Melissa Morton Psychologist

13/11/2025

09/11/2025

Overapologizing, compulsive caretaking, and more.

31/10/2025

04/10/2025

Anxiety attack vs panic attack

30/09/2025

14/09/2025

I ♥️ this!

I am an over-thinker, my mind is rarely quiet.

And I have learned over the years to feed it before it’s hungry, lest it become ravenous and impulsive.

I’ve also learned that as with most healthy organs, it needs a fairly clean diet.

I whittled out the gossip, the click-bait news and the salacious stories the media was serving up daily and replaced it with a balance of beauty, hope, goodwill, fun and laughter - and plenty ‘real-talk’ of course, to remind it we are not alone.

But this clean diet I live on doesn’t shy away from life’s sadness or difficult topics, as you may think. Not at all.

In fact, I really go there … but with real information as my recipe, no dramatics, and always, always, adding a side dish of comfort and hope.

We were never meant to know all of life’s troubles all of the time, you see. No human condition was ever supposed to worry for ALL human conditions.

It is too much.

So we must filter, prioritise and arrange the world’s worry, in order that we don’t become overwhelmed with hopelessness, misery and fear, becoming no use to anyone, let alone ourselves.

We must allow ourselves more ‘actionable stress’, than ‘non-actionable stress’ (stress we cannot do anything towards). Studies clearly show that actionable stress is far less dangerous, simply because we can take steps to overcome the issues, we can do something towards it. And your nervous system needs to do something to feel safe and useful.

So, my tip for anyone with a never-quiet mind is to be picky with your diet.

Be choosy over what worry is for you to take on and what worry you truly cannot do a thing about.

And if your mind runs dark as well as loud, you need to seek calm, intentionally. Seek beauty, deliberately. Seek out the joy, hope and light. Use it to shine on the heartbreaking stuff and show hope amidst the chaos.

If we take it all in, every day, these little boats of ours will go under.

Fill your boat with what you can fit, and be safe.

The world looks like it is getting worse every day, I know. But I think it is because we can see so much more now.

So choose what you see. Save what you can. Keep seeking light.

And love. Always.

D x

📕: https://amzn.eu/d/iTHcBGT

06/09/2025

I started living at age 58.

Until then, I never thought life could be any different—without the fixed routine of housework, shopping, laundry, meals to prepare, and silences to endure.

Since childhood, I had been taught that the most important thing for a woman was to settle down, marry, have children, and stay with the family.
Do not contradict. Do not argue. Do not complain.
And if you dream—do it quietly, because dreaming is useless.

I married young and had two children.
I was a mother, a wife, a housewife. I washed, ironed, cooked, and ran all day.
My husband worked. He came home tired, ate in silence, and sat in front of the TV. Then he began to criticize: that I was boring, that he had left me alone too long, that I had nothing left to say.
He told me that with women like me, you don’t live—you survive.

And what did I do?
I kept quiet.
Because “family is sacred.”
Because “you have to be patient.”
Because my mother always said, “Be patient. You’re a wife, you’re a mother.”

And so I was patient.
I waited for the day my children would be grown, independent, and then—maybe—my life could begin.

Then one day, he left.
No scenes, no explanations.
He packed a suitcase and never came back.

I was alone.
And strangely, the first thing I felt wasn’t pain.
It was silence.
A true silence, deep and unfamiliar—yet in that silence, for the first time, I heard myself.

At first, I was lost.
I no longer knew who I was.
I couldn’t remember what I liked, or what I wanted.
I walked around my own house like a guest.
I asked myself when I had last laughed freely, or woken up without rushing to the kitchen to make coffee for everyone.

One morning, I woke up—and didn’t make the bed.
I brewed coffee just for myself and sat on the balcony.
I noticed the sunlight slipping between the curtains.
A tiny, simple thing… yet I watched in amazement.
Because it was mine.

Something shifted in me that day.

I enrolled in an English course—simply because I wanted to.
I learned to use my smartphone to buy a train ticket.
I took a trip. Alone. For the first time in my life.
Then I went even further.

