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

Are you dealing with trauma? PTSD? Complex PTSD? ADHD? Feeling overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world?

In this PTSD awareness episode, trauma therapist Eve Menezes Cunningham shares some of her personal journey from PTSD diagnosis to healing, and uses the Feel better. Be better. Do better method to support you in navigating personal and collective trauma.

‘Instead of being consumed by hate, his hope was that Israelis and Palestinians and Christians could live in peace and harmony. And he created this school, Hope Flowers.’ Eve also reflects on an interview she did 20 years ago with, Ibrahim Issa, the son of the Hope Flowers School founder in Jerusalem regarding ongoing traumatic stress.

About this podcast

Feel Better Every Day! Learn from  the self 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 to help you:

•          Feel better (regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from)

•          Be better (accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing) and

•          Do better (turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large)

Thanks for listening or 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 deeper dives each Wednesday morning.

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 on Substack (https://evemc.substack.com ) 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  

• While my private practice for one to one work (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision) is almost always at capacity, if you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s still 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.

Want to connect with me on social media?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say ‘Hi’ and tell me what you want to ask or say:

YouTube @evemenezescunningham

Substack @evemc

Bluesky @eveimc

TikTok @evemenezescunningham

Insta @evemenezescunningham

Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay

And if you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your 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

(0:03 – 0:45) Welcome and purpose of the podcast

(0:46 – 2:12) Sole to Soul Circle and resources for healing

(2:13 – 4:05) PTSD diagnosis and the power of language

(4:06 – 6:28) Ongoing trauma: A story of hope from Jerusalem

(6:29 – 8:36) Global crisis, collective trauma and marginalised communities

(8:37 – 10:32) Self-care in the midst of ongoing trauma

(10:33 – 12:14) Feel better. Be better. Do better: Rest, regulation and compassion

(12:16 – 12:41) Grounding with what resonates: Feel, Be, or Do better

(12:42 – 13:20) Healing through love, protest, and the ocean

(13:21 – 14:00) Upcoming Circle content and community nourishment

(14:00 – 14:36) Next week’s theme

Resources

Hope Flowers School article: https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/content/news/teaching-peace

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 listening. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

Full transcript

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday, I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself. That's that highest, wisest, truest, most joyful, brilliant, miraculous part of yourself.

I do this to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from. You can find out more at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and you can, if you're interested in taking a deeper dive each week for the Sole to Soul Circle, which you can join, there are bonus interviews and deeper dives into the practices that have come up through that week's episode from that week's theme.

This week, it’s grounding practices to support trauma recovery.

And you also get immediate access to a rich archive, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey. You might also find the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing of interest. And there are book bonus videos and other self-care coaching resources for trauma, ADHD, and all sorts of areas at selfcarecoaching.net. Today's episode is for PTSD awareness.

And with everything that's going on in the world, it's like, much as I know that PTSD, its inclusion in the Diagnostic Statistics Manual and the DSM, it was life-changing for so many people, myself included, when I got a PTSD diagnosis back in 2008. It was after a house fire, and it gave me the language to help me understand my complex PTSD from very early childhood. It helped me learn to heal.

It helped me learn to ground and resource and to end up becoming a trauma therapist. And I love my work because I love that there are so many ways in which we can heal. And I'm also aware, I keep thinking of an interview I did, like when I was newly freelance, 2004, it appeared in Nursery World, a UK magazine for nursery people, in 2005.

And I just found a link, I will link to it in the show notes. https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/content/news/teaching-peace

But I never forgot this man I spoke to in Jerusalem. He was the son of Hussein Ibrahim Issa.

His name is Ibrahim Issa. And he ran the Hope Flowers School in Jerusalem. I'm not going to cry.

I'm not going to cry. They are bringing together, since his father's work as a Palestinian born refugee who had lost everything after World War II, instead of being consumed by hate, his hope was that Israelis and Palestinians and Christians could live in peace and harmony. And he created this school, Hope Flowers, where all three religions and people of no religion were educated.

And they were being bombed, like this is back 2004, 2005, when I was interviewing him. They didn't know one week to the next, like I think a wall had just been destroyed a week earlier. And I said something about PTSD very naively.

And he just said, really sadly, it's not post, this is ongoing, the children, they're tiny, tiny children. And it was ongoing. And of course, with everything that's happening in the world, I'm doing my best focus on the people who are working towards building peace and healing and trauma recovery for everyone rather than endless cycles.

But I thought there's no point doing something about post-traumatic stress as if you've survived the trauma. And that's all you have to worry about, just focus on the reflection, the healing, the all of it.

I think everyone is traumatised right now, I don't want to name any situations, because I don't want to be triggering anyone.

But at the same time, it's having to navigate life at different levels. And I know that marginalised communities have had to deal with this for so much longer, ongoing onslaughts to the right to exist, and then having to be professional at work, having to like wanting to bring their dreams into reality.

And I thought rather than doing an episode on post-traumatic stress disorder for post-traumatic stress disorder awareness, I would just name it and just encourage you, however you're feeling, whatever global situations or local situations.

I really don't want to name local things and global things in case that's not something that's making you cry at the moment. But I'm sure you have your own situations and they might be personal as well. People are struggling, individuals are struggling.

And I just wanted to use this episode to remind you that healing from trauma, when it's ongoing, is harder when you can't ground yourself as easily and remind yourself that you're safe when you don't feel safe when you're being triggered on a regular basis when you're actual thinking about what I said.

I'm not going to name places, I'm not going to, but you could think of many parts of the world where just the most basic things are suddenly very, very dangerous for so many people and people are laying their bodies on the line for peace and for healing and for progress where others are attempting to destroy that.

As we think about the feel better, be better, do better model, in terms of feeling better, the more you can make those self-care practices as bite-sized as possible, the more likely you are to actually do them. When life is so busy, when life is so hectic, when you feel potentially traumatised, it can feel not just self-indulgent, but it can feel impossible to do something that make you feel better.

For me, I talk about sitting underwater as my medicine and whether that's the pool or yesterday in the ocean and it just feeling so healing and it sets me up for several days at a time, but I don't always have the time to go, I can't swim every day, it just doesn't work with my schedule.

I can't do a longer yoga nidra every day, much as I would love to, but I can make time for a 10-minute yoga nidra and that just helps me. I can make time to connect with my breath, but less than a minute even, any time during the day.

I can make time for strong movement, I don't have time today, for example, to do my normal five kilometre walk, so I did a brisker two kilometre walk earlier and I'll do the other 3km later.

Think for yourself, think about your everyday self-care tools and practices, think about what helps you feel better, those regulatory things and think about one thing you can do when you're feeling traumatised, watching the news or scrolling on your phone or dealing with personal stories, hearing phone calls, talking to loved ones or what you're facing yourself. Think about one thing you can do that helps you feel better, that helps you regulate and do that as much as you can.

As we move into then the be better, that sense of there's no need to improve yourself, there's no need to do anything, you're fine, pull the duvet over your head if it's safe to do so. It can be incredibly hard to be, to relax, to give space to what might be coming up for healing when you're feeling very hypervigilant and unsafe and when you might be unsafe.

If you're able to, creating space to cry, creating space to talk to loved ones and other like-minded people, helping you heal in that co-regulation way, creating as much time as you can to allow yourself to nap, allow yourself to sleep, allow yourself to rest.

I realise that can feel really challenging where things are so busy, things are so hectic, but by creating pockets of space, even if you can't sleep, even if you can't nap, you can still rest, you can still notice that hypervigilance, you can still send yourself enormous love and compassion and recognise that anyone would be feeling stressed, let alone when you've been through what you've been through and how it might be triggering you right now.

Remind yourself you're doing amazingly, you're living through very challenging times, and allow yourself to be in whatever way helps you ground and remember that you have every right to joy and peace and freedom and love and safety and all of that. And if you want to just put an eye mask on or pull a jumper over your head or put the duvet over your head and just shut the world out for even a minute or a few minutes or have that nap if you can or cry, let it out.

Again, I'm moving back into the Feel better, but I guess the Be better, let yourself know that it's normal to be feeling traumatised, it's normal to be feeling triggered and what we are hearing about, what we are observing, what we are seeing, what we are feeling, it's too horrific for our nervous systems to navigate in normal situations.

The more you can do to just let yourself be and feel overwhelmed and feel hopeless and all of that, not saying to stay there, but acknowledging where you are and sending yourself enormous love and compassion will help you more than beating yourself up for not doing more.

But we are going to move into the Do better phase where we turn what hurts our heart, we transform that into action once we've stayed in that be better phase for as long as it's needed.

And I'm going to just say this week, just know that you are enough and you don't have to protest, you don't have to write letters, you don't have to do anything. If it's too much to even be kind and hold a door open for someone, just be kind to yourself and recognise that the more you are taking care of yourself, the more empowered you are yourself, the more you will be able to do in terms of supporting your community, helping heal the world, helping heal your family, whatever that might be.

But if you were to think of one thing you would like to do, if you had more energy in order to bring more peace, more healing to yourself, your communities and the world this week, what might that be?

Even imagine fantasising about it, giving yourself permission to not do a thing, to just kind of get through the day. But beginning to think about how might you turn that trauma into healing for yourself and others. If it feels good, it can feel empowering, it can also feel like too much pressure so honour what's feeling good for you.

To ground today's episode, I want you to think in terms of the Feel better, Be better, Do better method. What resonates most for you right now. For me, it's very much the Feel better. I'm amping up all my regulatory self-care tools, the practices that help me function, that help me get through the day.

I am still very much making space to be. It's an ongoing process. I find it more challenging.

And the doing, I'm protesting where I can. And most of all, I'm trying to be a force for love. I'm trying to connect with Divine Love as much as I can and keep reminding myself that we're all connected.

I was very much doing it in the ocean yesterday. The ocean reaches the whole planet. And just trying to do better by taking care of myself so that I'm at peace and not contributing to like projecting out all my own unhealed stuff and making things worse locally or beyond that.

Think for yourself what resonates most for you today, this week, whenever you're listening to this. Whenever you're watching this. And for our deeper dive in the Sole to Soul Circle, we're going to come back to some grounding practices to meet you where you are.

And I'm going to be asking members to give me some ideas for what would be most nourishing for you for this week. And so at time of recording the podcast, I don't know what that will be. But you can always find more resources at the website, which you can choose from.

Next week, it's going to be a lighter episode on the power of play. Episode 65. I hope that you have found today helpful.

And I hope that you will remember that you are enough. You're doing great. You're doing just surviving right now is taking an enormous amount.

Do what you can curate your feed. Notice what you're watching, what you're listening to and make it as soothing and supportive for yourself as you can. And just sending enormous love.

Thank you for listening.

Do you wish you could help heal the world but find yourself overwhelmed? Learn to Feel Better, Be Better and DO Better. Subscribe for trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas every Tuesday.

Are you navigating trauma and ADHD? This episode is for you. As we approach the Summer Solstice, it's a powerful time to reflect on what you're giving your energy to and how you allow yourself to shine.

But what if you don't feel ‘shiny’? Or have the energy you wish you did? Learn to honour your current capacity, especially when living with a trauma history and an ADHD brain.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to release the pressure to perform and embrace self-compassion, even when your energy feels low.
• Practical, trauma-informed, and ADHD-friendly ways to help your nervous system rebalance, including simple breathwork and mindful movement.
• Why allowing yourself to rest and simply be (even when hyper-vigilance or performance conditioning makes it challenging) is essential.
• How regulating your own system helps you contribute more effectively to the world without burning out.
• Why embracing community and collective action is especially important when you feel the weight of global challenges.

Empower yourself to Feel Better, Be Better and Do Better.

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

Learn from the self 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 to help you:

• Feel Better (regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from)

• Be Better (accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing) and

• Do Better (turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large)

Thanks for listening or 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 deeper dives each Wednesday morning.

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 on Substack https://evemc.substack.com 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

• While my private practice for one to one work (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision) is almost always at capacity, if you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s still 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.

Want to connect with me on social media?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say ‘Hi’ and share your questions and comments:

YouTube @evemenezescunningham

Substack @evemc

Bluesky @eveimc

TikTok @evemenezescunningham

Insta @evemenezescunningham

Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay

And if you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your 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 - 5:27) – Introduction to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and Summer Solstice

(5:28 - 14:00) – How to work with your nervous system to feel better this Solstice and let yourself shine. Feel Better and Be Better

(14:01 - 18:58) – Moving into Do Better to improve things not only for yourself but your family, teams, communities and world

(18:59 - 20:55) – Finding the courage to speak up for others and an invitation to the Sole to Soul Circle

(20:55 - 21:22) – How to join the Sole to Soul Circle at evemc.substack.com

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 listening. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

#TraumaInformed #ADHDSupport #SelfCare #NervousSystemRegulation #SummerSolstice #PodcastForADHD #TraumaRecovery #EveMenezesCunningham

Full transcript

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S: that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. The idea is to help you feel better every day, creating life you don't need to retreat from.

You can find out more at

http://thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com

And in today's episode, we're celebrating the Summer Solstice. So in the Northern Hemisphere, it's the 21st of June. I mean, it's the 21st of June everywhere, but it's summer here.

If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, you might be celebrating the winter solstice. And I'm kind of laughing because I live on the west coast of Ireland and it's been quite wintery even in June right now, which is perfect for this episode because the Summer Solstice.

When we're working with the Celtic Wheel of the Year energies, it's a wonderful time to think about your public self, that part of you. It's a great time to think about your commitments and what you're giving your energy to.

It's a wonderful time to think about letting yourself shine. And you think of summer solstice, you think bright sunshine, sunflower energy, glorious warmth. And that's not always the case.

And that's also not always the case with yourself. Sometimes our energies are aligned and in tune with the seasonal energies, whether the lunar cycle or the Celtic Wheel or whatever you follow. And other times they can feel like there's a bit of a mismatch.

So if there are lots of things you want to be doing, lots of contributions you want to be making to the world and you just don't have the energy, that's fine. It's about honouring yourself and letting yourself be.

Really just noticing for yourself now, you might want to grab a journal and think for yourself, what do you tell yourself when you feel like you should be doing more? When you feel like you should be your shiniest, happiest self and you just don't feel like it?

Maybe you have high hopes for what you'd like to be doing, maybe in your life, in your family, in your work, in your community, in the world at large, all these ideas and just struggling to manifest them, struggling to make them a reality?

I'm really encouraging you today to connect with your energies this Solstice and to think about how you might feel safe and secure enough to step out of your comfort zone, let yourself be seen and heard, let yourself be more visible and recognise that that is going to be scary for your nervous system. Any time we expand, there's that part of you that's going to be afraid. Working with it rather than denying it means you can support yourself through it and still make the kind of contribution you want to make to helping create a better, fairer, more equitable planet for everyone and also in your own work, in your own life.

But we need to recognise where we are, we need to start where we are. There's no point thinking that you've got all these brilliant ideas if you do or feeling overwhelmed. There's so much in 2025 to feel hopeless and overwhelmed by, but that doesn't help anyone.

For the Feel Better portion of this episode, so the Feel Better element is for those times when you have the motivation, the energy, the bandwidth to do the things that can help change your state, that can help resource you. We're going to be working with the nervous system and just recognising that we might be quite sophisticated beings in some ways, but our wiring is ancient and we just aren't equipped for everything that's going on.

