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Hi friends

Have you ever had a moment that you couldn’t explain? An inexplicable happening that shifted everything for you?

When I was about thirty one, I sat on a remote cliffside in Cornwall with my then husband, looking out to sea in our raincoats. My three month old daughter lay sleeping snugly in my lap. My faithful border terrier Hazel at our side.

The wind had picked up, forcing the drizzle into our faces, so we pushed our hoods up, with little impact. So much for summer.

We had both been crying.

A few minutes earlier, we had scattered the ashes of our first baby girl, Rosie, into the winds. She had a genetic disorder and didn’t make it out into the big wide world. It had only been us who knew and loved her, so we were the only ones there.

The now horizontal rain mixed with our tears, and I had frankly had enough.

I was angry with the universe.

Did it really have to rain today? This shittest and most miserable type of English rain too, coming from all directions and wholly unsatisfying. It was always going to be a terrible day. Why make it worse, universe?

We couldn’t spend time there, our tiny, cherished, living baby in arms, but we wanted to honour Rosie in a way that marked the impact her tiny short life had already had on us. That she had been ours, and she mattered.

In my head, so as not to upset my husband, I said as sternly, firmly, and as seriously as I could to the universe:

‘This better not be it. Bloody do something!’

A few moments later, as we watched out to sea, where our babies ashes were re-merging with the elements, five dolphins appeared from nowhere, playing and diving in the waves right ahead. We had been to Cornwall 2-3 times a year for fifteen years and never saw a dolphin, not once, though we’d heard they lived out there and always looked.

Our wide yes took in their sleek blue arched bodies, shining and glinting, far out to sea. We stood up, as if that would help ascertain we weren’t imagining them. They came closer, and stayed playing in that spot directly ahead of us, out to sea for a good ten or fifteen minutes.

Not moving on, not going anywhere, just there with us, playing.

Smiles lit our faces as we jumped and held each other and tried to show our sleeping baby. Hazel span around, wagging her tail. Different tears now rolled down my cheeks.

Remembering this beautiful moment brings tears to my eyes as I write.

Of course I have no idea what happened. If I conjured this, whether the universe, or the dolphins heard my request for ‘something else’ to happen on this dreary day. Whether my baby’s soul was hanging about in limbo and speaking to us.

But in that moment I felt my trust, that I had lost in the universe return. I felt beloved and belonging that I had lost sight of for years.

When it was over, the dolphins dived and swam back out into the deep, dark green-grey ocean. The drizzle subsided a little and we headed back to the car with our precious baby and rather bedraggled but never complaining dog trotting loyally alongside us.

I let the shift in my ability to trust life and the universe again sink in, after what had felt like such a deep and dark betrayal.

Most of us have had incredible, in explicable moments of one kind or another on various scales. But we tuck them away, as I have for the past two decades until today.

We can get drawn back into the grind, and forget the mystery that lies within and around us.

I am reminded that perhaps the universe listens. Perhaps we are part of something greater. Perhaps we have more agency than we could ever know.

This season, today especially, I’d love for us to take these experiences out, and look at them again as I have. Will you let me know yours in the comments?

Making Room for Wonder This Season

I invite you now to think back over your life to these luminous moments, where something shifted that is hard to explain. A pivotal moment, or strange occurrence that radically changed your life. What comes to mind? What did you learn?

Share it in the comments, however small, however strange, however long ago.

If you don’t want to share, today’s exercise is to write your experience for yourself, to bring it into the light, give it voice and substance. What was the essential message from this experience?

With love,

Kate x

Next week we’ll explore the power of visualisation with a gorgeous sunshine meditation, and mark the solstice and reflect at this half way point.

And another free therapy workbook for members is on its way!

I’ll be back soon with the next instalment for the Heal Your Past course too.

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Hi friends,

I've been posting here on Letters from Therapy for 2 1/2 years without a single break!

I haven't been feeling well this week, so I haven't got a post out for you, but I saw that some of you haven’t seen all my recent posts so I am linking to some here, to give you a chance to catch up, and me a chance to catch up to!

How do you feel about taking breaks?

I am looking forward to starting that very soon. I'll say more about it, but in the meantime, enjoy your day and see you next time!

👉🏻 Oh, and there will also be another workbook coming this month for members, so look out for that too.

👉🏻 And can you believe we are halfway through the year? I've got something coming for you for the summer solstice, which is in a couple of weeks time. Where does the time go? It's a great time to reflect on the half year so far and the half year to come. This is also in the membership, and if you're not already in, you're welcome to join.

With love,

Kate

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Hi friends

Twenty five years ago I held in my mind a happy life with friends around me, children, ease, plenty. That loving family, kids chatting around the kitchen table. It turned out it wasn’t to be.

I gave birth three times, though just have one (lovely) daughter. Off with those little souls went the architecture of the future I had built in my mind: the family, the home, the belonging, the kinship.

Did something change the direction of your life?

Over the years, my marriage didn’t survive it. Friendships dissolved. Family members, not knowing how to hold such an enormous loss, found ways to be absent when I needed them most, and still do.

The warm, chaotic family life, the sense of being held inside something larger than just me, stopped being possible, instead, my shattered future lay in my hands like dust. …

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I just love this beautiful story from meditation teacher Tara Brach, that gives me tingles!

I wrote about it originally here:

With love,
Kate

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Hi friends,

As promised, this is the third post in the monthly Heal Your Past Series, though each is standalone and you can’t fall behind.

