Healing Childhood Trauma: Why Going Slow Is the Fastest Way
If you’re beginning the journey of healing from childhood trauma, or maybe you’re halfway through, feeling around in the dark, or even circling back for the tenth time, I want to offer one simple, underrated, essential bit of advice:
How to Be Okay with Everything Not Being Okay
This question first came up in a conversation with my friend Tim, back in Australia, during one of those drawn-out global crises. You know the kind, where uncertainty floods the air and the internet offers up all the familiar slogans of reassurance.
Kindness or Willpower: What Heals Emotional Wounds?
Today I want to talk about something that’s been a longtime companion on my healing journey: the tension between willpower and kindness. When it comes to facing our emotional wounds, is it better to meet them with tough resolve, or with gentle compassion?
Ours Is Not a Caravan of Despair: Finding Hope in the Midst of Healing Childhood Trauma
One of the most challenging battles on the healing journey, especially when it comes to childhood trauma, is despair.
Defined as the absence or complete loss of hope, despair can feel like a wall we hit after we’ve taken those first brave steps toward healing. We think we’ve made progress, we’ve begun to look at our past, and suddenly, there it is. That hopelessness. That heaviness.
Should We Rage Against the Dying of the Light?
Today I want to sit with a big question. One that’s haunted poetry, film, culture, and maybe, in quieter ways, each of us:
“Should we rage against the dying of the light?”
That line, of course, comes from Dylan Thomas’s famous poem:
Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
It’s been quoted to death, used in movies, speeches, motivational moments. And I get it. The spirit behind it is defiant: don’t give in. Keep fighting. Don’t surrender. Push through.
The Humility of the Mystics (And Why We Need It Now More Than Ever)
If you read John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, or really most of the mystics from that time, you’ll notice something right away: They didn’t just value humility, they actively asked for it.
Julian of Norwich had three spiritual wishes. One of them was to be made so gravely ill that she would come to death’s door, just to see God more clearly. And that actually happened. John of the Cross writes openly about asking God for things to go wrong, for hardships to come his way, to bring him back down to size, to deflate his sense of self-importance.
The Problem with “Loving Yourself” (And What Might Work Better)
If you’ve been on any kind of healing journey, from childhood trauma to CPTSD to working through shame, you’ve probably come across this message dozens, if not hundreds of times. It’s in Instagram quotes, podcasts, self-help books, therapy rooms, and casual conversations. And it’s usually delivered like this obvious, non-negotiable truth:
Small Lies, Big Shame: How Little Truths Can Reduce the Toxic Shame of Childhood Trauma
Lying, to some degree, is a natural part of growing up and being human. Most people tell little fibs here and there. The most common lies are typically related to weight, age, or height. I even read once that “I love you” came in at number seven on the list, which is a bit worrying, but that’s a topic for another day.
How Do We Become a People Pleaser?
Today, I want to explore the question: how does someone become a people pleaser? What actually is people pleasing? Why do we use it as a way to manage our emotions? And most importantly, how do we begin to discharge the energy of it?
For most of us, people pleasing ends up feeling exhausting, futile, and never-ending.
Back Home in Brisbane
I moved to Brisbane when I was 15 and lived here until I was 30. And after years of living and working overseas, I eventually came back home.
For the past four years, I’ve been running my private therapy practice here in Moorooka, on the south side of Brisbane.
Coming back wasn’t just a lifestyle decision. It was personal. Brisbane is familiar to me. I understand the culture, the pace, the pressures. I understand what it’s like to raise a family here, to juggle work and cost of living, to try and hold things together while quietly carrying anxiety, stress, or old wounds.