The best thing we can do is not argue with reality and build in as much downtime as possible so that our nervous system can do the lift, lift, lift, sympathetic activation that life and all its excitement and all its stress and all its horror can bring. But the last thing we want to do is burn out and just go into that collapse mode. By building in times in which we can actively rest, actively rest, I make it sound like such hard work…

With trauma histories, with ADHD, rest and relaxation can feel like really hard work, but it's about countering what's normally happening. You're on the go at work, you're on the go at home, you're on the go with your unique brain wiring, thinking about a million things, a million causes you care so deeply about and feel hopeless about.

And that isn't healthy and that's not going to help anyone. Your suffering does not help anyone.

To help you feel better this Solstice, just be aware that your nervous system needs a rest, it needs a break, it needs to rebalance and you can do this as simply as if you are a runner or a swimmer or you do any kind of activity. If you're doing yoga, pause in Savasana after the Sun Salutations in your home practice or you might do some weights and then kind of sit down or lie down, wait for your heart to settle or some push-ups.

Any kind of activity, it might be vacuuming your house, any kind of activity, lift your heart rate or going for a brisk walk, lift your heart rate and then give yourself permission to sit down and if it's possible, observe your heart rate coming back to normal. That can, with some trauma histories, feel quite anxiety-inducing.

Go easy with yourself, go gently with yourself but it can be really beneficial to come into the body in this way and just notice what's happening with the heart rate and when it comes back down to normal, then get on with your day.

You've then begun to retrain your nervous system and the more we do that, we're helping to support our heart rate variability and that helps our physical health as well as our mental and emotional health.

It gives us that flexibility, we're able to deal with when we need to be. I love always thinking about cats and they might be very, very rested and relaxed but they're still ready but they're not like we often get where we're not relaxing.

We're not letting ourselves properly relax because we're so hyper-vigilant. By retraining the nervous system, you're going to be supporting that and a really simple thing you can do, pretty much anytime, anywhere, is to observe what's happening with the breath.

Just for yourself now you might want to notice whether the breath is shallow if you're breathing from the top of the lungs or from the middle of the lungs or from the lower lungs as if you were breathing from the belly.

And if it feels good for you, you might want to see how it feels to deepen the breath if you were breathing from the middle of the lungs or the top of the lungs and get a sense then of whether your in-breath is longer than your out-breath, your inhalation longer than your exhalation or if it's the other way around, longer out-breath, longer exhalation or if they're evenly balanced and ideally because we live in a society where we're on the go all the time and there's stress, stress, stress, excitement, excitement, excitement, for overall balance it's good to have a calming breath that's going to actually calm the nervous system, bring on that rest-digest response, that parasympathetic activation. For that, aiming for a slightly longer exhalation. If you enjoy counting, you might count in for one and out for two, in for two or out for three. Or in for four and out for six. A ratio that feels good with your breath, with your lung capacity.

Some people, myself including, find counting stressful so I prefer to just get a sense of a slightly longer exhalation and I'm aware other people like I've taught this at an investment bank in London and they very much wanted to know how long to count for so do what feels good for you and just notice even over these few moments how does it feel to notice your heart rate settle, to notice the breath, to deepen the breath and to aim for that slightly longer exhalation.

Something as simple as that can help you feel better, that's helping you regulate. In psychosynthesis terms we're using the Will archetype, that kind of any situation what can we do, how can we use discipline and focus and motivation and of course the more we practice the more easy it is to remember when we need these tools the most and of course with ADHD and with trauma recovery sometimes what seems like the simplest thing in the world can be impossible.

We move then into the Be Better element where that might sound like pressure but the idea is you're letting yourself just be. Letting yourself think, OK, I have ideas for what I would love to do in my own work, in my family, in my community, in the world and I just don't have the energy right now, I don't have the bandwidth right now.

Imagine putting a duvet over your head, let the sun shine outside and don't feel pressured to do anything that doesn't feel good for you. The being better element is the allowing yourself to rest, to relax and again recognising that can be really challenging with ADHD brains and also with trauma history. We have that hyper vigilance, it can feel unsafe to be and we might have been raised to perform and it can feel like we're not worthy of just allowing ourselves to be.

That can trigger a stress response on its own so notice how you feel as I even talk about it but also think about the times if you can where you have just let yourself be, where you've just been relaxing in the shower or maybe sitting in the sun. For me it's being underwater, just floating or swimming or snorkelling or taking pictures.

It's that time when my mind is most relaxed and it might be again after strong movement, after some sort of exercise. You're just letting yourself. So thinking about some of those times where first of all everyone deserves to just be, like we're human beings, it's not about doing but we get so conditioned to feel we have to be performing, we have to be productive, we have to be and I kind of hate saying this but it also helps motivate me and some of my clients to know that the more we actually build in that time for rest and relaxation even when it feels like the world is shining around us and we're supposed to be on.

Let yourself be, let yourself do what feels good to be you in any given moment, pull that duvet over your head or have a nap in the garden or whatever it might be for you, it might be watching a film that you love and don't have to think about much or listening to music but again that's kind of moving more back into the Feel Better, the regulatory, the thinking about what's going help me feel better.

The Be Better bit really is that letting yourself get still, letting yourself do nothing. For some of you I know that it's a sense of joy, like ‘I love doing nothing!’ and for others you might be, ‘Ah that feels impossible.’

Just notice how it feels. Then we move on to Do Better where I want you to think about what you would like for yourself, for your family, for your communities and the world. If you were to imagine the best case scenario for the world?

There is so much going on, there is so much pain, so much suffering, so many people in so many different parts of the world in so many ways, your suffering does not help anyone else.

You're allowing yourself to regulate, to look after yourself, to do the things that bring you joy, that empower you. And also you're allowing yourself to be better, to let yourself be and not be constantly trying to improve yourself but to know that you are worthy, you are lovable, it's the love archetype in psychosynthesis, just recognising how you feel in any given moment and what you need.

When you have that grounded, when you are feeling better from that deep within state, you will then feel more empowered to Do Better, to have a positive impact on the world around you.

I've just suddenly remembered, in my 20s I was very involved in the peace movement and I was working full-time, I had a chronic pain condition and I was crossing London every week or every other week one evening a week to go. We were fortunate enough, John McDonnell, an MP back then, had given us access to the House of Parliament to have our meetings for the Campaign for a Ministry for Peace.

I was in my 20s and other people involved were much older, much more experienced human rights lawyers and I had no clue I had ADHD at the time. I just knew I cared so deeply about everyone on the planet and I burnt out, I completely burnt out.

I was trying to do way too much and I was feeling so hopeless. I ended up getting signed off work for two weeks. This was in my last office job in a legal publishing company and I was basically so upset that my taxes were being used to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan. I was sobbing walking around the open plan office, I had such high hopes for how the world could be safe for every child and like thinking now about everything that's going on and the people impacted in all parts of the world and how heartbreaking it is and how hopeless it is easy to feel and how that doesn't help anyone.

We have to do what helps us regulate our own nervous system. We have to not let ourselves get caught up in the outrage and the fear and the hopelessness but to do the things that nourish us even if it feels self-indulgent, eating the good food, letting yourself sleep, letting yourself just find as much joy in life as possible, that is then going to help you do better, that is going to help you have the energy to make a positive impact, to help transform what hurts your heart into healing not only yourself but your communities and the world at large.

I'm aware that this might sound like quite an all-over-the-place plan and I'm also aware that ADHD brains might relate: there's that part of you that's like, ‘I want to do all the things, I want to help with this cause, with this cause, with this area, with this everything’ and again the Metta meditations you can Google and at selfcarecoaching.net Metta is Loving Kindness. There are lots that you can listen to and do yourself and it really helps me to not just kind of get around sobbing age nearly 50 now.

Yes, I cry a lot but I'm actually happier now than I've ever been in spite of all that's going on in the world because I feel more empowered and I know that there is hope for humanity however dire...

It's easy to feel overwhelmed when navigating ADHD and trauma recovery. You might constantly receive messages to tone it down or conform. But what if your unique sensitivities and intensity aren't something to suppress, but an expression of your Self?

This is where psychosynthesis and its concept of The Ways offers an empowering perspective. Developed by Roberto Assagioli, psychosynthesis is a transpersonal approach that honours your inherent wholeness and the unique ways your soul seeks to express itself. Instead of shaming you into being less, it celebrates the diverse paths individuals have taken throughout history to live authentically.

The Ways – seven types of soul expression – provide a framework for understanding not only yourself but also your loved ones. Imagine gaining self-empathy for your sensitivities, like experiencing misophonia on the Way of Beauty, or recognising your drive to make a difference on the Way of Action.

It’s not about fitting into a box but about recognising and giving yourself permission to fully embody your unique gifts and interests. For ADHDers especially, who often hear they are too much, The Ways offer a powerful reminder that your full, whole self is exactly what's needed for personal growth and to contribute to the world.

Exploring The Ways can help you:

• Connect with your unique purpose and potential
• Find greater purpose, meaning and joy in your daily life
• Develop deeper empathy for yourself and others and
• Integrate all parts of yourself for true wholeness.

Are you ready to support your soul as it unfurls and blossoms? Listen to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or watch here.

Work with me

Want to work with me (or access book bonus videos and other free resources)?

Find me on social media @evemenezescunningham and @feelbettereveryday

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#TraumaRecovery, #ADHD, #EmotionalRegulation, #SelfCare, #WholeSelf, #Psychosynthesis, #TheWays, #SoulExpression, #InherentWholeness, #Neurodivergent, #FeelBetterEveryDay, #PieroFerrucci, #InevitableGrace, #RobertoAssagioli, #Subpersonalities, #Transpersonal, #PurposeDrivenLife, #FindingMeaning, #InnerPeace, #WorldPeace, #HealingJourney, #MindBodySoul, #AuthenticSelf, #ShineBright, #SelfEmpathy, #SensorySensitivity, #Misophonia, #WayOfBeauty, #WayOfAction, #WayOfIllumination, #WayOfUniversalLove, #WayOfDanceAndRitual, #WayOfScience, #WayOfDevotion, #WayOfTheWill, #InnerWork, #PersonalGrowth, #GuidedImagery, #JournalPrompts, #SoleToSoulCircle, #SelfCareCoaching, #EveMenezesCunningham, #PodcastForHealing, #ADHDFriendly, #TraumaInformed

Full transcript

In a world in which so many of us, especially with trauma histories and ADHD, get so many messages shaming people into being less, to tone it down, to homogenise, and one of the things I love most about The Ways is it really respects seven different ways. Very different ways in which people throughout history that have been researched, their souls were expressing themselves.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and I'm here to help you create the life you don't have to retreat from. I'm doing this by helping you take better care of yourself. That's the lower case self care and also that upper case Self, that highest, wisest, truest, most brilliant, joyful and miraculous part of yourself. I do this by sharing trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas and I would love to hear how you're getting on and what questions you might have.

In today's episode, we're working with one of my favourite elements of psychosynthesis known as The Ways. It’s the different ways in which our souls express themselves. So in a world in which so many of us, especially with trauma histories and ADHD, so many messages shaming people into being less, to tone it down, to homogenise and one of the things I love most about The Ways is it really respects seven different ways, very different ways in which people throughout history that have been researched, their souls were expressing themselves. And it helps us have more empathy for whichever resonates most for ourselves and also to better understand loved ones and others in our lives. Now I'm not suggesting that we're up there with the geniuses that Piero Ferrucci studied for his gorgeous book, Inevitable Grace: Breakthroughs in the Lives of Great Men and Women, Guides to Your Self-Realisation.

I talk about The Ways in 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, but if you have a chance to read Piero's gorgeous book I highly recommend it.

Welcome to episode 62 and it's an introduction. My core counselling training was in psychosynthesis and it was developed by Roberto Assagioli who was an Italian who had been massively influenced by Eastern philosophies as well as through his work with Freud and Jung.

Probably best known for his parts work in psychosynthesis (it's known as subpersonalities), psychosynthesis is a transpersonal approach so we're working with the parts of ourselves that are beyond the personal.

We're always, anytime I'm working with a client, I'm looking at what might be trying to emerge at a soul level as well as whatever the actual issue is, whether it's about boundaries or whatever it might be. All of our parts are ultimately trying to help us. By getting curious about them and befriending them rather than trying to annihilate them, we can properly integrate.

Another way in which we integrate psychosynthesis, it sounds so jargony, but the idea is that synthesis, it was initially called bio-psychosynthesis, so very influenced by yogic philosophy for example, that union between body and mind, everything coming together. One of the ways in which we can synthesise is by working with our inherent wholeness and by connecting with the ways in which our unique soul is trying to express itself in this lifetime in the world.

We're all different. By connecting with our own unique gifts and interests we can not only live more in line with our potential and purpose, finding joy, purpose and meaning as we develop, but we can also better support others and contribute to the world at large by being our full whole selves.

How many times as ADHDers do you hear that you're too much? You're not. It's time to shine. I'm recording this a little bit in advance but we've just had a Full Moon which is always a reminder to shine.

I was really fortunate to interview Piero Ferrucci who'd continued Assagiolie's work on the ways in this beautiful book I mentioned, Inevitable Grace, and pre-internet he had done enormous research looking at these phenomenal people that most of us will have heard of even if we're not familiar with them. His other books include the beautiful Power of Kindness and so many more.

When we disown negative parts of ourselves, so I say that as if like negatives in air quotes, we project them onto others. I don't think anyone is looking around at 2025 thinking it's idyllic. It is pretty grim, it's certainly very interesting and by working with the parts of ourselves that we so often project onto others and owning them we're contributing to personal peace and world peace.

I know that sounds a bit grandiose but we all have so much more power and responsibility than we often believe. Especially in the face of such an onslaught of horrors.

I love the way, I don't want to like spoil anything and this is very much an introduction, but there are seven ways in which the soul expresses itself and, in all of them, the transpersonal experiences, their breakthroughs, the self-actualisation.

It's not easy but it is possible. By familiarising ourselves with what those who've come before us have done – and I'm aware like as I've been working on this episode I'm thinking of people I would fit into The Ways in modern times (eg, Simone Biles, the Way of the Will, AOC, Way of Action) because the book was written a good while ago.

As you find out more, I hope that you will give yourself permission to imagine your own soul unfurling and blossoming.

If you're a subscriber to my free newsletter you'll receive some journal prompts to help you with that.

And if you're a member of the Sole to Soul Circle (which you can join for less than two euros a week) you'll be receiving a recording of one of my favourite guided imagery practices from Piero Ferrucci's book to help you connect with your own sense of purpose, meaning and joy.

Access additional resources to support your own purpose, meaning and joy at selfcarecoaching.net/home/purpose-meaning-and-joy or look at selfcarecoaching.net/services/psychosynthesis.

I go into more depth into the ways in the book and of course Piero's book is phenomenal and I highly recommend it. I recommend all of his books.

We're going to start with the Way of Beauty and some of the examples he uses for this are Chekhov, Schuman, Van Gogh, Gaughin and Kafka. It's very much about learning to set aside stereotypes and worn out attitudes and to learn it all over again without fear of hesitation of being ourselves. So personally when I realised that my soul is like I adore music, I adore art, I'm a writer and I adore harmony.

