I Remember the People; Being Human in a World of Labels
I woke up this morning thinking about being human.
Not left or right.
Not black or white.
Not gay or straight.
Not immigrant or native.
Not rich or poor.
Not one of the ever-growing collection of words we use to explain who somebody is before we’ve even spoken to them.
Just human.
Perhaps it is nostalgia. Perhaps it is age. Perhaps living for 56 years simply gives you enough road behind you to recognise things you’ve seen before.
But lately I have found myself looking at the world and wondering:
When did we become so determined to put one another into boxes?
Because when I look backwards, I remember the people before I remember the labels.
I am a child of the seventies and eighties
I grew up in a working-class mining village in Yorkshire.
And we were poor.
Not the softened, nostalgic version of “we didn’t have much, but we were happy.”
Actual poverty.
I queued for free school dinners.
Some of us wore identical uniforms provided through schemes because our families couldn’t afford them.
And each morning at primary school, we were given a little bottle of lukewarm milk.
For me, that milk was often breakfast.
There wasn’t always breakfast in our house.
I didn’t necessarily have the language then to understand that as deprivation. It was simply life. You accepted what there was, went without what there wasn’t and carried on.
So when the school milk disappeared, it wasn’t simply the disappearance of a little bottle of milk.
For children like me, it could mean losing the only breakfast we were having.
I understand that differently now.
We were poor.
But I don’t remember spending my childhood thinking of myself as poor.
I remember being a child.
Four pounds made us rich
And there was joy. So much joy.
Our annual holiday wasn’t two weeks somewhere exotic.
It was Cleethorpes.
Once a year, around fifteen coaches would line up outside our local working men’s club, packed with families from the village heading excitedly for the seaside.
We children had perhaps £4 spending money.
Four pounds!
For that one day, we were loaded.
Kiss-me-quick hats, sugar dummies, sticks of rock, penny arcades and fairground rides competed fiercely for our fortune.
Cleethorpes might as well have been the Caribbean.
We came home exhausted, probably sunburned, carrying cheap plastic treasures that meant everything to us.
We didn’t have much.
But we had people.
Before community became a buzzword
Neighbours meant community.
We children ran errands for bread and milk for the old folk and, in those very different times, occasionally fags for old man Pat.
We washed cars for 50p.
We babysat for a whole £2.
We played outside.
Adults knew whose children we were.
Doors were knocked without appointments.
Things were borrowed and returned.
People argued.
People gossiped.
People helped.
It wasn’t idyllic.
There was violence behind some doors.
Alcohol.
Poverty.
Prejudice.
Unhappiness.
Secrets.
Abuse.
I don’t want to romanticise the past, because that would be dishonest.
But there was also community.
There was belonging.
There were people.
And for a while, I was an immigrant
From 1976, part of my childhood was spent in Zambia.
I was the immigrant then.
We arrived legally into somebody else’s country, and I understood, even as a child, that this was their home.
We were the newcomers.
We respected the country, its people and its culture, and I remember Zambia as a beautiful place that gave me memories I still carry today.
But I also remember things I didn’t understand.
Almost from the day we arrived, local people came knocking at our door asking for work.
“Garden boys.”
“House boys.”
Those were the words they used then.
Even as a child, I found it strange that another human being might be employed to do ordinary chores we would have done ourselves.
Something about it troubled me.
It seemed unequal. Unfair.
I couldn’t understand why one person should clean up after another simply because of where each happened to sit in society.
Yet there was another side that I was far too young to properly comprehend.
This was employment.
People were standing at the door asking for an opportunity to earn money for their families.
Was providing that employment helpful?
Was the inequality that made it necessary unjust?
Could both things be true at the same time?
I didn’t have those words then.
I was a child.
I simply knew something about it didn’t sit comfortably with me.
Looking back as an adult, I have questioned many things about what I witnessed. I understand now that history, poverty, economics and power can sit behind seemingly ordinary interactions in ways a child couldn’t possibly unravel.
But perhaps that discomfort tells me something about the child I was.
I noticed people.
I noticed when something didn’t feel equal.
And I didn’t need to fully understand somebody else’s circumstances to wonder whether they were being treated fairly.
Among my childhood friends were Priscilla Malulu and Sammy Comolonda, both Zambian - beautiful souls, both left a lasting impression on me.
They weren’t representatives of another race or culture to me.
They were my friends.
And perhaps there is something else Zambia gave me that I didn’t recognise until much later:
the experience, however briefly and under very different circumstances, of being the person who had arrived in somebody else’s country.
The outsider.
The newcomer.
The immigrant.
And knowing that being welcomed into another country did not make that country mine to disregard.
Respect mattered.
People mattered.
People before categories
Back in Britain, I worked for a while on a YTS scheme with Dr Patel and Dr Tripathy.
Again, they weren’t representatives of demographic groups to the teen that I was.
They were people with names.
People I knew.
People I respected.
That doesn’t mean racism didn’t exist.
Of course it did.
Britain in the seventies and eighties could be racist, homophobic, sexist and brutally class-conscious.
People experienced things I didn’t experience, and I would never want my memories to erase theirs.
I can only tell you mine.
And my experience was that I learned very young that people could look different, sound different, come from different countries and live very different lives without somehow becoming less human to me.
And what a soundtrack we had
Then there was the music.
Lionel Richie had us Dancing on the Ceiling.
Billy Ocean filled the radio.
Salt-N-Pepa told us to Push It.
Shirley Bassey gave us Goldfinger.
Boy George appeared in make-up, braids and gloriously flamboyant clothes singing Karma Chameleon — and Britain sang along.
We didn’t need everybody to look alike.
Some of the people we admired were wonderfully different.
Our sporting heroes included Daley Thompson, Fatima Whitbread, Tessa Sanderson, Seb Coe, Steve Cram and Steve Ovett.
Zola Budd ran barefoot, Torvil and Dean’s Bolero blew our minds.
We waved our Union Jacks.
We shouted ourselves hoarse.
We celebrated.
At the cinema we laughed with Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, cried watching Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple, and some of us developed a lasting appreciation of Denzel Washington.
Later, the United Colors of Benetton deliberately put faces of different ethnicities together across its advertising.
Difference was visible.
Sometimes celebrated.
And I don’t remember sitting there thinking:
That’s a black person.
That’s a gay person.
That’s a white person.
I remember thinking:
I love that song.
She’s incredible.
Look how fast he runs.
That’s my friend.
Perhaps children sometimes understand humanity more simply than adults do.
Then I watched my community break
The eighties taught me another lesson entirely.
I witnessed the miners’ strike.
Where I lived, this wasn’t an academic argument about economics or industrial relations.
It came down our streets.
It entered homes.
It divided families.
Suddenly, two little words became enormously powerful:
Picket.
Scab.
A label could supposedly tell you which side somebody belonged to.
People who had worked together, drunk together, raised children alongside one another and lived on the same streets found themselves divided.
And the scars lasted.
But underneath those labels were human beings frightened of losing many of the same things.
Their jobs.
Their homes.
Their communities.
Their ability to feed their children.
Their future.
People made different decisions while trying to protect the same precious things.
And I learned something then that I have never forgotten:
Once we stop seeing the person and start seeing only the label, division becomes frighteningly easy.
Then I became one of society’s statistics
When I left home, I didn’t step neatly into adulthood with savings, qualifications and a career plan.
I became a young single mother living on a housing estate where almost nobody seemed to work.
Unemployment was everywhere.
Addiction was rife.
Poverty wasn’t something being debated on television.
It lived next door.
And wherever poverty existed, there always seemed to be somebody prepared to make money from it.
Subprime money lenders and high-interest sellers circled communities like ours.
Buy now.
Pay weekly.
Borrow a little to get through.
Then pay considerably more because you were poor enough to need it in the first place.
Looking back, they seemed like vultures circling people in need.
But the people themselves?
Salt of the earth.
Perhaps despite their difficulties.
Perhaps sometimes because of them.
People who had almost nothing could still find something to give someone who had less.
There was addiction.
There was dysfunction.
There was violence.
But there was also humour.
Generosity.
Loyalty.
Resourcefulness.
Humanity.
Life taught me again:
Never confuse someone’s circumstances with their worth.
I wanted something different
By eighteen, I was a single mother on Income Support by 20 I was living with domestic violence.
I felt like part of an underclass.
Forgotten.
Unimportant.
Unprotected.
Nobody was coming to rescue us.
Yet somewhere inside me, I wanted more.
Not because I believed I was better than the people around me.
I wanted a different life.
For myself, yes.
But particularly for my children.
Less stress.
Less struggle.
More security.
More possibilities.
And getting out wasn’t as simple as somebody saying, “Get a job.”
The benefits trap was real in my experience.
When every penny is already accounted for, even inadequate security is still security.
Taking employment can mean gambling that certainty before your wages are sufficient to replace it.
The rent still needs paying.
Children still need feeding.
Childcare has to be found.
Shoes still need buying.
The electricity doesn’t care that you’re trying to better yourself.
I remember being advised that working could actually leave me financially worse off.
And for a while, it did.
That’s something we sometimes miss when talking about people “getting themselves out” of poverty.
Sometimes stepping upwards first requires stepping away from the only secure ground beneath your feet.
And when children depend upon you, that isn’t simply ambition.
It’s a gamble.
I took it.
I found someone to look after my children while I worked evenings caring for the elderly as I had learned to do as a child, often while my children slept.
I budgeted.
I studied.
I worked.
I worried.
I kept going.
Eventually, when my children were at school, I was able to move into what I thought of then as a “proper job”, working with Social Services.
There wasn’t a single dramatic moment when somebody announced:
You’ve made it.
Life changed slowly.
One decision.
One qualification.
One wage packet.
One frightening risk.
One difficult month at a time.
I was stronger than I knew
Looking back now, I realise something.
