What is most important?

 Many people have different ideas about what they consider to be most important. Some may be drawn to power, some to money and some to peace and happiness.

I suggest that any craving for money or power, although encouraged by capitalism is in fact based in insecurity. Perhaps the root of the desire for money and power stems from the very human existential fear of death. Accruing money and power may act as a distraction, but will do nothing to alter the fact that we die.

However, whether there is an “us” that dies is dependent on what perspective we take. From the relative perspective, “I” as thing in a world populated by other things will at some point cease to be that thing.

However, from the absolute perspective there is no death. There cannot be. The realisation that all boundaries are mental constructs, allows us to experience ourselves as unity.

As unity there is no death. Perhaps there is movement, process, currents of change. From this perspective death is simply a movement of form and energy. So, the experience of being unity, and the understanding that there is no death, allows for the letting go of fear.

In the letting go of this fear the compulsion to feel safer by the acquisition of wealth and power subsides. What replaces it is a general pervading sense of peace and happiness.

I wished we lived in a world where the most important things were love, compassion, and happiness. But we share the world with others where its seems the most important thing is to “be right.” Perhaps beliefs are just stagnant thoughts and the need to be right its fear based, again, about trying to feel secure in a volatile and ever-changing world.

Humans living in a fear-based reality, all needing to be right, go to war and kill each other so they do not have to feel the fear of not knowing. Why not turn into the fear? Embrace the questions “who am I?” and “what is this?” rejoice in the not knowing. Discover unity beyond belief and find peace.

Is this most important?

Coercive Control: The Hidden Abuse in Relationships

Most people imagine abusive relationships as involving shouting, violence, or obvious intimidation. But many abusive relationships do not look like that at all. They unfold slowly, quietly, and subtly. Over time one person begins to control the other’s world — their choices, their independence, their confidence, and sometimes even their sense of reality.

This pattern is known as coercive control.

Coercive control is not about a single argument or a bad moment. It is a pattern of behaviour designed to dominate, restrict, and gradually erode another person’s autonomy.

Often the person experiencing it does not realise what is happening until they are already deeply entangled.

What Coercive Control Looks Like

Coercive control rarely starts suddenly. It usually develops gradually. Early in the relationship the behaviour may even feel like care, protection, or intense love.

Over time however, the dynamic begins to shift.

The controlling partner may begin to monitor, restrict, criticise, manipulate, or isolate the other person.

Common patterns include:

Isolation
Discouraging or criticising time spent with friends or family.
Creating conflict whenever you try to see other people.
Gradually shrinking your world so the relationship becomes your main source of connection.

Monitoring and Surveillance
Wanting access to your phone, messages, social media, or location.
Constantly asking where you are and who you are with.
Framing this as “just caring” or “wanting honesty”.

Control of Daily Life
Telling you what you should wear, eat, spend money on, or do with your time.
Becoming angry if you make decisions independently.

Undermining Confidence
Subtle criticism, sarcasm, or put-downs that slowly erode your self-esteem.
You may begin to doubt your own judgement.

Gaslighting
Denying things they previously said or did.
Telling you that you are “too sensitive”, “overreacting”, or “imagining things”.

Over time, the person experiencing this may begin to feel confused, anxious, and increasingly dependent on the relationship.

Signs You May Be in a Coercively Controlling Relationship

People often sense something is wrong long before they can name it.

Some common experiences include:

• Feeling like you are walking on eggshells
• Feeling anxious about upsetting your partner
• Constantly second-guessing your decisions
• Gradually losing contact with friends or family
• Feeling like your partner’s mood controls the atmosphere of your life
• Feeling that it is easier to give in than argue
• Feeling like you have become a smaller version of yourself

Many people describe a loss of psychological freedom. They no longer feel able to think, choose, or act independently.

Why It Is Hard to See

Coercive control is powerful precisely because it is gradual.

Small compromises accumulate over time.

The controlling partner may alternate criticism with affection, apology, or promises to change. This creates confusion and emotional dependency.

There may also be genuine love present. That makes it even harder to recognise the pattern.

People often blame themselves:

“Maybe I am overreacting.”
“Maybe I am too sensitive.”
“Maybe if I just try harder things will improve.”

Unfortunately coercive control rarely improves without significant change — and meaningful change requires the controlling person to recognise and take responsibility for their behaviour.

What You Can Do

The first step is recognising the pattern.

Once the behaviour has a name, it becomes easier to see the dynamic more clearly.

Helpful steps can include:

Talk to someone you trust
Isolation makes coercive control stronger. Speaking openly with a friend, family member, or therapist can help you regain perspective.

Rebuild independent support
Reconnect with people and activities that exist outside the relationship.

Document patterns
Writing down incidents can help counter the confusion that often arises from gaslighting.

Seek professional support
Therapy can help you understand the dynamic, rebuild confidence, and explore your options.

Prioritise safety
If you are considering leaving a coercively controlling relationship, it can be helpful to seek advice and support. Leaving can sometimes escalate controlling behaviour.

A Final Thought

Healthy relationships are not built on control.

They are built on mutual respect, psychological freedom, and the ability for both people to remain fully themselves.

If you find yourself shrinking, doubting your own reality, or feeling increasingly restricted, it may be worth looking more closely at the dynamic.

Sometimes the most important step is simply recognising that what you are experiencing has a name.

And that you deserve something different.

Emotional Regulation: What Actually Helps

Emotional regulation isn’t about suppressing feelings or “calming down.”
It’s about increasing your capacity to stay present while experiencing emotion.

When people struggle, it’s usually because they’re trying to regulate at the wrong level — using thinking to manage something that’s physiological, or trying to calm shutdown with more calming.

Here’s what actually works.

1. Regulate the Body First

If you’re overwhelmed, start with physiology.

The nervous system responds faster to physical input than to insight.

Effective tools:

• Slow breathing with a longer exhale than inhale (e.g. 4 in, 6 out)

• Cold water on the face or holding something cold

• Pressing your feet firmly into the floor and noticing weight

• Looking around and naming five neutral objects

These shift autonomic state directly. No analysis required.

2. Know the Difference Between Overwhelm and Shutdown

Not all dysregulation looks anxious.

Overwhelm feels like:

• Racing thoughts

• Agitation

• Urgency

• Heat or tightness

This needs down-regulation.

Shutdown feels like:

• Numbness

• Flatness

• Fog

• Disconnection

This needs activation.

For shutdown:

• Stand up and move briskly

• Shake out arms and shoulders

• Use rhythmic movement (walking, music)

• Brief human contact (tone matters more than content)

Trying to “calm” shutdown makes it worse.

3. Name the Emotion (Even If It’s Vague)

When emotions are blurry, start broad.

Sad
Angry
Scared
Ashamed
Happy

You don’t need precision at first.

Better approach:

1. Notice body sensation.

2. Then label.

You can also ask:

• If this feeling had a temperature, what would it be?

• If it had a colour?

• If it had a shape?

Naming an emotion reduces its intensity. It integrates the experience instead of amplifying it.

4. Challenge the Story (When Thoughts Are Fueling It)

Once the body is steadier, then use cognition.

Ask:

• What evidence supports this thought?

• What evidence contradicts it?

• On a 0–10 scale, how big is this actually?

• Will this matter in a year?

This is especially useful for anxiety, shame spirals, and imposter patterns.

But don’t start here if your nervous system is activated. It won’t work.

5. Use Other People

Regulation is relational.

Eye contact.
Tone of voice.
Being understood.

These regulate the nervous system more effectively than self-talk alone.

Humans co-regulate. We always have.

6. Build Capacity, Not Just Coping

Quick tools are useful.
Capacity is better.

Long-term regulation improves with:

• Consistent sleep

• Regular movement

• Predictable routines

• Gradual exposure to avoided emotions (not flooding)

• Therapy that integrates body and relational work

You don’t eliminate emotion.
You increase your window of tolerance for it.

7. The Paradox: Allowing

The more you try to force a feeling to stop, the longer it stays.

Instead of:
“I need this to go away.”

Try:
“This is here. I can ride this.”

Emotions rise, peak, and fall when they aren’t resisted or fed by catastrophic thinking.

Final Thought

Emotional regulation isn’t about becoming calm all the time.

It’s about being able to feel what you feel — without being taken over by it.

