What I Actually Do

I've been writing these for a while now and it struck me recently that plenty of you reading this probably couldn't say what I actually do. You'll know there's something in there about emotions, about parts, about inner work, and beyond that it likely gets a bit vague, which is fair enough, because I don't think I've ever really spelled it out clearly.

I was at a workshop recently where we were asked to describe our work in one sentence. I've done that exercise a number of times over the years and it's never quite finished because the work keeps growing and evolving as I do, and it had been a good while since I last sat down with it properly. What came up for me this time is that people often get in touch without really knowing what they're looking for, they just know that something isn't feeling right and they want to understand it, and me being vague about what I offer isn't making that any easier for them.

So here's what I do…

People come to me when they're ready to understand themselves, and when they're curious enough about what's going on in there to actually do the work that takes.

What they're looking for, almost always, is somewhere they can put it all down. Somewhere you can arrive without being the capable one, without managing how you're coming across, without deciding which bits of you are allowed in the room today. All of you is welcome in that space, including the parts you're not proud of, the parts you keep well hidden, the parts you've long since decided are too much, or too angry, or too needy, or too old to still be showing up the way they do.

I used to assume I'd end up working with one particular sort of person, and it hasn't turned out that way at all. Right now I'm working with people in senior leadership, business owners, people at the very beginning of their careers, parents, people in their twenties and people in their sixties, from all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of lives. The one thing they have in common is that they want to understand why they think and feel and do what they do, and they want a space where they can bring every part of themselves and know they'll be met with curiosity rather than judgement, and where nothing that turns up is too much.

Most people who come to me have been carrying something for a long time, often years, sometimes decades, and much of it they've never put down anywhere or said out loud to anyone. What I do is guide you into your own inner world and help you understand what's actually going on in there, because what's happening inside you is shaping everything you're experiencing outside of you. We go carefully with the parts of you that have been running things for years, and as those parts begin to trust you and relax, you reconnect with who you really are underneath all of it, rather than who those parts have decided you need to be at work, or at home, or with the people closest to you. That's what allows a shift from a life run by fear into a life lived from love.

When you're deep in something, that calm, curious, steady presence in you can feel a very long way off, and plenty of people arrive without much access to it at all. Part of what I bring is that presence, and for a while people borrow mine. As the parts of you start to feel heard and understood, they begin to relax, and as they relax the connection to your-Self becomes available again. I feel very privileged to be a part of that process.

Alongside that, a lot of what I teach is how to be with your emotions and how to notice the different parts of you rather than experiencing all of it as just 'you'. The shift from “I'm anxious” to “there's a part of me that feels anxious” changes your experience of the anxiety or any emotion and it’s something I use all the time myself. So many of my clients have said the same, that once they could see their parts as parts, they could be in relationship with what's going on inside them instead of being run by it.

I go at the pace your system is ready for, always, because there's nothing to be gained from pushing a system that's protecting you for good reason. You'll probably have parts of you that are impatient with that and want it done, and those parts are welcome too, and we'll work with them like everything else.

I walk alongside you while you do this, and I believe your experience can change however long you’ve been carrying what you carry, because I've watched it happen too many times now to think anything else.

Life is short and it was never meant to be lived from stress and worry and fear. This world is a beautiful place and most of us are far too busy and far too wired to notice much of it, and that's what those parts of us that keep us running are quietly costing us. What I support people to do is live in their life, the one that's happening now, the one that so many parts of them are keeping them too occupied to be in.

And this work ripples. It starts with me doing my own work, because the more of that I do, the more of that calm and curiosity I have available to bring to my clients and to everyone else I come across in a day. The same happens for the people I work with. It goes home with them, into their relationships, their teams, their children, into the way they speak to themselves.

That's what I do. And if any of it sounded like what you've been looking for, you know where I am.