I was stronger than I ever gave myself credit for.
For years I told my story according to what happened to me.
Poverty.
Domestic violence.
Fear.
Struggle.
The things I didn’t have.
But there is another way to tell the same story.
I survived.
I raised my children.
I protected them as best I could.
I learned.
I worked.
I studied.
I changed direction.
I built something from circumstances that sometimes gave me very little to build with.
I survived.
And I never forgot the people who lived alongside me.
I have lived amongst people whom society might easily have called the “underclass”.
I was one of them.
But I knew their names.
Their humour.
Their generosity.
Their struggles.
Their children.
Their stories.
I remember the people.
Which brings me to the world I see now
Perhaps all of that explains why the state of the world troubles me as much as it does.
Because once again I see ordinary people becoming labels.
Left.
Right.
Woke.
Bigot.
Racist.
Fascist.
Snowflake.
Immigrant.
Native.
Trans.
And sometimes I hear echoes from a mining village.
Picket.
Scab.
Different words.
Different arguments.
Different times.
But I recognise the danger of deciding that one word tells us everything worth knowing about another human being.
It doesn’t.
I am tired of seeing disagreement automatically interpreted as hatred.
I can believe migrants and refugees should be treated with dignity while also believing that countries need secure borders and functioning legal immigration systems.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive to me.
I can respect another adult’s identity and their right to live their life while still believing we should be able to have careful, compassionate conversations about safety, about children, development, identity and safeguarding.
I don’t have to hate somebody in order to have questions.
And someone doesn’t have to agree with me before I recognise their humanity.
In fact, perhaps that is when recognising one another’s humanity matters most.
There should be room for becoming
I am 56 years old.
I was well into adulthood before I really began understanding who I was beneath everything life had taught me I needed to be.
Some of the most important parts of myself didn’t make sense to me until my forties.
Perhaps that’s why I believe there should be room for becoming.
Room to wonder.
Room to grow.
Room to question.
Room to change our minds.
Room to get things wrong.
Room to discover ourselves.
Room for children to be children.
And room for two decent human beings to disagree without deciding that the other must therefore be a bad person.
Suffering doesn’t need to compete
When Black Lives Matter became a global movement, I found myself reflecting deeply.
My instinct throughout my life had always been that every human life mattered.
But I can also recognise that believing human beings are equal doesn’t mean everybody has always been treated equally.
Those are different things.
I don’t need to deny somebody else’s experience of racism in order to tell the truth about my experience of poverty.
Their suffering doesn’t diminish mine.
Mine doesn’t diminish theirs.
There shouldn’t be a competition over whose suffering is legitimate.
A black child experiencing racism deserves protection.
A white child going to school hungry deserves protection.
A refugee fleeing war deserves humanity.
A pensioner frightened about changes in their community deserves to be heard.
A struggling single mother deserves dignity.
A man sleeping on the street deserves dignity.
A frightened child trying to understand themselves deserves patience, compassion and safety.
Human suffering doesn’t become more or less legitimate according to the political category of the person experiencing it.
Pain is pain.
Fear is fear.
And people are people.
The flag I remember
I sometimes find myself puzzled by what the Union Jack appears to communicate to different people today.
Because I remember waving mine.
I remember athletics.
Royal celebrations.
Street parties.
Sport.
Someone representing our little collection of islands achieving something extraordinary and millions of us shouting at the television.
I didn’t wave my flag against somebody else.
I waved it because it represented home.
So when I see someone holding a flag today, I don’t automatically assume I know what’s inside their heart.
Perhaps they’re proud.
Perhaps they’re frightened.
Perhaps they’re angry.
Perhaps they’re protesting.
Perhaps they simply love their country.
There’s a remarkably simple way of finding out.
Ask them.
Talk to people.
Listen.
Be curious.
The human being underneath that flag is probably considerably more complicated than whatever label we are preparing to give them.
I see the same thing now
Our world feels frightened.
Wars rage while ordinary families pay the price.
People worry about migration, housing, jobs, identity, inequality, poverty, community and whether their children will ever afford homes of their own.
Communities are changing.
Technology is changing - fast.
The way we communicate is changing.
Information arrives faster than our nervous systems were ever designed to process it.
And frightened people look for certainty.
We look for someone to blame.
Governments.
Migrants.
The rich.
The poor.
The left.
The right.
Boomers.
Gen Z.
Men.
Women.
And before long, complicated human beings have been divided into opposing camps.
I’ve seen something like this before.
I watched what happened when a mining community was split into pickets and scabs.
The subject was different.
The circumstances were different.
But I remember what division did to people.
And I don’t want that for us.
Perhaps we need to stand further back
Maybe what I have learned after 56 years is that we cannot understand one another while we are constantly reacting to one another.
Sometimes we have to stand far enough back from the argument to see the people inside it.
Not to surrender our beliefs.
Not to pretend differences don’t matter.
Not to silence legitimate concerns or difficult conversations.
But to become curious enough to ask:
What does the world look like from where you are standing?
I learned something about that in a mining village.
Picket and scab could look like enemies from opposite sides of the line.
Step further back and you could see two families frightened about how they were going to survive.
I learned it in Zambia.
I was the immigrant.
I was the person who had arrived in somebody else’s country.
I was welcomed into a culture that wasn’t mine, and even as a child I understood something about respecting the country and the people whose home I had entered.
Understanding somebody else’s perspective doesn’t mean adopting it.
Empathy isn’t agreement.
It is simply being willing to look at the world from another person’s position long enough to understand why it might look different from there.
English. Yorkshire. British. Living in Scotland. Female. Human.
And life continues to remind me of this now.
I am English.
I’m Yorkshire.
I live, love and work in Scotland.
Scotland is part of Britain, and I am British.
But I’m not Scottish.
Does that matter?
Not to me.
I can love Scotland without pretending to be Scottish.
I can treasure Yorkshire without believing being born there makes me better than somebody born somewhere else.
I can wave a Union Jack without waving it against anyone.
I can have deeply held beliefs and still listen to yours.
I can disagree with you without despising you.
And you can disagree with me without deciding what kind of human being I must therefore be.
Perhaps we have become too reactive.
Too quick to answer.
Too quick to categorise.
Too quick to defend our side and condemn theirs.
Sometimes we need to step back far enough to recognise that the person standing opposite us has a history we cannot see.
They have parents.
Children.
Losses.
Fears.
Memories.
Beliefs.
Reasons.
Perhaps even wounds that explain why they see the same world so differently from us.
Understanding their perspective doesn’t require us to adopt it.
It simply requires us to remember that there is a human being standing there.
Being human
That is the standard I want to live by.
I am human.
A mother.
A grandmother.
A wife.
A counsellor.
A Christian. Spiritual.
Working class.
A survivor of poverty and violence.
All of those things have shaped me.
None of them, individually, can tell you who I am.
And none of your labels can tell me everything about you either.
So before all of them, I am human.
That is how I try to meet other people.
And it is how I accept being treated in return.
With dignity.
With curiosity.
With respect.
Nothing less.
Perhaps that little working-class girl whose breakfast was a bottle of lukewarm school milk, who once thought four pounds in Cleethorpes made her rich, understood something the 56-year-old woman she became is determined not to forget.
Before the categories.
Before the politics.
Before the hashtags.
Before somebody tells us which side we are supposed to be on.
Stand back.
Look again.
See the person.
I remember the people.
And in a world increasingly asking us to choose a side, I choose something much simpler.
I choose to see the human being first.
The Need to Belong: What You See Isn’t Always Who I Am
Sometimes what looks like evidence isn’t really evidence at all.
It’s an observation to which we’ve added a story.
I’ve been thinking about this in relation to myself recently.
There have been times when I’ve enthusiastically said yes to something, committed myself to it and then, further down the road, had to pull back.
From the outside, I can imagine how that might look.
She changes her mind.
She gets enthusiastic about things and doesn’t follow through.
She starts with gusto and never finishes
She’s unreliable.
She’s awkward.
She’s difficult.
Perhaps even: There she goes again.
And if someone already held that opinion of me, my behaviour might look like compelling evidence that they were right.
Except they wouldn’t be seeing what was actually happening.
They’d be seeing the outside of an internal process they knew nothing about.
The need to belong
Many years ago, at the end of an abusive relationship, my abuser said something to me that felt as though I’d been hit square in the solar plexus.
He told me I had been easy to manipulate because I was “so desperate to be loved.”
The words winded me.
Not simply because they were cruel, but because at the time I believed they were true.
And I was deeply ashamed of that.
I heard desperate to be loved and translated it into weakness.
Worthlessness.
Something defective in me that another person had seen clearly enough to exploit.
It took me a long time to understand that differently.
I wasn’t defective because I wanted to be loved.
I was human.
We are relational beings. Belonging matters enormously to us. Being seen, accepted and connected to other people isn’t some embarrassing character flaw.
But when belonging has previously felt uncertain, unsafe or conditional, I think we can become particularly sensitive to its presence — and its apparent withdrawal.
And sometimes that can influence our behaviour without us even realising it.
I understand that much better about myself now.
People-pleasing doesn’t always look like people-pleasing
Sometimes an opportunity doesn’t simply arrive for me as an opportunity.
Somewhere beneath conscious awareness it can also whisper:
They want me.
I’ve been included.
There’s a place for me here.
I’ve found my tribe.
And before I’ve properly asked myself whether I have the time, energy, capacity or even genuine desire to do something, I’ve said yes.
People-pleasing doesn’t always look like people-pleasing.
Sometimes it looks like enthusiasm.
Ambition.
Generosity.
Being helpful.
Taking on another project.
Volunteering.
Working ridiculous hours.
Saying:
“Of course I can.”
And sometimes even I haven’t recognised what was underneath the yes.
Until my body does.
Something starts dragging.
My energy changes.
The enthusiasm disappears.