Osmophobia: When Smell Becomes Overwhelming

Most people think of smell as a background sense — something pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. But for some, smell is not neutral at all. It can be overwhelming, nauseating, emotionally disturbing, or even physically painful. This experience is called osmophobia.

Osmophobia is not simply disliking certain smells. It is a genuine sensory intolerance, often linked to nervous system sensitivity.

What is osmophobia?

Osmophobia is an abnormal sensitivity and intolerance to smells, where everyday odours trigger disproportionate physical or emotional reactions.

Common trigger smells include:

• Perfume and aftershave

• Cleaning products

• Cigarette smoke

• Food smells

• Body odour

• Chemical smells

Exposure can lead to:

• Nausea

• Headache

• Dizziness

• Anxiety

• Irritability

• An urgent need to escape the environment

For some, even mild smells can feel intrusive and overwhelming.

Why smell has such a powerful effect

Smell is unique among the senses. It connects directly to the brain’s emotional and memory centres, particularly the limbic system.

Unlike sight or sound, smell bypasses much of the brain’s rational filtering system.

This is why smell can instantly trigger:

• Emotional reactions

• Memories

• Fear responses

• Physical symptoms

The reaction is often immediate and automatic.

Common conditions associated with osmophobia

Migraine

Osmophobia is one of the most common and specific symptoms of migraine.

Smells can:

• Trigger a migraine

• Worsen an existing migraine

• Become intolerable during an episode

Many migraine sufferers develop strong avoidance of certain environments as a result.

Trauma and chronic stress

In trauma-affected nervous systems, sensory input can become amplified.

Smells associated with past experiences can trigger:

• Anxiety

• Emotional flooding

• Panic-type responses

Even when the person is not consciously aware of the connection, the nervous system reacts.

Sensory processing sensitivity

Some people naturally have more sensitive nervous systems.

This can include sensitivity to:

• Noise

• Light

• Touch

• Smell

Osmophobia is one expression of this broader sensory sensitivity.

Chronic pain and nervous system sensitisation

Osmophobia is commonly seen alongside conditions involving nervous system hypersensitivity, such as:

• Chronic fatigue

• Fibromyalgia

• Persistent pain conditions

In these cases, the nervous system becomes more reactive to all forms of input.

What osmophobia feels like

People often describe it in very physical terms:

• “The smell makes me feel instantly sick.”

• “It overwhelms me.”

• “I can’t think properly when I smell it.”

• “I need to get away immediately.”

It is not a preference. It is a nervous system response.

The nervous system perspective

Osmophobia is best understood as a sign of nervous system sensitisation.

When the nervous system becomes overloaded or dysregulated, its threshold for sensory input lowers.

Things that were once tolerable become overwhelming.

This is not weakness. It is physiology.

Can osmophobia improve?

Yes, particularly when the underlying nervous system dysregulation is addressed.

Improvement often follows:

• Reduction in chronic stress

• Trauma therapy

• Nervous system regulation work

• Migraine management

• Gradual and supported exposure

As the nervous system becomes less sensitised, smell tolerance often improves naturally.

A useful way to understand it

Osmophobia is not really about smell.

It is about how safe or overloaded the nervous system feels.

When the nervous system is regulated, the world feels manageable.

When it is sensitised, even small sensory inputs can feel like too much.

Final thoughts

Osmophobia is more common than many people realise, particularly in those with migraines, trauma histories, or chronic nervous system overload.

Understanding it as a nervous system response — rather than a psychological weakness or personal quirk — changes how it can be approached.

With the right support, the nervous system can become less reactive, and the sensory world can feel manageable again.

What Is EMDR and How Can It Help Me?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It is a form of psychotherapy designed to help people recover from trauma, distressing experiences, and emotional wounds that continue to affect them in the present.

Many people come to EMDR because they feel stuck. They may understand what happened to them logically, but their body and emotions still react as if the past is happening now. EMDR works by helping the brain and nervous system fully process these experiences so they no longer carry the same emotional charge.

EMDR does not involve analysing problems endlessly or trying to force yourself to think differently. Instead, it helps the brain do what it was naturally designed to do — heal.

Where EMDR Comes From

EMDR was developed by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. She discovered that certain types of eye movements appeared to reduce the emotional intensity of distressing thoughts.

This led to the development of a structured therapy that uses bilateral stimulation — usually eye movements, tapping, or tones — to help the brain reprocess unresolved experiences.

Since then, EMDR has been extensively researched and is now widely used around the world.

Why Trauma and Distress Can Get Stuck

Under normal circumstances, when something upsetting happens, the brain gradually processes the experience. It becomes something that happened in the past.

But when an experience is overwhelming, frightening, or happens when we feel powerless, the nervous system may not fully process it.

Instead, the experience remains stored in a raw, unintegrated form.

This can show up as:

• Anxiety

• Panic

• Flashbacks

• Emotional overwhelm

• Chronic shame

• Low self-worth

• Physical tension or pain

• Feeling stuck in old patterns

Even when you know logically that you are safe, your body may still react as if the danger is present.

EMDR helps resolve this.

How EMDR Works

During EMDR, you briefly bring to mind a distressing memory, feeling, or belief while simultaneously engaging in bilateral stimulation, such as following the therapist’s fingers with your eyes.

This activates the brain’s natural processing system.

Over time, the memory begins to change.

Not in the sense that facts are erased, but in how it feels.

People often notice that:

• The emotional intensity reduces

• The memory feels more distant

• New insights emerge naturally

• The body relaxes

The experience becomes something that happened, rather than something that is still happening.

What EMDR Can Help With

EMDR is best known for treating trauma, but it can help with many issues, including:

• Childhood trauma and neglect

• Abuse

• Anxiety and panic

• PTSD and complex trauma

• Low self-esteem

• Shame

• Phobias

• Grief and loss

• Fibromyalgia and other stress-related physical conditions

• Persistent emotional patterns that do not shift with talking alone

It is particularly helpful when problems feel rooted in past experience rather than just present circumstances.

EMDR Works with the Nervous System, Not Just the Mind

Many therapies work primarily through thinking and talking. EMDR also works directly with the nervous system.

This is important because trauma is not just stored as thoughts. It is stored in the body, emotions, and implicit memory.

This is why people often say:

“I know it’s over, but it still feels real.”

EMDR helps the body and brain update that experience.

You Do Not Lose Control

One common fear is that EMDR will be overwhelming.

In reality, EMDR is done carefully and gradually. A good therapist ensures you have the stability and resources needed before processing difficult material.

You remain fully aware and in control throughout.

You are not made to relive anything against your will.

What Healing Feels Like

People often describe the effects of EMDR as:

• Feeling lighter

• Less triggered by things that used to affect them

• Greater calm and stability

• Reduced anxiety

• Increased confidence

• Feeling more like themselves

Memories remain, but they lose their emotional grip.

EMDR Does Not Change Who You Are

It does not remove your personality or your history.

It simply removes the emotional wounds that no longer need to be carried.

Many people discover that beneath anxiety, shame, or fear, there is a version of themselves that was always there — but had been hidden by protective responses.

The Mind and Body Can Heal

When something overwhelms you, the nervous system adapts to protect you.

EMDR helps it recognise that the danger has passed.

Healing does not happen by forcing yourself to forget.

It happens by allowing the brain to finish what it could not finish at the time.

EMDR provides a way for that process to happen.

Can Psychotherapy Help with Fibromyalgia? Understanding the Mind–Body Connection

Fibromyalgia is a complex and often misunderstood condition. It is typically defined by widespread pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, and cognitive difficulties sometimes described as “fibro fog.” Medical tests often show no clear structural damage, yet the suffering is very real.

For many people, the lack of clear medical answers can feel invalidating or confusing. They may be told that nothing is wrong — while their body continues to hurt.

Psychotherapy does not suggest that fibromyalgia is “all in the mind.” Rather, it recognises that the nervous system, body, and emotional life are deeply interconnected. Therapy can help address the underlying processes that amplify pain and help the nervous system return to a more regulated state.

Fibromyalgia and the Nervous System

One of the key features of fibromyalgia is central sensitisation. This means the nervous system becomes overly sensitive and reactive. Signals that would not normally be experienced as painful become painful, and painful signals become amplified.