One of the ways in which people on the Way of Beauty could potentially be overdoing it would be in keeping the peace at all costs because we like harmonious lives. It's about, for me, that self-empathy. If, for example something like misophonia, I didn't understand that years ago, but learning about the Way of Beauty and recognising OK, so I am especially sensitive to noises and smells and what have you. Giving myself permission to change train carriages for example or like before I came across the Ways, I would force myself to endure what felt like assaults (visual or auditory or other sensory).

I'm imagining that many ADHDers and neurodivergent listeners will identify with this but it's about giving yourself permission to pursue beauty not at the expense of everything else.

All of these Ways have their wonderful transpersonal qualities and they also have a danger of going too far but even recognising that beauty is how many souls express themselves, giving yourself permission to surround yourself in stunning nature, great art, whatever it is that stirs your soul.

And also giving yourself permission to create without being too traumatised by the gulf between the vision of what you're hoping to bring into the world and the reality.

Then we move on to the Way of Action and his examples include the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, the activist Mary Carpenter, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Florence Nightingale. And he's explaining that through action we can become more capable, stronger and freer. And I'm reminded also of Mr Fred Rogers’ words after any horror show in the world, that his mother would always advise him to ‘look for the helpers’.

The helpers are those on this Way of Action but all of us can not only help others and be of service and make the world less of a horror show and create a more equitable, just, free, peaceful world for all its inhabitants.

It's inspiring to notice the people who even now are working tirelessly to be of service and to improve things for all and also taking action ourselves to whatever degree that is possible.

It's empowering and it helps to counter some of the despair.

Then we move on to the Way of Illumination which is also known as the Way of Universal Love. Some of the people he explores in this aspect are Saint Francis of Assisi, the Buddha, Gopi Krishna, Aldous Huxley, Assagioli, Tolstoy (not for his writing but for his educating.

He set up a school where people were free to come and leave freely and he considered the teachers as assistants helping the kids learn rather than the kind of very ‘power over’ approach that too many of us are familiar with from school), Montessori and just really thinking about that sense of Universal Love.

And thinking about maybe the teachers, the educators who've inspired you and how you can connect more with that Universal Love, that Illumination, that being guided.

Then we move on to the way of dance and ritual and it includes acting. It includes the ways in which actors would perform like he talks about Laurence Olivier’s kind of performing (like I did theatre studies A level and I remember the whole Stanislavski approach but that's a ritual). Reading the paper every morning if people still do that, I know people who still do that, is a ritual. Having a cup of tea outside or whatever rituals help ground you.

Dance. He points out that dance is found in all cultures and it's a form of recreation, it is a form of self-expression and it's also a way to release surplus energy. It can also be a way to connect with the divine as with the Whirling Dervishes, Isadora Duncan's work, he talks about tai chi and yoga, Rudolf Nureyev, Merce Cunningham, Mary Wigman and Black Elk.

Think about your own experiences with dance. It doesn't have to be anything public, it can be you connecting with your body.

Maybe you've tried Five Rhythms and Gabrielle Roth's beautiful therapeutic dance where it'd be five different types of music to express different types of emotion. You might want to draw the curtains if you're shy and just dance around your home or think about the rituals.

I know I share loads in these podcasts and in the book and on my site and everything but think about rituals, think about routines, think about dance, things of ways that help you feel more connected and more embodied and more connected with that transpersonal, with the Divine.

Then we move on to the Way of Science and I was laughing reading his talk about that kind of before the breakthrough and the slow demanding slog really with periods of despair and I was thinking while science is a rigorous discipline, writing has similarities.

He talks about Albert Einstein, Candice Peart, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie and I hadn't remembered this from reading it initially but he says that Thomas Edison was so lost in his experiments that he forgot to attend his own wedding.

Again the Way of Science with all of these Ways: hyper focus. I'm imagining many of these people that he studied would now be considered neurodivergent but I don't think I've come across anyone else forgetting to attend their own wedding because they got so caught up in scientific experiments.

We then move on to the Way of Devotion and he talks about the great mystics including Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Rumi, Hafiz, Narada, Kabir, Saint Catherine and also I think especially in 2025 when some people use religious beliefs to try and oppress others, all of the ways in which our souls are trying to express themselves have their dangers if taken too far but I think with some of the persecution we see going on today it's especially important to remember that it's not Divine to be oppressing anyone.

And then we move on to the Way of the Will. This is the final Way and he talks about pioneers, politicians, athletes who push beyond the limits of what is considered possible and all who risk their lives for some worthy cause. I'm thinking emergency services, activists who are putting their bodies on the line to protect the vulnerable.

He talked about Charles Lindbergh and his flight from Boston to Paris knowing that he might die, talks about Joan of Arc, Mahatma Gandhi and really taking the yogic philosophy principle of Ahimsa, non-violence, to change the world through non-violence and he points out that non-violence isn't just not committing violence but confronting injustice and fighting it until it's eliminated.

In the Circle there's going to be a special meditation and there'll be journal prompts for subscribers but you don't have to do anything else. Just ask yourself if any of them resonate for you. Which? Explore the book, go into more detail and get in touch if you'd like to through the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com or you could comment on any of the posts and give yourself permission to connect with even the possibility that your soul is trying to express itself in every given moment, any given moment.

That any problem is an opportunity for your soul to develop and evolve. Thank you for listening. For deeper dives into each podcast episode and bonus interviews with the guests plus access to the complete archive including the Love Your Whole Self Chakra Journey, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle and you might also enjoy the book 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and you can also find out more and access free and other resources at selfcarecoaching.net or sign up at evemc.substack.com. Thank you again for listening and if you haven't already subscribed and would like to that would be delightful, feel free to share with someone you think you might enjoy it, rate, comment, review, whatever feels good for you and this episode like all of them was produced by me your host Eve Menezes Cunningham.

I look forward to sharing more next week.

Watch here or listen wherever you get your podcasts

Let me know how you’re going to start better supporting yourself today (and while a lot of the conversation is about boobs, much of it is beneficial for all genders).

Le grá (with love),

Evei

Full transcript

It wasn't as much of an impact for me because I wasn't in a space where I was aware of it, but psychologically, huge, absolutely huge. So then I kind of went, this is mad. If this is having this effect on me, what can I do to bring this to my patients? And then after several years, I then set up my own physiotherapy service offering to patients the option for me to help them to be to internally support their breast weight through their posture or alignment and externally through optimal bra fitting.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and I'm here to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from by taking better care of yourself and your Self with an uppercase S, that highest, wisest, truest, most joyful, brilliant, and miraculous part of yourself.

I love sharing these trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly self-care ideas, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I've enjoyed making them.

Welcome, Siobhan O'Donovan! Thank you so, so much for joining me.

You're very welcome. I'm very, very delighted to be here.

I am so excited. I went to the Dive Ireland show a few weeks ago and Siobhan, known as the Booby Physio, was giving a talk on boobs and buoyancy and it was the only talk I went to.

Thank you.

It was basically about, like, I'm a member of Roscommon Sub Aqua Club, but when I come to the diving it's something I was aware of, like buoyancy, all the rest of it, different bodies. And what you were talking, it wasn't just about the diving, it's about daily life. And I just think what you're doing is phenomenal and I want as many people to hear about it as possible. I got home, I got rid of most of my bras because they were stabbing me and all the rest of it.

And I'm on the way to replacing, I've replaced two of them so far, I'll be, like, gradually, but it's incredible work you do. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And what would you like to say about what you're working on at the moment, what you do?

So I suppose if I give you a little bit of background as to how I've kind of ended up being surrounded by breasts.

I started my life as a PE teacher because I wanted to work within an active profession, and this was a long time ago when I was doing my first degree. And there weren't many options, there weren't many options in the activity field and there were fewer options again for women. So lots of things that I now look back on and I can see gender gap situations and things like that now that I'm a little bit more aware of that situation.

But from the point of view of a profession, I really never gave any thought to anything other than possibly becoming a sports journalist and then realise, no, that's not, that's not a thing. There is no, you know, because it was journalism and you then maybe reported on sports as opposed to now where it's a bit more specific. But it was either that or and then I was like, well, that's going to be sitting, you know, on a typewriter.

And I wanted a more active thing. So PE teaching was the basically the only option, but also something that I was really happy to be doing. I was, I was happy to go on to be a PE teacher for the rest of my life, or so I thought, until I did my actual four-year degree.

Within that four-year degree, we had a couple of modules on exercise physiology. So getting a little bit deeper into how the body works, deeper than we would have done in, you know, Leaving Cert biology. And then also there was a module on sports injuries.

And I kind of sat there through that and I thought, we really as PE teachers need to know this stuff because we are encouraging kids to be active. And if we give them, for example, an exercise or a movement that is potentially inappropriate, then we're effectively possibly teaching them something that could ultimately be damaging for them.

Now, having been in the field that I'm in for a lot of years, what we now know is that movement is absolutely a non-negotiable and it is far more important for somebody to be moving than for us to be focusing too much on, you need to be moving with your neck in this position or whatever.

But I've also come a little bit full circle on that in that we need to be mindful of the way that we hold ourselves because that does affect how we function. Yeah. That's a bit that I'll come back to when we talk a little bit more about posture.

I realised that there was the potential for me as a PE teacher to not be informed enough to be providing good quality movement advice. And so after I had finished my degree, I was teaching, I taught in London. And while I was there, I looked into how do I do more about this sports injuries bit? That's where I was focusing on.

Basically, cut a long story short, physio degree, three years plus a two year postgrad in sports, which would have involved me doing a lot of stuff that I didn't have an interest in. And also five years on top of four years financially, that was never going to happen. And then I heard about a Masters in the States. And basically, that's what I did. I went over to the States, did a year of prerequisite courses to get on to the Masters, then did the Masters.

And this was back in the early ‘90s when, you know, flying over to the States meant, ‘I'm gone for the year. You're not going to see me for a year.’ And I'd be lucky if I get back in the year. Very different to what it is now.

So that was that was quite a big move. And I suppose I like one of the things that I'm very proud of the fact that I did, because if I hadn't done, I probably would have been a very happy PE teacher for the rest of my life. But I kind of feel like what I'm doing now is impacting people in ways that are different to what would have happened if I'd stayed in PE.

While I was over there, the focus very much on what I was doing was on prevention of injuries. So it wasn't just wait for the fire to happen and try and put the fire out.

It was let's not have the fire start in the first place. Let's look at people's bodies. Let's look at how they move. Let's look at their lives and how they function. And let's prevent problems.

Then when I came back on this side of the water, I was pretty unique in that most people who would have gone on and done a physio degree, it would have been here are the problems. This is how we treat them.

And originally now it has changed. But originally, the focus would have been more on treatment. And I think what has happened over the years is people have come to realise that in order to do effective treatment, we also need to prevent the problem from coming back.

Therefore, that whole preventive aspect has come into play over here. It was more strong in the States because the degree that I did was based in schools and colleges. It was based on students having exposure to athletic injury every day because they were training every day like this.

The school sports system over there is incredibly intense. Yeah, I'll do it voluntarily, but they're training literally every day and possibly two games a week. So if you've that much exposure to potential for injury, then there is more injury happening.

The degree that I did was for a specific qualification that's school based. But when I then came back, I had quite a unique set. Well, I had a pretty completely unique set of qualifications and skills.

One of the things that I did was I got on board with developing those degrees in the UK and we now have them in Ireland as well. Looking at that more specific athletic sports. And when I say athletic, I don't mean you have to be an athlete.

I mean, being physically active and how that can, you know, the ramifications of that. So whether the person is going out for a walk or whether they are chasing an Olympic medal, that kind of a field. And so I was involved with that and with setting up the first professional body for that side of things.

And that was very much where my focus was. I was dealing with the active population. And then life changed for me in London when I had a bra fitting and I had it done purely by chance, purely because I had an hour to kill before I went to The Proms.

And with I was with my mother-in-law. I had read about this shop in London and that, you know, that I knew did bra fitting. And I was like, well, here I am, 45 years of age.

Sure, I may as well go and have my first one. And it was you know, it literally changed my view on everything. I walked out that door an inch taller.

Yeah. I don't know if I said this at the at the Scuba…

…I'm just I think I know the shop you mean. Yes. But also. Oh, no, no, there's several of them dotted across. And I can't remember which one we went to. But I was going to The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. And honestly, if I'd walked in the door and they had said on the stage, we're short somebody to play piano. Can somebody come up? I'd have been like, I'm there. I was ready to take on the world.

Whatever you threw at me, I was going to be able to cope with it because I had this absolute psychological change.

Yeah. For me, like at the time, I was training reasonably well because of playing for Ireland because I played rugby for Ireland. And I would have been at that kind of stage still where I was still training quite hard.

I wasn't playing at the time. But I didn't have physical and issues in terms of either thinking my breast weight was I never knew anything about breast weight, so I didn't know it could have affected my performance at all. And I didn't have physical kind of neck pain or back pain, which I now know people have as a result of unsupported breast weight.

Physically, it wasn't as much of an impact for me because I wasn't in a space. I was aware of it. But psychologically, you absolutely huge. Then I kind of went, this is mad if this is having this effect on me.

Yeah.

What can I do to bring this to my patients? And then after several years, I then set up my own physiotherapy service offering to patients the option for me to help them to be able to internally support their breast weight through their posture or alignment and externally through optimal bra fitting.

And I realised this is a longer answer to the question that you expected. But I ended up I'm from Cork. Remember the Blarney Stone? We just talk.

Oh, you're brilliant.

Sorry. But I realised very quickly that the vast majority of women are in the wrong bra, which is why the heading on my flyer and my banner behind, which might be back to front now, but the heading is, Are you wearing someone else's bra? Because the chances are that people are because they are generally not in the right fit.

And so far in all the work that I've done with the people that I've seen and the physios are therapists that I've trained who have also seen people we have yet to see anybody wearing the right bra. So everybody is. 100%.

Now, the research will tell you 70 to 80%. Bra fitters in shops that sell bras will tell you it's 90 to 95%. And we'll tell you it's 100% because those that we've seen now, obviously, if somebody goes into a shop to buy a bra, they're going in with a vested interest, presumably, but they may be more aware of the need. Yeah.

Early with us, people may be more aware of the need. But equally, what I want people to understand is that you don't have to have a need. To be more optimally supported, because it has the benefits, it has physical benefits and it has benefits that people don't know.

Yeah. Benefit from. And it's kind of like one of those things until you experience it.

Yeah. Don't underestimate the difference it can make.

With my yoga therapy element of my work, it involves a lot of neuroscience and you're talking about working with the pons part of the brain, like through the physiology of you said that it's taller, like you're sending signals of safety to the brain, which then cascade down to the whole system.

And it's like, yeah, imagine if everyone had that every day, walking into whatever situation and that feeling of safety to be ourselves and supported. And I love all the puns you use in your marketing.

I was going to ask about your ideal and actual daily self-care. You were talking a little bit about the posture. Do you do physio for yourself? Do you do any exercises yourself that help you? Yeah, well, I mean, for me, strength training is a really, really important part of everyone's life. Should be for everyone, but more so for women, because we have hormonal changes and men have hormonal changes, but the hormonal changes that occur for us over time. And I'm not talking about just at menopause, because again, there's a great increase in the narrative on menopause and it's fabulous that's happening. But there are hormonal changes with pregnancy. There are hormonal changes through the menstrual cycle. You know, we are constantly fluctuating in hormones.