Annual members, if you’d like to download your free 92 page Heal Your Past workbook, see your voucher is in the email I sent you on 29th March. Manage your subscription if you’d like one too. Is it time to move on?

Hidden Unfinished Business

Past experiences often shape our lives, behaviour, and choices in a way that can hold us back. Part of healing the past may be discovering and acknowledging these. Then you can move away from unconscious patterns and habits that no longer serve you, even though they may have at one time.

If any of these resonate, they can be a focus for you to explore and move through, if that feels right, with the therapeutic journaling questions below, and related articles in the membership.

It is normal to carry invisible bruises from the past within us over our lifetime. No-one escapes pain. But sometimes we find these things hold us back far too much, and often, outside of our awareness.

Our experiences can shape our thoughts, feelings and behaviours far more than we realise. Often in therapy, people don’t realise their presenting issue comes from unfinished business, or past pain that lingers. They discover that not only was there a wound, but there was an adaptation to cope with the wound. This includes 21 common patterns of unfinished business that may not seem related to your past. Do go more deeply into anything that resonates, and read the related articles I’ve linked to that are also in the Membership.

If you're drawn to go deeper, the rest of this post, with journalling prompts to try this week, are in the membership. You are so welcome to join us if you are ready to step more fully into yourself. Kx

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Today we are talking about unravelling our inner critic thoughts from our true self thinking.

This is from an original article I wrote here:

The world needs our fabulous plans. We deserve to reach our potential. We must give ourselves permission to follow our dreams. We are allowed to not bother, relax, and take it easy when our body and mind are tired, and just because!

With love,

Kate

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Hi friends

As part of our shedding inherited stories series in the Bloom Sessions, and the Heal Your Past series which resumes next week, I wanted to share come personal stories and client examples of the clues our bodies can hold without our realising.

Our bodies can become misaligned, sent out of kilter by past, overwhelming experiences. Today, I share useful practices from the therapy room to help bring your mind and body together as one, with ten journalling questions.

During my psychotherapy training, I had therapy for a couple of years with a body psychotherapist. Behind his chair was a huge bookcase, and on it was a very large book called ‘Job’s Body’, a classic text in body psychotherapy for years.

That title really got me: I felt seen!

If you aren’t familiar with the story, Job was in the Old Testament, who God sent horrendous difficulties to deal with, of different kinds, over and over again. Since my body had been through a lot, two still births, sciatica, ostracism because of the former, post traumatic stress: I felt like Job. And the relief that washed through me, sitting in that chair, just knowing that this book existed helped me shift. There were others like me who lived in traumatised bodies, for all sorts of reasons.

Years earlier, during one of the lowest periods of my life, I had read the story of Job in an attempt to understand my own suffering. I knew it was about someone who had a pretty bad time, for a long time, and I wonder if the story had anything to offer me.

It didn’t answer my questions, but I learned I wasn’t alone in the world; not the only one to suffer.

Most of us want to feel at home in our bodies

We want our bodies to support our lives rather than get in the way. We want to feel relaxed enough, alive enough, rested enough. We want to be able to enjoy pleasure, connection, movement, touch, rest.

But for many people, that isn’t how being in a body feels at all, like me in that phase of my life.

Instead, the body can feel tense, exhausted, anxious, numb, uncomfortable or distant, wired, over-sexualised, under sexualised, absent or alien.

We don’t want to feel ashamed of our bodies either.

In my client work, I worked with people who live with permanently tight shoulders or jaws. Others who couldn’t fully relax, as hyper-vigilence from long gone experiences remained. Some felt cut off from their physical sensations altogether.

Our bodies learn from our experiences

As children, we absorb all sorts of messages long before we are verbal. Whether emotions are welcome or inconvenient. Whether anger is dangerous. Whether sadness is acceptable. Whether we need to stay quiet, useful, pleasing, invisible, strong. Whether we are safe.

Over time, these things become embodied.

Someone who grew up around criticism may become vigilant. Someone raised around unpredictable anger may carry tension without noticing it. Someone who experienced trauma may disconnect from their body altogether, because being fully present inside it once felt unbearable and it’s still cut off, or dissociated.

These responses are adaptations. The body learns how to help us survive the environments we are in. The difficulty is that we often continue carrying those patterns long after.

Before we consciously know what we feel emotionally, the body feels it first.

A tightening in the stomach, a clenched jaw, a heavy chest, a sudden urge to disappear, withdraw, brace, or shut down.

Yet many of us are disconnected from this level of awareness.

Turning inward does not feel calming for all of us

One client told me she hated a mindfulness book someone gave her. It invited her to focus on her breathing, but she couldn’t, then went into shame. She wanted to throw the book away, and I encouraged her to do exactly that. She needed to process first, then she would be able to feel her body without o overwhelm again.

I experienced something similar myself years ago, at a mindfulness and Qi Gong retreat. We were practicing slow, circular arm movements in front of our bodies, when I suddenly burst into tears.

Three years earlier I had given birth to my second stillborn baby, Holly. I had my young daughter in tow, and, without consciously realising, I had spent those years barely looking down, or feeling the lower half of my own body. I had disconnected, because experiencing that part of my body, that was once home to my deceased baby, was just too overwhelming, filled with another layer of earth shattering grief.

As my awareness of these feelings returned that day, in the hall, surrounded by 70 strangers, tears flowed down my cheeks.

Our body often carries things the mind has not fully processed yet, because it is too overwhelming if we haven’t developed enough internal (like a cushion of neurones) or external (kind people) support.

