Mindful Comeback Therapy

Mindful Comeback Therapy Registered Psychotherapist
"Making Therapy the New Norm"

06/17/2026

Here’s why I ask that instead of saying “you don’t need to apologize.”

If I correct the apology, I’m telling them their instinct was wrong & their nervous system doesn’t experience that as helpful, it experiences it as one more person telling them they did something wrong. Even when my intention is the opposite.

Asking what it was like to do it does something different. It puts them back in their own experience instead of my opinion of their experience. It lets them notice the fear, the relief, the shakiness, whatever actually happened in their body, without me deciding what they should feel about it.

That’s the part that actually changes behavior. Not being told a boundary was good. Feeling, in your own body, that you survived setting it.

So if you’re working on this yourself, try asking yourself the same question after you set a hard boundary. Not “was that okay” but “what was that like for me.” That question keeps you in your own experience instead of immediately needing outside reassurance to know if you did it right.

The goal was never doing it perfectly. The goal was doing it and staying in your own body while you did.

Comment BOUNDARY if this helped💗

06/16/2026

As a therapist, I always know who’s never been in the room. It’s the people who say therapy is pointless with this weird confidence, like they ran the experiment and got the data back. You didn’t run the experiment. You just decided the outcome before you sat down.

I get it though. Sitting across from someone and being honest about what’s actually going on is terrifying. So it’s easier to call the whole thing fake than admit you’re scared to try it.

The bravest people I’ve worked with weren’t the ones who never needed help. They were the ones who showed up anyway.

06/16/2026

And I chose the snack. 😉

Not because I don’t care or because I’m avoiding, ecause my nervous system had been in overdrive all day and something in me knew before my brain caught up that I needed to stop.

This is what we call a bottom up response. Your body pulls you toward regulation before your mind gives you permission.

Childhood snacks are not random. They are sensory anchors. The taste, the texture, the smell, they signal safety to your nervous system. Your body remembers being small, being fed, being okay.

So no. I did not answer the emails first.

I sat with my snack. I let my jaw unclench. I let my shoulders drop. I let myself be a person for five minutes before I went back to being a professional.

The emails were still there after. They always are.

But I was more regulated when I got to them & regulated people make better decisions, write better responses, and hold more capacity for others.

This is not laziness or a character flaw. This is a nervous system that knew what it needed and a version of me that finally listened.

What does your nervous system reach for when the world gets too loud?

06/15/2026

This is one of the most painful things a person can carry & almost everyone who says it learned both messages in the same home.

Too much when they had needs. Not enough when they wanted love.
Too emotional when they cried. Not interesting enough to be asked about their day.
Too sensitive when something hurt them. Not important enough for someone to change the behavior that caused the hurt.

These two beliefs seem like they should cancel each other out, but they do not, they coexist & they create a person who is constantly monitoring themselves in every interaction, trying to find the exact right amount of themselves to show so that people stay.

Not too much that they overwhelm someone. Not too little that they get overlooked. A very specific window of acceptable selfhood that they learned to calculate in real time based on what the other person seems to need.

And it is exhausting. Because they are never just being. They are always performing a version of themselves that is palatable, shrinking here, expanding there, reading the room before they decide how much of their personality is safe to bring.

What I see in my therapy space is someone who has never had the experience of being fully themselves and having someone stay. Not the edited version or the easy version or the version that laughs at the right moments and does not take up too much space. The whole version. Messy and intense and quiet and loud and all of it at once.

The work is not about finding the right balance. It’s about unlearning the idea that you need to be a certain size to be loved.

You were never too much. You were just around people who did not have the capacity for what you were offering & you were never not enough. You were just in environments that made you believe your full self was not worth showing up for.

Both of those are lies your nervous system memorized & it is time to stop building your life around them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If this resonated with you let me know in the comments 💗

06/13/2026

An emotionally neglected child doesn’t usually sound dramatic or obviously distressed.

They often sound quiet, self minimizing, and overly reasonable.

They might sound like:
“I’m fine. It’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t really need anything.”
“I don’t want to bother anyone.”
“Other people had it worse.”
“I should be grateful.”

They explain away their own feelings before anyone else can. They speak logically about painful experiences, without emotion attached, because feeling never felt safe or useful.

They often apologize for having needs.
They ask questions instead of answering them.
They laugh when talking about things that hurt.
They struggle to describe how they feel and default to “I don’t know.”

You might hear them focus on others constantly worrying about being too much reading the room anticipating reactions shrinking their emotional footprint.

An emotionally neglected child learns early that connection comes from being easy, not expressive.

So they become mature too fast, independent too early, and disconnected from their own inner world.

As adults, they often sound unsure of themselves even when they are capable.

