Embody Being - Health Psychology & Somatic Psychotherapy

26/12/2025

25/12/2025

I love this so much!

24/12/2025

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the "soul friend."
In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home.
The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's lives. With your anam cara you awaken the eternal. ~John O'Donohue

*Check the comments for details on the book and painting

17/12/2025

I don’t dread holidays because I don’t like them.
I dread them because they’ve become predictable in the worst way.

Even after I left the relationship, every school holiday and every “special” time has carried the same weight. Before it even arrives, my body knows. I don’t step into these moments relaxed… I step in braced. Not because of the kids, but because experience has taught me what often follows.

This is something called post-separation abuse — a form of coercive control that continues after a relationship ends. It often escalates around milestones, holidays, and times that matter, because disruption is the point. It’s not about conflict. It’s about control.

From the outside, it can look minor or “manageable.”
From the inside, it means anticipating messages, boundary pushing, emotional manipulation, or escalation, right when you’re trying to create safety and joy for your children. It means being ready, once again, to advocate and protect them when there are genuine safety concerns.

What doesn’t get talked about enough is the impact on the nervous system.

I’m doing the work — therapy, awareness, regulation tools, healing practices. But a nervous system cannot fully settle while it’s being repeatedly re-triggered by the same person, year after year. Healing requires safety, not just coping strategies.

You cannot regulate your way out of an ongoing threat.

You cannot “stay calm” your way through coercive control.

And telling survivors to “just ignore it” misunderstands trauma entirely.

There is also grief in this, grief for the holidays I hoped my children would have, and for the belief that separation would automatically bring peace. Instead, it has required constant vigilance.

One of the hardest truths I’ve had to accept is this:
When someone is more invested in punishing their ex than protecting their children, shared parenting becomes a battleground rather than a partnership.

So if I seem anxious, guarded, or overwhelmed during holidays, this is why.

It’s not negativity.

It’s not bitterness.

It’s a nervous system shaped by years of ongoing psychological and post-separation abuse… still standing, still protecting, still trying to create moments of warmth in the middle of something that never truly stopped.

This isn’t about the past. It’s about what continues in the present.

17/12/2025

Maturing is coming to the honest realization that none of us is a “ready-made” partner. We all have triggers, flaws, unlearning to do, and growth ahead of us. Love isn’t about finding someone perfect or easy—it’s about finding someone intentional. Someone who is willing to learn you, communicate with you, and stay curious about who you are becoming.

Real commitment shows up in patience, in difficult conversations, and in the daily decision to grow together instead of giving up. It’s about choosing understanding over ego, progress over pride, and partnership over perfection.

When two people are committed to growth, love stops being a struggle and becomes a shared journey. And that, dear ones, is where real maturity lives.

10/12/2025

Someone told me yesterday that when they get nervous and their heart starts racing, they call it their “Inner Applause”—because instead of assuming something is wrong, they imagine their body is cheering them on. And honestly, that might be one of the most precious narrative shifts I’ve ever heard.

Think about how differently we would approach life if we treated our anxiety not as a warning to retreat, but as a signal that something meaningful is happening. Butterflies wouldn’t mean fear—they’d mean anticipation. A pounding heartbeat wouldn’t mean panic—it would mean preparation. The trembling hands, the shaky voice, the fluttering chest—maybe those aren’t symptoms of weakness at all. Maybe they’re the body recognizing a moment that matters before the mind fully catches up.

Every dream comes with a doorway, and often, the threshold feels uncomfortable. We’ve been conditioned to believe nerves are a red flag, when sometimes they are a green light. The body doesn’t always know the difference between excitement and fear. The sensations are nearly identical—the story we attach to them is what changes everything.

Calling it “Inner Applause” is like having your own built-in cheering section. It’s your heartbeat saying, “You’ve waited for this. You care about this. You’re stepping into growth.” It’s a reminder that the moments that make us shake are also the ones that shape us.

So the next time your heart races, try hearing it as a crowd rising to its feet—not to warn you away from the stage, but to welcome you onto it. Because sometimes, the body doesn’t say “stop.” Sometimes, it says “go.”
“Andy Burg”

09/12/2025

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