The nervous system becomes stuck in a state of threat readiness.

This can develop for many reasons, including:

• Chronic stress

• Emotional trauma

• Childhood adversity

• Long-term overwork or burnout

• Emotional suppression

• Lack of safety in relationships

The body remains braced, even when danger is no longer present.

Pain, in this context, is not imagined. It is the nervous system’s real, physiological response to perceived threat.

How Psychotherapy Can Help

Psychotherapy works by helping the nervous system relearn safety.

When the nervous system feels safer, it reduces its need to produce protective pain signals.

Therapy can help in several ways.

Regulating the Nervous System

Therapy provides a consistent, safe relational environment. Over time, this helps calm chronic fight, flight, or freeze responses.

As regulation improves, many people notice:

• Reduced pain intensity

• Improved sleep

• Less fatigue

• Greater emotional stability

This happens not through force, but through gradual recalibration.

Processing Trauma and Emotional Stress

Many people with fibromyalgia have histories of trauma, neglect, or prolonged emotional strain.

When emotional pain cannot be expressed or processed, it is often held in the body.

The body carries what the mind could not resolve at the time.

Therapy allows these experiences to be safely felt, understood, and integrated, reducing the need for the body to continue signalling distress.

Reconnecting with the Body

Fibromyalgia often creates an adversarial relationship with the body. The body becomes something unpredictable and feared.

Therapy can help restore a sense of collaboration with the body, rather than conflict.

This includes:

• Learning to notice body signals earlier

• Reducing fear of sensations

• Increasing tolerance for feelings

• Developing self-regulation skills

As fear reduces, the nervous system often becomes less reactive.

Reducing Internal Pressure

Many people with fibromyalgia have strong internal drivers such as:

• Be strong

• Please others

• Be perfect

• Try harder

These patterns place the nervous system under constant strain.

Therapy helps people recognise and soften these patterns, allowing the system to move out of chronic overactivation.

Which Types of Therapy Help Most?

Several therapeutic approaches have been shown to help fibromyalgia.

Trauma-informed psychotherapy

Addresses unresolved trauma and nervous system dysregulation.

Somatic therapies

Focus on body awareness and nervous system regulation.

Examples include:

• Somatic Experiencing

• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

• Body-oriented psychotherapy

These approaches work directly with how trauma and stress live in the body.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing)

EMDR helps the brain and nervous system process unresolved experiences that may be contributing to ongoing threat activation.

This can reduce both emotional and physical symptoms.

Relational psychotherapy

Focuses on attachment, safety, and emotional regulation within the therapeutic relationship.

This is particularly important when fibromyalgia is linked to early relational stress.

Cognitive and emotional integration

Helping people understand the links between stress, emotion, and physical symptoms reduces fear and increases agency.

What Therapy Does Not Do

Therapy does not claim fibromyalgia is imaginary.

It does not suggest pain is “just psychological.”

Instead, it recognises that the nervous system can learn pain — and it can also learn safety.

Pain can become a learned protective response that no longer serves its original purpose.

Recovery Does Not Mean Blame

Understanding the role of the nervous system is not about blaming yourself.

It is about recognising that your system adapted to survive difficult circumstances.

Fibromyalgia often develops in sensitive, resilient nervous systems that endured prolonged strain.

The same nervous system that learned protection can also learn safety.

A Different Relationship with the Body

For many people, therapy does not simply reduce symptoms. It changes their relationship with themselves.

They begin to experience:

• Less fear of their body

• Greater self-compassion

• Improved emotional regulation

• Increased energy

• A sense of safety that was previously missing

As safety increases, the nervous system no longer needs to signal danger through pain.

Healing Is Possible

Fibromyalgia can feel permanent and hopeless. But the nervous system remains capable of change throughout life.

Psychotherapy offers a way of working with the underlying processes that sustain pain, rather than only managing symptoms.

It helps the body learn what it may not have known for a very long time:

That it is safe now.

Different Kinds of Memory: How the Mind Stores Experience

We often speak about memory as if it were one single system — something you either remember or forget. In reality, memory is made up of several different processes. Some are conscious and verbal. Others are bodily, emotional, and wordless. Some can be recalled deliberately. Others show themselves through reactions, habits, and relational patterns.

Understanding the different kinds of memory is especially useful in therapy, trauma work, and relational practice, because not all memories are stored — or healed — in the same way.

Explicit and Implicit Memory

A useful starting distinction is between explicit and implicit memory.

Explicit Memory (Conscious Memory)

Explicit memory is memory you can consciously recall and describe in words.

Examples:

• What you did yesterday

• Your home address

• A conversation you remember clearly

• Facts you learned at school

You can deliberately bring explicit memories to mind and talk about them.

Explicit memory depends heavily on language and reflective awareness.

Implicit Memory (Non-Conscious Memory)

Implicit memory operates outside conscious awareness. It shows up through:

• Emotional reactions

• Body responses

• Habits and learned patterns

• Relationship expectations

• Felt sense of safety or danger

Examples:

• Flinching when someone raises their voice

• Feeling tense around authority figures

• Automatically pleasing others

• A sense of dread without knowing why

Implicit memory is especially important in trauma and attachment. Much early relational learning is stored implicitly, before language is fully developed.

Declarative and Non-Declarative Memory

Another way to divide memory is declarative vs non-declarative.

Declarative Memory

Declarative memory overlaps with explicit memory — it includes what you can declare or state.

It has two main forms:

Semantic memory

• Facts and general knowledge

• Concepts and meanings

• Not tied to a specific event
  Example: knowing what a bicycle is

Episodic memory

• Personal experiences

• Time-stamped events
  Example: remembering your last birthday

Declarative memory supports autobiography and identity story.

Non-Declarative Memory

Non-declarative memory includes learned capacities and emotional learning that are difficult to verbalise.

Examples:

• Riding a bike

• Playing an instrument

• Social reflexes

• Conditioned fear responses

• Attachment expectations

You “know” — but cannot easily explain how you know.

Procedural Memory

Procedural memory is memory for how to do things.

Examples:

• Typing

• Driving

• Tying shoelaces

• Clinical skills learned through practice

Procedural memory is built through repetition and embodiment. Once learned, it runs automatically.

In relational life, procedural memory includes:

• How you approach closeness

• How you handle conflict

• How you protect yourself emotionally

These are often learned early and enacted without conscious awareness.

Emotional Memory

Emotional memory stores the felt tone of past experiences.

You may not remember the event clearly — but you remember the feeling.

Examples:

• A sense of shame when criticised

• Fear when someone withdraws

• Warmth when welcomed

Emotional memory is fast and powerful. It shapes perception before conscious thought has time to intervene.

In trauma, emotional memory can remain highly active even when declarative memory is fragmented or missing.

Somatic (Body) Memory

Somatic memory is memory stored in bodily patterning.

It appears as:

• Muscle tension

• Startle responses

• Breath restriction

• Collapse or bracing

• Nervous system activation

The body “remembers” threat and safety through physiological patterning. This is central in somatic and sensorimotor approaches to therapy.

Narrative Memory

Narrative memory is the organised story we tell about our lives.

It is not just recall — it is meaning-making.

Narrative memory:

• Links events across time

• Organises identity

• Creates coherence

• Supports reflection and mentalisation

Two people can have similar experiences but very different narrative memories because the meaning assigned differs.

Therapy often works at the level of narrative memory — helping revise, deepen, and rebalance the personal story.

Tacit Knowing

Tacit knowing refers to knowledge that is understood and enacted but not easily put into words.

It includes:

• Relational intuition

• Clinical attunement

• Social timing

• Felt sense of what is right or wrong in a moment

In psychotherapy, tacit knowing shows up as:

• Sensing a shift in the room

• Feeling when to speak or stay silent

• Recognising an enactment before it is named

Tacit knowing grows through experience, not instruction alone. It is embodied, relational, and often implicit.

Memory and Trauma

Trauma disrupts the integration between memory systems.

Common effects include:

• Strong implicit and somatic memory

• Fragmented episodic recall

• Intense emotional memory without narrative context

• Procedural defensive patterns

• Reduced narrative coherence

This is why someone may say:
“I know it’s over — but my body still reacts.”