And so one of the things that really helps us, benefits us over life is to be stronger, is to be in a situation where we can physically do things. And then that has psychological benefits. So I mean, I needed to move.

There was actually, it was my husband's dive kit. So they got lost coming back on a flight and he was away and they delivered it in a taxi the next day. And I just picked it up out of the back of the car and took it in.

Because I'm used to carrying twenty five kilograms, that wasn't an issue. It was a lady taxi driver, it was a female taxi driver. She came to the door and she said to me, Is there somebody here that will be able to help us with the case? And I was like, You know, I'll be fine, you know.

And she was jaw to the floor at the fact that could just carry it in.

And for me, that's something that we all should be able to do. I'm not saying we should be able to lift 80kg, but we should do functional things, because that also gave me a really strong sense of, Well done me!

Yeah, to do it. You know, I wanted to help her to do it because she clearly needed help to get it into the taxi in the first place and then had decided, as she was driving down, going to need a man to carry it. And, you know, so that for me was a real kind of and it happens all the time when I get courier delivery.

So I get it for you. And I'll be like, No, that's fine. I've got it. And it's a good feeling to be able to do it from that perspective. So for me, strength training is really a non-negotiable. And I think also it ties into what I'm doing as well with the postural side, because and that comes back to what you were talking about.

I don't know if you ever read, there was a study that was done quite a few years ago, and then there was a lot of controversy about it, which I mentioned. So it was about what's called the Power Pose.

So basically, you're going into a bathroom before an interview, standing in the mirror, looking at yourself, bringing yourself up into this position. And that gives you all that neural input that you just mentioned. Increased testosterone, lower cortisol after just two minutes and the results last for hours.

Yeah. So where it was controversial was that they did saliva testing, looking at the hormonal responses. And what has been acknowledged by the author since then is that that saliva testing was not accurate or not potentially reliable.

And she got she got absolutely slammed by people saying that's not the case, that it doesn't happen like that. It isn't accurate. But the point of what she was doing, let's take away the saliva testing.

The point of what she was doing was I would challenge anybody to go into this what she called the Power Pose and not feel confident. And we have research showing that posture and mood are inherently correct. Absolutely.

If somebody sits in a slouch position, they find it easier to recall negative memories and they find it harder to recall positive thoughts, whereas if they're in a more upright position, the positive thoughts are easier and the negative thoughts are harder. So we know that what they called in that study, the Power Pose is a positive situation. And aside from the psychological side of it, there's a social side of it as well, which is, you know, a lot of the women that I speak to don't want to go out because they don't want people looking at their breasts.

They don't want to be active because they don't want their breasts moving and therefore they don't want to be cat called if they're running down the road. They will avoid exercise because and very often in high school, in teenage kids can be very cruel. And this is not that I'm not pointing the finger at boys here because girls equally unkind to each other.

But a lot of girls will drop out of sports in teenage years because of breast movement. And this is now something that we know. Again, we have research showing this.

But until we acknowledge that that's a thing, then there's nothing being done to try and change that. But the other social side of it is things not related to activity at all, not going to the party because you don't want somebody to be looking at you, not going because you don't have clothes that you think hide your breasts, wearing a scarf that hangs down, that literally hangs down because people think that detracts from their breasts when in fact, actually, what it does is it draws attention and being better supported actually is their visibility in a way, you know. So this is what's also been really interesting is that where we have had larger breasted women who've come in.

And one of the things that I would say to them that one of our goals is to bring your breasts more front and centre because when breast tissue is poorly supported, it sits underneath your arms. And if it's your arms, then your clothes hang down in a block. Yeah.

Our breasts are supposed to sit on the front of our body. So when we bring them to the front, a lot of large women be like, no, no, I don't want that. It's going to be too obvious.

But actually, when they're in front and narrower, they're less obvious. Yeah. Out at the...

For World Digestive Health Day, am delighted to be welcoming Jayne Leonard back to discuss a super simple way (even I’m enjoying experimenting with it) to improve our gut health, ADHD symptoms and mental health.

And Sole to Soul Circle members can join us tomorrow for a deeper dive into getting our inner (and actual) toddlers on board.

le grá (with love),

Evei

Watch here

Full transcript

… and found that those people who ate 30 or more plant foods a week had a far more diverse gut microbiome.

So that's fruit and veg?

It's actually fruit, veg, grains, nuts, seeds, so just 30 different types a week. So it actually isn't completely out of reach, you know, if you had your porridge with berries and seeds and nuts that's already like four different, four out of your 30 in one meal. It was just very little things, just like a different seed every morning, a different…

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and I'm here to help you create a life you don't have to retreat from.

I'm doing this by helping you take better care of yourself. That's the lower case self-care and also that upper case Self: that highest, wisest, truest, most brilliant, joyful and miraculous part of yourself. I do this by sharing trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self-care ideas and I would love to hear how you're getting on and what questions you might have.

Today we're working with our digestive health for World Digestive Health Day and I'm delighted to welcome back Jayne Leonard. She specialises in food and mental health.

I hope you find this helpful. And if you want to join the Sole to Soul Circle or if you're already a member, your bonus content this week will be a deeper dive into working with your inner child around pathological demand avoidance when you want to eat healthier but your inner toddler is like, No! And there's also plenty of helpful information for people dealing with actual toddlers. I've just made it all about my own inner toddler.

I hope you enjoy the episode and thank you for listening.

Welcome Jayne, thank you for coming back to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and this is actually around your specialism because we're celebrating World Digestive Health Day.

Do you want to say a little bit about your background for people who haven't listened to the earlier episodes and where people can find you?

Yeah, so I'm a psychotherapist and nutritional therapist. My interest is in the intersection of the two. Food and mood.

I am currently doing a PhD in how mental health professionals use food and mood research in their whole field called nutritional psychiatry which studies the relationship between what we eat and how we feel. You can find me on my website vivecounselling.com or on LinkedIn or Instagram @vivecounselling.

And that's v-i-v-e? That's v-i-v-e, yeah. Thank you.

If you were to think about your ideal self-care around your own eating and your actual, what would you like to say about that?

Ideally, based on the research, we should be eating 30 different plant foods a week and that's for our gut health, for our digestive health, mental health.

There's been a huge American, the American Gut Project found that those people who ate 30 or more plant foods a week had a far more diverse gut microbiome.

That's fruit and veg?

It's actually fruit, veg, grains, nuts, seeds, so just 30 different types a week. So it actually isn't completely out of reach, you know, if you had your porridge with berries and seeds and nuts that's already like four different, four out of your 30 in one meal.

So it's just varying little things, just like a different seed every morning, a different fruit. But yeah, aiming for 30 over the week.

Wow.

Yeah? So how do you think you do?

Challenge accepted! I think if this were even a few months ago I'd have been like, it's just like not even worth trying. Whereas I think, I'm guessing I'd be probably around 20 because I do have a lot of fruit and veg now and what you're saying with the nuts and seeds. I believe, I no longer think you're an alien for suggesting such a thing, put it that way. I believe it is possible.

I know you like dal, so it's like lentils, garlic, onion.

I made yesterday dal, I had the onion, the garlic, the ginger root, the turmeric root, the coriander, the spinach and the tomato. Would the coconut milk count?

I don't think so, it needs whole foods, so it'd be the whole. Yeah, so that's I think eight, if I counted correctly in one meal.

But then you tend to eat the dal every day for however long. It's about variety, isn't it?

Yeah, well your breakfast, your lunch, your snacks. Yeah, so about 30 plant foods a week.

One helping of fermented food a day as well, for gut health, is what they say is best. So in the future? Yes, kefir, kimchi, miso, sauerkraut. You just have to be careful if you're buying sauerkraut in the supermarket that it's not the pasteurised one, that it's the actual real fermented.

What are vegan options and if possible, what are pepper-free vegan options? This is very much about my allergy, but there'll be other people who are vegan.

Yeah, so some kimchis are vegan. You just have to note to see that it's not the fish.

I know Aldi have one, or Lidl have one that's vegan. Sauerkraut, miso, you can make water, kefir, kombucha.

OK.

Yeah, so most of them, yeah. So I think like about a tablespoon or so a day of sauerkraut or something.

Just a tablespoon? Yeah, I think one tablespoon is one serving.

I mean, I think most people don't even get close to that, so any increase is a good increase.

It's that sense always of, and I think this is an ADHD thing as well. It's like the, well, I can't do it perfectly. I'm not going to bother at all. So a tablespoon feels way more manageable. I was imagining that a whole bowl of it and thinking, Ew.

No, like one to two tablespoons. Yeah. I mean, you know, but beyond two tablespoons, I don't think it's probably a need, but like any, you know, like I said, any change is better than none.

That's the point of the podcast. Something is better than nothing. A teaspoon will be better than nothing, you know, or having it once a week would be better than never having it.

It's, well, whatever feels manageable, you know, you're not trying to be perfect. You're just trying to be, a little bit, make it a little bit easier each time.

I say this now, knowing that I rarely do this myself with the healthy foods, even though I have the best intentions, but definitely make the 30 different plant foods. So they would be two things. And then the other thing I would say is ultra processed foods. To really watch those.

Yeah. I know. They're just kind of coming out now as being pretty bad for gut health and overall health and mental health as well.

Big links between that.

So I'd say if you have them, have them intentionally, you know, rather than, because we can have like an ultra processed pasta sauce and not realise it's actually maybe not as good as we think ourselves, whereas at least if you're going to have something ultra processed, at least recognise what it is and that you're having it as a treat rather than, you know, putting them into your day. Yeah.

I, when I started seeing the medical herbalist, Colleen, she was a guest a few weeks ago and it was a good few years ago now, maybe four years ago, but I was actually celebrating my Denny's anniversary of like a year of Denny's vegan sausages every day because they were so delicious.

She was horrified. And it's like as a treat, but not as a yeah.

Yeah. A lot of the vegan food is very ultra processed. Yeah.

And do you use the Yuka app?

I don't. I tend to make most of my stuff from scratch or I just quickly check the label. I tend to just buy the whole food. So I don't, but I know I've had lots of clients say it's been very helpful. I know you've said it's very helpful. Yeah.

Just thinking like, even in terms of like, say making dal, the first time I was using the app, most of the coconut milk tins I was picking up were containing hazardous, risky additives. That's the thing I'm seeking to avoid.

But like some of the ultra processed vegan stuff, it shows up well on the Yuka app in terms of nutritional value and others, terrible. And it's really like even within the same brands, different products, either. And it's really like I wouldn't have the bandwidth or the brain to be navigating the labels. So yeah.

Yeah. And I would say with labels, it's, you know, like a shorter label or foods you can recognise tend to be, but that's just a general rule of thumb. But yeah.

And with the coconut milk, you can replace it with, you know, the block. I got organic, it was OK.

Oh yeah.

Sorry, do you mean like the decimated coconut?

No, you can kind of get, is it cocoa butter? It's a little cocoa butter. It's a little block. Oh, you can get it in the health food store.

I need to figure out what it is. It will come to me, but you can just kind of like grate it up. Yeah.

I think it is. I want to say the decimated or desecrated coconut. My grandmother used to use it.

But I can't remember. Clearly it's not like unsacred. Yeah.

So that's one workaround. Yeah. And the organic one was good.

Yeah. But sorry, I'm interrupting you.

No, you're fine.

Anything else for your ideal for all of us and for yourself?

I think that would be if, I mean, I think we'd be doing amazingly if we could all do that, if we could get ultra processed to like, you know, 20% ultra processed. So that's, you know, those kinds of highly processed foods or that you said have lots of additives like emulsifiers now are being thought to be pretty unhealthy for the gut. They might increase the permeability of the gut and damage the balance of the microbiome.

But they're also quite high in sugar, which is the bad bacteria. And they are very low in fibre. The fibre is usually stripped out, which of course we need fibre to feed the good probiotics.

Yeah.

In terms of your actual, because I know you're looking amazing and sounding amazing, but you're also in a tumultuous time with lots of house moves and like you're doing amazingly.

What is your actual essential daily self-care around food and your own gut health?

Yeah, it could be better at the moment. Like you said, things are very hectic, but I do try to eat, you know, I think I've said this the last podcast, like something protein-y.

I usually just have nuts or seeds or something first thing in the morning. And I try and just keep it really, really simple. Oat cakes with hummus and tomatoes and, you know, some spices or herbs, you know, that's kind of already three things, you know, three of my 30.

Just very, very simple things, but that are not usually processed or like rice cakes with a hundred percent peanut, peanut butter or almond butter and banana and cinnamon. Yeah, just trying to keep it really, really simple. But recognising that, okay, yeah, I could have the really fancy, lovely, tasty thing, but actually really tasty too.

And you do notice that when you start cutting out all the processed foods, regular foods do taste better.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because we've been conditioned and I'm also remembering you're gluten-free as well as being vegan. Like, so you've got extra challenges around.

Well, very low gluten. Yeah. But I do eat sometimes because I'm not coeliac, but I do have gluten intolerance, but yeah. So it is, but I suppose I'm used to it now.

Yeah. And you mentioned, I've heard that a few times about the importance, especially with ADHD brains for like protein. And I'm thinking I've got a little bowl of nuts next to the kettle for easy access, which I walked straight past this morning and I haven't had breakfast yet.

I've been up for hours. And some people have said that it's important to eat first thing. And then other people talk about like intermittent fasting and I tend to think, Oh, I'll eventually eat when I remember to eat, which I realise is probably not what you're going to say is ideal.

I don't know. I mean, I suppose it's, it is kind of individual. I wouldn't previously, even when I, I still do, I still eat when I feel like eating, you know, I just look at breakfast is when you break your fast rather than to be at 8am or 7am or whatever.

But yeah, intermittent fasting, the research is interesting. I think it's more persuasive for men than it is for women because of hormonal fluctuations and things with ADHD as well. It may not be the best option or maybe that you do your kind of fasting window from morning till afternoon, particularly if people are on medication, they probably do need to eat before they take their medication because that suppresses them.

Yeah, I mean, I have worked with people who do intermittent fast, but we've looked at kind of adjusting the fasting window and that seems to work better.

And again, to be clear, I'm not actually intermittent fasting. I'm just randomly picking something and thinking, well, maybe what I'm doing that everyone's telling me is bad is fine because other people deliberately don't eat for that length of time.

But I'd love if you could say something. First of all, is there anything else that is an essential for you, especially in turbulent times?

For me, I suppose it's nature as well, time outside in nature among the trees. And that's obviously really good for gut health as well. And there's lots of microbes all around us that we should be absorbing and digging in the soil and stuff. I haven't had a chance to do that in a while, but in nature as much as I can.

Yeah, wonderful. And what would you like to say about sensitive nervous systems and trauma and ADHD and gut health, if anything?

Yeah, so I suppose there's a link between trauma and digestive issues, IBS and irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. And there's also a link between ADHD and IBS. So I don't know that they fully know why, but obviously the gut microbiome is being investigated as a link and there is a link between ADHD and gut health as well.

They're looking at that.

I think it probably is about improving gut health through diet and maybe probiotic supplementation, maybe more time in nature, more exercise, managing stress. And there is research that when we do that, ADHD symptoms can improve.