The body remembers

Another client kept clenching his fist and tapping it against his leg while he spoke softly about his mother. When I gently pointed out the movement, and invited him to ask what the fist was saying, memories and feelings he had pushed away for years emerged. He realised how angry he was with her, but had never been able to access it, because it had never been allowed.

His body was speaking before words could, telling us where to explore. His self harm stopped that day.

Body awareness can matter so much in therapy and healing work. We don’t need to constantly analyse ourselves, but our bodies know so much, before our minds catch up.

Healing doesn’t happen only through insight, but through small repeated experiences of safety.

That's what therapy provides. An experience of safety with another human. That's what I try and create here at letters from therapy too: little online space where we can experience more safety for ourselves.

Thee practices below teach our body, our nervous systems, our souls, that we are safe.

Then, we can cultivate and experience a more easeful present and future, no matter what happened or what we are going through.

Your body is not the enemy

Most of the time, what we call anxiety, numbness, exhaustion, tension, or overwhelm is our body trying to protect us, but we can use our conscious mind to soothe and heal; to give a helping hand and a reality check.

Your body is the story.

Somatic acts of homecoming

If you feel your body may store stories from the past, or even what you are living through now, that you could benefit from increasing your mind-body connection, these small physical acts can help your body feel safer, calmer, and more connected. These aren’t magic cures, but gentle ways of listening to your body rather than overriding it.

Make it a daily practice to integrate your body and your mind.

Simple practices include:

• softening your shoulders

• taking a slower breath

• stretching

• walking, especially in nature

• resting

• dance and movement

• allowing yourself pleasure or comfort

If you're drawn to go deeper, the rest of this post, with homecoming somatic exercises and journalling prompts to try this week are in the membership, you are so welcome to join Kx

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This weeks episode is about growing courage.

I wrote about this topic a couple of years ago here (i think there are some typos!) and its an important topic, particularly when we are navigating challenges.

https://lettersfromtherapy.substack.com/p/how-to-grow-your-courage-for-a-happier

We all have change and responsibilities to navigate. This shifting time in my life feels as seismic as twenty years ago, when the world as I knew it ended. I followed a hidden dream to become a therapist, after loosing my baby in late pregnancy. The world turned black that day, though because of that, I could see the light.

Courage was the little spark that lit my path. It carried me through my gut-turning grief, muscle-clenching trauma and icy shame.

But I uncovered my courage, so I could spin it all into gold.

Back into the dark tumbled my earlier adaptations, trying to fit in, to do the right thing, to meet the expectations of others: all now impossible anyway. I saw everything with new eyes. Fr…

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Come home to yourself and feel less alone, with enriching tools and insights from therapy. 🤍

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Do you sometimes wonder why your life is so much worse than everyone else’s? That you should be xyz by now? That maybe everyone is right, you are pretty useless? That you might as well give up, since the world is set against you?

You might be seeing yourself and others through one or more of the cognitive distortions I outline below.

Having therapy throughout my psychotherapy training taught me that I could get caught up in seeing myself and others through a distorted lens without realising. A total eclipse of reality in favour of the unhelpful stories my patterned mind liked to come up with.

I found it common in my clients too, who also distorted their reality, sometimes because of what happened in the past, or inexplicably giving far too much weight to something of no real consequence. Ever worried what someone you haven’t seen for ten years thinks about you?

These stories feed low self worth, low mood and anxiety. I still need to check myself to make sure I see clearly.

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This weeks paid audio episode:

My dear friends

This post is not about death, it is about life! Your miraculous, starlit, effervescent life! [The audio recording is a little different, from an old version of this post, but I know its nice to listen to the author, so I uploaded it too.]

Sometimes it’s good to reflect on our mortality. Not to dwell, but to use reality that we are going to die one day as a tool for shaping our lives now.

At the moment to exploring our inherited stories and patterns and what I share today will help you reveal things about yourself that you may not see. What matters most. It’s a gentle shedding.

There’s a therapeutic journalling exercise below that will get your beautiful life force, meaning, and purpose flowing. If you feel at all stagnant, stuck, uncertain, this one is for you.

Living an aligned life

It may be unhealthy to think about death all the time, but it’s just as unhealthy to never think about it. It is healthy to think about it sometimes, so I invite you to today, for a moment.

To remind ourselves we are mortal helps us understand our actions, how we spend our time and energy, to moult the fluff, and the stones in our shoe we could do without.

This exercise below will cast a ray of sun over what matters most in your life, so you’ll know where to spend your energy now. It will help you set your compass, remove the dust that gathered there, and give it some oil. Living life more aligned doesn’t necessarily mean doing more, or changing everything, it just means being more… you.

It’s the gift of a peaceful death after a well lived life.

(If you are currently facing death, illness, grief or loss, you might like to read one of my posts here. I do mention my first stillborn baby Rosie below with no details, but feel free to skim over that part.)

There are many wonderful people writing about death and grief on Substack, and it was healing for me to connect here after my own life changing losses long ago that I struggled to find support for.

Some of us are forced to confront death earlier in life than others.

Often in a near miss, or the loss of a loved one, we can learn so much about who we are.

Who we truly are.

What matters most to us, in our heart-pumped lives, orbits into view. Under our pain lies a bright light.

Mortality Is Everywhere (TW)

When I was at university, I studied Zoology. One of my modules was human physiology. Nothing prepares you for walking into a laboratory, with flickering white strip lights and the heavy scent of formaldehyde, and a surprise series of corpses lying on each of the lab desks. All male. Grey. Dead. All offering their bodies up in the name of science for future students to peer at.