I begin feeling overwhelmed or resistant.
There’s an incongruence between what I’ve committed myself to externally and what something inside me has been trying to say.
And eventually I have to listen.
Did I actually want this?
Do I have capacity for this?
Does this belong to me?
Or:
Did being asked feel so much like being included that I forgot to ask whether I wanted to say yes?
That last question has taught me a lot about myself.
Sometimes healing disappoints people
Occasionally, getting back into alignment means changing my mind.
Sometimes it means withdrawing from something I’ve already agreed to.
And that can affect other people.
I don’t dismiss that.
I am responsible for the commitments I make, and part of my continued growth is learning to recognise what is happening sooner — preferably before the automatic yes escapes my mouth.
But there is a painful paradox here that I hadn’t previously understood.
To stop people-pleasing, sometimes I have to allow people to be displeased with me.
To stop seeking acceptance, sometimes I have to tolerate somebody not understanding my decision.
To become more congruent, sometimes I have to say something another person doesn’t want to hear.
And when belonging is already a tender place, that can feel enormous.
That’s where the echoes still sometimes appear for me.
Someone isn’t welcoming.
I’m excluded from something.
Someone responds dismissively.
I have to withdraw from a commitment.
I disappoint somebody.
And suddenly an experience happening today can touch something much older.
The old questions can appear remarkably quickly:
What did I do?
Why don’t they like me?
Why don’t I belong?
What’s wrong with me?
I know those questions now.
I know their origins.
That doesn’t mean I never feel them.
It means I’m increasingly able to recognise that an old feeling isn’t necessarily evidence about a present situation.
What we see isn’t necessarily what happened
And that’s why I’ve become increasingly cautious about the stories we construct from other people’s behaviour.
Someone cancels.
Someone withdraws.
Someone becomes quiet.
Someone enthusiastically says yes and subsequently says no.
Someone leaves.
Someone changes their mind.
The behaviour is observable.
The explanation isn’t.
There may be consequences. There may need to be accountability. Understanding someone’s behaviour doesn’t mean pretending its impact doesn’t matter.
But perhaps we can leave a little room between:
“This is what they did.”
and
“Therefore, this is who they are.”
Because human beings are much more complicated than the fragments of behaviour other people get to see.
A different relationship with belonging
These days, my life is very different.
I’ve learned to approve of myself.
I have people in my life whom I love deeply and whose love I genuinely feel.
And yet I can still sometimes hear the echoes of that old struggle with belonging.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve stopped seeing healing as reaching some magical point where nothing from the past ever touches me again.
For me, it’s increasingly about recognising when it does.
I see you.
I know this feeling.
I know where you came from.
But I don’t have to build today’s meaning from yesterday’s pain.
I’m learning to pause before saying yes.
I’m learning to check my capacity.
I’m learning the difference between:
I want to do this
and
I want to be wanted to do this.
I’m learning that I can disappoint somebody without becoming a disappointment.
I can be excluded without being unworthy.
Someone can misunderstand me without their understanding becoming my identity.
And I can belong without abandoning myself to secure my place.
Perhaps that’s what I wish I could tell the younger version of me who was so devastated by those words all those years ago.
Wanting to be loved was never the shameful part.
Losing myself trying to earn it was what hurt me.
And finding my way back to myself has meant learning something very different:
Belonging that requires me to abandon myself isn’t belonging at all.
Sometimes we say yes for the warmth of belonging, only to discover later that saying no awakens the old pain of believing we are a disappointment who doesn’t belong afterall.
Caring Without Carrying: Protecting Ourselves When We Listen to Trauma
Many professionals and volunteers regularly listen to people describing trauma, abuse, loss and deeply painful experiences.
We may be counsellors, support workers, advocates, healthcare professionals, safeguarding leads, emergency responders, helpline volunteers—or simply the person others trust enough to speak to.
We are often taught how to listen.
We are not always taught how to listen without taking another person’s pain home with us.
That matters, because repeated exposure to traumatic material can affect our emotional and physical wellbeing. Without sufficient boundaries, supervision, rest and support, we may become vulnerable to burnout, empathic distress or vicarious trauma.
Empathy remains essential
As a person-centred counsellor, empathic understanding is one of the core conditions of the therapeutic relationship.
Empathy helps another person feel heard, understood and less alone. It enables us to listen beyond the words and begin to understand the experience from that person’s frame of reference.
The difficulty is not that we care too much.
The difficulty can arise when understanding someone’s experience becomes absorbing their experience.
There is a subtle but important difference between imagining ourselves in another person’s shoes and trying to understand what it feels like for that person to be in their own shoes.
The first might sound like:
“If that happened to me, how would I feel?”
We may begin generating our own fear, grief, anger or helplessness in response to their story. Alongside recognising their emotions, we are now experiencing our own imagined version of the event.
The second asks:
“What might this experience feel like for them, with their history, circumstances, needs and understanding of the world?”
We remain ourselves while being genuinely curious about the other person.
What Dr Dan Siegel taught me about the difference
I first heard this distinction explained by psychiatrist and interpersonal neurobiology educator Dr Dan Siegel.
Dr Siegel describes empathy as allowing another person’s internal experience to resonate within us. However, he also emphasises the importance of differentiation: we can be changed by what we hear without becoming the other person.
Using the example of witnessing someone involved in an accident, he distinguishes between imagining that it is happening to us and considering what it may feel like for the person actually experiencing it. The first can lead to over-identification and personal distress. The second preserves a sense of self while allowing care, understanding and a wish to help.
His explanation helped me understand that compassion is not emotional distance. It is an integrated way of caring—remaining connected to the other person while also remaining grounded within ourselves.
Dr Siegel has spoken about compassion as an important part of a healthy, integrated mind and draws upon research distinguishing empathic distress from compassion. Watch Dr Dan Siegel discuss compassion.
Research by Olga Klimecki, Tania Singer and colleagues also found that training in empathic resonance increased participants’ negative feelings when witnessing suffering, whereas subsequent compassion training increased positive feelings and engaged a different pattern of brain activity. The researchers suggested that cultivating compassion may offer a way of responding to empathic distress and strengthening resilience. Read the published study.
This does not mean that empathy is harmful or that compassion replaces it.
Empathy provides understanding and connection. Compassion adds warmth, care and an orientation towards what may help. Both matter.
Compassionate understanding
Compassionate understanding might sound like:
“I am here with you.”
“I want to understand what this has been like for you.”
“I care about what has happened to you.”
“I will help where I appropriately can.”
“And I recognise that this experience belongs to you—I do not have to carry it as though it happened to me.”
This is not coldness.
It is not detachment.
It is not switching off our emotions or becoming clinical and distant.
It is staying close enough to understand, while maintaining the internal boundary that allows us to remain calm, thoughtful and useful.
When we emotionally merge with another person, our own nervous system may begin responding as though the danger is happening to us. We can become overwhelmed, lose perspective and have less capacity to remain fully present.
Compassion allows us to care without abandoning ourselves.
Practical ways to remain present without carrying
Before a difficult conversation, take a moment to notice your body. Feel your feet against the floor and the support of the chair beneath you. Remind yourself that you are here, in the present, and currently safe.
While listening, keep part of your awareness connected to your breathing and body. If you notice yourself becoming overwhelmed, gently lengthen your exhale and return your attention to the room around you.
Ask yourself:
“Am I alongside this person, or have I stepped inside their experience?”
“Am I trying to understand what this feels like for them—or imagining it happening to me?”
“What belongs to this person, and what belongs to me?”
Afterwards, create a deliberate transition. This might be a short walk, stretching, stepping outside, listening to music, washing your hands mindfully or taking several slow breaths before moving into the next part of your day.
Supervision and reflective practice are also essential. They give us somewhere appropriate to process what we have heard, notice what has affected us and recognise when our capacity is becoming depleted.
Healthy boundaries, manageable workloads, sufficient breaks and supportive organisations matter too. Burnout is not always an individual failure to practise self-care. Sometimes it is a reasonable response to unreasonable demands.
Notice the early signs
The signs that we are carrying too much may include:
- Thinking repeatedly about someone’s story outside our role
- Feeling responsible for rescuing or fixing them
- Becoming unusually tearful, irritable, anxious or numb
- Struggling to sleep after hearing traumatic material
- Losing patience or emotional availability
- Dreading conversations we would previously have managed
- Feeling guilty when we rest or say no
- Experiencing changes in how safe we believe the world to be
These signs are not evidence that we are weak or unsuitable for the work.
They are information.
They tell us that our system may need rest, support, supervision, stronger boundaries or a reduction in exposure.
We can care deeply without carrying everything
Our humanity is not measured by how much pain we can absorb.
We do not serve another person by becoming overwhelmed alongside them. We are often most helpful when we can remain warm, regulated, compassionate and able to think clearly.
The aim is not to feel less.
It is to care in a way that remains safe and sustainable.
We can listen without taking ownership.
We can understand without over-identifying.
We can stand beside someone in their pain without carrying it as our own.
Compassion is not distance.
It is care with a boundary.
Falling for a Narcissist: A Survivor’s Perspective, Twelve Years On
In 2014, I wrote a series of blogs called Falling for a Narcissist: A Victim Perspective.
At the time, I was reflecting, trying to understand and make sense of a relationship that had left me frightened, confused and deeply wounded. The person involved had been diagnosed with a personality disorder, and I immersed myself in research, searching for language that could help me make sense of what I had experienced.
The original blogs combined that research with lived experience. They were written with the benefit of hindsight, but still from within the longer aftermath, as I reflected on the relationship, its impact and the process of finding my way back to myself. I was still trying to understand how a relationship that had initially felt loving and hopeful had become so incredibly destructive.
Twelve years after writing that blog, I would write the piece differently.
Not because the experience was any less real, or because the behaviour was any less harmful, but because my understanding of trauma, personality, relationships and recovery has grown considerably.
