Road Map Step 6: I Love

This isn’t the love story you see in wellness posters with glowing crystals, chanting circles, and fairy dust. This is the gritty, grounded, soul-deep kind of love. The kind where you catch your inner critic mid-rant, squint sideways and mutter, “Not today, Karen.” The kind where you honour the light and the shadows — the parts of you still fumbling, healing, screwing it up. Because this isn’t about being fixed. It’s about being real. It’s about showing up again and again, even when your old habits sneak back in wearing a new disguise.

Road Map Step 5: I Transform

Transformation isn’t some glossy movie montage set to inspiring music. There’s no slow-mo scene of you dancing in the rain with a fresh haircut and a healed soul. Nah. It’s messier than that. It happens in the quiet. In the gritty silence between sobs. In the middle of the night when you choose-again-to show up, even when no one’s watching. In the tiny rewiring moments when you catch yourself being someone you no longer need to be... and gently say, “Not today.”

Road Map Step 4: I Understand

There comes a moment in this journey where things don’t necessarily get easier — but they finally start making sense. You’re not just reacting, spiraling, over-giving, people-pleasing, shutting down. You’re finally able to name it. “Ohhhh, that’s why I freeze up when someone raises their voice.” “That’s why I say yes even when I’m screaming no on the inside.” When you can name your patterns, they lose their mystery. And with that — their power.

Road Map Step 3: I Discover

The clues were always there. I just hadn’t looked yet. There’s a moment on this wild inner journey where you stop obsessing over the now… and start tracing the lines back to where it all began. You start seeing how the past shaped the patterns. The emotional shutdowns. The overreactions. The way you twist yourself into knots to feel safe or loved or enough. And then comes the part that cracked me wide open: I stopped blaming my 8-year-old self for surviving in the only way she knew how.

Road Map Step 2: I Explore

At first, I thought “self-awareness” meant just knowing I was triggered. Cool, I knew it. Still snapped. Still sulked. But this phase? It’s the watching phase. Like being in your own reality TV show... and slowly realising you’re both the drama and the audience.

Road Map Step 1: I Am Aware

There’s a moment—maybe quiet, maybe chaotic—when you realize: “I can’t keep going like this.” That was me during early COVID, exhausted and ragey, hustling for everyone else while secretly cracking inside. I had read every self-help book over the past decade, but I hadn’t lived what they taught. When my husband, Ant was shot during lockdown, everything stopped. It stripped me bare. And in that raw pause, I finally started seeing things clearly.

Feelings & Defences: What Are You Really Avoiding?

Let’s be honest—facing our feelings can suck. So we don’t. We scroll. We snack. We keep busy. We dive into work, wine, or someone else’s drama instead. All totally human responses, by the way. Avoiding feelings like loneliness, shame, fear, or anger isn’t just common - it’s often automatic. But every time we dodge those emotions, we’re reinforcing unconscious patterns. These patterns are called defence behaviours, and they can sneak in dressed up as “coping” or even “being productive.” One of my favorite quotes comes from Caroline Fenkel, Executive Director of Newport Academy: “When you’re busy numbing out your feelings, your feelings are in the other room doing push-ups.” Brilliant, right? Because when you finish your binge-watch or sugar-binge or shopping spree, those feelings come back stronger. Fitter. Ready to fight.

Feel It to Heal It

When people say “feelings,” we usually think of stuff like hunger, exhaustion, or freezing our butts off in winter. But the emotional kind? We’re often taught to shove those down or slap on a fake smile and carry on. Here’s the truth: emotions are here for a reason. There are six core ones — happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise — and everything else is just a remix. Think of them like primary colours, blending into an entire emotional rainbow.

Every Emotion Has a Job — Even the “Ugly” Ones

We tend to label emotions as good or bad — but the truth? Every emotion has a job. It’s not about getting rid of the hard ones; it’s about getting curious about what they’re trying to show you. Let’s take a peek at a few familiar faces...

What Are Triggers?

You probably know exactly what being triggered feels like. Maybe it’s the guy who cuts you off in traffic. Or the family member who won’t stop ranting about their views that directly oppose yours. Maybe it’s a sudden memory of something painful, or a client who treats your workday like it belongs to them. We’ve all been there. But let’s get curious — what is a trigger, really? A trigger is an emotional reaction that flares up in response to something happening in the present, often tied to past pain. Our inner caveman (hi, survival brain!) loves linking pain to anything around us at the time of the hurt. It’s how our ancestors survived long enough to make more humans.