When we face death, chronic illness, or the death of a loved one at any age, we cannot help but contemplate our lives are existence.

The rest of this post, journalling and exercise is in the membership, you are welcome to join us here for your weekly ritual of self-discovery Kx

My Loss that Changed Everything (TW)

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Our inner child is a metaphor for the parts of us that are vulnerable, undeveloped, and need support. It is the part of you that holds your earliest feelings, needs, and processes. Connecting with these younger parts of us helps us understand the origins of many of our adult behaviours and emotions, including why and when these more undeveloped parts of us may inhibit us.

Put your arm around your inner child and have a listen.

The original article I wrote on this is here:

With love to you and your inner child,

Kate x

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First post in the series:

Hi friends,

Life is often messy, and we encounter people and experiences that hurt us. Sometimes this is due to deliberate actions of others when we were children or as adults, or experiencing too much change or loss over a short period.

Sometimes we experience existential things like death of loved ones, illness, or accidents, that can all have a profound impact on us.

This is all part of being human, though when too much happens for our brain to process, or we are highly sensitive, vulnerable, or too young to be able to make sense of it, we may find it hard to deal with and move on. Read my post on trauma.

When the Past Still Haunts us, it is Unfinished Business

When harmful past events still haunt us, they can rise inside as extremely painful emotions, or horrible memories that won’t go away. We can be left with jumbled thoughts and feelings which are hard to articulate and can swirl around inside us like a hurricane, effecting mood, behaviour, habits, relationships and careers. Have an unconscious impact on us drawing a situations that do not serve us. This quote feels like a great analogy.

Do you have ‘unfinished business’ weighing you down? The exercises are here in the membership and you are very welcome to join! You can also listen to the members podcast. Kx

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Welcome to the new podcast, where we will explore popular themes we’ve covered here at Letters from Therapy. Though now you can now listen to my voice on your podcast app, Spotify, on Substack, or in your browser. No fancy intros, jingles or production, just me! For all paid members.

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Members podcast starts on Thursday!

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Hi friends

When I first trained as a counsellor 20 years ago, the theory I'm sharing today blew my mind clean off. (Well, almost.)

With these ideas, I could immediately identify unhelpful patterns I was living by, and as we know here, awareness is the first step.

At Letters from Therapy this season, we’re exploring our inherited patterns and stories from our families and culture, to see what we want to shed or reshape.

We sometimes have unconscious scripts we live by, that get in our way without our knowing. Becoming aware of them enables us to adjust to a more free, true version of ourselves, and stop falling in the same holes and spirals.

If like me, you notice certain patterns in your life that feel strangely familiar but don't make sense, or you find yourself in the same dead ends, this theory may be for you.

Maybe you find yourself in similar relationship dynamics again and again.
Or you work hard, push through, achieve something… then feel flat once you arrive, even sabotage the opportunity.

Maybe life often feels as though it will begin once things are sorted, once you are calmer, more organised, more secure, more ready; so plans or dreams never really happen.

Or perhaps when something good happens, part of you braces for the moment it might disappear, and you even turn away from it, returning to drudgery.

Many of us experience this sense of a repeated emotional storyline, as if life is following a script we never consciously chose.

A life script is not chosen consciously, it is formed in the search for safety, belonging, and meaning. But once an old pattern is recognised, it is no longer our destiny.

Identifying Your Life Scripts

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Hi friends

If I imagine a younger version of myself, perhaps in my twenties. That ‘me’ would never have pictured my life as it is now.

Becoming a therapist seemed like something only brave people do. Being a jewellery designer with my own business and 11,000 followers online was a world away from where I was, stuck in an office overstimulated, uninspired, underwhelmed, with no confidence.

These dreams take the courage of a super human being that bore no resemblance to me. Being a writer too, for 4000+ people is the stuff my stuttering fourteen year old self didn’t imagine even in wild dreams.

I didn’t know that someone like me could do things like this. I’m still pretty shy, introverted, bruised, and I still sometimes doubt myself. Getting here took courage. I’m sure you understand, it took a lot for you to get where you are too.

Each of these achievements materialised for me because of things going dramatically wrong in my life when young.

The plan that was set for me, to be normal, to please others, to put myself last and to stay small, plus marriage, children, financial security - perhaps, with hindsight, a stifling container, was all put asunder by loss. Because this life that had been set cannot not hold the vast grief that separated me from those around me.

Those patterns that kept me locked in my ‘stay small’ original mindset that could not imagine any such dreams were for me, were incorrect, and not aligned with who I was underneath layers of adaptations towards parental and society’s expectations.

I often write about my two lost babies that changed my life. But the impact wasn’t all bad. In those dark moments, some other magic was waiting for me.

All hope felt lost, and for so long, as the life plan I’d inherited, of family, social standing, being ‘normal’ crumbled into those soft, Cornish winds where their powdery ashes drifted away.

In many ways, I lost everything, my marriage, home, friends, ease, and with it, all the stories of what my life was supposed to be. I had internalised a story that went back generations, through the lines of my family tree, those stories scattered far over the sea too, making space for something new.

It wasn’t just that I lost those little baby girls, I lost the story I’d been given, and I had to find what was mine, in the rubble,

The glowing embers of my true self sparked up, and took the lead. The soulful part that’s entwined with life force itself. This part for me that I had kept locked away, guided me on to new stories that form my life twenty years on, because I had no choice. I’ve healed!

I wonder what you survived thanks to your own flame inside? Maybe you already let some of your stories go? If my life had gone to plan, I would not be here writing this to you today.