Healing involves linking systems that became separated:

• Body with story

• Emotion with language

• Implicit reaction with explicit understanding

• Experience with meaning

Why This Matters

Not all remembering happens through thinking and talking. Some remembering happens through feeling, reacting, and relating.

Different memory systems require different therapeutic pathways:

• Narrative work for meaning

• Relational work for attachment memory

• Somatic work for body memory

• Experiential work for emotional memory

• Reflective work for explicit integration

Memory is not just what you can recall. It is what lives on in how you feel, respond, and connect.

Understanding this changes how we understand both suffering and healing.

Gaslighting: What It Is, Where It Comes From, and How to Protect Yourself

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that can leave people doubting their own perceptions, memories, and sense of reality. Over time, it erodes confidence, self-trust, and emotional safety. Many people who experience gaslighting don’t recognise it at first — they just know they feel confused, anxious, or as though something is wrong with them.

Understanding gaslighting is an important step in reclaiming clarity and agency.

What Is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting occurs when one person repeatedly denies, distorts, or minimises another person’s experience in order to gain power or control.

It often sounds like:

• “That never happened.”

• “You’re too sensitive.”

• “You’re imagining things.”

• “You always overreact.”

• “You’re remembering it wrong.”

The key feature is not a single disagreement or misunderstanding, but a pattern that causes the other person to mistrust their own reality.

Where the Term Comes From

The term gaslighting comes from the 1938 play Gas Light, later adapted into films. In the story, a husband subtly manipulates his wife by dimming the gas lights in their home and then denying that the lighting has changed, insisting she is imagining it. Over time, she begins to doubt her sanity.

The name has endured because it so accurately captures the experience of having your reality quietly, persistently undermined.

Who Gaslights and Why?

Gaslighting is not limited to one “type” of person, but it is more common in people who struggle with insecurity, shame, or a strong need for control.

Some common underlying motivations include:

Avoiding responsibility
By denying reality, the gaslighter avoids accountability for harm, mistakes, or abusive behaviour.

Maintaining power
If someone doubts themselves, they become easier to dominate or manipulate.

Protecting a fragile self-image
Admitting fault may feel intolerable, so reality is rewritten instead.

Fear of abandonment or exposure
Gaslighting can be an attempt to keep someone close by destabilising their confidence.

Gaslighting can occur in romantic relationships, families, workplaces, and even therapeutic or spiritual settings. It is not always deliberate or consciously planned — but its impact is real regardless of intent.

What Gaslighting Is Hoping to Achieve

At its core, gaslighting aims to shift authority away from your inner experience and onto the other person.

Over time, the gaslighter hopes you will:

• Stop trusting your own perceptions

• Look to them for “truth”

• Feel dependent, confused, or unsure

• Be less likely to challenge or leave

This is why gaslighting is so destabilising — it attacks the very foundation of psychological autonomy.

What It Feels Like to Be Gaslit

People who are being gaslit often report:

• Constant self-doubt

• Confusion or mental fog

• Anxiety or hypervigilance

• Apologising excessively

• Feeling “too much” or “not enough”

• Losing confidence in decisions and memories

Many trauma survivors are particularly vulnerable, as early experiences of having feelings dismissed can make gaslighting feel familiar — even if it’s deeply harmful.

What to Do If You’re Experiencing Gaslighting

Name what’s happening
Even silently naming it to yourself can be grounding. Confusion is often the first clue.

Anchor in your reality
Write things down. Keep notes of conversations, feelings, or events. This helps counter the erosion of memory and self-trust.

Seek external perspective
Talk to someone you trust — a friend, therapist, or support group. Gaslighting thrives in isolation.

Set boundaries
You do not need to convince someone who refuses to acknowledge your reality. Boundaries might include ending conversations, limiting contact, or refusing to engage in circular arguments.

Trust patterns, not explanations
Gaslighters often sound convincing. Focus less on what they say and more on how you consistently feel after interactions.

Protecting Yourself Long-Term

Healing from gaslighting involves rebuilding trust in your own perceptions.

Therapy can help you:

• Strengthen your internal sense of truth

• Understand why the dynamic felt compelling or confusing

• Repair self-doubt and shame

• Learn to recognise red flags earlier

Most importantly, recovery means relearning that your experience matters — and that disagreement does not equal delusion.

A Final Word

Gaslighting is not about being weak, naïve, or “too sensitive.” It works precisely because humans are relational and want to understand each other.

Clarity returns not through arguing harder, but through reconnecting with your own inner authority. When you trust yourself again, gaslighting loses its power.

If you recognise yourself in this, support can help. You are not imagining it — and you are not alone.

Autism or the Impact of Emotional Neglect? Understanding the Overlap and the Differences

Many adults question whether lifelong difficulties stem from autism, emotional neglect, or both. The similarities can be confusing: social overwhelm, shutdowns, sensitivity, rigid routines, and trouble reading others. Yet the underlying causes differ, and understanding those differences can dramatically change the path forward.

This guide breaks things down clearly and simply.

Why These Two Get Confused

Both autism and emotional neglect can shape:

• Social confidence

• Emotional regulation

• Sensory sensitivity

• Patterns of protection (shutdown, freeze, avoidance)

• Comfort in predictable routines

On the surface, they can look similar — but they develop in very different ways.

How Emotional Neglect Shows Up

Emotional neglect and abuse are relational. They reshape how the nervous system responds to people and stress. The patterns below are far more trauma-related than neurodevelopmental:

1. Little or no memory of childhood

A common sign of chronic emotional overwhelm.

2. Shutdown or confusion around people

Not just difficulty — threat response.

3. Social fluency only with trusted people

If safety transforms your social ability, it points to trauma, not autism.

4. Sensory overload that begins later in life

Autistic sensory traits usually appear early and stay consistent.

5. Reading too much into people (hypervigilance)

A protection strategy learned in unsafe environments.

6. Highly critical or emotionally absent caregivers

A core driver of chronic freeze, dissociation, and relational fear.

7. Identity shifting across contexts

Feeling like different “parts” come forward depending on who you’re with.

How Autism Shows Up

Autism is neurodevelopmental — present from early childhood, whether noticed or not.

1. Early social differences

Solitary play because peers felt confusing, not threatening.

2. Difficulty with sarcasm or indirect meanings early on

Before any trauma, environment, or stress.

3. Strong preference for structure and predictable patterns

4. Detail-focused thinking

Often moving from detail → meaning.

5. Social cues learned later and through conscious effort

6. Sensory overload present from a young age

Not emerging suddenly in adulthood.

When Both Are Present

Some people have both an autistic neurotype and a history of relational trauma.

Trauma tends to:

• amplify sensory overwhelm

• increase shutdown and freeze

• distort social perception

• reduce flexibility

• fragment the sense of self

The combination can make autism appear “more severe” than it truly is.

Key Difference in One Sentence

Autism creates differences in how the brain processes information.
Emotional neglect teaches the brain the world is unsafe.

The two can look similar, but the driving force is different.

What Actually Helps (Regardless of Diagnosis)

1. Nervous system regulation

Reduce chronic freeze, panic, and overwhelm.

2. Safe relational experiences

Therapeutic consistency, emotional presence, attunement.

3. Building internal safety

Moving from survival-mode to connection-mode.

4. Sensory awareness and management

Even trauma-induced sensory issues benefit from support.

5. Step-by-step relational expansion

At a pace that doesn’t activate shutdown.

Final Perspective

Many adults who feel “different” discover that their traits make perfect sense once their history is understood.
Whether the root is neurodevelopmental, relational, or both, clarity helps you move forward — not label yourself, but understand yourself.

Maladaptive Daydreaming and Trauma: When Escaping Becomes a Survival Strategy

Most people drift into daydreams from time to time. A pleasant fantasy on a long commute or before sleep can be harmless — even soothing.
But for some, daydreaming becomes an all-consuming inner world, one that feels more vivid and rewarding than real life.
This experience is known as maladaptive daydreaming — a pattern of immersive, compulsive fantasy that can interfere with daily functioning, relationships, and emotional presence.

While it’s not officially classified as a disorder, many people recognise it as a deeply real and distressing experience. And at its core, it often has a profound connection to trauma and emotional neglect.

What Is Maladaptive Daydreaming?