I now recognise the importance of separating a clinical diagnosis from abusive behaviour.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a complex mental health condition that can only be diagnosed by an appropriately qualified professional. Not everyone who behaves selfishly, manipulatively or abusively has NPD. Equally, receiving a diagnosis of NPD does not automatically mean that a person will abuse others.
Abuse is abuse because of the behaviour and its impact—not simply because of a diagnostic label.
This updated article is therefore not intended to diagnose anyone. It is an exploration of what it can feel like to become caught in a relationship characterised by manipulation, coercive control, emotional inconsistency, devaluation and fear.
It is also about recovery: how we begin to recognise what happened, release the shame that was never ours to carry and reconnect with the parts of ourselves we may have learned to silence.
When Something Does Not Feel Right
One of the most powerful questions I asked in the original blog was:
Why are you searching for answers?
What has led you to question your relationship?
What emotions are you experiencing?
Do you generally feel safe, respected and accepted, or do you spend much of your time feeling anxious, confused, diminished or afraid?
Healthy relationships can experience conflict, frustration and disagreement. No relationship is happy or harmonious all of the time. However, a healthy relationship should not routinely leave one person questioning their memory, their value, their sanity or their right to have needs.
If you repeatedly find yourself wondering:
What did I do wrong?
Why are they so different today?
Why do I feel as though I am walking on eggshells?
Why am I constantly explaining myself?
Why do I no longer recognise who I am?
then those questions deserve attention.
Our emotional responses are not always a perfect interpretation of events, but neither are they meaningless inconveniences to be overridden. They can provide important information about how safe, respected and connected we feel.
Many of us have been taught to distrust emotion. We are told not to overreact, not to wear our hearts on our sleeves, not to be too sensitive and not to let feelings rule our decisions.
However, emotions are part of the body’s internal communication system. Fear, unease, confusion and tension may be signalling that something requires our attention.
Recovery often begins when we stop asking, “What is wrong with me?” and begin asking, “What has been happening to me?”
Understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is associated with enduring patterns that may include grandiosity, a strong need for admiration, entitlement, interpersonal difficulties and reduced capacity or willingness to recognise the feelings and needs of others.
People may also experience an unstable or vulnerable sense of self beneath an outward appearance of confidence or superiority. Criticism, rejection or perceived humiliation may be experienced as particularly threatening.
The precise causes of NPD are not fully understood. As with many personality conditions, development is likely to involve a complex interaction between temperament, early relationships, attachment experiences, family environment, culture and other psychological and biological factors.
It is important not to reduce the condition to simplistic explanations such as “too much praise” or “bad parenting.” Human development is rarely that straightforward.
NPD is not diagnosed from a checklist completed by a partner or from a collection of difficult behaviours found online. Diagnosis involves professional assessment of long-standing patterns across different situations, the impact of those patterns and the exclusion of other possible explanations.
Psychotherapy may support some people with NPD, particularly when they recognise their difficulties and are motivated to engage with treatment. However, change requires insight, commitment and personal responsibility.
A difficult childhood, a mental health condition or a history of being harmed may help explain behaviour, but it does not excuse harming someone else.
Compassion and accountability can exist together.
The Beginning: When the Relationship Feels Extraordinary
Many survivors describe the beginning of a manipulative relationship as intense, exciting and unusually affirming.
The other person may appear attentive, charming, generous, interested and emotionally available. There may be long conversations, frequent messages, powerful declarations and a sense that the relationship is somehow exceptional.
The survivor may feel deeply seen.
They may hear:
“I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“You understand me in a way nobody else does.”
“I’ve waited my whole life for someone like you.”
“We are meant to be together.”
This experience is sometimes described as idealisation or love-bombing. However, not every affectionate or enthusiastic beginning is manipulative. New relationships often involve excitement, heightened attention and a natural desire to present our best selves.
The concern is not simply that someone is charming or romantic.
The concern arises when intensity is used to accelerate trust, bypass boundaries, create dependency or establish a level of emotional commitment that has not yet had time to develop naturally.
Persona: The Person We Believe We Have Met
Carl Jung used the term persona to describe the social face or role we present to the world.
We all have personas.
We present ourselves differently at work, on a first date, with friends or in a professional setting. Presenting our best qualities is not inherently deceptive. It becomes harmful when a carefully constructed image is used to mislead another person and conceal patterns of exploitation, aggression or control.
In the early stages of a manipulative relationship, the other person may appear to share the survivor’s interests, values, hopes and beliefs.
They may seem extraordinarily similar.
They listen closely, ask personal questions and remember important details. This can feel like intimacy, but it may also provide information about the survivor’s vulnerabilities, desires, fears and unmet needs.
The survivor has no reason to assume that these disclosures will later be used against them.
They believe they are building trust.
The Invisible Process of Building Trust - The Invisible Seduction
No one knowingly hands their heart, finances, private information or personal safety to someone they believe will harm them.
People enter relationships because the other person appears trustworthy.
Trust is built through words, actions, consistency, shared experiences and emotional disclosure. In a manipulative relationship, that entirely ordinary process may be deliberately exploited.
The person may identify what the survivor longs for or lacks:
Affection.
Security.
Belonging.
Practical support.
Financial stability.
Companionship.
Childcare.
Transport.
Confidence.
Hope for the future.
They then position themselves as the answer.
The support may feel generous and unconditional. Yet, over time, gifts, money, favours or practical help may become leverage.
What was freely offered may later be presented as a debt.
“You would have nothing without me.”
“After everything I’ve done for you…”
“Nobody else would put up with you.”
“You owe me.”
It is important to say this clearly: accepting help does not make someone responsible for being abused.
Trusting a person who appeared trustworthy is not foolishness. It is a normal human response to the information that was available at the time.
When the Relationship Changes
For many survivors, the most bewildering part of the experience is the sudden change.
The warmth diminishes.
Affection is withdrawn.
Conversations that once seemed fascinating are now treated as irritating or tedious. Jokes that were once shared are met with contempt. The survivor may encounter criticism, eye-rolling, dismissiveness, secrecy, unexplained absences or increasing hostility.
They may begin to ask:
“What happened?”
“What have I done?”
“Is there someone else?”
“How can I get us back to how we were?”
This is often described as the devaluation stage.
Again, relationships naturally evolve. The intensity of a new romance usually settles, and people become more aware of each other’s imperfections.
Devaluation is different.
It involves a repeated erosion of dignity, confidence and emotional safety.
The survivor may be criticised for needing reassurance, accused of being jealous for noticing secretive behaviour or described as controlling for requesting ordinary communication and mutual consideration.
The relationship begins to operate through inconsistency.
Affection may briefly return and then disappear again.
There may be apologies, promises and renewed closeness, followed by another period of rejection or cruelty.
This creates a powerful push-and-pull dynamic.
Why Inconsistency Can Become So Powerful
When affection and rejection alternate unpredictably, the nervous system can become increasingly focused on restoring connection.
The survivor may try harder.
They may become quieter, more accommodating or more vigilant. They monitor tone of voice, facial expression and mood. They begin anticipating what might trigger criticism or anger.
They may describe themselves as walking on eggshells.
Periods of kindness become enormously significant because they offer relief from distress. The return of warmth may be interpreted as evidence that the original loving relationship still exists and can be recovered.
This is one reason simplistic questions such as “Why didn’t you just leave?” are so damaging.
The survivor is not responding only to the present moment. They are holding the memory of the earlier relationship, hoping for its return and trying to understand what they must do differently to restore it.
The occasional return of affection may reinforce that hope.
The survivor may believe:
“If I am less demanding…”
“If I stop upsetting them…”
“If I become more understanding…”
“If I can prove that I love them…”
“Then things will go back to how they were.”
But one person cannot regulate, repair or transform another person through love, compliance or sacrifice.
It is like one person drinking alcohol and expecting someone else to become intoxicated.
Change belongs to the person whose behaviour needs to change.
Gaslighting and the Loss of Trust in Yourself
Gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation that causes someone to doubt their perception, memory or understanding of events.
The survivor raises a concern and is told it never happened.
They describe how something affected them and are told they are too sensitive.
They notice a contradiction and are accused of being confused.
They express fear or discomfort and are told they are imagining things because of previous relationships.
Some statements may contain enough truth to create doubt.
Perhaps the survivor has experienced trauma before.
Perhaps they do feel anxious.
Perhaps they have become jealous, frightened or reactive.
The manipulative person may use these genuine reactions as proof that the survivor is the problem, while ignoring the context in which those reactions developed.
Over time, the survivor may no longer trust their own interpretation.
They become dependent on the very person causing the confusion to explain reality to them.
Isolation and the Breakdown of Support
Friends and family may notice changes before the survivor does.
They may see increased anxiety, withdrawal, exhaustion or diminished confidence. They may express concern about the relationship.
The survivor, still holding the memory of the early loving connection, may defend their partner.
The manipulative person may anticipate criticism and provide explanations:
“Your family has never wanted you to be happy.”
“Your friend is jealous.”
“They don’t understand what we have.”
“They are trying to control you.”
Sometimes the person attempts to charm those who might challenge them. At other times, they create conflict and encourage the survivor to withdraw.
Eventually, the survivor may become isolated from the people most likely to offer perspective and support.
This is rarely experienced as one dramatic moment. It often happens slowly, through repeated disagreements, cancelled plans, embarrassment, secrecy and emotional exhaustion.
By the time the survivor recognises the danger, they may feel ashamed to return to the people who warned them.
They fear hearing, “I told you so.”
This is why responses to survivors matter so much.
The most helpful message is not:
“Why didn’t you listen?”
It is:
“I’m glad you told me. You deserve support. We will work through this safely.”
When Behaviour Becomes Frightening
In some relationships, emotional abuse may escalate into threats, stalking, financial control, sexual coercion, damage to property or physical violence.