And I mean, you're saying that it's like, of course, and the Rest Digest response, parasympathetic activity, it's so important. And then it's so much easier said than done.

What helps you reduce stress? I know you've said a few things and you seriously revolutionised my life when I interviewed you the first time. Like yesterday, I had a friend over making dal and pilau rice.

And it was like, yeah, it was stressful trying to navigate the attention and focus and getting distracted. But thinking, I can't believe how much I've come to love cooking, because I decided to reframe it as part of my self-care, that nourishing myself.

And I have actually forgotten what I was asking you.

Other things to reduce stress that I do. Maybe try the breakfast. Yeah, I suppose nature is my biggest one. I love being outdoors. And even just, you know, there is again, lots of studies that say nature is great for trauma, great for anxiety, great for depression, for ADHD symptoms, because that's how we're meant to live.

It really grounds me, makes me feel mindful. It switches off my brain. And presumably it helps my gut health.

And like you said, cooking as well is, I find it very, very mindful. I get into the flow. And, you know, so it's like, that's just what I'm doing.

That one thing.

And can you remind us, for people who haven't listened to your first interview on the podcast, like I'm listening to you now. And it's like, I'm going to do, oh, the batch cooking.

I am doing much more batch cooking. But I realised that my brain, I realised that is a symptom. It's like, I'm going to spend a whole day doing like a month's worth. And that just isn't realistic with my schedule. How do you navigate, because you've got kids as well, like how do you navigate the actual cooking in a sustainable way?

I think just keep it simple. You know, like I said, I like, you know, you see all the Instagram meals and they look amazing and they're great and they are fabulous.

But they're really, you know, they can be really overwhelming as well for anyone, for busy people, anyone.

But if you've ADHD as well, or trauma or anxiety or depression, like that's really overwhelming to gather all these different ingredients and prepare it all and do 25 steps. I think it's lovely for a special occasion, but I do think, and I've had this conversation with clients before, when we look back on how our grandparents ate and our parents would have eaten, and they were, you know, probably much healthier than us in terms of like food related illnesses.

And the soil would have had more nutrients back then as well.

Yeah, for sure. And more, the food had more flavour back then because of the way bread and the soil.

But they ate much simpler food. It was just a focus on what's in season, what's, you know, whole foods. And that's what I do.

I just keep it really, really simple. I don't do hugely fancy. I use a lot of herbs and spices and things, but I'm not, you know, I'm not spending hours every day making dinner at all.

Well, for the bonus content for the Sole to Soul Circle members, I'd like to talk to you about self-care and nutrition for our inner children, like, and actual children as well, where appropriate. But I wondered, just for this conversation, what are your thoughts around working metaphorically, like when we have an upset stomach, when we have, when there's a lot going on that's stressful and we're struggling to digest life? Like, do you work metaphorically with the gut as well as physiologically?

Probably not as much as you would, I would think. Not so much. I would, I mean, I would always encourage people to listen to their gut. I mean, that's, I'm huge on that, huge on that coming from the trauma background. I don't know, do I do it so metaphorically? But for sure, listening to it, what's it saying?...

I’ve been meditating daily (at least once a day) since March 2013. Sporadically since 2001. And teaching different types of meditation since 2003.

And I still find it really challenging. But I can’t imagine life without it.

I hope that by sharing some of the joys and challenges of different types of meditation and ADHD and trauma, my own history (with a deeper, more personal dive for the Sole to Soul Circle members tomorrow), that you’ll be kinder to yourself around any challenges you have in keeping your focus on the meditation.

Remember, it’s a practice.

Some days it’s easier than other days but the noticing when our attention drifts and bringing it back is the key.

Let me know how you get on! Email [email protected] or comment.

le grá (with love),

Evei

Full transcript

And when I treat it like punishment, like I don't know about you, but I used to get told off a lot for talking in class, again, ADHD, for distracting other people, and of course, I distract myself. So it's figuring out what length of time would work for you. And when I'm talking about a 12-hour silence, that's not all meditative, but it does help me get quieter.

Welcome to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday, I release new episodes to help you feel better every day. They're trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly, (Self with an uppercase S and lowercase s) self-care ideas designed to support you in connecting with and taking care of your Self, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, and miraculous part of yourself. To create a life you don't need to retreat from. So I hope you enjoy this new episode.

And if you haven't already listened, access older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com or at selfcarecoaching.net or through whatever platform you prefer.

You can also access lots of free resources to find out more about how we might work together at selfcarecoaching.net.

And through the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, and for deeper dives into each podcast episode, there's a bonus interview with my guests, where I have guests or into the theme, as well as access to the complete archive, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey. And you can access all of that by joining the Sole to Soul Circle. So that's S-O-L-E for the Sole of your feet.

It's a fully embodied approach and soul S-O-U-L. It's a transpersonal approach. It's very holistic.

You can find out more at selfcarecoaching.net and evemc.substack.com. So thanks again for listening. And I hope you enjoy today's episode for World Meditation Day.

Today's topic is meditation. Episode 589. We're looking at the challenges and benefits of meditation for trauma survivors and VAST/ADHD brains. While I've already shared hundreds of meditations for you, I have several in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, as well as on my YouTube, in newsletters, blog posts, articles.

And you can access loads through the site selfcarecoaching.net or through my YouTube channel. I'm sharing shorter trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD meditations every Friday, starting soon, not this Friday. But I thought it would be a lovely way actually to show the huge degree of variation in meditations. They have different benefits, different feelings, different ways of applying them.

When my psychiatrist told me that if anyone told me I should try mindfulness to cure my ADHD, I should tell them to F off, I laughed. I agreed with her AND shuddered to even imagine the state of my brain had I not been meditating for decades and daily since 2013. And I teach mindfulness meditation as one of the forms I do teach.

It's been amazing and it remains challenging. In recent years, since 2012, understanding more about my brain and other trauma survivors’, and then more recently VAST/ADHD brains, the meditations I've been guiding and facilitating for myself and others have all been trauma-informed and in the last few years, VAST/ADHD friendly. Even so, I still struggle with meditation.

I'm still waiting to try ADHD medication, but I also know that even though I struggle with my daily meditation, it is so worth it. In today's episode, I'm going to share part of my own personal journey with meditation and hope that it will inspire you to keep practicing. It is, after all, a practice.

This is another episode that I have scripted. I'm just moving the recycling bin a little bit closer. I hopefully won't wave too many papers in too many directions as I go through it.

In my twenties, the first time I tried meditation, I thought I was having a heart attack and I wasn't, but I was so conditioned to not cause a fuss. I just kind of sat there thinking I was having a heart attack and not looking after myself. Apparently my heart chakra was just opening, but there are so many different styles and there are ways if you want to try it and you're struggling, there are ways to go easier on yourself.

There truly is something for everyone. And the more compassionate you can be with yourself as you practice, and it is a practice, the more beneficial you'll find it. Even when we fail. I got distracted in this morning's beditation. If you want to find out more about ‘beditation’, I refer you to Caroline Shola Arewa’s episode of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, episode three, I think it was.

We still gain benefits even when we get distracted. It's about noticing when the mind wanders, congratulating yourself for noticing and gently bringing the awareness back to whatever the focus of that particular meditation is.

Research has found that, I mean, there's been so much research around meditation and many of these practices are ancient, whereas the modern neuroscience is just catching up. Some research shows that in as little as eight minutes, we get psychological, mental and emotional benefits. And that's for anyone.

A lot of the research has been done on seasoned veteran meditators and people who are monks and in other ways of life where it is an enormous part of their day-to-day. With practice, it rewires our brain.

If you're interested in some of the ever-increasing research using cutting-edge neuroscience and technology to find out how some of these ancient practices have been helping people, in some cases for thousands and thousands of years, I highly recommend Sharon Begley's beautiful book, The Plastic Brain.

It's a great start, a great place to start. In a nutshell, our brains are plastic. Everything we do either entrenches old beliefs or habits or helps us to cultivate newer, more helpful approaches.

While it's easier for children to, for example, learn a new language, learn new skills, learn anything new, their brains are more plastic when they're developing. It's never, ever, ever too late to learn even though it takes more effort. Dr Daniel Siegel was a guest lecturer when I trained and I remember him telling us about a man in his 90s who had healed his attachment issues even at that stage.

Every time you struggle with meditation practice or any kind of mind-body practice, I hope that you will remind yourself that all humans struggle and it can of course be even harder for our brains as Dr Ned Halliwell puts it, Ferrari engine, bicycle brakes, but it's still beneficial.

So even this morning, my not stellar effort had me start the day feeling much more centred, much more grounded, much more focused and calmer than if I hadn't bothered. If you were to imagine a jungle well-worn pathways are the old unconscious patterns and beliefs and habits that are our defaults.

We don't think about them. As Donald Hebb said, neurons that wire together, neurons that fire together, wire together. The more we do anything, whether that's helpful or less helpful, the stronger those neural pathways become. As we consciously change these, initially it might be like trying to find our way through dense thicket.

You might need a metaphorical machete to cut through, but the more we do it by practicing meditation and other new habits we're consciously cultivating, the more familiar and the better trodden those newer pathways, those newer neural pathways, new ways of being become.

That doesn't mean that we won't have tougher practices, but even noticing like I did this morning and persevering and like kind of giving myself more slack, cutting myself more slack helps us enormously. Just having a daily practice, having a regular practice and noticing some days your concentration is better. Some days your focus is better.

I hope that my sharing some of my experiences and some different practices, which you're going to find in instructions for in the new mini meditation series, will help you build, create or restart and maintain a regular meditation practice that supports you and your unique glorious brain.

I remember from childhood, I did a lot of drama, but I was so self-conscious and we did a lot of like relaxation, guided relaxations and meditations. And I remember pretending to relax. My mind was whirring the gazillion miles an hour. I remember on one occasion, I was so wound up. I looked relaxed, but someone kind of touched me gently and I kind of flew down a split of stairs at the Towngate Theatre in Basildon, because my startle reflex remains high, but it was really, really high. I would pretend to be relaxed, but I could not relax. I didn't understand anything about either ADHD or trauma.

I mentioned earlier my crystal therapy introduction to meditation as an adult, and I'd chosen some rose quartz to support my heart chakra. And I was palpitating so badly, I thought I was having a heart attack. In the Sole to Soul Circle, I'm sharing some of the crystals that support different types of meditation, because they can really offer a beautiful focus, both in terms of their energy, which I believe they have, but also in terms of them being comforting to hold.

So I have this beautiful clear quartz cluster here. It wouldn't be one that I generally pick for meditation, but just to give you an example for like focus, clarity, that could be wonderful. There are so many, I'll go into more detail with the Sole to Soul Circle, but you can also check out the crystal information on the website.

I remember in yoga classes when I started attending around 2001, for pain relief for the endometriosis, I'd be sobbing in Savasana at the end of every class, but I kept going because it offered such good pain relief. I knew it was a psycho-spiritual practice, so I knew that the stuff was coming up for healing, but back then there was very little understood about trauma-informed yoga. I longed to heal to get through how awful I felt.

And there was a part of me that kept going back and that did heal and that continues to heal. But something I teach my yoga students the whole time and often share with clients or loved ones is if you're in a position where you're meditating or you're doing anything where things are coming up for healing and you're struggling to contain it, being kind to yourself. Let yourself bring your awareness to your thighs, your breath, inhale as you tense the thighs and exhale as you release the thighs. By doing that a few times, you're coming into a sense of safety in your body and you're coming into the present moment.

By tensing and releasing the thighs, you're also burning off some of the extra stress hormones that are coursing through your system. When I did my psychosynthesis training, I did a lot of guided imagery work, which was really powerful, really transformative and sometimes deeply distressing because it was so powerful and transformative. And back then it wasn't trauma-informed the way I kind of facilitate them. They're very much trauma-informed. I've also been really fortunate wearing my freelance journalism hat to interview meditation experts, including former presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, Sonia Choquette, Martha Beck, Robert Dilts, Dr Dina Glouberman, Piero Ferrucci, Diana Whitmore, so many people, so many different styles of working with meditation in so many different ways, practising, being kind to ourselves.

In my yoga therapy training, obviously there was an enormous amount of meditation and we finished with a semi-silent retreat, which for me back then, I remember everyone else was like, ‘Yay, silence!’

And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I'm not going to survive this.’ I had no idea it was coming up. My longest stretch of pure silence was 36 hours. We were allowed to journal. I know people who swear by like the 10 day Vipasana retreats, they adore it. For me, and now again, I understand more about my VAST/ADHD brain. It's like, of course I need to journal. Of course I need to externally process. Of course the rejection sensitivity dysphoria is high in such situations.

Back then, I remember thinking we were meant to be doing pure mindfulness meditation and I was drifting into breath practices and drifting into Metta meditation because I just found it too much to focus on. So I was shame spiralling. Then I went to hear Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is credited with bringing mindfulness to a more secular audience around the world decades ago now.

I love the title of one of his books, Wherever You Go, There You Are. I heard him in London in 2013 and there was something so beautiful about his approach. So allowing, so gentle.

I've not missed a day since. I just recognised, of course, it's about befriending your brain. It's not something I have to do or should do. It's something that I long to do. It's something I need to do, just like I brush my teeth. It's just like, I love it.

That doesn't mean that I always love it but I love it enough. Like as I record this, I'm waiting for high tide and I'm also wondering if the rain will stop and I'll have a sea dip. But I know enough that, year round, being in the sea, it helps me reset. A mini meditation.

It helps me reset. In 2013, I had an MRI for aura migraines and I passed no heed for many years because the only abnormality they felt, first of all, I was like, they found a brain but they found an abnormality, which when I Googled it, it correlated with ADHD. And back then we weren't as addicted to our devices as we are now.

We hadn't rewired like so many people, even without ADHD or without trauma histories. As a society, we've been rewiring our brains for inattention. So I would be doing in my morning meditation, mindfulness of the breath, some Metta. I include all my clients past, present and future supervisees, groups I'm working with and groups I'm worried about, like different parts of the world, local, wherever it might be. I'll often do some image work and then I'll move into a moving meditation with some yoga. I will also, because I'm so used to it now, when I'm stressed during the day, I will regularly be moving into that calming breaths, those calming, like just grounding myself, centring myself and helping me navigate life and all of its lifing. Life-be-lifing.

The other day, the other week, I was at a conference in Cork and I came up against a really scary hill start and I needed to get out the car and my partner took over for me. He used to do this loads when he was teaching me how to drive, but I've had my licence now since September last year, I think it is. I'm recording this end of April and I've become a much, much better driver. Regularly driving halfway across the country alone and I do like at night, I do all sorts, but this particular hill, it set me back.

I did my calming breaths and I got into a resourceful state. When I got back home to Westport, I started taking myself for little hill finding missions and I came to the conclusion that Westport was really flat. It is not.

It just wasn't that awful hill in Cork which came out onto traffic lights and it was just like traffic behind me, but I realised how much better I've got by practising, but I realised also I was calming the breaths, I was calming the whole body.

We know through Polyvagal Theory, 80% of the signals go up through the vagus nerve, up from the body to the brain, which then sends all those signals of calm, of peace or confidence or ease or whatever condition, whatever feeling you want to cultivate by working with your body, by working with your breath, you can send that shortcut signal to the brain and it's incredible.