Maladaptive daydreaming is more than having a rich imagination.
It’s characterised by:

• Intense, detailed fantasy worlds with ongoing storylines or characters

• Hours lost in daydreaming, often accompanied by repetitive movement or music

• Difficulty returning to reality or staying engaged with daily life

• Emotional dependence on the fantasy for comfort, excitement, or identity

Inside the fantasy, the person may feel powerful, loved, admired, or safe — all experiences that might be missing or painful in real life.

Over time, the mind begins to prefer the dream world over the unpredictability or emptiness of reality.

How Trauma Shapes Escapism

Maladaptive daydreaming can be understood as a creative survival response — the mind’s attempt to find safety when the external world feels threatening or barren.

1. Escaping emotional pain

Children who grow up in environments of abuse, neglect, or instability often have limited ways to soothe themselves.
When the body is trapped in unsafe circumstances, the mind may create an alternative world — one where love, control, and safety exist.
In this sense, daydreaming functions like a psychological sanctuary. It’s not laziness or indulgence; it’s protection.

2. Dissociation and fragmentation

Trauma fragments attention and identity. Parts of the self split off to manage overwhelming emotions.
Daydreaming can become a dissociative strategy — a way to step out of unbearable reality and into a space where pain can’t reach you.
While this helps in the short term, it can make it hard later to feel grounded, embodied, or emotionally connected.

3. The fantasy of being seen

For many, the fantasy world becomes the only place where they feel visible or significant.
In it, they can play out unmet needs for validation, power, or love.
This can echo attachment trauma — the longing for connection with an unavailable or rejecting caregiver.

The Cost of Living Elsewhere

While the daydream may begin as protection, over time it can lead to:

• Emotional numbness or detachment from real life

• Difficulty maintaining relationships or goals

• Feelings of shame, loneliness, or being “addicted” to fantasy

• Loss of time and disconnection from the body

The fantasy becomes a self-made prison — safe, but isolating.

Healing: Reclaiming Presence

Recovery doesn’t mean erasing imagination. It means re-establishing safety in the here and now so that you no longer need to flee into fantasy to feel alive or soothed.

1. Understand the function

The first step is compassion.
Ask yourself not, “Why can’t I stop daydreaming?” but “What am I protecting myself from?”
Seeing the daydream as an adaptive response to pain shifts the focus from shame to understanding.

2. Reconnect with the body

Daydreaming lives in the head. Healing begins in the body.
Grounding practices — noticing breath, movement, or touch — help re-anchor awareness in the present moment.
Some people gently reintroduce sensory input by feeling textures, walking barefoot, or tuning in to bodily sensations after long periods of disconnection.

3. Process the underlying trauma

Trauma therapy can help integrate the painful memories or unmet needs that gave rise to the fantasy world.
As the real world becomes safer and more responsive, the mind no longer needs to escape into imagined ones.

4. Build emotional safety in relationships

Maladaptive daydreaming often fades when genuine connection becomes possible.
Feeling seen, accepted, and emotionally met in therapy or safe relationships gradually replaces the fantasy with lived experience.

From Escapism to Imagination

The capacity to imagine is not the problem — it’s a gift.
It’s the compulsive escape into fantasy that signals unprocessed pain.
When safety returns, imagination can be reintegrated into life — as creativity, vision, or reflection — rather than refuge.

Maladaptive daydreaming isn’t about being lost in unreality; it’s about a mind that once had to build its own refuge.
Healing means learning that the world — and your body — can now be safe enough to come home to.

Misophonia: When Everyday Sounds Feel Unbearable

For most people, sounds like chewing, tapping, or breathing fade into the background.
But for others, those same sounds trigger intense irritation, anxiety, or even rage.
This condition is known as misophonia — literally, “hatred of sound.”

It’s not just about being sensitive or easily annoyed. Misophonia can feel visceral — as if your whole body is being invaded or hijacked by the sound.
It can make daily life, relationships, and social situations deeply challenging.

Understanding misophonia means looking beyond the surface reaction and exploring what’s happening in the nervous system, and why certain sounds feel like a threat.

What Causes Misophonia?

The exact causes aren’t fully understood, but research and clinical experience point to several overlapping factors — neurological, emotional, and developmental.

1. A sensitive nervous system

People with misophonia often have an over-responsive nervous system — one that detects and reacts to threat quickly.
This can be linked to neurodivergence (such as ADHD or autism), where sensory processing differences make sounds feel more intense or intrusive.

For some, the auditory system doesn’t filter background noise in the same way, meaning certain sounds are experienced as unfiltered, sharp, or invasive.

2. Early experiences and trauma

Trauma can also prime the body to perceive danger where there is none.
If you grew up in an unpredictable or unsafe environment, your body may have learned to stay hypervigilant — listening for subtle cues of threat, tension, or anger.
A sound that once signalled danger — like someone sighing, shouting, or chewing aggressively — may now automatically trigger a fight/flight response, even in safe situations.

In this way, misophonia can be both a sensory and emotional memory.
The sound acts like a key that unlocks the body’s stored stress response.

3. Associative learning

Sometimes misophonia develops through association.
If a specific sound became linked to conflict, shame, or powerlessness, your nervous system remembers — even when your mind forgets.
The body says, “this sound means danger,” and reacts before you can think.

How It Relates to ADHD, Autism, and Trauma

• In ADHD, the brain’s attentional filter can struggle to prioritise sensory input. A ticking clock or tapping pen that others tune out becomes impossible to ignore. The frustration can escalate into anger or distress.

• In Autism, there’s often sensory hypersensitivity — sounds, lights, or textures register more strongly. Misophonia can overlap with this sensitivity but carries an added emotional charge, often linked to overwhelm or the need for control and predictability.

• In Trauma, misophonia can represent a triggered survival response. The sound reactivates implicit memories of fear, invasion, or threat. The body prepares to defend itself, even though the danger is no longer present.

In all three, the common thread is nervous system dysregulation — a system that has learned to be on alert and struggles to settle when overstimulated.

Healing Misophonia: Soothing the Threat Response

There’s no quick fix, but healing is possible.
The goal is not to eliminate sensitivity, but to help the nervous system feel safe again.

1. Name the experience

Understanding that misophonia is a body-based stress response — not a personal flaw — can immediately reduce shame and self-criticism.
It’s not “overreacting”; it’s your system trying to protect you.

2. Regulate before exposure

Trying to “tough it out” usually backfires.
Instead, start with grounding and regulation: slow breathing, gentle movement, or feeling your feet on the floor.
Once your body feels more settled, you can experiment with tolerating mild triggers in small, safe doses.

3. Soothing through sensation

Some people find it helpful to balance overwhelming auditory input with other sensations — listening to white noise, wearing ear defenders, or using tactile grounding (holding something textured, stroking the skin, or feeling the weight of a blanket).

4. Explore the emotional roots

In therapy, you might explore what the triggering sounds represent.
Sometimes, beneath the irritation lies a younger part of us that felt trapped, invaded, or unheard.
When that part of you is acknowledged and soothed, the intensity of the reaction often softens.

5. Work with body-based approaches

Because misophonia is a nervous system issue, body-oriented therapies — such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or Polyvagal-informed approaches — can be especially effective.
They help the body complete old fight/flight responses and re-establish a sense of internal safety.

Finding Safety in Sensitivity

If you live with misophonia, it’s important to remember: sensitivity is not weakness.
The same nervous system that registers threat so vividly is also capable of deep empathy, intuition, and creativity.

Healing misophonia doesn’t mean dulling those sensitivities — it means retraining the body to trust the present moment.
When the nervous system learns that it’s safe again, sound becomes just sound — not a signal of danger, but part of the world you can inhabit fully and calmly.

What does Transpersonal actually mean?

Quite often the transpersonal is explained in spiritual or religious language. Which means that if we don’t understand that language then we don’t understand what is being said.

Even if you read secular texts such as those of  transpersonal psychology is it any easier to understand what is being said?

Is there a simple way of explaining it?

This is a perspective.

If you take a piece of wood what is it made out of? Cells?

Ok what are cells made from? Molecules.

What happens if we keep going with this?

Ok so atoms, and then we start getting down to elementary particles

to protons, neutrons and electrons (elementary particle)

quarks and gluons, (elementary particle)

so what now? Ok, for ease just assume that string theory is correct

and that elementary particles are made from vibrating strings of energy.