The person may behave aggressively toward children, animals, strangers or service workers. The survivor may witness a side of them that appears entirely inconsistent with the earlier persona.
After an abusive incident, the person may cry, apologise or promise it will never happen again, while simultaneously blaming the survivor:
“Look what you made me do.”
“You know how to push my buttons.”
“If you hadn’t said that, this would never have happened.”
This is not accountability.
A genuine apology does not transfer responsibility to the harmed person.
Nobody causes another person to become violent simply by disagreeing, setting a boundary or expressing an emotion.
The person choosing aggression remains responsible for that choice.
The Ending: Discard, Departure and Continued Control
Some manipulative relationships end abruptly. The person may withdraw completely, move rapidly into another relationship or behave as though the previous connection meant very little.
Others do not end cleanly.
The person may continue contacting, monitoring, threatening or provoking the survivor. They may alternate between affection and cruelty, attempting to regain access whenever the survivor begins to move forward.
Private disclosures may be weaponised.
Information shared during the early stages of the relationship—trauma histories, fears, mistakes, financial difficulties or family conflicts—may be repeated out of context or used to discredit the survivor.
This can be particularly devastating because the accusations may contain fragments of truth.
The survivor then feels compelled to explain every detail, believing that if they can make others understand the full context, the truth will become clear.
Meanwhile, the person causing harm may appear calm and convincing, while the survivor appears distressed, repetitive or emotionally overwhelmed.
This difference in presentation can influence family members, professionals and even legal systems.
Calmness is not proof of truth.
Distress is not proof of dishonesty.
A traumatised person may struggle to present their story in a neat, linear and unemotional way. Memory under stress can be fragmented, and recounting events may reactivate the body’s threat response.
Trauma-aware practice requires us to understand that presentation and credibility are not the same thing.
Why Leaving Is Not Simple
People often ask why someone stayed.
A more compassionate and useful question is:
“What made leaving difficult or unsafe?”
The reasons may include fear, financial dependency, housing, children, threats, isolation, disability, immigration status, hope, shame, love or concern that the abuse will escalate.
The survivor may also be grieving the person they believed they had met.
That loss is real, even if the relationship was built upon deception.
They are not only leaving the present relationship. They are letting go of the promised future, the person they hoped their partner would become and the version of themselves who believed they had finally found safety.
Leaving may also be the point at which risk increases. Attempts to regain control can intensify when an abusive person recognises that access is ending.
Advice such as “just leave” may therefore be both insensitive and unsafe.
Survivors need carefully considered support, safety planning and access to specialist services.
What Happens Afterwards
The ending of the relationship does not necessarily end the impact.
The nervous system may continue responding as though the threat is present.
The survivor may experience hypervigilance, emotional flashbacks, sleep disturbance, shame, anxiety, numbness, distrust, dissociation or difficulty making decisions.
They may question their judgment:
“How did I not see it?”
“How can I ever trust anyone again?”
“Why do I still miss them?”
“Was it really abuse?”
They may become highly alert to changes in tone, facial expression or communication. Ordinary misunderstandings in future relationships can activate fear connected to the past.
This does not mean the survivor is broken.
It means their mind and body adapted to an unpredictable and threatening environment.
Responses that developed to help someone survive may continue after the danger has passed. Healing involves helping the nervous system recognise that the present is different from the past.
Reconnecting With Emotional Awareness
In the original blog, I wrote about the importance of listening to emotion.
That remains central to my work.
Mindfulness was useful in my recovery, but it was only part of the process. I needed to learn how to notice emotional and physical responses without automatically dismissing them.
I needed to become curious about sensations in my body.
What happened when I felt unsafe?
Where did I notice tension?
What did fear feel like before my thinking mind had found words?
When did I override my instincts to avoid appearing rude, jealous or unreasonable?
Attunement is not about believing that every fearful thought is factually correct. It is about listening respectfully to the information our bodies and emotions are offering.
We can then slow the process down, consider the evidence, seek perspective and make decisions without abandoning ourselves.
Healing is not achieved by becoming less emotional.
It comes through developing a safer, more compassionate relationship with our emotions.
What Does a Healthy Relationship Look Like?
Healthy relationships are not perfect.
They involve two people with different histories, beliefs, moods, needs and ways of interpreting the world. Conflict is inevitable.
The difference lies in how conflict is handled.
A healthy relationship should be grounded in:
Mutual respect
Each person’s dignity, boundaries and individuality are recognised.
Trust
Trust develops through reliability, honesty and consistency. It is not demanded or enforced.
Equality
Neither person is entitled to dominate the other. Decisions, responsibilities and power are shared fairly.
Honesty
Difficult truths can be discussed without deliberate deception, intimidation or punishment.
Compassion
Both people are able to recognise that the other has feelings, needs and vulnerabilities.
Compromise
Each person is sometimes willing to adjust, negotiate and consider the relationship as well as themselves.
These elements may fluctuate. No couple demonstrates all of them perfectly at every moment. However, they should remain fundamentally present and available to both people.
A relationship cannot be sustained by one person giving endlessly while the other takes without accountability.
Relationships are sometimes described as requiring 50/50 effort. I prefer to think of each person as being fully responsible for their own contribution.
Each person must be willing to reflect on the impact of their behaviour, communicate honestly and participate in repair.
No amount of love from one partner can compensate indefinitely for the absence of respect, honesty or responsibility from the other.
There are few experiences lonelier than being in a relationship where love, effort and concern flow in only one direction.
Trauma and the Personal Lens
Every person interprets the world through their own experiences.
In my work, I have sometimes described this as the Personal Opinion Processor: the unique lens through which we make meaning from what we see, hear, feel and experience.
That lens is shaped by countless factors, including age, culture, education, mood, beliefs, relationships, trauma, medication and life experience.
As Anaïs Nin is often quoted as saying:
“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
Trauma can influence this lens.
A person who has experienced unpredictability or violence may become highly alert to possible danger. Another may disconnect or dissociate when emotions become overwhelming. Someone else may appease others to reduce the risk of conflict.
These responses are not character flaws.
They are adaptations.
Understanding them helps survivors move away from shame and towards choice.
The aim is not to erase the past. It is to recognise when the past is shaping the present and develop enough safety, awareness and support to respond differently.
A Word About Victim-Blaming
A survivor is not responsible for another person’s decision to manipulate, coerce, deceive or abuse them.
They are not responsible because they trusted.
They are not responsible because they loved.
They are not responsible because they stayed.
They are not responsible because they returned.
They are not responsible because they failed to recognise the pattern quickly enough.
Victim-blaming often disguises discomfort.
It can feel safer to believe that a survivor made an obvious mistake because that allows us to imagine the same thing could never happen to us.
But manipulation succeeds precisely because it does not initially look like manipulation.
It may look like love, generosity, confidence, protection or commitment.
Telling survivors that they should have known better reinforces shame and prevents disclosure. It can also leave the person who caused harm unchallenged.
The responsibility for abuse remains with the person who chose abusive behaviour.
At the same time, survivors deserve support to understand their own patterns, needs and vulnerabilities—not because those things caused the abuse, but because self-understanding can help restore agency and reduce the likelihood of becoming trapped in similar dynamics again.
Responsibility and blame are not the same.
We are not responsible for what someone did to us.
We can become responsible for supporting our own healing.
Hurt People Can Hurt People—but They Do Not Have To
The phrase “hurt people hurt people” contains an important truth, but it should never be used to excuse abuse.
Many people who experience trauma do not go on to harm others.
Pain may help us understand behaviour, but it does not remove responsibility.
Every person has a duty to recognise the impact they have on others and to seek support when their unresolved pain begins shaping their relationships destructively.
Having once been harmed does not create permission to create another victim.
Healing involves interrupting the cycle.
Finding Your Way Back to Yourself
Recovery does not always mean returning to the person you were before the relationship.
Sometimes it means meeting yourself more fully than you ever have before.
It may involve learning to:
Trust your responses without being ruled by fear.
Recognise manipulation without becoming suspicious of everyone.
Set boundaries without believing you are unkind.
Receive support without feeling weak.
Notice when your body feels unsafe.
Understand that confusion can be a response to inconsistency.
Allow grief without interpreting it as a reason to return.
Speak about what happened without carrying the shame of the person who harmed you.
Healing is rarely linear.
There may be days when you feel strong and clear, followed by days when doubt returns. That does not mean you are failing. It means your mind and body are processing a complex experience.
The relationship may have taught you to disconnect from yourself in order to maintain connection with someone else.
Recovery asks you to reverse that process:
To reconnect with yourself.
To listen.
To attune.
To become congruent with what you know, feel and need.
To recognise that your safety matters.
Final Reflection
When I wrote the original series in 2014, I was still searching for explanations.
I wanted to understand how I had become caught in something so damaging and why it had taken so long to recognise what was happening.
Today, I understand that the most important part of the story is not the label given to the person who caused harm.
It is what happened within the relationship.
It is the deliberate confusion, the inconsistency, the misuse of trust, the erosion of confidence, the isolation and the absence of accountability.
It is also the resilience of the survivor.
There is life after a destructive relationship.
There is understanding after confusion.
There is connection after isolation.
There is a way back to safety, and there is a way back to yourself.
If something in your relationship does not feel right, you do not need a diagnosis or a perfect explanation before seeking support.
Pay attention to how the relationship affects you.
Do you feel safe?
Can you speak freely?
Are your boundaries respected?
Can concerns be discussed without retaliation?
Are you allowed to remain fully yourself?
You are not required to prove that someone is a narcissist before acknowledging that their behaviour is harming you.
The impact matters.
Your safety matters.
And what happened to you was not your fault.
Copyright © 2014–2026 Deborah J Crozier. Updated from the original “Falling for a Narcissist: A Victim Perspective” series.