I saw the sea in winter—the real sea, not the one in photos.
It smelled of salt, sharp and alive. That day, I understood freedom.
I took off my shoes, sat on the wet sand, and thought:
“Why did I wait so long?”

A neighbor asked me, “Are you out of your mind? Traveling alone at almost sixty?”
I smiled.
Because maybe, at last, I wasn’t lost anymore. I had found myself.

Now, I live alone.
Not because no one loves me—
But because, for the first time, I love myself.

I have no schedules, only choices.
I don’t spend my days in the kitchen anymore.
Instead, I spend hours in museums, on regional trains, in bookstores, or curled beneath a blanket with a novel I left untouched for years because “I never had time.”

Sometimes I look in the mirror. The wrinkles are still there.
But my eyes are different.
There is a new light in them.

Because at 58, I stopped surviving.
And I started to live.

~ The Two Pennies

~Shared As Received~

25/08/2025

NO MORE ‘NICE’ GIRL

Growth is uncomfortable.
Sometimes it makes you want to crawl out of your own skin.
Not because it’s wrong.
Because it’s new.
Foreign. Unfamiliar. Stretching.

For a long while now I have felt uneasy…
Like something within me is just “off”.
(Other than the obvious cancer and all the many layers that have gone with that)

I just haven’t been feeling like that ‘nice girl’ I grew up believing I had to be…
The one I was expected to be…

A little flickering warning saying- “THIS ‘not nice’ isn’t you… THIS version isn’t familiar...”

I was beginning to feel guilty...

But then suddenly yesterday morning the dots aligned and my mind lit up with “getting it” (as is happening with so many random life dots at the moment):

For the longest time I have been that “nice girl.”
Taught from the youngest age to put others first.
To stay quiet.
To keep the peace.
To smile.
To nod.
To serve.

And in my childhood home the instructions were clear-
God… then others… but self… ABSOLUTELY last.

And if self dared show up at all, it was branded as selfish.

But the thing I have come to realise, is this:

That version of “nice” came at a cost.
A high cost.

Nice girls burn out.
They wear masks so others feel comfortable.
They become people-pleasers, doormats, silenced to show-up regardless…

And sometimes… nice girls become unwell…

For the first time, I am questioning it all.
The expectations.
The labels.
The hard-wired sacrifice of self.

And I have realised that being a “nice girl” has kept me trapped- not free.

Part of this multi-faceted season of Unforesting is about reevaluating and reframing what “nice” truly means. What it SHOULD mean.

And here’s what’s becoming clearer each day:

The nice girl should be honouring the little girl within who deserves to live in a way that makes her soul sing and her body dance.

She should be allowing that little girl to do that.
Encouraging her to do that.
And being proud of her when she does...

Because that honouring doesn’t mean selfishness.
It doesn’t mean hurting others.

It means that before I raise my hand or say “yes”, I get to ask: AT. WHAT. COST?

And if that little girl whispers, “Please No. I need a break. This is too heavy. This will vacuum more than you have”- even if others can’t see it, then I will listen.
I will honour HER.

No more “nice” that silences truth to avoid conflict.
No more “nice” that sacrifices self at every turn.
No more “nice” at the expense of an inner child who wants to truly LIVE.

Instead- this is the season of the free girl.
The girl who speaks her heart.
The girl who communicates her needs.
The girl who sets her boundaries.

And the girl who knows that the kindest thing she can do- for herself AND others- is to live with so much more compassionate space for the things, the people, the places that really delight her soul.

Yes, this season will shake some relationships.
Some will fall away.
But what remains will be real. Rooted. True.

You see- “nice girls” keep DOING. They stay trapped in boxes built for them by others.

But free girls… They step out, breathe deeply, and finally learn that just BEING is enough.

And maybe, that’s the most radical reframe of all…

The bravest, kindest thing we can do is stop being “nice” at the expense of self…

And instead, grow into the freedom of becoming whole.

Because I am beginning to think that perhaps the freest girl, truly is the nicest of them all…

With love and learning to be free,
Naomi ❤️

19/08/2025

A good reminder for all of us over-thinkers 😉

07/08/2025