If you’ve ever experienced rock bottom and I know many of you have, it is never the end, but a beginning.

As we watch the ashes of our life scatter before us, we can mourn, though the wind will always bring something new.

We don’t have to wait for tragedy to strike. Grief and tragedy does tend to show us a different path. But here at Letters from Therapy we can find that path and all the gold that lines it, whatever happened before.

Many of us live by stories we didn’t write.

I still feel conflict today, between the story that had been given to me, and the story that life wrote for me. I still grieve it, but I follow the glimmers inside me.

What about you?

Those narratives you carry about who you are? Subtle ones like whether you’re someone who succeeds or struggles, whether you’re too much or never enough, whether the world is safe or something to brace against?

All these stories, big and small, mostly got to work long before you were old enough to have any say in the matter.

This is where we are focussing here over this season.

You don’t need a tragedy to discover your true self, your calling, your essence.

We will explore the stories we live by, where they came from, how they shape us in ways we can’t see, and what it might mean to discover something new.

What are your inherited stories?

Long before we have language for it, we are making meaning. A small child doesn’t experience a parent’s withdrawal as ‘they are tired and overwhelmed’. They experience it as ‘something about me’. And from that raw, wordless, and often tragic conclusion if it’s too frequent, the little version of us might believe:

• I am too much

• I am not loveable

• I have to be good to be safe

• I’m not enough

Other stories that often come through families:

• Scarcity stories: “Money runs out.” “You must save everything.” “Luxury is irresponsible.” “Money is greed.”

• Success stories: “People like us don’t do that.” “Don’t get too big for your boots.” “Stay safe rather than dream big.”

• Emotional stories: “Crying is weak.” “Keep your problems to yourself.” “Don’t burden people.”

• Gender stories: “Nice girls don’t speak up.” “Men don’t talk about feelings.” “Your job is to keep the peace.”

• Safety stories: “The world is dangerous.” “Trust no one.” “People will betray you.”

• Identity stories: “You’re too sensitive.” “You’re the difficult one.” “You’re the responsible one.”

The unthought known

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas called the earliest layer of this developmental process the unthought known.

The things we know in our bodies, told through our behaviour, before we have any words for them. Were we cuddled enough? Were we a crutch? Were we ignored? Were they disappointed?

The conclusions we drew about life can shape us from the inside out, usually without our awareness. We can live out these stories without realising all through our lives.

Many stories we live by are cultural, passed down through families like furniture. You may carry beliefs that belonged to your grandmother, or her father before her.

My father was born in 1940 at the beginning of the Second World War. The first 11 years of his life were rationed (except as his father, my grandfather, was a GP he was gifted eggs on the side by grateful patients). When I grew up with my brothers in the 70’s and 80’s, it was almost like rationing still took place. My father had internalised the scarcity so deeply, and got stuck there. We didn’t experience the ease that many of our peers did at that time, despite his salary as a doctor which did not leave us lacking at all. Or perhaps it is even further back? His father was very Victorian, and displaying any kind of wealth was considered vulgar.

Our parents will pass on their stories without meaning to. They too were often living their own inherited stories.

Unravelling our stories

When we are more aware, we can choose whether to keep the stories or not. And if not, what do I want instead? We don’t have to entirely reinvent ourselves, but it’s so freeing to feel aligned with the real you!

When you think of your little stories, how far do yours go back?

Think of a belief you hold about yourself. Might your story belong to someone else more than it belongs to you?

Examples: I’m not good with money. I’m too sensitive. Life is always hard. Authority figures are never trustworthy. All men are dangerous. I don’t finish things. I’m destined for xyz. Women with high ponytails are tarty. (My mother told me this, when I proudly swang mine around in 1985 for about five minutes).

Over the coming months, we are unravelling these narratives in the membership. There will also be a members podcast running alongside to listen here or in your favourite app.

To unravel your inherited stories, and everything else in the membership, can join here (it’s cheaper in your browser).

What stories have you inherited?

With love,

Kate

P.S. If you enjoyed this, do click the little heart, and share it on Substack. It really helps!

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Hi friends,

I often think of fairy tales, those that hold timeless psychological insights into our lives and emotions.

You’ll remember Snow White's evil Queen, who, consumed by envy of the younger woman’s beauty and purity, tries to destroy her. All she wants is to obliterate the lovely Snow White, to preserve her self image of being the most beautiful.

This archetypal story shines a light on envy's potential to distort our perception and damage relationships, both our own envy, and the envy of others towards us.

Snow White, in her innocence, doesn’t see the Queens dark envy until it is too late.

We watch her fate unfold through our fingers.

In clinical practice, envy often emerges as an undercurrent in clients' relational difficulties. Unlike jealousy, which involves fear of losing something or someone, envy stems from wanting something another person has.

Envy fits with our current theme of shedding our inherited stories and patterns, because often it stems from a strong desire to be something other or more than our real self, driven by inner stories. The lack we perceive, then notice in others, can grow so strong it becomes destructive.

Envy is experienced along a spectrum, (like my sister said she was ‘wel-jel’ of our aunt’s wardrobe (that’s ‘well jealous’ if you don’t know the Bristol lingo!), to desire for the total annihilation of another. My sisters jealousy is mild and non destructive, but it did drive her to go on Vinted and update her wardrobe!

We will all experience envy sometimes - and we must own it to release it.

