Mastering Change | The trauma, mental health & wellbeing podcast

For most professional athletes, sport is not simply something they do. It becomes part of who they are.  Years of training, competition and sacrifice shape their identity, relationships and sense of purpose. Success and failure are experienced publicly. The routine is familiar. The goal is always clear.  But what happens when that identity no longer fits?  This week on Mastering Change, Emma and D...

When we think about trauma recovery, most of us think about talking therapy.  In this episode of Mastering Change, the human rights psychotherapist and dance movement therapist Amber Gray, explains why movement may be one of the most overlooked aspects of trauma recovery.  Drawing on decades of work with torture survivors, refugees, indigenous communities and people affected by conflict and disast...

Psychedelic therapy is attracting more attention than ever before.  But amidst the growing excitement, an important question often gets overlooked: what actually helps people turn these experiences into lasting change?  This week on Mastering Change , we speak with psychotherapist and Inward Bound co-founder Rob Coffey, who has spent years supporting people through psychedelic retreats, trauma rec...

Can something as simple as laughter help us heal?  When we think about therapy, humour is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Yet according to clinical social worker and addiction counsellor Glenn Maloney, it may be one of the most overlooked tools available to us.  This week on Mastering Change, Glenn explains that humour is far more than comic relief. He explores its role in therapy...

How do you move forward when something feels impossible to forgive?  Forgiveness is often misunderstood.   When many people hear the word, they think it means excusing what happened, condoning harmful behaviour, or letting someone off the hook.  This week on Mastering Change , Clara Naum offers a different perspective.  Drawing on her work across therapy, coaching and personal development, Clara d...

The rise of GLP-1 medications has changed the conversation around weight, health and body image.  But what happens when weight loss is mistaken for wellbeing?  This week on Mastering Change, we speak with Charlotte Ord – a counselling psychologist specialising in body image and eating disorder recovery, with a background in fitness, strength and conditioning, NHS bariatric and weight management se...

What if culture is not just tradition or identity – but trauma repeated over time?  This week on Mastering Change, we speak with Dr Yemi Joy Penn – a self-described “pracademic” – who is challenging how we understand trauma, culture and belonging.   Her work sits at the intersection of lived experience, research and storytelling. Through her PhD, Yemi explores how cultural trauma is formed, how it...

Trauma recovery is not only about what happened. It is also about rebuilding the capacity to know what you feel, what you think and what you need.  This week on Mastering Change, we speak with Amelia Kelley – a therapist, professor and writer whose work sits at the intersection of trauma, relationships and neurodivergence.   Amelia’s work centres on empowerment , particularly for survivors of abus...

In times of increasing isolation, how we listen matters.  This week on Mastering Change, we speak with Paul Browde – psychiatrist, storyteller and couples guide – whose work explores how listening shapes what can be said, and how the stories people tell shape how they live.  Paul reflects on the changes he has seen since the pandemic. More fear. More loneliness. A growing difficulty for many peopl...

Trauma therapy often begins with the past – but what if that’s the problem?  This week on Mastering Change , psychologist Carla Shohet challenges the way trauma is commonly approached – arguing that many therapeutic models move too quickly into processing, without first building the capacity to hold what emerges.  Carla’s work centres on nervous system regulation as the foundation for healing. Bec...

Healing trauma is not only about understanding the story.  This week on Mastering Change , we speak with BG Mancini, a neurodevelopmental specialist working across integrative medicine, primary care and brain-based healing. BG’s work sits at the meeting point of research and daily life – translating what we know about the nervous system, sensory input and the gut-brain axis into practical ways of...

We’re living through a loneliness epidemic – and it’s not for lack of connection.  On this episode of Mastering Change , Francesca Tighinean explores why, despite being more digitally connected than ever, so many people feel increasingly isolated and unsure how to build real relationships.  She points to a deeper shift.  With constant exposure to social media, global events and information, many p...

Flow state is a rapidly growing topic in media – trending across social platforms, as well as in professional, self-development and wellbeing spaces.  This week on Mastering Change , we speak with Josh Dickson, psychotherapist and founder of Resurface, who is exploring how flow can be used to support therapeutic change.  ‘Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where you feel and perform at your...

