Seaside Holistic Psychology, Sydney (2026)

28/03/2026

An important part of trauma treatment is moving forward differently.
It is visiting the past while staying in the present moment.
Paying attention to our body and nervous system.
And moving forward differently.
Working through our issues doesn’t mean we automatically change.
It is not an organic or spontaneous process.
And unfortunately it is not easy a lot of the time.
We have to be deliberate in the ways we show up.
AND choose to show up differently.
Maybe you go from 0 to 100
or
perhaps you are shut down or numb.
Shifting to a new way means deliberately and intentionally stepping on a new path. Baby steps that become more automatic and organic with time, as we practice doing things differently.
We get off the reactivity highway and find more peaceful paths that we have created x

21/03/2026

Clients often tell me their goal is to heal, to be free or more at peace.
That road to freedom, away from suffering, usually requires feeling some discomfort.
The tricky part of this, is that for many trauma survivors, feeling discomfort is linked to a reality where they didn’t feel safe.
The threat detection systems are therefore highly tuned, sending alarm signals at the slightest suggestion of discomfort.
Getting to know our nervous system can help us build just enough capacity for safety in our body, so we can move towards discomfort.
Enough safety to take baby steps towards that yearning for freedom & peace.
To be able to figure out the difference between discomfort that is healthy, such as applying for a dream job or one that requires new skills & is outside your comfort zone (which is what I did late last year & hence my absence form this space for a while).
And discomfort that leads to more pain and keeps us small such as seeking out or staying in unhealthy situations because they feel familiar & comfortable.
The road to getting to know ourselves and our nervous system will have some bumps and scrapes along the way. It is normal and natural. I can attest to this from persona experience!
What I have found is that the path to healing & away from the legacy of trauma is best taken when those steps towards discomfort are nestled in a nervous system that has some capacity for safety to begin the uncomfortable work of healing.
This is where befriending & working with our nervous system helps x

03/03/2026

Accurate representation 😁❤️😉

Get • .therapist What’s actually happening on my end:

• Tracking attachment patterns in real time
• Recognising defence mechanisms as they show up
• Noticing subtle shifts in body language and tone
• Mapping trauma responses beneath the story
• Holding emotional safety in the room
• Co-regulating the nervous system
• Connecting dots from three sessions ago
• Building a clinical formulation in the background

And yes… occasionally nodding.

21/12/2025

Now more than ever, that feeling of being unsafe isn’t something that will magically disappear or go away just because it is the ‘festive’ season.
If we are used to becoming very still & quiet, playing small, so we don’t attract any attention to ourselves or living in a state of hyper vigilance, it can make it difficult for our brain to discern whether we are safe or not.
Being able to distinguish between unsafe & uncomfortable sensations in our bodies can help us stay grounded.
We can take up space by moving our bodies & exploring the space that we are in, whether it is at our own house, a restaurant, a park or someone else’s house.
Look around or get up & walk around, take in where the exits are, where the doors & windows are. Take in a 360 degree view of your environment.
Sitting still over time at a table or a chair can begin to elicit a trauma response. Being able to stand up, walk around & move can create cues of safety.
Pay attention to the sensations in your body as you talk to people, is there anyone your nervous system feels relatively safe with that you can orient to?
We can practice present moment awareness of the sensations in our bodies & also our breath to help us figure out if we unsafe or uncomfortable.
Box breathing exercises such as inhaling for a count of 4, holding the breath for a count of 4 & exhale for a count of 4 which we repeat 4 times can help & no one will notice as you work on activating your parasympathetic nervous system to calm arousal.
My favourite exercise is focusing on a normal breath in & then a long exhale. You can do this with a sigh or a hum as you exhale to restore yourself back into a ventral vagal state of safety.
As we begin to discern the difference between being unsafe or uncomfortable we begin to slowly re-inhabit our bodies & expand our ability to move through the world x

19/12/2025

Many people assume therapy works because of the specific method, but research shows that the biggest differences come from the relationship itself. Feeling understood, supported, and genuinely met often matters more than the modality.

(I really do believe this. The relationship between therapist and client matters. To feel seen, heard and feel accepted can create a space where it is safe to be open and vulnerable.)

In this week’s episode, .hanson and explore one of the major topics in psychology today: how to understand evidence-based care, and the tension between mainstream and alternative approaches.

