My Holistic Therapist

A teen show has taken over the conversations of women in their thirties, forties, and fifties - and it has nothing to do with an attractive lead. In this episode, I explore why so many women are having such a strong emotional response to watching emotionally available male characters, and what that reaction reveals about the relational template we were actually given growing up. Using attachment t...

Boundaries are everywhere in the conversation nowadays, but almost nobody talks about why so many women struggle to actually put them into practice, even when they know what they "should" be doing. In this episode, I unpack why that gap exists - how being raised to equate love with self-sacrifice trains the nervous system to override our own signals before we even register them, and why it's so of...

Change is inevitable and yet most of us resist it, even when we've chosen it. In this episode, I explore why change is so confronting at a psychological and nervous system level, and why our history shapes the way we orient to the unknown. I unpack why every change, welcomed, hard, or mixed, carries within it an ending, and why so few of us have been taught to hold that well. I explore the rol...

When your child steps into the world, the cultural script tells you to be proud, celebrate them, and let them go. And you do, genuinely, but grief sits right alongside that pride, and for most women there is simply no sanctioned place to put it. In this episode, I explore why grief is a clinically valid and entirely expected part of the empty nest transition, how suppression shows up in behaviour,...

In part one of this series, we covered a lot of clinical ground - what narcissism actually is, where it comes from, the four Ds, what happens to a child's developing sense of self inside a narcissistic family system, and the arrested individuation that so often results. And I ended by saying that children who grow up with a narcissistic parent are drawn toward narcissistic relationships in adu...

There is more content about narcissism online than ever before, and yet some of the most important clinical pieces are consistently missing from the conversation. In this first episode of a two-part series, I cut through the noise, offering a grounded and nuanced account of what Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) actually is, where it comes from, and what it does to the children who grow up i...

This week I'm talking about something that consistently changes the results women get in their health - and it's probably not what you're expecting. The women I work with arrive having tried a lot. Supplements, breathwork, sleep protocols, elimination diets. Each one taken up with real intention. And yet the symptoms persist - the anxiety, the insomnia, the gut issues. We are a holisti...

This is the final episode of the Regulated Woman mini-series with Dr. Carrie Rigoni. We've covered the physical symptoms of stress and trauma, we've gone deep on the vagus nerve - and in this episode, Carrie and I turn the clinical framework onto the wellness industry itself. We work through some of the most widely circulated interventions you'll see on social media - breathwork, meditation, high-...

In this conversation, chiropractor and applied kinesiologist Dr. Carrie Rigoni and I break down what the vagus nerve actually is, what it does, and why understanding it changes the way you think about your stress response. We cover why your body is processing threat faster than your conscious brain can keep up with, why a day off or a meditation won't shift a dysregulated baseline, and how your ne...

In this first episode of a three-part mini series, I am joined by Dr Carrie Rigoni - chiropractor, applied kinesiologist, and vagus nerve educator - for a conversation that many women will recognise immediately. If you have been through the medical system, had every test run, and been told everything looks normal - yet you still don't feel physically well - this episode speaks directly to that exp...

In this episode, I explore one of the most common patterns I see in my work with women in midlife - feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and disconnected despite doing all the “right” things. Many of the women I work with have already done therapy, developed insight, and understand their patterns. And yet, the way they feel hasn’t shifted in a meaningful or lasting way. In this episode, I unpack why that...

In this episode, I build on last week’s conversation around adult child estrangement and explore what we need as parents to do different if we want to have a healthy relationship with our children, and what it looks like to consciously create a healthier relationship within your own family. I share my personal experience of becoming a parent before I had done any therapeutic work, and how my under...

In this episode, I explore the growing conversation around adult children becoming estranged from their parents - and the narrative that this is simply about avoiding difficult conversations. From a clinical perspective, this is a significant oversimplification. I unpack what is often missing from this discussion, including long-standing patterns of emotional immaturity, boundary violations, and t...

In this episode, I explore a pattern I see all the time in my clinical work - the quiet, often hard-to-articulate experience of feeling unseen in a long-term relationship. There isn’t always conflict or crisis, it is often an absence. An absence of connection, emotional depth, and being truly met. I unpack what’s really going on beneath that experience, including the familiar patterns we unconscio...

In this episode, I explore something I’m noticing more and more in conversations around nervous system healing - the growing idea that being “regulated” means feeling calm all the time. While nervous system regulation is an important part of healing, I think we may be misunderstanding what it actually means. Humans are emotional beings, and emotions are not a problem to be eliminated. They are phy...

In this episode, I explore the growing scientific debate around Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory - a framework that has shaped how many therapists and clients understand nervous system regulation and trauma. Recently, neuroscientists and psychophysiologists, including Paul Grossman and colleagues, have questioned some of the biological mechanisms behind the theory. I explain what is actually being...

In this episode, I explore something I see repeatedly in my work with women in midlife: anxiety that feels new during perimenopause is often not actually new - it has simply become harder to override. Hormonal changes during this phase can increase vulnerability to anxiety, and that physiological shift is real. But for many women, perimenopause exposes long-standing patterns of nervous system acti...

This week’s episode was sparked by an article from Jamella Jamil with the provocative title  “ Ah shit, we let paedophiles decide our beauty standards.” I don’t often build a whole podcast episode around an article, but this one made me stop and think - particularly after last week’s episode on power, hierarchy and abuse. In this episode, I explore the question:  Do our beauty standards keep women...

This week I’m speaking about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, his recent arrest, and the broader psychological impact of watching powerful men appear protected within institutions of wealth and hierarchy. I’m not dissecting gossip or speculating on legal outcomes. I’m looking at power, I’m looking at secrecy, I’m looking at what happens inside the nervous system of survivors when allegations, settlemen...

There’s never been more access to psychological education - yet midlife women’s mental health is not improving. In this episode, I explore why insight alone doesn’t create change. Drawing on developmental neuroscience and the work of Dr. Bruce Perry, I explain how early relational experiences shape adult stress physiology - and why perimenopause often exposes what was never fully integrated. If yo...

Breathwork is everywhere right now, and many women are turning to it hoping to feel calmer, more grounded, and more connected to themselves, but not all breathwork is designed for regulation. In this episode, I unpack the origins of Holotropic Breathwork - a method originally developed to facilitate non-ordinary states of consciousness - and explore why this intention is very different from the st...

This week I’m joined by  Sheradyn Dekker , a Functional Nutritionist specialising in gut health and hormonal imbalances. Sheradyn holds a Masters in Nutrition with postgraduate training in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and brings both clinical expertise and lived experience after years of chronic gut pain, IBS, bloating, missing periods, and food intolerances. In this conversation, we unpack why...

In this episode, I explore why birthdays can feel unexpectedly heavy for people-pleasers and women with a fragile sense of self. I unpack how early conditioning, unresolved trauma, and core beliefs like  “I’m not good enough”  or  “I’m unlovable”  can come closer to the surface on birthdays, making moments of missed attention or lack of thoughtfulness feel deeply personal. I also share my own live...

This episode builds on last week’s conversation about the  Let Them  theory and the many responses it generated. One message stood out: “The Let Them theory has been everywhere lately & it has made me uncomfortable … but what you write has hit home like a light bulb for me. It has made me realise I’m not just being antagonistic and negative about the Let Them stuff… I’m yet to be convinced tha...

In this episode, I take a clear stance on a growing problem in the mental health space: the flattening of psychological nuance on social media and the rise of coaching-style advice being delivered as if it were therapy. Using the  Let Them concept and recent high-profile commentary around family estrangement as examples, I unpack why this kind of advice is not just oversimplified - but concerning...