Every lunchtime, I do a longer yoga nidra, that really helps. I've got several that you can experiment with and there are bespoke ones in the Sole to Soul Circle, but they're guided relaxations that also help harness the power of the unconscious mind to help you move towards goals and dreams otherwise known as sankalpas that you're working towards.

Every week I do a 12 hour silence, which is both delicious and it continues to sometimes be excruciating. With the yoga nidras, find recordings that don't stress you out. So if you like my voice, great, listen to them. You might prefer other types of voices. You might prefer music in the background or other sounds. Me personally, I like voice only. Mine are all trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly.

But with the 12 hour silence, it's really interesting in terms of the years I was doing a 24 hour silence around every Christmas and I continue to do that. But every year, I'd start out, I'd be stressed. I'd be like, I need my phone. I need to talk to whoever. I need to message whatever I need to do, do, do, do. I let myself journal.

I let myself write all my Brain in a Box thoughts (see the Lisa Woodruff episode for more), jotting them down, emptying my brain onto index cards. But very quickly my mind settles. I feel more attuned to whatever I'm doing.

No TV, no washing machine. I'll let myself boil the kettle. I'll let myself brush my teeth. I've got an electric toothbrush. I'll try and be telepathic with the cats rather than talking to them out loud. I've let all my loved ones know that I'm not available for that 24 hours.

But this year, I realised that every year for over a decade, I've been promising myself at another bank holiday, I'm going to do that. And I realised I've not done it. So I thought, how can I make it more manageable for myself? And I thought by doing a weekly 12 hour one.

It tends to be on a Friday night. Once I've kind of had my goodnight conversation with my partner, I will turn my phone off and it will stay off for 12 hours. Then on the Saturday morning, I do my yoga without being able to take any photos of how adorable the cats are being or potentially the donkeys.

I might bake in silence or clean in silence. Normally I listen to podcasts or audio books or music. And it's such a gorgeous start to the weekend. I don't know how to describe it. But when I frame it as a treat for myself, as an indulgence, it's brilliant. And when I treat it like punishment, like I don't know about you, but I used to get told off a lot for talking in class, again, ADHD, for distracting other people.

And of course I distract myself. So it's figuring out what length of time would work for you. And when I'm talking about 12 hour silence, that's not all meditative, but it does help me get quieter.It does help me. My yoga on those mornings goes deeper. My meditation goes deeper.

Yes, I still get distracted wanting to take photos of whatever it is I'm seeing, or wanting to send messages to myself to remind me to do things or make notes or whatever it might be. And having an even bigger stack of index cards than I normally have access to, because when I'm in those 12 hour periods or those 24 hour periods, more ideas come....

What one thing might help you feel even a little bit better?

There are lots of self-care ideas in this week's podcast.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch here

le grá,

Evei

Full transcript

Everything I do, I’m a mental health professional, I attend to my own mental health on a daily basis…

Hi, you're listening to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and I'm here to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from by taking better care of yourself.

And your Self with that uppercase S: that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. I'm sharing trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas each Tuesday.

For deeper dives into each theme, including additional content from my guests, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle.

Some tech issues meant I almost didn’t get an episode out this week but I hope you find this sign post episode, where I flag previous episodes that might be most helpful (while, being a mental health professional and someone who prioritises my own, ALL are relevant) is helpful.

Episode 44 some of my own mental health journey.

Episode 2 with Rebecca Seal, best-selling author of Be Bad, Better. So comforting re the systems that create unrealistic stress and expectations.

Episode 3 with Caroline Shola Arewa, Opening to Spirit author on the importance of rest.

Episode 13 with researcher, CBT psychotherapist and yoga therapist Veena Ugargol talking compassion.

Episode 14 with former Psychologies Editor, The Big Leap author and Heart Leap Facilitator Suzy Walker talks about big leaps helping her survive her toughest times.

Episode 15 with Gill Fennings on self-care for our mental and emotional health being even more essential as therapists and supervisors.

Episode 16 with Dr Dina Glouberman on The Joy of Burnout and using our imaginations for good.

Episode 21 with Leonie Dawson not only befriending but utterly adoring her whole self (while honouring her sensitive nervous system and building a multimillion creative, heart led business)

Episode 22 with ND therapist and supervisor Chris Oxborrow recognising not only what you need but knowing that you deserve it. Ooof.

Episode 25 with Louise Lucas (formerly Brown) on spiky profiles, accepting her right to HAVE needs and honouring her neurodivergence.

Episodes 27 and more with psychotherapist and my Vice-Chair on IACP's Editorial Committee, Jayne Leonard. On cooking as self-care, celebrating our neurodivergent (50), sending love to our ADHD brains (45) and coming soon, supporting gut health and mental health (60)

Episode 31 with Jane Travis on setting time boundaries ourselves and the importance of pleasure for our mental health.

Episode 36 dealing with global shock and my reflections on self-care for despair.

Episode 39 on working with the nervous system to counter the endless stress by activating the Relaxation Response

Episode 40 on setting intentions around what you WANT.

Episode 41 with Lisa Woodruff on how externalising our thoughts and organising them can (it's working for me!) reduce overwhelm and support better mental health.

Episode 47 on creating your own Dopamenu to work with your ADHD brain.

Episode 48 on Cattitude and polyvagal informed approaches for trauma recovery and VAST/ ADHD.

Episode 49 on the importance of sleep for good mental health (and 33 ways to sleep better)

Episode 53 on VAST / ADHD terms that could change your life. Some are transforming mine as I am up the self- compassion.

Episode 56 on loving your inner Smelly Cat and 57 with Margaret O’Connor on the ways in which this pro natal society others women without children.

I hope you enjoy them and that you'll prioritise your own mental health this week.

Thank you for listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. For deeper dives into each episode and theme and bonus interviews with my guests, as well as access to the complete archive, which includes the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle. And you might also enjoy the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.

You can find out more about all my resources, free, paid for, whatever suits you, at selfcarecoaching.net and evemc.substack.com. And of course, I'd love, if you haven't already, for you to subscribe, rate, comment, review, send me an email via thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com, or simply at [email protected].

Have a gorgeous week, and I look forward to sharing more next time.

‘OK, well I'm not going to have children so what do I do with my life? What does life look like? How do I prove myself? How do I validate my existence?’

I so adored talking to Margaret O’Connor and hope you enjoy Episode 57 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast where she explores her journey with self-care and becoming an advocate for the child-free.

And for this week’s deeper dive for the Sole to Soul Circle, I’m delighted to be sharing more with Margaret O’Connor around discerning our energy levels, the impacts different people have on them and some reminders that you get to choose how you respond to the different demands on your time and attention.

Full transcript

What do I do? Like, what is important or who will support me? You know, and there's the fear because you're repeatedly told that you will die alone and you'll regret it and it's the worst thing you'll ever do. So that you, given that you live in a pro natal society, of course, there's a chance you'll have internalised some of those beliefs and it can be really hard to navigate that.

Welcome to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I release new episodes to help you feel better every day. They're trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly, Self with an uppercase S and lowercase s self-care designed ideas to support you in connecting with and taking care of your Self: that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. To create a life you don't need to retreat from.

I hope you enjoyed this new episode and if you haven't already listened, older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com or at selfcarecoaching.net or through whatever platform you prefer.

You can also access lots of free resources to find out more about how we might work together at selfcarecoaching.net and through the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and for deeper dives into each podcast episode, there's a bonus interview with my guests where I have guests or into the theme, as well as access to the complete archive, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey and you can access all of that by joining the Sole to Soul Circle.

That's S-O-L-E for the sole of your feet. It's a fully embodied approach and soul S-O-U-L, it's a transpersonal approach. It's very holistic and you can find out more at selfcarecoaching.net and evemc.substack.com. So thanks again for listening and I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Welcome to episode 57 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm delighted to be joined by Margaret O'Connor, who I only met recently at the IACP (Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) conference the other week. She was one of the guest speakers and it was a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, so gorgeous presentation on the expectations around motherhood and not motherhood.

The permission to be mediocre and child-free was permission I didn't know I needed to hear but it was like, of course. There's so much and I'd love for you to say a little bit about what you're working on about your work, how you got into it and the pro natal society and if I'm asking too many questions all at once!

I'll keep talking so interrupt me if I go too far. Thank you so much for having me, it's lovely to be here and speak with you.

I am a counsellor and psychotherapist. I am based in Limerick in Ireland. I work in private practice and some kind of general counselling and then specifically with a service called Are Kids For Me which is aimed at people who are not sure if they want to have children or not. Or people who have decided not to have children and are kind of navigating that decision. So it is niche which is fine. As well I work with a counselling college so I'm involved in training with people who are training to become counsellors and psychotherapists.

I suppose my own reason for getting into that specific kind of work is because I am child-free by choice. I suppose just to distinguish a little bit you know that's a positive choice that's something that I have wanted to make and obviously that's very different from someone who is not able to have children and that's not their choice. I just want to distinguish that.

But yeah and I suppose you know for me it even feels a bit strange to call it a decision because it's just something I've simply never wanted to do. I have never had that urge or when I was looking at my life or making decisions about what I was going to do it's never something that appealed to me or that I saw in my future.

As I talked about a little bit at the conference I suppose it did move between being an abstract choice around something that may or may not happen you know far off in the future.

And then it became a very tangible choice of like, ‘Oh OK. You know do I actually mean this? You know do I’ll follow through on this?’ when I was about 29. Yeah, I just said didn't really foresee anything changing and as I said I'm 42 and nothing has changed you know my view on that has stayed the same.

So kind of adapting to life of thinking, OK, well I'm not going to have children so what do I do with my life? What does life look like? How do I prove myself? How do I validate my existence? What do I do with all my free time and money? You know, all that stuff.

But it was it was hard navigating that and I suppose that's why. I was in my therapy training at the time. Anyways, I would have been involved in therapy and as I said didn't find it the most supportive place at the time. That really encouraged me to offer you know the specific service to people because I think it's really important. If we skip on to the pro natalism word which is really important.

Pro natalism is the belief that birth is good. It's pro-birth. Which, as I'm always very quick to say, is fine. I'm not saying I'm anti-birth. The problem is we need people and we have more than enough people.

We're not into killing anyone!

But the impact I guess of pro natalism, if you're living in a pro natalist society, which we all do, basically this is what happens.

If a you can't have children or you don't want to have children because really it's such a pervasive. The impact of it is so pervasive. We see it in the majority of religions. Based around the idea that it is good to reproduce and have children.

Government policies, economic policies are around you know family friendly. And that family, I'm air quoting here, family being parents. And you know so when everything is designed with the assumption that a) you want to b) you will c) you can have children what happens when you don't or you can't come under that?

That's why it's hard to navigate that decision if you're unsure. It can be why it's hard to commit to that decision even if you're quite sure because there is this this real divide I suppose or split I'd almost say.

You know, we have so many representations of what parenthood looks like. This is what family, again family with children, looks like. You know there are pathways to follow. There's so little representation and so little positive representation of what life looks like if you're not doing that that it can feel like a void. It can feel like, ‘Well, what do I do like? What is important or who will support me?’ You know and there's the fear because you're repeatedly told that you will die alone and you'll regret it and it's the worst thing ever.

Given that you live in a pro natal society, of course there's a chance you'll have internalised some of those beliefs. And it can be really hard to navigate that. I've gone off now on a mad tangent. I suppose it's just right to put that in put that in context is that it's very, very pervasive and it can be really challenging in lots of way for people. And it can evoke a lot of anxiety or a lot of uncertainty for people.

I do believe, you know, very passionately that it's important to be aware of this. To provide supportive objective spaces where people can address their concerns. As I said there's lots of people who want to have children who are also anxious about it because it's huge. And lots of unforeseen aspects can be part of it. So allowing people to address those concerns, to address their ambivalence if they're unsure or they feel like they're changing their mind, and indeed for people who do not want to choose that.

And we know from statistics like there are more people choosing not to have children. There's a large portion of the society, you know it's around one in four, one in five women now in in Europe and America who won't have children for a combination of choice and not. When you think about that, one in four or one in five people, that's a lot.

Absolutely.

That's not even counting the men who don't get counted, well who never get asked.

Absolutely.

Yeah, so there's a lot of people and, at the moment, they're not being seen. They're literally not being counted and they're not being represented. And that can be so isolating and so stigmatising. So yeah, I'm passionate about it. I'm raising awareness around it and about.

You know, hopefully trying to provide some support for people in that situation. Which is wonderful. I mean I'm postmenopausal now and I remember I did my work experience when I was about 13 I think at a preschool. And I flip-flopped between, ‘I love kids!’ and ‘I'm never having kids!’, ‘I love kids!’ ‘I'm never…’ and because I didn't know the word pro natalism until your session, but because of the pressure, but then… I'm postmenopausal but I had endometriosis. Diagnosed in my 20s so that kind of awareness but your talk was so healing for me.

Just thinking, like I kept waiting for, ‘Is there going to be some day where I'm in floods of tears that I never…?’ and it's all this kind of pressure. My partner has six children but it's a really interesting. Like when you think about the culture and especially Irish Catholic and so many religions where there is that pressure. But I'd love to know how it impacts your self-care and your uppercase Self care and could you tell me a bit about your ideal and actual self-care? Like in the morning? Later on? In the evening?

OK. Getting into the nitty-gritty. Just to reference this, it was like that quote, you know about the right to be mediocre. I must cite my source. So that's from a book by Caroline Magennis it's called Harpy [A Manifesto for Childfree Women] and it came out last year an amazing book. Really, really recommend it. She's an Irish author who wrote about this topic and it's about specifically women who are childfree and she talks a lot about self-care.

I think yeah that I mean there's so much in that sentence actually. Talk about the expectation that's so unspoken. And yes, it weighs so heavy because when you hear something like that, it's like, ‘Oh my goodness! How much does that drive people?’

I do think we're moving away from that. Within the child-free community there's much more acceptance of or even, you know, trying to help people understand like there doesn't have to be this huge reason why you don't want children. Or there doesn't have to be a huge traumatic reason. Because most people think like what is wrong with you that you don't want this? But there are just people who don't want to have kids. That it. Full stop.

Because it's just something you don't want at all or you don't want enough.

Gorgeous. I'm sorry to interrupt but I remember you saying something like you'd never go up to a family and say, ‘What made you have two?’ or like ‘Why did you have the second?’ It's just so rude and intrusive!

Yes! Yes, it's perceived that way and yet I'm sure anyone listening, if you're in that situation, if you say you don't want children, you are asked why. People want a reason and an explanation to justify yourself. Like for some reason that's okay. So first of all, that’s OK. There doesn't have to be this like huge reason. And also, that you are you're not making up for anything. You know it's often seen as like other achievements are like a consolation or a justification. You know, OK, I didn't have children but you know I've done this amazing thing or that amazing thing or whatever it is. That I think there's definitely an effort to try and move away from that but it's really hard.

And I suppose to me that connects like the biggest thing I would see in my client work and in training. It's really interesting as well like we know. And I always I love this. Like, as therapists, it's our job to look after ourselves. It's written in our code of ethics: You are professionally negligent if you aren’t. Like I'm like this is amazing, amazing job like you have to do this and you know I was talking about that with students or whatever but like the blocks. Like how hard it is. And the beliefs that get in the way. I just think this is such a huge or can be such a huge block to people. Like because you don't have children for whatever reason you still deserve self-care. You know, I mean, it sounds such a stupid thing to say we also still need to say it.

