Dr Rachel M Allan

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Dr Rachel M Allan

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From crisis to turning point❤️‍🩹
Chartered Counselling Psychologist🧠
EMDR Accredited Practitioner💡
ONLINE THERAPY 🛋️
https://www.rachelallanconsultancy.com/contact/
FREE GUIDE: https://go.rachelallanconsultancy.com/reallygoingon

18/03/2026

Have you ever noticed how a problem that felt impossible to think through and solve the night before feels clearer in the morning? Or after you’ve been for a walk, taken a break, or talked it through with someone who isn’t tied up in it?

When we’re in the middle of a hard moment, feeling flooded and overwhelmed, the part of our brain responsible for clear thinking, perspective, and problem-solving is offline. The threat system has taken over, and its only job is to protect you, not to help you think.

So when you pause, sleep, walk, breathe, or feel even briefly held by someone safe, your nervous system begins to settle. And when it settles, your prefrontal cortex comes back online. Suddenly you can see options. Suddenly there’s space.

This is why the advice to “just think it through” so often fails people who have lived with longer-term stress or trauma. It’s not that you’re not trying, or that if you just think about it for long enough the answer will appear. It’s that you’ve been attempting to solve from inside a survival response. And the brain in survival mode was never built for solving, it was built for getting through.

I use this mantra in my own life: Soothe before you solve.

If this resonates, save it for the moment you need it most. And if someone in your life is stuck in a loop right now, send it to them. Sometimes the most useful thing we can do for someone is show them that what’s happening inside them makes complete sense.

💬 What’s your version of this? What helps your nervous system settle before you try to solve?

Want to understand the patterns driving your pain? Comment GUIDE below and I’ll send you my free resource — “What’s Really Going On? A Psychologist’s Guide to the Patterns Behind Your Pain”

15/03/2026

Of all the people I sit alongside in therapy, the mothers leave the deepest impression on me. That includes the women who fought for motherhood and live with lifelong grief for a child they waited for but never met.

I have witnessed mothers walk into the hardest corners of human life: grief, fear, responsibility, and bear the weight of knowing this is for life, no matter what. I have seen mothers advocate, fight, and keep going, when every part of them is ready to crumble and collapse. Mothers encountering things that are painful, complex, and brutally unfair, and still finding a way to keep moving forward. Behind the tidy word mother sits some of the most unfiltered and uncompromising human experience there is.

Motherhood also asks something unexpected of women. Alongside caring for our children, it demands we tend to younger parts of ourselves too, whether we realise that or not. I remind my clients of that a lot. Don’t forget that other child in your care.

When I think about the woman I was when I first became a mother (that’s her in the photo!), I feel compassion for her. I wish I could sit beside her and tell her she has more strength, resilience and capacity than she can even imagine. That she can look to the women around her (not least those coming through the clinic door) who are fierce, intelligent, resourceful, gentle, and full of humour, and learn from the best.

To the women on the relentless journey of motherhood, thank you. I know this is not an easy day, for all kinds of reasons.

Go gently.

Remember you are the best of us.

05/03/2026

Have you ever had the experience of your mind and body shooting back to a moment in the past and it feels like you are living it all over again?

Here’s why that happens.

In moments of fear and distress, we don’t always process new information in the normal way. That means it then shows up and intrudes on our experience time and time again.

When we treat that, the memory doesn’t disappear. But it does usually stop crashing in on you when you least expect it.

Share this with someone who needs to understand this.

Follow for more insight into trauma, recovery, and breaking free from the lifelong patterns holding you back.

25/02/2026

Airson suidh gu comhfhurtail agus feuch eacarsaich anail ‘s a’ Ghàidhlig… 🧘🏼‍♀️

Inspired by .oshea, a breathing exercise in Gaelic for Seachdain na Gàidhlig

Feuch fhèin e! | Give it a try!

20/02/2026

There is a particular moment I see often in my work, and it does not occur when something difficult is happening. It arrives afterwards.

During the event itself, most people become very clear-headed. They organise, they decide, they absorb more than they thought they could absorb. They say the necessary things to others and, if required, they hold everyone else together. This is the mind prioritising survival of ordinary life.