Neuroplasticity, Hypervigilance, and the RASamataz Plot Twist
One of the concepts we explore in our Reconnect & Regulate programme (starting Monday 29th June) is neuroplasticity – the brain’s remarkable ability to change, adapt, and form new neural pathways throughout our lives.
The image below captures an important truth, although I’d add a little nuance.
Our brains don’t simply create “more good” because we think positively. Rather, they strengthen the pathways we use most often.
If we repeatedly focus on danger, criticism, rejection, mistakes, or what might go wrong, those neural pathways become stronger. Equally, when we intentionally practise noticing strengths, opportunities, connection, gratitude, kindness, and moments of safety, those pathways become stronger too.
This is where the Reticular Activating System (RAS) enters the story.
In our workshops, I often jokingly call it “RASamataz” — the plot twist that most people don’t see coming.
The RAS acts like a filter, constantly deciding what information reaches our conscious awareness. When someone has experienced trauma, adversity, loss, violence, or prolonged stress, that filter often becomes highly skilled at detecting danger. Hypervigilance is not a flaw or weakness; it is an intelligent survival response.
The brain learns to ask:
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s unsafe?”
“What do I need to watch out for?”
And for many people, that system becomes exceptionally good at its job.
But here’s the RASamataz plot twist…
The same system that learned to scan for danger can be retrained to notice opportunities.
The same brain that became organised around survival can learn to recognise safety, connection, possibility, kindness, strengths, and growth.
Not by denying reality.
Not by forcing positivity.
Not by pretending life is perfect.
But by helping the brain notice that danger is not the whole story.
One of the exercises I often use with counselling clients is called Mia Vita – Latin for My Life.
Clients are given a shoebox with the words:
“Everything in this box is…”
Throughout the week, they add notes, memories, achievements, moments of gratitude, acts of kindness, strengths, opportunities, successes, connections, or anything else they would like their brain to notice more often.
This year, we’re bringing Mia Vita into our Reconnect & Regulate workshop as a collective exercise.
Over the eight weeks, participants will contribute to a shared box together. Each week they will add positive experiences, strengths, achievements, moments of courage, learning, connection, hope, and possibility.
In doing so, we are intentionally directing our attention.
Not because life is easy.
But because what we repeatedly look for, we become more likely to see.
What fascinates me is that participants are not only learning from their own experiences — they are borrowing hope from one another. Someone else’s moment of courage may remind us of our own. Someone else’s achievement may help us recognise possibilities we had previously filtered out.
And that is neuroplasticity in action.
New pathways are strengthened through repetition.
Attention begins to shift.
The brain starts noticing different things.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the Law of Attraction resonates with so many people. Not because the universe suddenly starts delivering things to us, but because our attention changes.
We begin noticing opportunities that were always there.
We recognise strengths that had previously been overlooked.
We become aware of connections, solutions, and possibilities that our hypervigilant brain may have filtered out.
In other words, a traumatised brain trains the RAS to ask:
“What’s dangerous?”
A healing brain begins teaching it to also ask:
“What’s possible?”
That’s the RASamataz plot twist.
Sometimes the biggest plot twist in healing is discovering that your brain is still capable of change.
Reconnect & Regulate – 8 Week Programme
📅 Starts Monday 29th June
🕕 6pm–8pm
📍 A Positive Start CIC, Harestanes Tower, Jedburgh
To learn more or book your place:
https://apositivestart.org.uk/reconnect-regulate-program/
#Neuroplasticity #ReconnectAndRegulate #TraumaInformed #PolyvagalTheory #MentalHealth #Healing #PersonalGrowth #ReticularActivatingSystem #RASamataz #CommunityHealing #APositiveStartCIC #ScottishBorders
The POT of Perception: How Awareness Brings Clarity
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
— Anaïs Nin
This simple sentence captures one of the most important truths about being human.
Our experience of the world is shaped not only by what is happening around us, but by what is happening within us.
Recently, I came across an image comparing how humans, pigeons, butterflies and mantis shrimp perceive the world. It highlighted something fascinating: what we see is only a tiny fraction of what is actually there.
Humans have three colour receptors (cones) and can distinguish around one million colours. Pigeons have five cones and can see ultraviolet light. Butterflies perceive colours and patterns invisible to us. Mantis shrimp possess one of the most complex visual systems in the animal kingdom.
The image concluded with a powerful statement:
“Every other animal is looking at a different world.”
As I looked at it, I couldn’t help but think:
Humans are too.
Not because our eyes are different, but because our perception is.
This is what I call the POT of Perception – our Personal Opinion Translator.
It is the lens through which we interpret ourselves, other people and the world around us.
And no two POTs are exactly the same.
What Makes Up Our POT?
From the moment we are born, our POT begins to form.
It is shaped by:
• Our family experiences
• Our culture and community
• Our education
• Our relationships
• Our successes and failures
• Our beliefs and values
• Our hopes and fears
• Our memories
• Our nervous system
• Our life experiences
Every interaction we have contributes to how we interpret future experiences.
Over time, our POT becomes so familiar that we stop noticing it.
We assume everyone sees the world as we do.
We assume our interpretation is reality.
But perception and reality are not always the same thing.
The Nervous System Lens
What many people do not realise is that our nervous system is constantly filtering information long before our conscious mind has had a chance to make sense of it.
Every second, our brains receive far more information than we could ever consciously process.
So the brain filters.
It decides what is important.
What deserves our attention.
What can safely be ignored.
Our Reticular Activating System (RAS) acts like a search engine, scanning the environment and bringing certain information to our awareness.
If you are thinking about buying a red car, suddenly red cars appear everywhere.
They were always there.
Your awareness simply changed.
The same thing happens emotionally.
If we believe people are trustworthy, we tend to notice signs of trust.
If we believe people are dangerous, we tend to notice signs of danger.
Our nervous system influences what makes it through the filter.
The Polyvagal Lens
Dr Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory offers another way of understanding why our perception of the world can change so dramatically.
According to Polyvagal Theory, our nervous system is constantly asking one fundamental question:
“Am I safe?”
The answer to that question shapes how we experience ourselves, other people and the world around us.
What is fascinating is that the same situation can feel completely different depending on which nervous system state we are experiencing.
Through a Ventral Vagal Lens – Safety, Connection and Belonging
When we feel safe and connected, we experience the world through our social engagement system.
In this state we are more likely to experience:
• Joy
• Curiosity
• Compassion
• Creativity
• Confidence
• Connection
• Playfulness
A busy community event feels exciting.
A room full of strangers feels full of opportunity.
A challenge feels manageable.
We can access our natural resilience, connect with others and enjoy the present moment.
The world feels safer.
People feel safer.
We feel safer.
Through a Sympathetic Lens – Protection and Survival
When our nervous system detects danger, it shifts into mobilisation.
This is commonly experienced as:
• Anxiety
• Panic
• Hypervigilance
• Irritability
• Anger
• Restlessness
• Overthinking
Now the exact same community event may feel overwhelming.
The room full of strangers may feel threatening.
The challenge may feel impossible.
The nervous system begins scanning constantly for signs of danger.
We become highly aware of facial expressions, tone of voice, criticism, rejection and uncertainty.
The world can feel chaotic, stressful and unpredictable.
Through a Dorsal Vagal Lens – Shutdown and Conservation
When the nervous system determines that fighting or escaping is not possible, it may move into a state of shutdown and withdrawal.
This can be experienced as:
• Hopelessness
• Isolation
• Numbness
• Disconnection
• Exhaustion
• Withdrawal
• Depression
Once again, the situation itself has not changed.
But our perception of it has.
The community event may now feel pointless.
The room full of people may feel lonely.
The challenge may feel hopeless.
The future may appear bleak.
The world can feel empty and disconnected.
The Event Hasn’t Changed – The Lens Has
Imagine three people attending the same gathering.
One person arrives feeling regulated and connected. They leave inspired and energised.
Another arrives feeling anxious and hypervigilant. They leave exhausted and overwhelmed.
A third arrives in a state of shutdown and leaves feeling even more disconnected.
The event was the same.
The people were the same.
The environment was the same.
But each person’s nervous system created a very different experience.
And just as importantly, the same person can experience very different nervous system states from one day to the next. One day we may feel calm, connected, confident, and safe in the world around us; the next, we may feel low, disconnected, overwhelmed, or on edge. These shifts are not random. Learning to recognise what influences and triggers these changes is just as important as understanding the nervous system itself. Often, these reactions can be linked to past experiences that remain unresolved, with the body responding to present-day situations through the lens of earlier hurt, fear, or threat. When we begin to understand these patterns, we can respond with greater curiosity and self-compassion rather than self-judgement.
This is why understanding our nervous system matters.
What we perceive is not always an objective reflection of reality.
Often, it is a reflection of the state of our nervous system in that moment.
How Trauma Changes Perception
This is where trauma becomes particularly important.
One of the biggest misunderstandings about trauma is the belief that the impact appears during the traumatic event itself.
Often, it doesn’t.
During overwhelming experiences, our minds and bodies focus on survival.
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Fawn.
Adapt.
Survive.
The responses that many people refer to as “symptoms” often emerge later, once the immediate danger has passed and the nervous system begins attempting to process what happened.
In many ways, these responses can be understood as evidence that the mind and body finally feel safe enough to begin dealing with what could not be processed at the time.
This is when people may begin experiencing:
• Hypervigilance
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks
• Sleep difficulties
• Emotional overwhelm
• Intrusive thoughts
• Heightened startle responses
The nervous system has learned something important:
The world can be dangerous.
Its job then becomes ensuring that the same thing never happens again.
To do this, it begins scanning continuously for signs of threat.
Hypervigilance is not weakness.
It is not attention-seeking.
It is not a character flaw.
It is not a ‘disorder’.
It is an intelligent survival response developed by a nervous system attempting to protect us.
