Embody Being - Health Psychology & Somatic Psychotherapy

11/02/2026

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUajIh3CA9u/?igsh=cm1mYjV5bzlvcHRu

08/02/2026

Overfunctioning often moves quietly within relationships because it can resemble care.

On the surface, it looks like patience. Loyalty. Reliability. Being the steady presence when things feel uncertain. It can appear as emotional strength — the one who absorbs tension, initiates repair, and keeps the connection intact.

Yet over time, a different pattern can take shape.

The relationship begins to organize itself around one person’s effort. One person tracks feelings, translates silence, softens conflict, and sustains forward movement. The other person’s participation becomes less required, not always by intent, but by the system that has formed.

In these dynamics, emotional labor can expand while emotional reciprocity narrows.

Intimacy tends to grow where responsibility is shared — where both people engage discomfort, reflection, and change. When one partner consistently carries the emotional weight, closeness can slowly give way to fatigue, distance, and quiet loneliness.

Overfunctioning, then, is less about love and more about imbalance — a structure where devotion replaces mutuality.

Educational content only and does not establish a therapy relationship.

01/02/2026

01/02/2026

wabi-sabi & kintsugi 🫂🥂🪞🪽🫶✨

03/01/2026

1. “When someone’s inner narrative is built on unworthiness, shaming that person doesn’t create change; it cements their collapse.”

This is a nervous system truth, not a moral opinion.

When someone already believes they are defective, lazy, or broken, shame does not motivate. It confirms the story they are already living inside.

The psyche doesn’t hear criticism as guidance.
It hears it as evidence. Instead of creating movement, shame pushes the system deeper into freeze, collapse, or self-sabotage.

2. Continued in the comments.

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.