So a string is composed of pure energy.

Pure energy is not an object, is not a thing.

So if your forgive my possibly spectacular simplification and poor grasp of physics,

using this logic our stick is made of energy.

If a stick is made of energy, who determines its boundary, where the stick starts and ends, what is stick and not stick.

And the answer to that would be the mind. Objectively speaking there is no stick, well, outside of the human mind anyway.

If we split reality into phenomenon and noumenon and take phenomenon to mean reality as experienced by the mind and the noumenon to mean some objective reality outside the mind, could there ever be such a thing as a stick?

 Ok so another leap not of bad physics this time but into bad neurobiology.

 Left brain, right brain.

Left brain responsible for subject/object duality, the world of things,…or sticks

Right brain, closer to experience of the noumenon, nonverbal unity, a non-conceptual boundarylessness.

According to hemisphere theory our subjective experience of reality can be one of subject/object where objects have very firm boundaries and there is little of no experience of the numinous or unity.

A more right brain dominant experience may be one of experiencing reality as a boundaryless continuum or loving unity.

So assuming that we have an optimum sized corpus collosum and we are able to integrate these two experiential realities we may experience a reality where we experience ourselves as things but with softer more compassionate boundaries with an awareness of or connection to a loving unity. This may equate to a believe in an anthropomorphic god.

If we accept this rather clumsy model then there will be a part of ourselves that is considered thing, and a yet an awareness of boundaryless unity which is also us.(even if that is outside of awareness).

And so I suggest that the transpersonal is our self as a thing’s awareness of, or connection too experiences happening in the “not us” space, with or without the understanding that we are also that space.

There is no inside and outside of what we are. There is only awareness itself and mind generated objects within that awareness.

Did that make any sense at all?

The Void: When Emptiness Is a Form of Protection

Many people in therapy speak of the void — a sense of emptiness, hollowness, or disconnection that can feel unbearable. It might show up as emotional numbness, a loss of motivation, or the sense that life is happening behind glass. The mind says, “I should feel something,” but the body feels far away.

This void isn’t a flaw or failure of willpower. More often, it’s a form of protection — the nervous system’s way of keeping us safe when feeling once meant danger.

Where the Void Comes From

Unmet Relational Needs

From birth, we depend on others to help us know that we exist and that we matter. When caregivers are responsive and kind, we internalise a felt sense of safety. But when love is inconsistent, conditional, or frightening, the mind and body learn to shut down yearning altogether.

The void is what remains when our need for connection has gone unanswered for too long. It’s the echo of a need we no longer allow ourselves to feel.

Disrupted Attachment

Attachment isn’t just emotional — it’s biological. If we grew up in unpredictable or unsafe relationships, our nervous system may never have learned how to rest in closeness. Intimacy might feel overwhelming, while isolation feels lonely but safer.

This can lead to a painful push–pull dynamic: longing for connection while keeping it at arm’s length. The void here is the quiet ache of a self that learned to survive without others.

Lack of Felt Safety

When the body doesn’t feel safe, it can’t stay present. It retreats inward, numbs out, or dissociates. Over time, this protective pattern becomes a way of being. Even when nothing is wrong, life can feel muted — colours dull, sensations distant.

The void, in this sense, is not absence but defence: the body’s way of saying, “Feeling isn’t safe yet.”

How These Layers Intertwine

Unmet needs, disrupted attachment, and lack of safety all reinforce one another.
When we don’t feel safe, we can’t attach.
When we can’t attach, our needs stay unmet.
And when our needs are unmet, our system learns to numb rather than reach.

The void is the space between the self we had to become and the self that still longs to feel.

The Path of Healing

The way out of the void isn’t to fill it — it’s to befriend it. Healing means slowly restoring connection: to the body, to emotion, and eventually to others.

1. Safety First

Start with the body. Sensation is the language of safety.
Warmth, gentle touch, grounding through your feet, or feeling the rhythm of your breath all help the nervous system remember it’s safe to exist.

If you feel completely numb, begin gently. Some people find it helpful to lightly pinch the skin, run cool or warm water over their hands, or use a power shower head to notice the pressure of water on the body. These stronger sensations can reawaken awareness until more subtle ones become perceptible again.

2. Micro-Connections

Moments of genuine attunement — eye contact, shared laughter, a kind voice — help the body re-learn trust. Healing attachment wounds doesn’t require perfect relationships; it begins with small, safe ones.

3. Compassion for Numbness

Numbness is not nothingness — it’s a sign of how deeply the system once needed to shut down. Treat it with tenderness. The more kindly we meet the absence of feeling, the more space we create for life to return.

Reconnecting with Life

The void isn’t the enemy. It’s a message from the body: “I’ve been protecting you.”
As we begin to listen — with patience, curiosity, and gentleness — that emptiness slowly transforms into space.

And within that space, feeling begins to return — first in whispers, then in waves.
What once felt like nothing reveals itself as the beginning of aliveness.

The Two Abysses: Trauma, Awakening, and the Difference Between Falling Apart and Falling Through

There are moments on the path of healing and awakening that feel like falling into an abyss. The ground disappears, meaning collapses, and everything once familiar dissolves. Some describe this as nihilism, despair, or depression. Others call it ego death, awakening, or the void.
Though these experiences can look and feel similar, they are not the same — one arises from disconnection, the other from dissolution. One is a wound, the other a doorway.

The Abyss of Despair

The first kind of abyss is born from pain — from trauma, loss, or neglect that taught the nervous system that the world isn’t safe and connection cannot be trusted.

This “void” is not mystical but psychological. It feels hollow, cold, and empty. There’s a sense of being cut off from life, from others, and from one’s own vitality. In trauma, the system shuts down to protect itself from further overwhelm. The result is numbness, isolation, and meaninglessness.

This kind of emptiness is a wound — the absence of love, safety, and belonging. It’s the body saying, “I can’t bear to feel anymore.”
Here, what’s needed is not transcendence but tenderness: grounded connection, compassion, and the slow reawakening of the senses.

The Abyss of Awakening

The second abyss appears later, often after much healing or surrender.
It, too, can feel like dying — but what dies here is not the body or sanity, it’s the idea of being a separate self.

When the ego’s structure begins to dissolve, awareness encounters itself without boundaries. There’s no “me” watching “reality” anymore — only pure experience unfolding.
At first, this can be terrifying. The mind interprets the loss of control as annihilation. But if we allow the fall — if we trust the letting go — we discover that what seemed like nothingness is actually everything.

This void isn’t empty; it’s alive with presence. It’s the peace that comes when the struggle to become someone finally ends.
If the first void is emptiness as lack, the second is emptiness as wholeness.

How They’re Related

The two abysses are intimately connected.
In fact, many people can only reach the spiritual void by passing through the psychological one.

The trauma void shows where connection was lost.
The awakening void reveals what lies beneath, once defences dissolve.

But it’s essential not to bypass the first in pursuit of the second. Trying to “spiritually transcend” pain before it’s metabolised can lead to a kind of spiritual dissociation — where stillness becomes numbness and detachment replaces aliveness.

Healing trauma allows us to fall through despair into depth, rather than collapse into it. When the pain of separation is fully felt, the same abyss that once seemed like death becomes a doorway to truth.

Moving from Despair to Depth

• Ground in the body — Safety in the body is the bridge between trauma and transcendence.

• Grieve what was lost — Feel the absence before trying to fill it.

• Stay connected — Healing the void requires relationship, not isolation.

• Let the body lead — When safety returns, the void shifts from terrifying to spacious.

The Realisation

The abyss of trauma and the abyss of awakening may share the same landscape — silence, stillness, vast emptiness — but their essence is opposite.

The first says: “Nothing matters.”
The second whispers: “Everything is made of this.”

The trauma void is the wound of separation.
The awakening void is the realisation that separation was never real.

Ego Death - what does it feel like?

Reality is subjective. When we have an experience outside of the frame of what we believe is possible we can choose to deny it. However, if we choose to accept it then our sphere of what is possible grows to incorporate it.

In this way two people may hold vastly different experiences of reality. Sharing experiences to those who are unable to accept them may trigger fear and result in anger as a threatened ego tries to defend itself.