At its most destructive, envy manifests as sabotage, like the friend who subtly undermines another's relationship prospects by being unsupportive or critical. Or maybe the colleague who withholds crucial information before your presentation. The family member who diminishes your achievements, ‘Well, that’s just pop psychology, Kate’. ‘It’s only a degree, lots of people have them.’ Maybe you’ll draw attention to problems in a friend’s new home (And you don’t mind that it’s quite close to the motorway…?’) rather than celebrate his milestone.

A friend, when I had been very ill for a long time leading to weight loss which I was rather self conscious of, said to reassure me, ‘well, you do at least look nice and slim.’ Another, who struggled with her weight (or at least, her perception of her weight) said ‘Oh, dear, you look very thin Kate.’

These behaviours reveal the darker potential to corrode our connections. They are little ruptures that can become cavernous. They can be the tiny fractures that leave you not wanting to see a friend, like me, though sometimes without understanding why that is.

If you're cringing in recognition, perhaps you are an envious ‘perpetrator’ you can use your envy as information of what you want, without destroying your relationship with others.

When we have awareness of our own envy, we can process it, and engage with our friendship and wish for him to be in his new home, or with their achievements.

We can use awareness of our envy to decide to save more, work harder, or ask for a pay rise, so we too can buy a house one day.

Our envy is channelled to build the life we want, and we keep our friends too.

The Evil Eye

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Hi friends,

Boundaries are the sacred containers that allow us to flourish.

We need our cocoon of boundaries to keep us safe, to nourish us, and stop us merging with our environment or others in relationships.

Many people come to therapy exhausted, resentful, and overwhelmed, because they care for others - without limits. Maybe you can relate?

They’ve learned (as I did before i did my inner work) that saying “no” makes them selfish, that their worth comes from endless giving, that having needs is somehow shameful.

This results in chronic exhaustion, relationships that drain rather than nourish, and a depleted sense of self.

This week, all paid members can download the Strong Boundaries, Strong Self workbook here, normally £17, and you’ll see how your life changes when you implement these ideas. Keep it forever and revisit whenever you want. The workbook is available free for members for one week only.

With love,

Kate

If you are a free subscriber and want to become a member, you are very welcome to upgrade here.

Many members use the Sunday ‘Bloom Sessions’ posts as a quiet weekly ritual of illuminating self discovery. You aren’t alone! Look out for the Members only podcast coming soon! Kx

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Hi friends

Before we get into today’s (non religious) post, Mother Teresa’s secret, an exploration of the spiritual bypass including my own, and check in with our healthy spirituality, a quick reminder!

This quarter for members, we explore themes of shedding our inherited stories, unconscious patterns and limiting beliefs about identity that can shape our lives. Our family histories, cultural expectations, long-forgotten experiences and those internalised assumptions we never chose. In therapy, we make the unconscious conscious, and that’s what we do in these sessions.

Make these Sunday sessions your quiet ritual of self discovery work each week?

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I’m not religious though today we explore the idea of a spiritual ‘bypass,’ often an escape from pain or reality, and how to develop a more healthy, fulfilling (non religious) spirituality instead. This includes ideas and 10 journalling questions for members.

That feeling of the wind in your hair when you made it to the top of the mountain. The serenity of cradling my newborn baby, or my elderly father reaching for my hand from his hospital bed, holding hands for the first time in 40 years.

We can lead a spiritual life, connected with the divine, while honouring the beauty of our limitations and humanness, which we do not need to disconnect from: they are all ‘us.’

Religion can give me the ick when it is imposed by others, used to tell a story of spiritual superiority, when in fact this kind of authoritarianism feels quite the opposite.

Some even use spiritual ideas to disguise or excuse bad behaviour, passivity, inaction, or negligent non-attachment. For example, those who doing things “in the name of god” or a “higher self” rather than owning and taking responsibility for their actions.

A spiritual bypass can make spirituality jarring, cause disconnection, even to the point of causing war.

This is not intended as a heavy article, instead, challenging and uplifting. But if you suspect you or someone you know is stuck in a spiritual bypass, or you want to connect with your spiritual side more to ground you in this universe without dogma, this is for you.

Healthy spirituality embraces the full spectrum of life, the light and the dark, the mundane and the mysterious. It doesn’t seek to transcend the human experience but to fully embody it.

The Darkness

I sometimes write about the experience of my tiny baby girls dying long ago, changing my life completely. But what I haven’t told you is that the first time this happened, when I lost my first baby who we called Rosie, I became highly religious, all of a sudden.

I did always feel a spiritual bond to my then husband or ‘soulmate’. Sometime later the idea of soulmate was pathologised during my psychotherapy training which isn’t right either.

Loving a baby who died is pretty psychotic whilst being exactly the right thing. I was crazy, but perfectly sane at the same time. The vast, cavernous space of death felt particularly apocalyptic when the person who’s died is your baby, your body is flooded with hormones to ensure the strongest attachment in human life and survival of your line.

It’s easy with hindsight, but at the time, trauma and my subsequent inability to ‘fit in’ in my life any more, led me to a full blown connection with god, which at the time was the only thing, along with my ex-husband, that kept me alive during such intense grief and pain. Believing in God and connecting with that was the only bridge across the dark cavern of death for me at that time.

Mother Teresa’s Secret

I was always inspired by Mother Teresa, a devout servant of God who spent her life in the service of those who were suffering.

After her death (which went quite unnoticed as it was soon after the death of Lady Diana), letters were found, expressing something that inspires me to this day.

That Mother Teresa had lost her faith in God several times though her life, but she still continued her beautiful work. She consistently did that work anyway, not for God, but for people, and just because it felt right for her.