The difficulty is that a nervous system trained by danger can begin detecting danger even when no immediate threat exists.
A raised voice can feel unsafe.
A delayed text message can feel like rejection.
A disagreement can feel overwhelming.
A crowded room can feel threatening.
The world may not have changed.
But the lens through which we are viewing it has.
What we notice changes.
What we focus on changes.
What we expect changes.
And ultimately, our experience of reality changes.
Trauma does not simply affect what happened to us.
It affects the lens through which we interpret what is happening now.
Language, Congruence and the Nervous System
One area that I believe deserves greater discussion within trauma-informed practice is language.
Language is not simply a collection of words.
It is often an expression of our internal experience.
The words we choose are frequently connected to our nervous system state, our emotions and our lived reality.
When I am experiencing joy, connection and safety, my language naturally reflects that experience.
When I am feeling calm, regulated and connected through my ventral vagal system, my words are likely to sound hopeful, curious, compassionate and engaged.
When I am frightened, overwhelmed or experiencing panic through a sympathetic state, my language may reflect fear, urgency, frustration or danger.
When I am experiencing a dorsal state of withdrawal, exhaustion or hopelessness, my language may become flatter, heavier or more disconnected.
This is not because I am choosing to be negative.
It is because my words are attempting to communicate something real about my internal experience.
This is where I sometimes find myself questioning approaches that focus heavily on correcting or managing the language people use.
Whilst I understand the intention may be to encourage hope, safety or empowerment, I believe there is a risk that we inadvertently move away from curiosity and towards control.
A person experiencing a dorsal state may describe feeling hopeless, empty, detached or defeated.
A person experiencing a sympathetic state may use language that reflects fear, anger, chaos or danger.
These words are not necessarily problems to be corrected.
They may simply be accurate descriptions of that person’s present experience.
From a person-centred perspective, I am sure it is not my role to decide whether someone else’s language is acceptable if it authentically reflects their internal world.
If somebody is experiencing terror, asking them to speak as though they are experiencing safety may create incongruence.
If somebody feels hopeless, asking them to describe themselves as hopeful may create distance from their truth.
If somebody has survived violence, asking them to soften or alter the language that best describes their experience may feel minimising rather than empowering.
When language is disconnected from lived experience, people often do not feel understood.
They feel managed.
For many people who have experienced trauma, being told which words are acceptable can feel remarkably similar to earlier experiences of having their reality questioned, dismissed or redefined by others.
The nervous system rarely interprets this as safety.
More often, it experiences it as judgment and control.
For me, being trauma-informed is not about teaching people which words they should use.
It is about becoming curious about why those words have emerged.
What is the nervous system trying to communicate?
What experience sits beneath those words?
What happened that makes this language feel true for this person?
Only when we understand the meaning beneath the language can genuine connection occur.
Congruence matters.
Authenticity matters.
Feeling heard matters.
Sometimes the most trauma-informed response is not to correct a person’s language at all.
It is to listen carefully enough to understand what their words are trying to tell us.
Perhaps this too is part of the POT of Perception.
When we insist that others use language that feels comfortable to us, we may be viewing their experience through our own lens rather than seeking to understand theirs.
Why Two People Experience the Same Event Differently
This is why two people can sit in the same meeting, hear the same conversation and leave with completely different experiences.
One feels encouraged.
Another feels criticised.
One feels welcomed.
Another feels excluded.
One sees opportunity.
Another sees danger.
Neither person is necessarily right or wrong.
They are simply viewing the experience through different POTs.
Different histories.
Different beliefs.
Different nervous systems.
Different expectations.
Different realities.
Awareness Brings Clarity
The goal is not to get rid of our POT.
That would be impossible.
The goal is to become aware of it.
Awareness creates choice.
When we understand our own filters, we become less reactive and more curious.
Instead of automatically believing every thought, feeling or interpretation, we can pause and ask:
• What am I noticing?
• Why am I noticing it?
• Is this happening now, or does it remind me of something from before?
• What nervous system state am I viewing this through?
• What else could be true?
This is where growth begins.
Not by denying our experiences.
Not by dismissing our feelings.
But by becoming aware of the lens through which we are viewing them.
A Different World
The image reminded me that a butterfly, a pigeon, a mantis shrimp and a human can all occupy the same space while experiencing completely different realities.
The same is true for people.
No two individuals share exactly the same experiences.
No two nervous systems develop in exactly the same way.
No two people perceive the world through the same lens.
Perhaps that is why curiosity, empathy and compassion matter so much.
Because the person standing in front of us may be seeing a completely different world than the one we see.
As Anaïs Nin observed:
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Perhaps that is the heart of the POT of Perception.
The goal is not to eliminate our lens, but to become aware of it.
Because awareness brings clarity.
And clarity creates the possibility for understanding, connection and change.
The world has not changed.
The lens has.
Awareness brings clarity.
When Does Persuasion Become Manipulation?
As many of you know, one of the topics I explore in our STAND – Parents as Protectors workshops is manipulation.
Not always the obvious kind.
Not the dramatic, easy-to-spot kind.
The subtle kind.
The kind that influences perception before we have even realised it is happening.
Recently, I found myself on the receiving end of an experience that perfectly illustrates why understanding manipulation matters.
For almost ten years, A Positive Start CIC has used the same internet provider. Whilst I have watched prices rise over the years, the service has been reliable and I intended to continue with them when we moved to our new premises.
The move itself created challenges. The property was not listed on the Postal Address File (PAF), meaning I had to go through the process of registering the address before services could be transferred. I made numerous calls, completed paperwork, paid the relevant fees and repeatedly contacted my provider trying to arrange installation.
I was assured someone would call me back.
Eventually, the call came.
The person introducing themselves stated they were calling in relation to my existing account.
Relieved that somebody had finally responded after weeks of chasing, I engaged in the conversation believing I was speaking with a representative connected to the company I had been dealing with for almost a decade.
The conversation focused on a package specifically aimed at small businesses and not-for-profit organisations. I was told I could save money and receive a better deal than the one I currently had.
Naturally, I was pleased.
As the founder of a community interest company supporting mental health and wellbeing, any opportunity to reduce costs means more resources can be directed towards supporting people.
I agreed to proceed.
The following day, I received information from a company I had never heard of.
Initially, I assumed it must be a subsidiary or partner organisation. After all, the conversation had begun with a reference to my existing account. However, a quick search revealed there was no connection between the two companies whatsoever.
When I contacted the company to query this, I was informed that their representative had mentioned the company name several times during the call.
Perhaps she had.
But that wasn’t really the issue.
The issue was perception.
I was expecting a call from one organisation.
The conversation began by referencing that organisation.
Everything that followed was interpreted through that lens.
What happened next concerned me even more.
Once I realised I was dealing with a company I had never knowingly chosen to engage with, I requested cancellation.
No service had been installed.
Nothing had been delivered.
I had signed nothing.
Yet I was informed that, as a business customer, I was not entitled to a cooling-off period and that cancellation could result in financial penalties.
At that moment, my concern shifted from confusion to discomfort.
Whether something is legally permissible and whether it feels fair are not necessarily the same thing.
The experience reminded me of something we discuss regularly in trauma-informed work.
People do not simply respond to words.
They respond to meaning.
Meaning is shaped by context, expectation, previous experience, emotional state, trust and timing.
This is why manipulation can be so difficult to identify.
Many people assume manipulation requires outright lies.
In reality, manipulation often relies upon implication, assumption and carefully managed perception.
If I say just enough for you to reach a particular conclusion without explicitly stating it, have I lied?
Legally, perhaps not.
Ethically, the answer may be more complicated.
This principle extends far beyond sales.
We see it in relationships.
We see it in families.
We see it in safeguarding.
We see it in politics.
We see it in media.
We see it wherever information is presented in ways that shape what people believe to be true.
The question is not always whether the facts were technically stated.
Sometimes the more important question is:
What understanding was intentionally created?
In my STAND workshops, we encourage people to pause and examine situations more carefully.
To ask questions.
To seek clarity.
To trust their instincts when something feels uncomfortable.
And most importantly, to recognise that informed consent requires genuine understanding.
Transparency is not simply saying what you are legally required to say.
Transparency is ensuring people understand what they are agreeing to.
For me, the experience became a powerful reminder of why these conversations matter.
Manipulation doesn’t always require deception.
Sometimes it only requires carefully shaping what another person believes to be true.
When Survival Becomes a Way of Life
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of being invited by Florence Koenderink to join a conversation about her work, Beyond the Trauma Wall.
I’ve found myself reflecting on that conversation ever since.
As a trauma-informed practitioner, and as someone with lived experience of trauma, Florence’s concept of the Trauma Wall resonates deeply with me.
When we talk about trauma, we often focus on what happened.
What we talk about less is what happens afterwards.
And by trauma, I mean an event—or series of events—that felt life-threatening, whether the danger was real, perceived, physical, emotional, or psychological.
No one told me what to expect after trauma.
No one explained why I suddenly felt on edge all the time.
Why I couldn’t relax.
Why I struggled to trust.
Why I became hypervigilant.
No one told me why I kept running.
Running from people.
Running from difficult conversations.
Running from feelings.
Running from memories.
Running from situations that reminded me of what had happened.
Sometimes physically.
Often emotionally.
No one explained that running had become a survival strategy.
No one told me why ordinary situations felt threatening.
Why I felt disconnected from myself and from other people.
Why my confidence disappeared.
Why I doubted myself.
Why I felt exhausted from constantly scanning for danger.
Why my nervous system seemed to react before my mind had time to think.
Looking back, I realise I spent years running.
Not because I was weak.
Not because I lacked resilience.
Not because I didn’t want to heal.
I was running because my nervous system believed I was still in danger.
The threat had passed.
But my body hadn’t yet received the message.
Looking back, I can see another layer to my own story.
After the initial attack, there was a second attack around ten weeks later.
