I think it was a huge lesson and blessing to learn that it was safe for me to be in my body. Like I say, all the things I trained in initially, they were to help me.

Start however small you need. There's a lovely exercise around it. You might start with an earlobe, you might start with the tip of your nose, you might start with one toe. Any part of the body that feels neutral and that you can expand on.

We all are embodied in this lifetime, and it's how our souls have chosen to experience the world. And the more embodied we are, the more we are as comfortable in our own skin as possible, the more we enjoy life, the more we can ground, the more we can transcend whatever’s going on for us.

7) Because we're paying attention to those early signs, we're adapting, we're able not only to feel OK, but to feel joy. And to recognise that joy is a wonderful GPS, joy is a way, contentment is a way, love is a way, all the positive emotions, they're ways of guiding us towards our highest goods. Finding safe ways to feel embodied and to build on them is just incredible. I never, ever, ever would have believed that I would be sitting here saying that, I used to be so disembodied.

8) Cats are incredible. And it's Meadbh! I'm not going to lift her now, because she's kind of purring away on my lap and holding paws with me, and I don't want to disturb her. But I kind of, I learned over many, many years, to have more courage to be myself.

And my site, probably since I wrote the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Selfcare Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, I put everything that I was doing at the time into the book. And it kind of was a way for me to out myself with some of my stranger offerings. And I think the more experienced I've got, and the more I've healed myself, the more I've realised it's safe to be me, the more I've really kind of allowed what moves me to drive me.

And I have a whole area of work inspired by the rescue cats, working with polyvagal theory, presenting at a conference and recording CPD for a therapy organisation, and working on a book about it. But I've been, for 13 years since I got Rainbow, it's been so informative. Like before I could get embodied as a human, before I could co-regulate with another human, it was Rainbow Magnificat helped me come to a place of peace and ease in my body on a regular basis, to help her stay in rest digest mode as much as possible, me talking as gently to her, and that became me talking gently to myself as well.

So obviously, I'm still a human. But yeah, cats being incredible had to be number eight.

9) Moving to Purr! Hiss! Freeze! and how I use cats to illustrate Polyvagal Theory (and encourage people to come up with their own names, when naming the dorsal vagal sympathetic survival and ventral vagal states) helping you get to know your own nervous system. You can listen to that episode again, or go to selfcarecoaching.net/feline. And that will take you there. But yeah, I just find it incredible how not just me, but my clients, people I know personally, and groups, we're generally much kinder in the way we talk to a beloved cat or kitten or puppy or dog or lizard or toddler or baby or child. And the more you can think to yourself, the way you talk to yourself matters.

In terms of polyvagal theory, like your tone of voice is hugely important. And that was the start of it for me, really softening my tone of voice, because I didn't want to upset the cat. And as a result, I began to internalise a softer inner voice, then all the tools and techniques and tips and tricks which do work, which are helpful, but they weren't enough for me.

It's simple, just play with it, experiment with it, be gentle with when you kind of go back into less friendly self-talk.

10) Healing can be painful. There were times when I was doing my crystal therapy training, there were times when I was doing my therapy training, oh my god, the amount of full-on snotty nose tears and sobbing and shaking and all of it.

Healing can be painful. You can have spiritual crises where I remember being told ground, ground, ground by my crystal therapy trainer. And later, when I became a trauma therapist and realising how important grounding and resourcing are.

11) But you don't need any training to think how can ground, something like washing up can be grounding, putting your laundry away, walking barefoot in the grass or on the sand. Just putting the feet down, putting like the hands down, like touching the ground, imagining you've got roots going into the heart of the earth, breathing in that nourishing, supportive earth energy. Loads of kind of loads and loads and loads of ways, but I don't want you to be thinking that it's overly complicated.

Think of the times you felt most nourished and supported by the earth's nourishing, supportive, accepting, holding, containing, beautiful healing energy. When have you felt most, you can just undo more of that. In terms of spiritual crises, I wish I had taken more time back then to rest.

I wish I had taken more time back then to process, to sleep, to dream, to nap, to meditate, to journal, to do the things that with hindsight would have helped me not feel like I spent the entire nearly four years of counselling training in an emotional washing machine. You can make it gentler for yourself. So that's number 11.

Healing can be gentle. You get to choose and it really is about prioritising yourself.

12) If you choose gentle, if you choose ease for whatever's coming up for healing for you in any given moment, maybe a lifetime of pain, maybe day to day, trust your nervous system. Stop overriding what you know to be true. You might be thinking you don't understand, and again with trauma, with ADHD, we were conditioned to override.

We were conditioned to endure. We were conditioned to mask, to pretend to be okay when we weren't. But you can unlearn that at any time and your nervous system is designed to help you thrive through what feels good.

It's something that helps you then connect with others to create safety, not just for yourself, but for others. It contributes to peace in your relationships, in your communities, in the world at large, to your connecting with your resourcefulness. And oh my god, if we could live in a world where everyone was safe, welcome and loved, everyone would be in a position to thrive.

No problem would be insurmountable because we'd be working together in ways in which people felt safe enough to make mistakes and to really bring their best selves without pressure to be their best.

13) Is the everyday aspect of the Feel Better Every Day name and creating a life you don't need to retreat from. Self-care is free. You don't need fancy retreats. You can go for them. You can enjoy them. I've facilitated a few myself. It can be wonderful. But self-care is daily. It's hourly. It's every minute. You have a choice with every breath to move towards what feels good, what feels friendly and what doesn't.

And I know that the self-care industry is a multi-million, multi-billion euro industry. But at its core, it's about you connecting with yourself. You don't need fancy candles. You don't need anything.

I've got loads of free resources on the site. The book is very reasonable. There are libraries.

There's the podcast. But there is loads of free information out there, not just from me, free meditations, free yoga nidras, all sorts of things.

But the more you learn to connect with yourself, the more you know in any given moment, what is your life force telling you? What is your nervous system telling you? And listen to it all.

14) Is the lesson and blessing that I've created a life I don't need to retreat from. I've been in this house for six years. I've been in Ireland for six and a half years. And that was probably one of the most dramatic examples for me back in 2018, where I was so upset watching Boris Johnson on the TV, on the news, not facing any consequences from all the lies before the Brexit vote, which kind of led to so much hate and led to so much.

I mean, sunlight's the best disinfectant, but it was just such an awful realisation for me, growing up Indian Irish, born in London, but believing that most people were against what the British Empire had inflicted on so much of the globe and realising, no, that hadn't been the case. So, yeah, I've created a life I don't need to retreat from, which is wonderful.

15) It came from number 15, following my feelings and letting myself sob watching him on the telly on Valentine's Day 2018. And I was single, and I'd been single for a really long time. I was used to using my NLP, my coaching, all the things to get myself into a resourceful state and to not wallow.

But that day, I just let myself sob and sob and sob and sob. And I expected that the idea to move to Ireland would vanish. And for several days, I thought I'd wake up and feel differently.

But the more I learnt, I'd always had an Irish passport, the more I learnt, the more I wanted to do it. But I had to feel that pain, that hurt, that rage. And by this time, I'd gone through my therapy training, I'd done all of that, but it was still such a revelation that from such pain, like I couldn't breathe, I was so upset the idea that hate had been legitimised.

And then later that year, what happened in America, and what's going on now, what's going on in so many parts of the world, it's horrific. And we can use our rage, we can use our pain, we can use our hurt to heal, to make yourself safe, and to then ground resource yourself and figure out what you can do to turn that pain into support for yourself, for others.

16) Going back in time, learning from all over the world, learning from all different ages. So much of