You know it's not that well. Because this is the thing that that kind of seeps in. It's like, ‘Oh well, I'm not tired enough’ or ‘I'm not, you know, I haven't…’

Well I don't feel like I have more time anyway but that's what I'm thinking. I can only imagine how people with kids manage because I'm perpetually exhausted and not knowing how I navigate just me!

Same. Like I don't genuine, my God, so much respect! But you know that it's OK that you still deserve, you don't have to justify through this busyness or what you're doing. That self-care is still necessary. But it can be much easier to say than to do. So I would recommend um Caroline's book to unpack that a little bit.

My own self-care, OK.

Well ideal: if you had all the time and energy and money and everything in the world what would you like to do?

What I would like to do? That is a big question. I think live somewhere sunny! The first one which is probably achievable but there hasn't been at the moment. You know, to me, I was thinking about this a little bit today. To me it's actually, they're they are small things to me. Having a day where I don't have to set an alarm or where I'm not like tied to a schedule. Because you know when you work as a therapist you're very time bound.

Yeah, that's a real luxury. It's such a just a pressure off to kind of go, ‘I can get up whenever’ and you know it's not that I'll be in bed all day. And actually to get up and like stay in my pyjamas. I know that sounds so basic but to not have to, ‘Oh my God, I have to have a shower and have to get ready and have to be here.’ Just that luxury of not having to do anything is just divine.

I love that. I kind of hate myself almost for saying this but movement and exercise have become a really important.

We’re mammals! We need to move.

And I never I was and I am not a sporty person and never was but in the last three four years it has become something I actually really value. So I do I try to go for a walk most days. I do like exercise and like weight lifting. One of those who’s gotten into that. And I love it. I like the feeling of it and it's around feeling strong.

It's around like realising what my body is capable of and seeing that progress and it's very hard to think when you're lifting heavy things so it's fantastic. Really shuts the brain off. That's become actually a really important part. I've gone back or try to get back into swimming, something I did as a child but was never very comfortable with.

I'm doing some lessons on that and trying to do that weekly because again it's very hard to think about anything else when you're swimming. It's so immersive. Then yeah I suppose I do and I struggle with this a little bit is because I am quite an introverted person so I really have to manage my social interactions.

Sometimes, there are days I'm just like I can't. Can't. You know. I need quiet and need to recharge. But then of course there's other times where it's great to meet people and be social. I sometimes find it a bit difficult just to manage if there's a busy time, there's a nice things on and like they're lovely to go to in theory but, ideally, I can't do more than one social occasion in a weekend. Which sounds really weird but yeah, there's a there's a fine line for me around that.

What else? I'm very, I don't know what the word is, but like anything with heat. Like, wrap me in a blanket. Put me in a sauna. Anything where I just kind of get to like wrap up cosy and be warm. It's just amazing. So again living in Ireland does you know give you lots of opportunities to need to do that.

Podcasts I've gotten into. I love reading and I had to kind of re-jig that a little bit because I was I was reading a lot for work and they weren't relaxing. So I kind of had to shove that to one side and get back into fiction which I'm really pleased about. And then it said podcast and then I'd have different like I'll have like work-related ones but I'll also just have very silly ones or not very taxing ones. And that's actually something I find quite important . Like things that are relaxing to my brain so whether they're like shows I've watched before or things that don't require like much intellectual effort to piece those in as well. Like it's OK to have that downtime and again give yourself permission. Like it's OK. Like some ways that's just relaxing or fun. That's just silly. Yeah, I think it's very important so it's a little bit of a mix and match I would say.

So what would be the essential if you could only do some of that?

Well again now, I'm a very basic person as well. So in terms of sleep and food, I have such a narrow window on both things. Sleep and food are essential regularly and you know it's sufficient. I think actually at this point it's probably the movement.

I was saying to you you know I was a bit sick there last week and I'm out of routine I. I notice it now like I've if there's a week where I'm not literally like not getting outside because I work from home or I'm not kind of just getting enough of that I definitely notice it so that's interesting like that was not a thing for me 10 years ago uh or even five so that's new. And that downtime. I need that half a day or a day ideally where I can kind of potter around and do my little jobs whatever they are, around the house.

Just to not feel under pressure that I have to be somewhere doing something but that's really important.

Yeah. That's wonderful. And if you could go back in time to your Inner Child at any age or Younger You any adult age, what love, compassion, wisdom anything else would you like to share with her?

Do you know I think it is actually around the introvert thing. It took it was until I did my counselling training that I really realised what that was. And it was okay. It wasn't just like a personality defect and that really was like game changer. Like, ‘Oh, this is just how some people function’ you know. But it's okay. So that was so important. And yeah, as I said I was in my mid-20s when I figured that out so if I'd known that earlier that was probably would have been helpful.

And just to be more compassionate around that and also maybe that piece where I would like have a bit more fun. You know we can all be very serious sometimes. So you have to watch the cat video or you know whatever works for you and that works for me.

And you know that's OK too!

Absolutely. Well thank you so much! And we'll be sharing a bonus video with you for the Sole to Soul Circle but can you tell people where they can find you online? Both your...

Bealtaine is a festival of fertility, love and lust and this year, we're braving the parts of ourselves we find hardest to love...

Full transcript

Thinking again about who you love but this time bringing it more to yourself and thinking about all the different parts of yourself and the parts of yourself you find it easier to love and harder to love.

What parts do you appreciate about yourself and what parts do you find more challenging if love feels too strong? And I want you, if you're familiar with Friends, to remember Phoebe's famous song about that poor smelly, smelly cat. Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, what are they feeding you? Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, it's not your fault. They won't take you to the vet, you're probably not their favourite pet. Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, it's not your fault.

Welcome to episode 56 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

Thanks for joining me. I'm your host and producer Eve Menezes Cunningham and this week we're celebrating the Irish Celtic Festival of Bealtaine, also known as Beltane. It's a festival, part of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, of fertility, love and lust.

And for the purposes of this week's podcast and the Sole to Soul Circle membership, we're focusing on love.

The love we have for ourselves and for others can, of course, be really challenging with trauma histories and with ADHD and with rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD). It can be really challenging to feel love and really easy to feel rejection.

The more we can have that awareness around our styles of interpreting the world, the stories we're telling ourselves about what actions mean and being able to love ourselves enough to speak up for ourselves and love our loved ones enough to speak with as much love as possible but expressing our needs and wants.

It can all be really fraught and tense and also so joyful and it's such a lovely time of year with the lambs and the leaves and the flowers and the growth in all directions, that sense of thinking about what you love and the way your love life is, whether you're single, whether you're attached, how you would like it to be, thinking about your ideal love relationships, your ideal in terms of how much time you would be able to spend with your loved ones, thinking about what you already value in terms of your love life and others in your life you love and who love you.

And also using it as an opportunity to do a bit of a love audit and think about where things might be missing, where you can amp up that self-love.

Inner child work is always really powerful, really needed because the more we attend to those wounded parts of ourselves, the less likely we are to project them outwards, the more able we are to hold ourselves and therefore to communicate in a more loving, compassionate way. So lots to be thinking about.

I hope you've got a diary or pen and paper ready so you can pause things, make notes, maybe pause the episode, come back to it.

Starting by thinking about all the things and all the people we love. Maybe pause here and just make a note of all the things you love, things you love to do, things like inanimate things, other things, parts of the world like places, people, animals, whatever springs to mind when you think about what do you love, just let yourself make a list of all the things you love.

We're going to come back to it later and I'm going to remind you again that like all the episodes, this offering is to help you gently explore ways in which you can amp up the love for yourself and for your higher case S Self and for others.

Thinking again about who you love, but this time bringing it more to yourself and thinking about all the different parts of yourself and the parts of yourself you find it easier to love and harder to love.

What parts do you appreciate about yourself and what parts do you find more challenging if love feels too strong? And I want you, if you're familiar with Friends, to remember Phoebe's famous song about that poor smelly, smelly cat. Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, what are they feeding you? Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, it's not your fault. They won't take you to the vet, you're probably not their favourite pet. Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, it's not your fault.

I do a lot of work around Cattitude and Feline Better Every Day and working with polyvagal informed approaches to trauma recovery and VAST / ADHD and recently was talking to someone about doing some CPD for them. And I pitched Smelly Cat! Because the more we love those smelly parts of ourselves, the parts we feel are completely unlovable, mangy, maybe flea-ridden…

All those parts need our love. If that cat were taken to the vet, given a good clean, given an enormous, maybe at a distance – It might be feral – hug. But time and patience and understanding and the commitment to getting to know those smelly, smelly, smelly cats, that cat could become a beautiful magnificat, a wondrous creature. Like most cats in terms of knowing how worthy it is of love and adoration and freedom and safety and all the things all us mammals are worthy of.

When you think of your own inner Smelly Cat or when you think of the Smelly Cats in your life, the people you struggle to love, but most likely the parts of yourself that you struggle with that you just want to kind of ignore and pretend they're not there, potentially worse, you might hurt yourself, you might.

But if you were to imagine the potential for healing with those smelly parts of yourself, those Smelly Cat parts of yourself…

And that brings us then to the kind of love that therapists have for our clients. I never know if I'm pronouncing it right rightly or wrongly, agape or agape, but it's that kind of essence of love and in person-centred counselling, it's known as unconditional positive regard.

You're not, obviously, going to breach any boundaries, but there is that love for your clients in terms of what they're bringing, for your supervisees in terms of what they're bringing. And that in psychosynthesis we have the archetypes of Love and the Will.

Will is really important in terms of making changes, sustaining changes, and there are different types of will. There's the ‘transpersonal will’, the ‘good will’, thinking of the greater good, and there's ‘skillful will’ where we adapt our approaches accordingly, and there's ‘strong will’ where we just kind of plough through, get things done.

But Love is just as strong, just as important as Will. It is more to do with acceptance, with support, and thinking for yourself, like how can you show those Smelly Cat parts of yourself more love?

How can you hold them when you think about the people in your life that you've identified, the ones who are easy to love, the ones that are more challenging to love, if you were to imagine having more patience with them, more understanding for them, more giving yourself and others more grace?

That's what it's all about. And knowing that you and everyone else is worthy of that, and not trying to expect yourself to be like some sort of saint where you only feel love and light, we're humans, we annoy each other.

It's completely normal and natural, but by recognising what is getting churned up, what's getting stirred up, what's coming up for healing, and by attending to it, we can then really use our relationships with the parts of ourselves as well as with others, both loved ones and the people we find more challenging, to help us grow, to help us evolve, to help us develop.

Thinking in terms of the Love archetype, and maybe whether you, and again you might want to make some notes in your journal, your piece of paper, you might want to think maybe the Will archetype is stronger in you? Maybe you're really great at getting things done, at go, go, go, at like figuring out how to make the impossible possible, and maybe it's very much like giving into that ‘good will’? Thinking for the highest good for all concerned, and maybe even surrendering to ‘transpersonal will’?

But we still need that Love energy. Thinking for yourself, with yourself, with a Smelly Cat part of yourself, and maybe more than one part is coming up for healing now, and maybe if you have children, or you have other like kind of young people in your life, or anyone in your life, thinking about how can you be more accepting of those parts of yourself, and of others, without trying to change anything.

I'm laughing now, because this is my work, this is, this has been my work for a really long time now, and I had a little bit of a meltdown at the weekend, at time of filming, where we were on our way back, driving from Cork to Westport. And I am highly allergic to peppers, anaphylaxis, and I am vegan, so no animal products, and we'd stopped at a service station with, I don't know, five, six concession stands.

And I could not get anything that was edible, let alone anything that I wanted to eat, and all I needed to see were the ingredients, like were there peppers? Bell peppers, okay, I can't have that. Instead, people kept pointing me to allergen lists, and bell peppers aren't one of the big 14, so they're not on their lists.

I felt like the smelliest Smelly Cat in the universe, and I'm 49 years old. I've been doing this work on myself for so long, but I felt so vulnerable. I felt like I'd never be able to eat again. I was hungry, I kept it together, but later on that evening, when I got home, I got really upset about it.

And I realised I really needed to attend to that kind of baby toddler part of myself that had felt too much for the adults around me. Not all the time, but at times, I think that had got very churned up. I was able to talk to my partner about it, I can talk to friends about it, but it's still with the allergy, with the being vegan, it's something that gets triggered in me when I go out to eat. Even when I've given the information in advance, and they've assured me it won't be a problem, and then it's like, oh, it's got cream in it, or oh, it's got butter in it, or oh, all these things that aren't vegan. Or worse, peppers. And so I had to really work hard to love that part of myself that didn't cause a scene, but wasn't as gracious as I normally like to be.

I normally like to be, thank you so much, that's amazing, whereas it was just like, ‘OK, can I please have the base of a pizza with some tomato sauce then?’, ‘Would you like cheese with that?’ ‘No thank you, cheese is not vegan.’

They didn't have vegan cheese, and it just felt like with all, and I think Marianne Williamson talks about everything being a call for love, when we think about bad behaviour, when we think about the times we act out, or others act out, and if we're able to see what's behind it, it's just that:

Am I lovable? Am I too much? Am I enough? Am I…?

It's really easy to love, and to help others heal, and to help ourselves heal, but we have to not only start with ourselves, but to help others when they can't do it for themselves, it's not that old, ‘Oh you can't love others, or you can't let love in until you love yourself,’ because that way, so many people would never love.

We do love and heal in connection. We co-regulate. But it is all connected, and when you notice yourself feeling cranky, when you notice yourself feeling frustrated, when you notice yourself not being at your best, if again you were to attach that Smelly Cat love, and know underneath the smelliest of cats is the most adorable divine feline.

You have that within yourself as well. How can you attend to those smelly parts? How can you, I'll get off the Smelly Cat analogy at some point, but not today. How can you just know that you are worthy? How can you know, how can you believe in every fibre of your being, that you are deserving? And that you deserve good food? That you deserve care in other areas of your life, in other types of work? In other places you visit?

All sorts of things, like there are so many people who, especially now, in so many things in 2025, where you'd think we had gone past all the hate, all the maligning of already marginalised communities, and just show them the love that they and everyone else deserve.

Thinking for yourself, this Bealtaine and beyond, how can you show yourself more love? How can you show others more love? How can you accept more love? How can you know, even when you feel at your smelliest, that you are worthy and deserving of others’ love?

And it might be that you let them attend to your smelly parts, and that you begin to think, oh, OK, if you haven't already watched Penelope, and if it's still on Netflix when you’re watching or listening to this, please watch it.

It was one of my favourite films for decades, and I re-watched it recently, and it definitely stands up. Again, the key is self-love. I don't want to give much more away but let me know how you get on, I love hearing from you.

And for Sole to Soul Circle members, your deeper dive bonus content this week will be a simple ritual you can do to heal your hurting heart, both over Bealtaine and throughout the coming year.

It's really a symbolic healing, and it's really powerful, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.

And this episode, like all episodes so far, has been produced by me, your host Eve Menezes Cunningham. Thank you very much for listening, I love sharing these with you, I love hearing from you, and you can, if you haven't already, rate, review, subscribe, share, comment, like, if you think of anyone who would benefit from this content, please send them a link, or tell them where they can find it on Spotify, Apple, everywhere else, Substack, and YouTube.