Following that incident, the police supported a decision to move my children and me out of the area because, in their words, they believed he wanted to kill me and they could not guarantee our safety.
Looking back, I realise the lesson my nervous system learned was not that I was safe.
It learned that danger was real.
It learned that danger could return.
It learned that survival meant staying alert and keeping moving.
So I did.
I kept moving.
Not because I was restless.
Not because I couldn’t settle.
But because my nervous system had learned that movement was what kept my children and me safe.
Years later, I began to understand that although the threat had passed, my body was still following the rules it had learned during that time.
It was still doing exactly what it had been taught to do.
Stay alert.
Keep moving.
Survive.
What I know now is that these were not signs that I was broken.
They were signs that my body was trying to protect me.
Over time, I began to think of this as a protective barrier.
Florence calls it the Trauma Wall.
A wall built not because people want to keep others out, but because somewhere along the way, their nervous system learned that the world was not safe.
The wall says:
“Stay alert.”
“Don’t trust too easily.”
“Protect yourself.”
“Don’t get hurt again.”
From the outside, this can look like withdrawal, anger, defensiveness, people-pleasing, control, avoidance, isolation, or resistance to help.
But underneath those behaviours is often a nervous system trying its very best to survive.
This understanding sits at the heart of my own work.
The question is not:
“What’s wrong with this person?”
The question is:
“What happened to this person, and what is their nervous system trying to protect them from?”
This is where my STAND and TRUST frameworks fit.
STAND (Stop, Think, Act, Never Doubt) helps create a pause between trigger and reaction. It helps us notice when survival responses are taking over and gives us an opportunity to respond rather than react.
Instead of:
Trigger → Reaction
STAND creates:
Trigger → Awareness → Choice → Response
It helps us recognise:
“This feels dangerous.”
rather than automatically assuming:
“This is dangerous.”
Then TRUST comes in.
Because insight alone doesn’t lower a trauma wall.
Safety does.
TRUST (Trigger Recognition, Reassurance, Understanding, Safety and Truth) helps create the conditions that allow the wall to lower.
Where trauma created fear, TRUST creates safety.
Where trauma created isolation, TRUST creates connection.
Where trauma created confusion, TRUST creates understanding.
Where trauma created self-doubt, TRUST creates reassurance.
Where trauma distorted reality through the lens of past hurt, TRUST helps separate past danger from present truth.
The result is not that the wall is torn down.
The result is that it becomes less necessary.
The person slowly moves from protection to participation.
From survival to connection.
From hypervigilance to safety.
From isolation to belonging.
From fear to growth.
Healing does not happen when we force our way through the wall.
Healing happens when enough safety exists that the wall is no longer needed.
The wall was never the problem.
The wall was protection.
The real work is helping people feel safe enough to put down the protection they once needed to survive.
Thank you, Florence, for creating a model that helps people understand not only the impact of trauma, but also the path beyond it. Your work has prompted me to reflect more deeply on my own experience and on the trauma-informed approaches that have helped me, and many others, find a way forward.
#TraumaInformed #BeyondTheTraumaWall #FlorenceKoenderink #TraumaRecovery #Healing #PsychologicalSafety #Neuroception #PersonCentred #TRUST #STAND #APositiveStartCIC
Leaving Dorsal
There was a time in my life when I was considered “farthest from the labour market.”
At that point, I struggled to look people in the eye. Shame sat heavily in my body. Fear kept me small, quiet, and disconnected from my own potential.
It wasn’t just anxiety.
Whenever I had to stand up in front of people, my body would completely overwhelm me. I fainted repeatedly from the stress of it — vasovagal syncope linked to fear, pressure, and previous experiences of humiliation. My nervous system learned to associate being seen with danger.
So when I say I never imagined myself speaking publicly, delivering presentations, facilitating workshops, or studying at Master’s level — I mean that truthfully.
For those who have never experienced dorsal collapse, it can be difficult to explain what it feels like.
It isn’t simply “feeling low” or having a bad day.
It feels like falling through the cracks in the pavement without warning — one moment you are functioning, the next you are somewhere dark, cold, damp, and terrifying.
A place that feels hollow and bottomless.
A place of isolation, hopelessness, shame, and worthlessness.
Like being trapped in a round room with no doors.
No obvious way out.
No light switch.
No map.
Just silence, fear, exhaustion, and the unbearable weight of existing.
It feels ancient somehow.
Like cobwebs, shadows, damp walls, horror, abandonment, and despair.
Like your nervous system has decided the safest thing to do is disappear.
People can look directly at you and still not truly see you.
They look through you.
Beyond you.
Past you.
You’re physically present, but somehow absent at the same time.
Your voice feels far away, like it can’t quite reach the outside world properly. Words become difficult to find, difficult to hold onto, difficult to explain. Sometimes you stop trying altogether because the exhaustion of translating your inner world feels too great.
You’re trapped inside yourself.
Alone in a darkness other people cannot see.
One of the hardest parts is that from the outside, people may think you’re quiet, withdrawn, lazy, distant, rude, or “not trying” — when inside, your nervous system is fighting desperately for survival.
Dorsal collapse can feel like disappearing while still being alive.
Like becoming invisible to the world — and eventually to yourself.
Over time, I became so familiar with that place that I learned to recognise others who were there too.
We see each other.
Not always through words — but through the eyes, the posture, the exhaustion, the silence, the nervous system itself.
And slowly, I began learning where the exits were for me.
I realised there is no single doorway out of dorsal.
Each person’s escape route is different.
For some, it begins with therapy.
For others, nature, movement, music, connection, creativity, faith, learning, safety, compassion, animals, purpose, or being truly seen for the first time.
Leaving dorsal rarely happens all at once.
It happens through tiny moments.
A safe conversation.
A kind glance.
Someone believing you.
One step outside.
One breath.
One decision to keep going.
Until one day, almost without noticing, you realise:
you are no longer completely trapped in the dark.
Recently, I met with my dissertation supervisor to discuss my MSc research. We talked about ethics approval, timelines, and the next stage of the process.
Afterwards, something quietly hit me.
Not the pressure of the work ahead — but the distance I have already travelled.
I haven’t quite completed my MSc yet — but I’m confident I will, and honestly, that in itself feels like an incredible achievement.
From not being able to stay…
To staying the distance.
Who would have thunk it!
There was a time when surviving the day was enough.
And yet somehow, step by step, my world slowly became bigger.
From surviving trauma…
To understanding trauma.
From fainting at the thought of being seen…
To standing in front of groups and speaking openly.
From hiding…
To helping create spaces where other people feel safe enough to stop hiding too.
I am a survivor.
A survivor of trauma.
A survivor of domestic abuse.
A survivor of shame, fear, self-doubt, and survival responses that once completely controlled my life.
And truthfully, I felt proud.
That’s not a feeling I’ve been overly familiar with. But I’m learning that pride doesn’t have to mean arrogance. Sometimes it simply means acknowledging the courage it took to keep going despite everything your body and mind had been through.
It’s okay to acknowledge your journey.
Your past.
Your mistakes.
Your limitations.
It’s okay to be 56 and still learning, still growing, still progressing.
It’s not over until it’s over.
Keep going.
Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I didn’t get here alone.
I got here because of the people I met along the way.
Some taught me.
Some supported me.
Some challenged me.
Some believed in me before I believed in myself.
For all of it — I’m grateful.
Healing isn’t linear.
Growth isn’t instant.
And nervous systems don’t transform through force or shame.
They heal through safety, compassion, understanding, repetition, and experiences that slowly teach the body:
“You are safe now.”
Slowly, piece by piece, I mapped my own journey homeward.
The journey back to self.
And eventually…
I called it A Positive Start CIC.
Seeing the Person, Not the Problem
It’s been a tough week.
A week of study and learning.
My own MSc reading.
Supporting others with theirs.
Noticing how theory is learned… & then how it translates into real lives.
Later in the week, I read case studies, medical & session notes from across clinical professions — GPs, counsellors, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, students, to consultants.
I felt sadness.
Not because theory was absent — it wasn’t.
Carl Rogers was cited.
The person-centred approach was named.
The language of practice was present.
But something essential was often missing.
When all that is seen is behaviour & “presenting problems”, the human beneath can remain unseen & unheard.
Across different disciplines, I noticed patterns — adaptations being labelled, survival responses being pathologised, & meaning being assigned without fully understanding the lived experience beneath the behaviour.
I read how ambition in someone living in very difficult circumstances was described as delusional — even grandiose.
And I wondered… when did hope become pathology?
From a lived-experience & trauma-informed perspective, I see something different.
I see survival.
I see adaptation.
I see nervous systems shaped by what has happened, not who someone is.
As trauma research continues to show — including the work of Bessel van der Kolk — behaviour often reflects stored experience, not personal defect.
And I return, again and again, to Rogers’ core conditions:
• Congruence
• Unconditional Positive Regard
• Empathic Understanding
These are not simply concepts to reference.
They are ways of being with another human.
If we truly hold unconditional positive regard, we do not reduce a person to their current circumstances.
If we practice empathic understanding, we ask:
What has happened to you?
Not:
What is wrong with you?
Neuroplasticity tells us change is possible.
Trauma recovery research tells us safety, hope, & relational presence support healing.
Hope is not delusion — it is often the first sign that someone still believes life could be different.
It’s been a tough week for humanity.
And especially for victims & survivors of abuse.
Because when a survivor dares to imagine a different future & that hope is reframed as pathology, we risk repeating the silencing they have already lived through.
We can do better.
In our teaching.
In our supervision.
In our practice.
We must teach students & practitioners not only to recognise problems — but to see people.
To look beneath behaviour.
To understand adaptation.
To honour hope.
To remember that sometimes what appears “grandiose” is simply a human being who has survived — and still dares to dream.
The human must always come before the label.
Always.