On this episode of Mastering Change, we explore one of the most rapidly evolving and widely discussed areas in mental health: psychedelic-assisted therapy.  Neuropsychopharmacologist Rayyan Zafar joins us to explain how new treatments – particularly psychedelics – are changing how we understand trauma and addiction.  Rayyan’s work focuses on neuroplasticity – and he challenges a common assumption:...

Anxiety doesn’t begin in your thoughts – it begins in your nervous system.  In this episode of Mastering Change , breathwork educator Jamie Clements explains how conscious breathing can directly regulate the autonomic nervous system and help shift anxiety at its root.  Jamie shares how breathwork became central to his own recovery from panic attacks, and why he now teaches a structured approach th...

Trauma doesn’t only create fear – it often creates isolation.  In this episode of Mastering Change , Lucas Casanova explores trauma as a fundamental rupture in safety and belonging. A Buddhist and transpersonal therapist, Lucas integrates secular Buddhist practices with neuroscience and embodied therapy to help people reconnect – not just cognitively, but physically and relationally.  He explains...

When trauma takes you out of your body, rebuilding safety and connection can take years.  In this episode of Mastering Change, Karen Whelan shares her lived experience of sexual abuse and the long, gradual journey of healing that followed. She speaks openly about self-hate, disconnection and the profound loss of safety in her own body – and how therapy, spirituality and embodied practice helped he...

Many of us weren’t optimally seen, held or supported as children – and the adaptations we made to survive can quietly shape how we relate, connect and protect ourselves as adults.  This week on Mastering Change , Maya Vaughan, Director of the Trauma Training Institute (TTI), explains the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) – a non-pathologising, relational approach to healing developmental trau...

Many of the behaviours we label as “dysfunctional” may actually be attempts to survive. In this episode of Mastering Change , we’re joined by Mike Niconchuk, whose work is shaped by personal and intergenerational trauma linked to his family’s experience during the Guatemalan civil war, as well as years of humanitarian work in active conflict zones. Mike did not enter this field through clinical tr...

For people living with trauma or chronic stress, the brain can feel like it’s working against them. In this episode of Mastering Change , Dr Kate Truitt introduces brain partnership – a trauma-informed approach that reframes the brain as a protector rather than a problem. She explains how fast threat pathways in the amygdala and hippocampus form to keep us safe, and why those same pathways can lat...

For many people, healing can feel stuck. Symptoms persist, patterns repeat and change itself can begin to feel unsafe.  In this episode of Mastering Change , Raoul Goldberg, founder of the PATH Method, explores why what we often describe as “chronic” may not be purely medical – but psychosocial and spiritual in nature. He shares how his work helps people reconnect with a sense of wholeness by stre...

How do you rebuild a life when your earliest memories are of profound and extreme loss?  That’s what Richard McCann explores in this episode. When he was just five years old, his mother was murdered – an event that later became national news and that influenced every part of his childhood.  Richard describes how this grief showed up in ways he didn’t have words for at the time – hypervigilance, fe...

So much of what happens in healthcare is shaped by trauma – yet most clinicians are never taught what trauma is or how to recognise it in themselves or their patients.  This week on Mastering Change, we speak with Susanna Petche, a GP with 25 years’ experience, who shares how her own misdiagnosed depression eventually revealed an underlying trauma response. That realisation changed her life – and...

What makes someone feel so bonded to a group that they’d sacrifice almost anything for it – and how does that same force help us heal?  In this episode of Mastering Change, cognitive anthropologist Dr. Martha Newson unpacks ‘identity fusion’ – an extreme form of social bonding where self and group identities merge, creating family-like ties and powerful loyalty.   Drawing on years of research with...

Therapists, clinicians and helpers often tell themselves they’re “fine” – even as the work wears down their nervous system.  In this conversation, palliative care doctor Dr. Rosie Weir offers a compassionate guide to trauma stewardship : the practice of staying present to other people’s pain without losing yourself in it.  Drawing from her years on the frontline of end-of-life care, Rosie explains...