We may experience reality from the perspective of being a thing, an object that exists in relation to other objects. Default reality is one of subject-object duality. Being an object, we may experience ourselves as travelling along a timeline from past to future. However, if that object were to dissolve temporarily or permanently, we would still have the experience of being an ‘I’ but not the experiences of being in time, or indeed in space. As we acclimatise to the transition between thingness and no-thingness we may experience ourselves as objectless space but will ultimately settle into being non located. Not located in time and space, but being timeless infinity.

The transition from object to process may be gentle or utterly terrifying. Ego death is not some “death-lite” experience. Even though it is a psychological rather than a bodily death it is experienced subjectively as dying. When you have a dream of hanging off a cliff by your fingernails its all too easy to let go if you know you are dreaming, but would you let go if you were not? Would you hang on until your arms were shaking and your finger tips bled, until every last drop of energy had been expended from your body?

Imagine for a moment having the realisation “I am going to die!” Your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems both firing at the same time. You feel the build-up of energy. You need to run, yet experience being frozen at the same time. One foot pressing the accelerator to the floor the other foot firmly on the break. In this car metaphor the vehicle in question would begin to shake violently and this is indeed what happens.

Fear builds into terror and panic. “I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die, shit, shit, shit”

But even though you know you are going to die, there is an awareness that that its ok. There is something safe and loving that remains untouched by this terror.

Tension from stalled fight/flight responses stored the muscles is freed from the body as violent tremors. Emotions long ago repressed come bursting to the surface as a geyser of laughing and crying.

The lungs start expanding like they filling full off energy and might explode. Sensations of cold liquid metal dripping down inside. Cold sweats.

“Shit, shit, shit, …fuck, fuck, fuck,… shit-fuck, shit-fuck, …I’m dying”

Reality starts to distort. Three dimensions split up into separate two-dimensional layers. Faces become skeletal or look like Picasso paintings.

“Shit-fuck, shit fuck”, laughing-crying, shaking, I’m going explode….

…then woosh.

Like turning to ash and feeling all other objects dissolve simultaneously. Reality races out in all directions. I am the Universe.  

No longer are decisions made. Everything happens spontaneously. There is no seer and seen only seeing happening. Subject-object duality has collapsed into unity.

For a time, there is elation, perhaps due to a sudden freedom from the fear of death. For if there are no things, then there is nothing that can die.

Years pass, this new version of reality beds in and becomes normal.

All that is left is to work out is whether to continue using language in the same way and feel dishonest, or to change language to reflect the new subjective experience of reality and risk a backlash of fear and anger from those around you who sincerely believe that you are crazy.

Conspiracy Thinking and Paranoia: When the Mind Tries to Stay Safe

Conspiracy theories can seem strange from the outside — but for those drawn to them, they can feel like clarity in a confusing world. Beneath the surface, both conspiracy thinking and paranoia often come from the same human place: a nervous system trying to make sense of threat, mistrust, and powerlessness.

This isn’t about madness or gullibility. It’s about how the mind protects itself when the world feels unsafe.

Making Sense of Threat

When we feel uncertain, our minds search for patterns — ways to explain what’s happening. Paranoia and conspiracy thinking both emerge from this instinct to find order in chaos.

Paranoia tends to feel personal: “They’re out to get me.”
Conspiracy thinking is more collective: “They’re out to control us.”

Both offer a story that restores a sense of meaning and control, especially when reality feels overwhelming.

The Roots of Mistrust

For many, mistrust doesn’t appear from nowhere. It can trace back to early experiences where trust was broken — in families marked by betrayal, neglect, or inconsistency. When safety was uncertain in childhood, the adult nervous system may remain tuned to danger.

Large-scale uncertainty — pandemics, political unrest, economic instability — can reactivate those old survival patterns:

“You can’t trust what you’re told.”
“Someone must be lying.”
“There’s danger, and no one’s telling the truth.”

These are not delusions so much as trauma responses writ large — old instincts resurfacing when life feels unsafe again.

Isolation and Powerlessness

Conspiracy thinking often grows in conditions of isolation and anxiety. When people feel unheard, alienated, or powerless, it can be soothing to find explanations that make sense of the chaos.

Conspiracy communities, too, can offer belonging. They can provide a sense of “us” — people who understand the world differently, who see through the illusion. In that way, conspiracy thinking sometimes becomes a way to feel connected in a disconnected world.

The Mental Health Connection

Research links conspiracy belief with experiences of paranoia, anxiety, and low self-esteem. These aren’t causes so much as companions — signs that the nervous system is under strain.

The crucial difference lies in flexibility. Healthy skepticism stays open to new evidence; paranoia and conspiracy thinking tend to close around certainty. Once the mind finds safety in a particular narrative, it can be frightening to let it go.

Restoring Safety

In therapy, the goal isn’t to argue with beliefs, but to explore what they protect. Often, beneath rigid ideas lies deep fear, shame, or powerlessness.

Therapeutic work can help by:

• Exploring the emotional meaning of mistrust

• Building safety in relationships, allowing space for reflection

• Grounding the body, so the mind no longer feels under constant threat

• Reconnecting with uncertainty, learning to tolerate not knowing

Safety doesn’t come from proving or disproving a theory — it comes from helping the nervous system feel less under siege.

A Compassionate View

Conspiracy thinking and paranoia are not failures of reason; they are expressions of fear. When life has taught us that trust is dangerous, the mind learns to defend itself by questioning everything.

Healing begins when we no longer need certainty to feel safe.
When the body softens, the world can, too.

The Bystander Position in the Drama Triangle

Most people familiar with Karpman’s (1968) Drama Triangle know the three classic roles: Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer. Together, they describe the repeating patterns of conflict and emotional entanglement that can play out in relationships, families, and groups.

But some people don’t quite fit into any of these three. Instead, they find themselves watching from the sidelines — not directly involved, yet deeply affected. This is the Bystander position: the quiet observer who sees what’s happening but feels powerless, conflicted, or frozen.

Understanding the Bystander

The Bystander isn’t officially part of Karpman’s original triangle, but it naturally emerges in relational systems. When conflict or emotional drama unfolds, someone often takes the role of the watcher — the one who notices but doesn’t intervene.

This position can look very different depending on the person and situation:

• A child witnessing parents argue or become violent.

• A friend observing tension between two others and feeling caught in the middle.

• A team member noticing bullying at work but unsure how to respond.

At its core, the Bystander carries awareness without agency — seeing what’s happening, but not feeling able to act.

Why We Become Bystanders

For many, the bystander position begins early in life. In families where conflict, neglect, or emotional volatility were common, watching became safer than participating. Children learned to observe quietly, to monitor others’ moods, and to stay out of danger’s way.

This survival strategy made sense then. But later in life, it can lead to patterns of emotional detachment, indecision, or guilt. You might see a problem but freeze instead of responding. You might feel torn between wanting to help and wanting to stay safe.

The bystander position often holds tension between empathy and fear.

The Emotional Cost of the Bystander Role

Although it looks passive from the outside, being a bystander can be deeply distressing internally. You might experience:

• Helplessness — feeling unable to change a painful situation.

• Guilt — believing you “should have done something.”

• Detachment — learning to numb out to avoid overwhelm.

• Hypervigilance — staying alert, waiting for the next eruption.

In therapy, bystanders sometimes describe feeling invisible or peripheral — like they don’t have the right to take up space or express anger. These are echoes of early relational learning: it felt safer to watch than to risk being seen.

Moving Out of the Bystander Role

Healing from the bystander position involves reclaiming agency — learning that you can act, speak, and set boundaries without recreating danger.

Some steps might include:

1. Acknowledge the freeze
Notice the moment you go still. Freezing is a nervous system response, not a moral failure. It’s your body remembering what once kept you safe.

2. Work with guilt and self-blame
You didn’t create the situations you witnessed. Compassion replaces guilt when you understand your limits at the time.

3. Reconnect with your voice
Therapy, journaling, or assertiveness work can help you begin to speak from the self that once had to stay silent.

4. Practise small acts of engagement
Safety grows through gradual steps — offering an opinion, saying no, expressing emotion. Over time, your system learns that participation doesn’t equal danger.

From Bystander to Witness

When the bystander heals, they transform into something powerful — a witness. A witness sees clearly but without freezing; observes with compassion rather than detachment; speaks truthfully when needed.