The confusion begins when life settles and you expect relief. Outwardly, relief has happened. The calendar looks normal again. You are back at your desk, back in conversations, back being the person others rely on. Yet internally there is a quiet but persistent sense of vigilance, as if something has not fully stood down. Concentration is thinner. Small demands feel more weighty. You find yourself preparing for bad news you have no evidence is coming. It is difficult to justify this to anyone, including yourself, because you are coping and you are competent.

People in this position often conclude they should simply push on until their mind catches up. In practice, the opposite tends to occur. The mind does not forget what it never had the chance to properly register. It continues to scan, to anticipate, to rehearse.

Therapy at this stage is not an act of crisis management. It is the place where an experience finally gets processed at a human pace rather than a necessary one. When that happens, people usually describe a very specific change: ordinary days stop feeling like something they have to brace for.

If you recognised yourself while reading this, you have reached a very understandable point in the aftermath of something significant. You do not need to wait for a collapse to justify speaking to a psychologist. You are welcome to get in touch. There is a way forward, and we would love to hear from you.

18/02/2026

Meanwhile, you may…
1. Feel sick with fear when your boss asks for a “quick word” because you assume you have done something wrong and will be shamed.

2 Question every decision you make: food, clothes, plans, where you live, because you don’t trust your own internal ability to judge what you want.

3. Reach for anything that stops that familiar “bad feeling” you can’t quite name. Food, alcohol, work, spending — because that is how you have learned to cope with difficult feelings (and it has probably saved you, to a point).

4. Relentlessly compare yourself to others and conclude that other people’s lives and successes are another sign of your failure and worthlessness.

5. Stay in relationships/workplaces/friendships/communities that keep you small or stuck, because you tell yourself this is all you are worth.

6. Tolerate disrespect, put up and shut up when others steamroller your boundaries because who are you to assert what you really want or need?

7. And, worst of all, dismiss your right to name your own suffering, your own struggles and your deserving of help to break free from lifelong patterns that keep you stuck.

I hear this all the time. It wasn’t that bad. Other people had it worse. I have had a nice life. That can all be true, and still you struggle with shame, guilt, fear and feeling stuck.

Trauma is not always a big and dramatic event. Relational trauma can take place in small, repeated moments where no harm was intended. It can be in lack of safety, in a relational tone that was judgemental, critical, or unforgiving. It can be in witnessing the harsh judgement of others. It can be transmitted through generations as attitudes, through culture, and through behaviours that go unchallenged.

So the next time you dismiss your own suffering, remember there are many roots to these moments where you question yourself, compare, fear the worst, or feel shame wash over you yet again.

The good news is you can be the one to break the pattern.

⭐ Comment GUIDE to get my FREE GUIDE What’s Really Going On? A Psychologists’s Guide to the Patterns Behind Your Pain ⭐

FOLLOW FOR MORE

05/02/2026

Self-compassion is widely recommended in psychology.

Yet for many people, it feels inaccessible or even distressing.

When someone holds a strongly binary moral identity, self-criticism can function as a way of maintaining safety, belonging, and control. Shame tends to create global negative identity beliefs, while guilt usually remains linked to behaviour. When these become fused, compassion toward the self can feel morally unsafe.

This is particularly relevant in individuals shaped by rigid moral or cultural frameworks where emotional expression, accountability, or personal responsibility are tightly regulated.

Therapeutic work often involves carefully expanding identity beyond binary categories, allowing accountability and self-respect to coexist with compassion.

Self-criticism rarely appears without history, meaning, or function. When these are understood, change becomes more possible and more stable.

If you recognise yourself here, you are not alone in this experience.

Comment GUIDE for my free guide “What’s Really Going On?” A Psychologist’s Guide to the Patterns Behind Your Pain.

And if you are ready to start your therapy journey, get in touch via the link in bio to enquire about therapy with a Counselling Psychologist in my practice. We would love to hear from you.

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Alloa

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http://www.rachelallanconsultancy.com/

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