Through my most challenging times, I found that small acts helped me more than blanket beliefs, like naming my living daughter ‘Grace’, because I knew how lucky I was to have her.

I lit candles.

I read poems and I started to write.

When baby Holly was born and died a few years later, I did not feel much grief initially, and chose her middle name to be Joy. I believed that it was the same soul that had come back to try again, to teach me something, to be on this earth, in my body again.

It turned out, this was an avoidance of my grief, and part of my continuing spiritual bypass, a coping mechanism to protect my psyche from the armageddon I was in. The grief came out in therapy a couple of years later, and, if you are a sceptic, the pain I had now had in my lower back for years mysteriously lifted as I process what hat happened to me. My spiritual bypass subsided, as I was able to tolerate life and feel and process my deep grief.

What is a Spiritual Bypass?

We might experience a spiritual bypass when we use spirituality, our beliefs, practices, or identity as a way to avoid difficult emotions, unresolved wounds, or the messiness of being human. It may be all we can manage in those moments, like it was with me.

But it is a way of skipping over the real work of healing, if we lean on spiritual concepts as a form of escape from our past or our reality. It can let us off the hook so we don’t have to be self aware. It is sometimes easier not to be. And that can be fine for a time - it is alright to simply survive, but perhaps not forever.

Examples of a Spiritual Bypass

Do any of these experiences resonate? Maybe in yourself, or in another?

Love and Light avoidance.

Someone might say, “Everything happens for a reason”, or they ‘“vibrate on a different plain” rather than facing their overwhelming grief or processing difficult emotions. Annoying for the person alongside them, feeling their human emotions.

so, we might believe we’ve “transcended” anger when we just buried it. We might detach from relationships, mistaking our dissociation for enlightenment. When it’s used to bypass pain, we end up stuck in inauthenticity, our truth buried under a veil of forced optimism, which also alienate others.

Detachment disguised as enlightenment.

A person claims to be “above” human emotions or relationships, saying things like “attachment is ego.” whilst floating on their cloud. They avoid intimacy and vulnerability, often due to past wounds, using spiritual concepts to justify emotional disconnection. These people may make you feel bad just for being a normal human, unaware that it is they who are not whole.

Karma Blame.

Someone explains away suffering by saying it’s simply the result of past karma, rather than acknowledging real-life systemic, psychological, or personal issues that need addressing. Two people said this to me about loosing not one but two babies. It didn’t help me much, it just made me feel ashamed.

Believing that my babies died due to bad karma rather than because of unfortunate genetics, and my theory - a body that didn’t want to let go and miscarry, taking the pregnancy to the third trimester/full term where I believe others may have had a early miscarriage.

Sadly it happens now and then across the population, and it happened to be me.

I was unlucky.

Over emphasising this type of karma can lead to inaction, or a lack of compassion for hardship, as I experienced with a bang.

Spiritual superiority.

When a person believes they are more evolved or enlightened than others because of their spiritual practice, they dismiss those who are struggling as not awake enough. Their spirituality is not used for self-awareness and growth, but to boost their ego and avoid looking at blind spots. I had a narcissistic psychotherapy tutor who bullied and shouted at people he didn’t like. He was also a priest. (Don’t worry, most therapists are lovely, integrated folk).

Meditation as escapism.

I’m a big fan of meditation, though some may turn to meditation, psychedelics, or mystical experiences to avoid dealing with real-world problems or connecting with their authentic, beautiful self just as it is.

Instead of working through emotions, healing, or making changes, they seek transcendence as a way to check out from reality.

True meditation engages us with our truth and reality, and is a wonderful practice, but it is not a replacement for living life, or avoiding pain or responsibilities.

What Causes a Spiritual Bypass?

There are many reasons we might develop a spiritual bypass. The intensity of grief without enough support was mine but it also could be:

Fear of pain.

It hurts right? Gestalt therapist Ervin Pollster suggested that all madness is an avoidance of madness.

A deep discomfort with suffering can lead us to suppress emotions rather than process them. For me, my pain was so overwhelming and unprecedented, and not something anyone I knew had experienced at that time. (“Try again” is not something you should ever say to someone whose baby has died.)

Childhood conditioning

If we grew up in environments where certain emotions (like anger or sadness) were shamed, we might turn to spirituality to deny them, for example praying to rid ourselves from it, though in reality they are normal human experiences that should be felt and understood.

Trauma and wounding

People who’ve experienced trauma may seek safety in transcendent or numinous experiences, dissociating from their bodies as a way to avoid old or current wounds. (this is what I did).

Perfectionism and ego inflation

Some use spirituality to craft an identity of being “above” human struggles, striving for an unattainable purity rather than authentic growth. There were a few psychotherapists I knew who would out-compete each other as to who was the most spiritual! If your psychotherapist carries a guru-like air that keeps you feeling small, you might consider switching.

Over-reliance on rituals

Ritual can absolutely be a healthy expression of spirituality, and help bond people with shared faith. But someone could become obsessed with spiritual rituals, such as cleansing, astrology, tarot, prayer, chanting, or manifesting.

This feels great as a way to control their life and avoid uncertainty.

Nothing beats facing their fears, making decisions, or taking practical action. To keep performing rituals in the hope that the universe will “fix” things for them may not work.

This avoidance isn’t true spiritual connection. It overrides autonomy, which can eventually erode self development and worth. It's healthier to trust your own intuition and autonomy and seek guidance outside of yourself, with friends or a therapist. Or becoming a member here!