The difference is subtle but profound: a witness holds awareness and presence. They neither merge with the drama nor abandon themselves in avoidance.

Final Reflection

The bystander position is often misunderstood as passivity, but it’s really a learned form of protection. Beneath the stillness lives someone who once saw too much and could do too little. Healing means recognising that your awareness was never the problem — it was your body’s way of surviving chaos.

As you find safety again, that awareness can become one of your greatest gifts: the ability to see, hold, and respond with wisdom rather than fear.

Human Being or Human Doing? Why We Feel Compelled to Always Be Doing — and What It Means to Simply Be.

We live in a culture that worships productivity. From an early age, we’re praised for achievement — for what we do, not who we are. “Keep busy,” “make progress,” “don’t waste time.” The rhythm of modern life often leaves little room for rest, reflection, or stillness.

Yet somewhere beneath all that activity, many people sense a quiet question rising:
If I stop doing… will there be anything left of me?

The Human Doing Trap

When our sense of worth is tied to productivity, we become what some call a human doing rather than a human being. We fill our days with tasks, constantly ticking off lists, rarely pausing to notice how we are.

This compulsion to do often isn’t laziness avoidance or ambition — it’s anxiety. Many of us feel a deep unease in stillness because slowing down brings us into contact with feelings we’ve spent years avoiding: emptiness, sadness, fear, or guilt.

Doing can be a kind of armour.
When we keep moving, we don’t have to feel.

The Roots of Constant Doing

For many people, the drive to stay busy is not a personality quirk but a survival strategy learned early in life.

• If love was conditional, we may have learned that we had to earn approval by achieving or helping.

• If rest was unsafe, perhaps in a chaotic or unpredictable home, constant motion kept us vigilant and in control.

• If emotional needs weren’t met, doing became a way to feel useful or valued, even if it meant abandoning our own needs.

In this way, doing can become a trauma response — a nervous system that learned to run on high alert and never come down.

What Does “Being” Actually Mean?

“Being” is one of those words that can sound abstract or even frustratingly vague. But at its heart, being simply means inhabiting the present moment without needing to change or fix it.

Being is:

• Sitting quietly without needing to fill the silence

• Noticing sensations in your body without trying to push them away

• Letting emotions arise and pass without immediately analysing or acting on them

• Allowing yourself to exist without justification

Being is presence without performance.

From Doing to Being — Not Either/Or, But Both

Doing is not the enemy. We need to act, create, and build — these are part of being human too. The problem comes when doing becomes compulsive and disconnected from our deeper self.

The goal isn’t to stop doing, but to bring being into what we do.
To act from presence rather than pressure.
To move because something feels true, not because we fear what will happen if we stop.

Practising Being

If “being” feels foreign or uncomfortable, that’s understandable. Many people find that it takes gentle practice to reconnect with this state. Some ways to begin:

• Pause intentionally: Take one minute a few times a day to simply notice your breath.

• Check in with your body: Ask, “What am I feeling right now?” instead of “What do I need to do next?”

• Allow unstructured time: Even a few moments of daydreaming, sitting outside, or watching the light change can reconnect you to presence.

• Notice discomfort: If being still feels unbearable, that’s a clue. You’re meeting old fears of emptiness or unworthiness — and with compassion, they can begin to soften.

Coming Home

Being isn’t about doing nothing — it’s about coming home to yourself in whatever you’re doing. It’s remembering that you are not defined by your output, your achievements, or your usefulness.

You are not a project to complete.
You are a being to be lived.

Paranoia: Understanding the Causes and Finding Safety Again

Paranoia can make the world feel unsafe. It often shows up as suspicion, mistrust, or the sense that others are judging or talking about us. While everyone feels wary at times, paranoia becomes distressing when it shapes how we see people, affects relationships, and makes life feel threatening.

Where Paranoia Comes From

Paranoia rarely appears out of nowhere. It usually has roots in how we’ve learned to protect ourselves.

Early relationships
If we grew up in environments where trust was uncertain — where we were hurt, betrayed, or emotionally neglected — the mind can learn to expect danger. Suspicion becomes a way to stay safe.

Trauma
After trauma or bullying, the nervous system can become tuned to threat. It stays on alert even when the danger has passed, scanning constantly for signs that something bad might happen again.

Stress and isolation
Periods of high stress, loneliness, or lack of sleep make us more vulnerable to distorted thinking. Without contact and reassurance, our minds can fill in the gaps with fear.

Mental health factors
Paranoia can exist on its own or as part of wider issues such as anxiety, trauma responses, or psychosis. It’s not always a sign of “madness” — it can also be a sign of how hard someone has tried to survive.

Social and cultural pressures
Living in a world of surveillance, social media, and mistrust can amplify these feelings. It becomes easier to doubt others, and harder to know what’s real.

Working With Paranoia

Paranoia often lessens not through argument, but through safety.

Slow things down
Notice the thoughts and ask: What’s the evidence? Is this familiar? Could there be another explanation? Slowing the process helps re-engage your reflective mind instead of reacting from fear.

Reach out
Isolation strengthens paranoia. Talking with someone you trust — a friend, counsellor, or therapist — allows you to reality-check your thoughts and feel less alone.

Understand its roots
Therapy can help trace where the mistrust began and why it makes sense. When you understand the purpose paranoia once served, it becomes easier to loosen its grip.

Regulate the body
Grounding, breathing, and mindfulness can calm the body so the mind feels less under threat. A calmer body creates a safer inner world.

Professional support
If paranoia feels overwhelming or persistent, professional help is important. Psychotherapy offers a space to rebuild trust, while medical support may help if symptoms are severe.

Finding Safety Again

Paranoia is rarely about “being crazy” — it’s about being frightened. It often reflects old experiences of danger replaying in the present. Working through it means helping the body and mind learn that safety is possible again.

Mentalisation vs Mindfulness: Two Pathways to Understanding Ourselves

In therapy and personal growth, two words often come up: mentalisation and mindfulness. They may sound similar, and both invite us to slow down and pay attention, but they focus on very different aspects of human experience. Understanding the difference can help us use each practice more intentionally, both in daily life and in therapy.

What Is Mentalisation?

Mentalisation is the ability to understand our own and others’ inner worlds—the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and beliefs that drive behaviour. It’s about asking: What might be going on in me right now? What might be going on in the other person?

Developed as a concept by Peter Fonagy and colleagues, mentalisation is central in therapies like Mentalisation-Based Therapy (MBT). When we can mentalise, we are less likely to act impulsively, misinterpret others, or get swept away by overwhelming emotion.

Mentalisation in action looks like:

• Recognising that your partner’s irritation might come from their bad day, not from your worth

• Noticing that you feel anxious in a group and wondering what story you’re telling yourself about belonging

• Holding curiosity about others instead of jumping to assumptions

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally. It is less concerned with why we or others feel something, and more about noticing what is happening right now.

Rooted in contemplative traditions and popularised in psychology through practices like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), mindfulness helps regulate attention and reduce reactivity.

Mindfulness in action looks like:

• Bringing awareness to your breath when you feel stressed

• Noticing tension in your shoulders without rushing to change it

• Observing thoughts as passing events rather than truths

The Key Difference

• Mentalisation asks: What might explain what I or others are experiencing? (Interpretation, perspective-taking)

• Mindfulness asks: What is happening, right here and now? (Awareness, presence)

In short, mindfulness grounds us in the moment, while mentalisation helps us make sense of the mind.

How They Work Together

Both practices are powerful on their own, but together they can deepen growth:

• Mindfulness helps us notice sensations, thoughts, and emotions without being overwhelmed.

• Mentalisation helps us reflect on those experiences and understand how they shape relationships.

For example, mindfulness might help you notice, “My heart is racing and I feel heat in my face.” Mentalisation might then add, “I think I’m feeling ashamed because I believe I’ve disappointed someone.”

Why This Matters in Healing

Trauma, stress, or relational wounds can disrupt both mindfulness and mentalisation. We may become cut off from present-moment awareness, or lose perspective on our inner world and others’. Strengthening both skills supports emotional regulation, empathy, and healthier relationships.

In therapy, mindfulness can steady the nervous system, while mentalisation can open curiosity and flexibility in relationships. Together, they allow us not only to feel but also to understand, not only to witness but also to connect.