They discuss what it means for an approach to be evidence-based, the real-world dangers of inflated claims, and therapy’s complex relationship with the medical model. They get into the weeds on study design, effect sizes, insurance, why different approaches may or may not have a large body of evidence, and how to think about the research on “common factors” in therapy.

They offer a simple framework for making good decisions amidst all of this complexity.

If you have the time it’s an interesting discussion.

11/10/2025

“Our energy is precious … ignore the haters” ❤️

Love this reminder to be aware of who we give our time, energy and attention to!

03/10/2025

Humility is the ability to acknowledge potential personal wrongness, it is an essential part of moral character.
It is respecting others, being caring & compassionate AND it is directly related to our willingness to learn, be curious & open to feedback.
Humility is the opposite of arrogance, entitlement & an inflated sense of self importance.
It is being willing to allow for the possibility that we can be wrong instead of the arrogant insistence that it’s just not possible wrongness could lay at our feet.
When we practice humility we can reach a solution that is satisfactory to both sides, when the opportunity to practice humility is missed, talking gets us nowhere.
Some people are not willing to allow for the possibility that they could be wrong & may even lie or revise the truth to avoid being wrong. They may come to believe their revisions of the truth & struggle to move beyond “I’m right, you’re wrong, end of discussion.”
When this is the case, attempts to be reasonable will not work because some people are not interested in reason, they are only invested in being right or winning. Trying to get them to look at something they do or how they effect others can be exhausting!
The study of humility on its own as a trait or behaviour is fairly new to the scene. One of the questions is whether it can be taught & strengthened with practice, like a muscle. An issue could be that those most in need of developing this trait could be the most resistant.
What we do know though, is that humility is critical in sustaining healthy relationships x

06/09/2025

Growing up, I didn’t think boundaries were possible or even an option.
They were met with dismissal, derision, disregard, mockery & at times outright hostility.
If you were taught that your needs & wants were not important or even ok, you learn to not stand up for yourself.
Over time you start believe to believe that you’re not worth standing up for.
As I started to do more work on myself, making sure my actions aligned with my value system, with who I am & want to be, I realised that boundary work was really at the centre of it all.
Self worth & boundaries work in a loop.
They are intertwined.
Boundary work asks what YOU think, want & need.
Over time you start to realise that your thoughts, needs & wants are also important.
That you matter & you are worth standing up for.
That’s what boundaries do, they stand up for you.
If you grew up believing your wants & needs were not as important as other people’s, you might have resorted to fawning & pleasing, hoping somewhere in there you’ll also get what you need if you make the other person or people happy first.
Changing these patterns that were set up in childhood is not easy.
It is uncomfortable & for some, down right scary.
They were met with hostility, bullying, isolation & exclusion when they tried standing up for themselves.
We learnt at a young age that our worth was tied to having no boundaries.
Being loved meant not having our own thoughts & feelings.
Boundaries meant we were being difficult & felt guilty.
It is time to change these patterns.
Unhealthy boundaries create feelings of low self worth.
Healthy boundaries are kind, they give clarity to you & me, they allow us to live with integrity & accountability when we treat ourselves like we have equal value & worth x

24/07/2025

Hope is a good thing, however there is a difference between what Martha Stark calls ‘relentless hope’, that is the pursuit of the unattainable.
Versus a hope that is sustainable & rooted in reality.
We hope that one day this person will stop drinking, gambling, cheating, maybe even ask you how your day was without being prompted!
We hope that once they stop the behaviour that is causing us pain, life will be better. They will be the partner, parent, boss, friend, that we know they have the capacity to be.
Maybe they were different when you first met & you miss that person. Or maybe you see so much potential in who they could be one day.
But what if this is it?
Do you like who this person is as they are? Do you want to be around this person, spend time with them if they never ‘change’?
For some, when things are good, it is hard to remember or hard to imagine that things were ever bad! Or when things are bad it can be hard to imagine or hard to remember that things were actually good.
We may even be painfully aware of the need to let go of the hope that this person will change & accept the reality of who this person is. However to get from relentless hope to acceptance of what is, there is grief. Relentless hope is a way to protect ourselves form feeling the pain that goes with that grief.
The reality that this person will never change hurts too much so we hold on to hope. We probably even try harder to make things work!
Where relentless hope is a way of keeping us from the pain of what is. Realistic hope is having the capacity to accept what is & the heartbreak & grief that comes with that acceptance x