And I just really want to know what is that smelliest, smelliest, Smelly Cat part of yourself? You can email me, eve at selfcarecoaching.net, or you can comment on any of the platforms that I'm sharing this on. If you were to think what does that Inner Smelly Cat need? Just keep asking yourself, what does that Smelly Cat need? It might need a bit of a bath, it might need some fresh air, it might need some sunshine, it might need some time in the company of other cats, it might need sleep, I mean, my goodness, sleep always makes me better company, it might need food, but knowing that you and everyone else are worthy of love, and I hope that with this time of year, having such wonderful, loving energy, that you can afford that to yourself and others in your life.

With that, am sending enormous love to you and yours, and I look forward to sharing more next week!

Would you like to add to your self-care toolkit by managing life's stresses with more compassion for yourself and others? This new episode is for you.

Full transcript

We can internalise shame about not handling the situation with more grace, and even when it is extreme pressure. Stress can be a good thing. Think about a coal turning into a diamond, or think about a toddler, no one is yelling at that toddler, ‘Toddle! Walk!’ There's that inherent drive within all of us that we want to grow, we want to evolve, we want to learn, we want to develop. And when we're under a good stress, that eustress, that is what's happening, but where it's more distress, as in not de-stressing, but di-stress, it can be really damaging for not just the nervous system, but inflammation conditions and immunity.

Welcome to episode 55 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast.

I'm your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and every Tuesday there's a new episode to help with trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly Self and self-care ideas to help you connect with that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, and miraculous part of yourself, and to create a life you don't need to retreat from.

This week we're looking at Stress Awareness Month. As I was reflecting on stress awareness (if you would like to, you can access loads of free resources at selfcarecoaching.net/home/ stress, and they'll support you with stress, helping you understand more about it. There's also a lot in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, and of course other podcast episodes), I realised that while it's one of my areas of expertise for over two decades, it's especially important for sensitive nervous systems when we're dealing with VAST, also known as ADHD, and trauma recovery.

And there's room for improvement in my own life, even now, and there's, I think we just live in stressful times, it's a completely normal thing.

I realised a few days ago… I'm a BACP media spokesperson, and they'd asked me to contribute some self-care advice for young people navigating stress at work, and as I was writing my answers, advising young people, I was thinking, ‘49 Year Old Me is benefiting from this advice, too!’ Because one of the work projects I'm involved with has been very stressful for a very long time.

As always, I am and remain my first client, and when I realised I was talking to myself as well, it's like, ‘Of course!’ And it makes sense when I think about the ADHD, when I think about the trauma history, when I think about being an immigrant myself, when I think about being the daughter of immigrants, being the granddaughter of immigrants: We can know in our bones that something is too much pressure for someone, anyone else, but somehow when it's us, we can internalise shame about not handling the situation with more grace, and even when it is extreme pressure.

Stress can be a good thing. Think about a coal turning into a diamond, or think about a toddler, no one is yelling at that toddler, ‘Toddle! Walk!’ There's that inherent drive within all of us that we want to grow, we want to evolve, we want to learn, we want to develop. And when we're under a good stress, that eustress, that is what's happening, but where it's more distress, as in not de-stressing, but di-stress, it can be really damaging for not just the nervous system, but inflammation conditions and immunity.

I've got the tail end of a cold, and it's like really funny, because I was thinking to myself, ‘My immunity is great! Because I'm taking really good care of myself!’ And then I came down with this bug. But it is another sign of stress. The body takes too much, and then it goes into needing that time for recovery.

We know from Polyvagal Theory that we're wired to thrive when we feel safe, welcome, and loved. Asking yourself if there’s any situation in your life, or any relationship as it stands, where you don't feel safe, welcome, and loved. And ask yourself what might you do to improve things, or if you might need to exit the situation.

It's also, as I just said, about remembering that stress itself is not bad, there are the different types of stress. We talked a bit about eustress. We talked about distress. With eustress, you think about going to the gym, you think about the muscles actually breaking down before they come back stronger. We grow through working out.

And we sometimes forget that we always have a choice, but when we're in that kind of distress situation, we can feel powerless, we can feel helpless, we can feel burnt out, underappreciated, undervalued, and not good enough.

One thing I'm doing, as part of on an ongoing basis to reduce stress in my life, while also attempting to follow Marie Forleo's advice about simplifying to amplify. I've changed up the membership a bit. So it's still the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, and I've changed the title of my Substack to Feel Better Every Day, more in line with my overall practice, which has been Feel Better Every Day with Eve Menezes Cunningham for years, and years, and years, and years.

Feel Better Every Day with Eve Menezes. Also known as selfcarecoaching.net. But I've complicated things, because I've been working with the lunar phases and the Celtic Wheel of the Year for decades, I thought it would be really simple and easy to have things aligned for the different levels of membership.

But thinking about it, that's been a bit complicated, so I'm simply going to have the podcast remaining Feel Better Every Day, and then free subscribers will get bonus content and special offers, sorry about this cold, I'm talking a bit strangely. And then the Sole to Soul Circle will be the third option which you can upgrade for so it will no longer be a Full Moon or Super Moon membership, it will be just the Sole to Soul Circle.

With that, it's that Sole to Soul Circle, fully embodied from the soles of the feet, transpersonal approach, so it's to the soul, get it, soul, S-O-L-E to soul, S-O-U-L, and it's an approach to trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly, self and self-care.

This week, the deeper dive content for Sole to Soul Circle members will include a video with some stress-reducing yoga poses and an energy technique that's hilariously simple but really effective. It really amps up that self-empathy and it really grounds and empowers the person.

I’m looking forward to sharing that soon. And, of course, there's access to the exclusive membership benefits area, including the entire Love Your WHOLE Self chakra journey.

We know that yoga is especially good for stress, and Dr Chris Streeter found many, many years ago in a study, that just attending a one-hour class creates GABA, which is a naturally occurring, it's mimicked in drugs like Xanax to help calm the system, but it occurs naturally in the body through yoga. It's one of those things that we know again through working with the vagus nerve, there are so many things we can do with our body, with our breaths, to change our physiology, change the way we feel.

For example, Forward Folds help us come into deeper contact with our bodies in the present moment. We have that stretch reflex at the back of the legs which can help us, especially with ADHD, feel more stimulated in the pose. And there's more to focus the attention on, as well as connecting with the breath, having that deeper breath, that slightly longer exhalation or your Ujjayi breathing, whatever feels best for you.

When we use the Forward Folds with the relaxation response, and you can listen to the podcast episode about that if you'd like, it can be especially helpful.

Lion pose is one of the ones I'll be sharing in the Sole to Soul Circle. It's a great way to roar away any stresses and strains, and it's really about never underestimating the power of even acknowledging your current situation.

Once you've acknowledged it, even to yourself, you can empower yourself to improve it. And that's one of the reasons EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques including tapping) can be especially helpful, because EFT can help us move from sympathetic activation of the autonomic nervous system, the ‘stress response’, to the parasympathetic activation, the ‘rest / digest response’.

We're coming into our body, we're tapping on certain points around the face and upper body, and like yoga, like anything that grounds us, that feels soothing, there are so many things we can do and we forget.

I'm hoping that this episode is going to remind you of things that are already in your toolkit as well. But today, or any time it's helpful for you to revisit this, think about any situation that's stressing you out, and as we do this EFT Tap Along, your words are going to resonate more than mine, so use mine as a guide, but trust yourself and trust your own inner wisdom.

We're working with that stressed part of yourself, and that stressed part of you is really ready to be heard, because it's sick of you ignoring it, it's sick of you taking on more and more as if you're somehow to blame for the circumstances you found yourself in, and if you just somehow hustle harder, work harder, it will all be okay.

It's like, ‘No, you need a break, you need, like the stress symptoms are trying to tell you something, we're not machines, we're not superhuman, really pay attention.’

So start by asking yourself where you would rate your current feeling of stress.

With EFT, (Emotional Freedom Techniques, including tapping) part of the reason they can be so effective is that we can release tension. If you think about a toddler who falls over, gets a hug from its carer, and is happily gurgling and laughing and playing again the next moment, babies are brilliant at moving emotions through the system, through the body, and not getting stuck in it.

But the older we get, we learn to not move as freely as we would like, we're having to sit still at school, or we're having to do all sorts of things that go against our body's innate wisdom. And I'm not saying that that's entirely a terrible thing, because we have to be socialised to a certain degree, but even doing this work over the decades I've been doing it, it goes too far, it goes way too far.

So many people are suffering way more than they need to be suffering, by not doing the little things that can be done each day, or each moment, to ease that stress and enhance that comfort.

The tapping helps to move the energy. It might come out through laughing, it might come out through shaking, it might come out through yawning or farting or burping, or sometimes we get bored as we're tapping away and wander off, it's just the energy has shifted.

To help us recognise that, ‘Actually, yeah, I was feeling really bad about this particular thing, really stressed out, and now I can't even remember what I was worried about, I can't remember what I was thinking’ before we start tapping, it's really helpful to rate your current level of stress.

If you were to think of a scale between minus 10 being terrible, and plus 10 being amazing, and 0 being neutral, ask yourself where you are on that scale right now when you think about this stressful situation.

We're going to start with the side of the hand for the setup statement. We're going to start with, ‘Even though I feel so stressed, I choose to soothe and support myself. Even though I'm feeling so stressed out, I choose to soothe and support myself.’

‘Even though I'm feeling really stressed, I choose to soothe and support myself.’

The tapping points are the inside of the eyebrow, outside of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, under the lip, under the mouth, the thymus, like using the palm of the hand on the thymus and tapping the collarbone. That, just on its own, can be a really comforting thing.

And then under the arm, so if you imagine the side of a bra, whether you're wearing one or not, the top of the head. So you've done that, even though I'm feeling so stressed. And again, with the setup statement, the idea of doing it around whatever it is you're feeling, whether it's an emotional thing you want freedom from or a physical thing.

It used to always be. ‘I deeply and completely love and accept myself’. ‘Even though [whatever it is], I deeply and completely love and accept myself.’

‘Even though [whatever it is] I choose to soothe and support myself’ can be more accessible for a lot of people, because we live in a world where unfortunately many of us have been taught to not love ourselves. And it can take a lot of healing, a lot of work to reconnect with that inherent worthiness, that inherent being lovable.

So we're going to do it again: ‘Even though I'm really stressed, I choose to soothe and support myself. Even though I'm really stressed, I choose to soothe and support myself.

Even though I'm really stressed out, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.’

And if you feel tearful, know that that's completely normal. Just be gentle with yourself.

I hate feeling so stressed out inside of the eyebrow. I hate feeling completely overwhelmed so much of the time outside of the eye. This is not sustainable under the eye.

I can't keep going like this under the nose. I'm scared of what's going to happen if I stop under the mouth. I can't keep going on like this.

Collarbone. I don't know how to get off this treadmill under the arm. It's too much stress.

And then back to the inside of the eyebrow. I feel like I'm somehow not being good enough outside of the eye. Like if I was somehow more efficient and productive, I wouldn't be feeling this stressed.

Under the eye. Like it's me that's the problem. It's me.

I am the problem. It's me. Under the nose.

Even though I know that's not true. Under the mouth. There's that part of me that feels like I'm not good enough.

And the collarbone. And that's stressing me out too. Under the arm.

And I don't know who to ask without giving my power away. I want things to change top of the head. But it feels vulnerable asking for help and support.

So taking a big breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. And noticing for yourself where that number is. It may have got worse as we've tapped on some of the more challenging aspects of how you might be feeling.

Or it may have moved in the other direction. Or it may not have moved at all. But just make a note of your new number.

And feel free to message me to let me know what it was, what it is, what it's going to become. And for the purposes of this tap along, we're going to, I'm going to encourage you to pause the recording and keep tapping on other issues that have come up for you. Trust yourself.

Let yourself make noises. Let yourself swear. Let yourself just get the stress out of your system and tap it away.

We're working with acupressure points. The ends of the meridians. It's amazingly effective.

You can do it through a duvet. You can do it through an enormous winter coat. I often tap mentally while I'm swimming.

It's so much to do with intention. But it's a really powerful tool, which I hope you're already feeling the benefits from. And we're going to then close this with around where we connect with a more positive element.

So again, your words are going to resonate more than mine. But because I'm doing this for people, I don't know your specific situation. Change it where it doesn't resonate for you and use what works in terms of what does.

I am looking forward to letting go of all of this stress. I'm looking forward to feeling calmer, more relaxed. I deserve to feel calm.

I deserve to relax. I deserve rest. I deserve downtime.

I deserve to not feel anxious about rest and downtime. I deserve to have fun. I deserve time to daydream.

I deserve to be forgiven for making mistakes. To not take all the stress onto myself. To recognise that everything is collaborative.

That it's safe to ask for help, even when it feels unnatural. And it's safe to assert myself and set boundaries. I deserve to feel relaxed.

I deserve to assert myself. I deserve to notice what's the information coming back at me. There will be some people who don't like the boundaries I'm setting.

There will be some people who try to shame me for asserting myself. That's still not my problem. That's not my issue.

That's them not liking me putting down the stress that I've been carrying for them. I deserve to release that stress. I deserve to focus on what feels good to focus on.

My time, my money, my energy, my effort. Can I imagine how free I'm going to feel? How much fun I'm going to have? How good I'm going to feel? I like even thinking about letting go of a lot of this stress. And I don't have to overdo it.

I don't have to clear it all in one go. I don't have to change my entire life. I don't have to quit everything.

I don't have to have all the challenging conversations. Just this tapping I'm doing on myself. Just the journaling I'm going to do afterwards.

It's all getting to know what is stressing me out. What do I want to do about it? And what could I do about it even if I don't want to do those things? I deserve to feel wonderful. So another big breath in through your nose, out through the mouth.

So I encourage you to pause this. Make some notes. Let me know how you're getting on.

I hope you found it helpful. I love hearing how you're getting on. And if you think that the changes I've made or I'm making to the Sole to Soul Circle sound less stressful to you, I'd love to hear!

I also hope that you will go to the website selfcarecoaching.net and check out the book, the Circle, the other free resources for stress and other episodes. And you can find out more at selfcarecoaching.net. And if you haven't already and you would like to, please share, subscribe, rate, review, comment. Let me know what you want more of.

Let me know what you're going to do from this episode to take better care of yourself and create a life you don't need to retreat from.

Have a gorgeous week. And for Sole to Soul Circle members, you'll be getting your yoga poses and that energy technique.

And if you are a subscriber to Feel Better Every Day on Substack, again, you can find out all that information on selfcarecoaching.net or evemc.substack.com. You'll be getting some journal prompts as well to help you go a bit deeper. And yeah, recognise that stress like everything else is simply information and it's up to you what you do with it. But I can tell you from experience that when we empower ourselves to speak up for ourselves and make the changes we know we need to make, it's a matter of progress, not perfection.

It gets easier with practice. But I mean, when we're in a stressed state, we're not at our most resourceful.

With all these practices, you do them, it becomes easier, it becomes more a part of your daily life.

But you're still going to get tripped up. We're living in a really, really like interesting times. There's an enormous amount of suffering.

There's an enormous amount of pain. Give yourself a break. Sending enormous love and looking forward to connecting with you again next week.