To read the rest of this post, including 5 ways to resolve a spiritual bypass, and develop healthy spirituality instead, including 10 journalling questions, it’s here in the membership.

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How to Resolve a Spiritual Bypass and Develop Healthy Spirituality

If this resonates for you, there is no judgement here. We can gently come back to a more healthy way of expressing our spiritual selves, embracing spirituality and humanity, rather than using one to escape the other.

Some ways:

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The popular Heal Your Past series starts monthly today, a six-month series for members, exploring how we untangle the stories, patterns and wounds we’ve carried from our past. Today’s post is the foundation, a good place to start.

Before I dive in:

The Heal Your Past Workbook: Current annual subscribers, check your inbox soon. Your 92-page workbook is on its way, yours to keep!

Another free workbook this month: I’m also including the Find Your Boundaries, Find Yourself workbook for all current paid members. All current paid members receive a free workbook every quarter. Fuzzy or missing boundaries are one of the most common things that keep us stuck, disrupting the healing process in ways we often don’t notice. It feels like a complimentary companion to this seasons themes.

And if you missed last week’s video workshop:

The Heal Your Past series sits alongside our usual Sunday Bloom Sessions, which this quarter explore themes of shedding inherited stories, unconscious patterns and limiting beliefs about identity that can shape our lives. Our family histories, cultural expectations, long-forgotten experiences and internalised assumptions we never chose. In therapy, we make the unconscious conscious, and that’s what we do in these sessions.

Make these Sunday sessions your quiet ritual of self discovery work each week?

Subscribe now

Today’s post offers 7 foundations for healing your past, with practices, meditations, further exercises, two downloadable PDFs, and therapeutic journalling to help you find your direction.

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It can feel disheartening when old, difficult memories return, or we feel so crushed or inhibited in our lives, because of something that has happened before.

It is often that our awareness of the ruts we sink into comes long after we dwelt on memories, feeling pain, rage, sorrow, or indulging in unhelpful habits, or simply withdrawing from a ‘bad world’. When back to a more stable version of ourselves that we realise we were stuck as if something that happened long ago is happening right now.

Those old neural pathways, and the resulting experiences may keep rising, but we can shift them. There are things we can do to stop falling into the same holes. We can rewrite patterns. It is possible to move on.

We can’t change what happened, but we can change our relationship to it.

I wrote the Heal Your Past series to help you reclaim your true self, and give back what wasn’t yours. To address common issues from past issues that often rear their head in the present. Breaking free is possible, or losening the grip. It has been a popular part of Letters from Therapy for the last 2 years.

Change is Possible!

Pain and suffering comes to all of us: it is part of our messy human life. But it can leave us with challenging symptoms if it was all too much, remaining unhealed, like overwhelming emotions, difficult memories, relationship and confidence issues, or feeling ashamed or inhibited from doing what we know we could be capable of.

If we haven’t found a way to move on, we can live with our suffering alone.

These tools help you move on into a brighter, clearer version of yourself.

Whilst I believe that time is a great healer, it often isn’t enough, particularly if we have experienced trauma. Part of healing is to know that we aren’t alone, that there are people out there who care, and may even have had similar experiences, like many of you reading now.

This post is about the foundational practices for healing work, and I linked some relevant meditations and useful pdf’s for you to keep. There is also an exercise to get us started on the Heal Your Past journey.

And if you've done this before, it's worth revisiting to reinforce what you learned last time. It’s also monthly now so it’s easy to keep up!

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The Heal Your Past Monthly Series

The series on Letters From Therapy and in your inbox is packed with useful, gentle tools I’ve used with my past clients will help you integrate, heal and move on. I’m a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist in the UK with two full professional trainings (P.Dip, MSc), and 16 years experience of client work.

We will visit unfinished business, unravell stuck patterns, manage difficult memories, move out of shame, explore the idea of forgiveness if relevant, and celebrate ourselves.

All peppered with exercises journaling, somatic tools, meditations and visualisations to support our healing work.

“The course has helped me tremendously, thank you.”

“I am grateful that I found your course! I feel so much better about myself and accepting me for me. Thank you x”

Find a dedicated notebook, and for this and all the Sunday Bloom Sessions, why not set aside a regular time for yourself?

If it’s time to heal your past, and clear the path to a brighter future, this monthly series is for all paid members.

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7 Foundation Skills for Healing

Suffering is an inevitable, and no-one escapes pain. Our minds have evolved to be able to adapt and heal so we can move through the course of our lives.

When events are too much, too big, too painful, or small ‘grains of sand’ mini traumas that build up over a long period, they can be too hard to process and move on from. I talk about trauma in my last post.

Past experiences can feel like they remain - as intrusive memories, overwhelming feelings, unhelpful behaviours, problems with relationships, hiding, feeling shame, loosing self confidence, experiencing overwhelming emotions, rage, over-intellectualisation, bad boundaries, anxiety, perfectionism, and so many more issues we will shine a light on next time.

Accepting yourself and your current experience is the foundation for personal exploration. We do have the power to change into a more full, integrated and healed version of ourselves.

Therapists train for many years to hold space for gentle healing work, and I am here for you in the background. But here are the skills that are pre-requisite for this work, and I invite you to grow these skills for yourself. Before zipping by as you read or listen, really make a commitment to how you will build it into your life this month. It might be when you wake up in the morning, or carving out sometime at lunchtime. These are the skills which will help you heal, and for many of us it’s easy to say, or think it, but less so to put it into practice.

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