21/06/2025

Emotional abuse & emotional neglect wear a person down over time.
If you were on the receiving end you may not even have realised you were being abused.
For many, this trauma began in childhood.
A child who has been emotionally abused may grow into an adult who sees malice, attack & criticism everywhere.
They may shut down or strike back in response.
Growing up with name calling, insults, inappropriate & unreasonable limits or control can lead to us being demanding, critical & expecting perfection.
Braced for the next attack, perceiving danger & threat (even when it isn’t actually happening), we react accordingly.
A child who has experienced emotional neglect may grow up feeling confused & empty. When our parents fail to notice our struggles or show interest, we can grow into adults that have learned to suppress our needs, worried that they are too much for others.
We learn to put other people’s needs first, solve problems & take on every request made of us. As a result we lose touch with who we really are & struggle to set limits & boundaries in all areas of our lives.
Trauma isn’t just what happened to us, it is also acts of omission, what didn’t happen. Sometimes we may not be able to point to one particular thing that did or did not happen, we just have a sense that for a significant amout of time things were “off”.
Emotional neglect, being an act of omission, can be even trickier to identify, it’s hard to remember or even understand what didn’t happen but should have.
Especially if you came from a family that met all your physical needs.
So you learn to ignore, minimise or even be ashamed of your feelings as an adult, feeling ungrateful about “complaining”.
Emotional abuse & neglect don’t leave marks on our bodies but that doesn’t mean they are “invisible”.
They leave a lasting impact that effects every area of our lives x

14/06/2025

Being vulnerable asks that we connect to ourselves, to what we feel & then share it with another person. Brene Brown describes vulnerability as, “the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.”
It sounds wonderful doesn’t it?!
To me it means the ability to be real & authentic with ourselves. And then sharing this part of ourselves with another person. Not having to worry or be scared of their reaction to our truth.
When expressing our truth is met with repeated criticism, shaming or attack, we learn to silence ourselves & we begin to self blame. We start to question our reality.
Relational trauma is very much the perpetrators reactions to our feelings, how they responded, what they said or did, how they shamed & hurt us when we tried to stand up & express our feelings.
It’s not the expression of our feelings that is the problem, it is the reactions we received that caused the issues.
Using DARVO tactics actively discourages people from speaking up.
It’s a three part strategy, deny, minimise or dismiss what you bring up. Attack your credibility and then they flip roles & play victim. This causes confusion & silences the real victim.
When we speak our truth to someone who can hear you, validate you, believe you, we learn to trust ourselves, to reconnect with our gut intuition & trust our inner wisdom, we regain the things that were destroyed as a result of the trauma x

10/06/2025

When the bystander is forced to take a side, it is easier to take the side that asks you to do nothing. That asks you to ignore, forget, dismiss, minimise, stay silent.
And there are rewards for your silence. You avoid being excluded, isolated, attacked. You get to stay in the fold. Be part of the group or the pack. It is tempting to look the other way.
When you watch another be attacked, discredited, treated with contempt, it is easier to look away & let the perpetrator name & define the reality of the situation.
Even with everything we know today about the way trauma impacts a human, it is the credibility of the victim-survivor, not the perpetrator, that is repeatedly put into question.
It’s not uncommon for the victim-survivor be treated more harshly than the person who abused them. To hear comments like:
“Why are you being so difficult?”
“Why are you making things awkward for everyone?”
“Why can’t you just let it go?”
“Get over it!”
If someone is telling you something about another person, gossiping about someone, it can be seductive to go along & even enjoy the attention that may be given to you by this person. To feel part of the ‘crew’.
Consider approaching the person who is being talked about, get to know them or listen to what happened for them. Especially important if you consider this person a friend.
And if you are on the receiving end, it may be time to let people go & invest in new relationships. It is important to hold tightly to your reality when the tendency is to blame the victim x

Seaside Holistic Psychology

28/03/2026

21/03/2026

03/03/2026

21/12/2025

19/12/2025

11/10/2025

03/10/2025

06/09/2025

24/07/2025

21/06/2025

14/06/2025

10/06/2025

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