They ask for permission.
They doubt their reactions.
They minimize pain that deserves care.
It’s not that they don’t feel deeply.
It’s that no one taught them their feelings were allowed to take up space.

If you felt this way share how you show up for the world now or just comment REALITY and let’s support each other

06/13/2026

People think it’s timing.

“I just met the right person.” “We weren’t trying and it happened.” “Things finally fell into place.”

But here’s what’s actually going on underneath that.

Your nervous system has one job i.e to keep you alive & when it’s been running on threat for years, it makes two very specific decisions without asking you:

It will not let you choose a safe partner.

And it will not prioritize creating life.

Securely attached people feel boring to a dysregulated nervous system. No chase, no intensity, no push and pull. Your body doesn’t read that as love, it reads it as unfamiliar. So you keep choosing the person who keeps you guessing, because at least that feeling you know.

And cortisol, the stress hormone your body floods with when it thinks danger is near, directly suppresses the hormones you need to conceive. Your body is not being difficult. Its literally doing exactly what it was designed to do. It will not grow a baby in a war zone.

Therapy changes both of these things.

Not because it makes you a better picker. But because it makes safety feel safe again. Your window of tolerance expands. Your baseline shifts. The person who is actually consistent, actually present, actually available starts to feel like something you can move toward instead of something that makes you want to run.

And your body? It finally gets the signal that the threat has passed.

The relationship and the baby were never the reward for doing the work.

They were just what became possible once your nervous system stopped surviving and started living.

Have you experienced this in your life? Lemme know in the comments.

06/12/2026

Who else can relate?

06/11/2026

Expressing a feeling is not an attack. But when someone hears “I felt hurt,” their nervous system can register it as a threat and threat responses don’t leave much room for empathy.

This is why emotionally safe conversations require a regulated nervous system first. When someone is in fight or flight, they literally cannot access the part of the brain responsible for listening, reflection, or repair.

Here’s what’s actually happening when sharing a feeling turns into a fight.

Your words land as criticism. Their brain detects threat. The prefrontal cortex goes offline & now you’re not talking to your partner anymore, you’re talking to their defense system.

This is called emotional flooding & it’s one of the strongest predictors of relationship breakdown.

Here’s what you can do:

→ Time it. Don’t bring up hard feelings when either of you is already stressed or tired.
→ Start with “I” not “you.” “I felt dismissed” lands differently than “you never listen.”
→ Name what you need first. “I just need to feel heard right now, I’m not looking for solutions.”
→ Take breaks on purpose. If it’s escalating, a 20 minute pause resets the nervous system enough to actually hear each other.

The goal isn’t a perfect conversation. It’s one where both people feel safe enough to stay in it.

That’s a skill & skills can be learned.

Lemme know t in the comments if this was helpful by commenting ‘feelings’

06/10/2026

When the client says “I think I’m done with therapy” and I know they’re not even close. I sit there, calm, nodding & asking what’s making them feel ready.

And internally I am walking in slow circles in a parking lot at 11pm.

Because I can see it. I can see the pattern that’s about to repeat. I can see the relationship they’re about to walk into. I can see the version of them that’s six months away if they just stay a little longer.

But it’s not my call.

That’s the part nobody tells you about this job. I hold the map but they drive & sometimes they stop right before the best part of the road.

So I say: “I think that’s worth exploring. What does done feel like for you?”

And I mean it. Because autonomy is the work too.

But the parking lot pacing is also real.

To anyone who’s ever left therapy too soon, your therapist wasn’t relieved. They were rooting for the version of you that almost showed up.

If you ever stopped therapy what was your reason? Would love to know it in the comments.

06/10/2026

Honestly? Some weeks I’m terrible at the basics.

I’ll sit with four clients back to back, help them understand why their body is stuck in survival mode, explain the cost of running on empty and then look up and realize I haven’t eaten since 10am.

Not because I don’t know better.

Because knowing better doesn’t automatically make you do better.

That’s the gap nobody talks about. The space between having the insight and actually changing the behavior & I live in that gap too. (I am himan and not perfect)

Here’s what I know for sure though:

Your body doesn’t wait for a convenient moment to start keeping score.

Skipping meals → nervous system reads threat.
Never pausing → nervous system reads threat.
Pushing through on empty → nervous system reads threat.

And then you wonder why you’re snapping at people you love. Why you’re exhausted but can’t sleep. Why you feel everything at once or completely nothing.

Babe you’re running on a deficit.

The fruit isn’t the point.

The point is you’re allowed to stop. Before everything is done, before you’ve earned it, before you hit a wall.

Even 10 minutes is enough to remind your body it’s not under attack.

If you want to change comment ‘break’ and let’s do this together.

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Durham, ON

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Monday 10am - 8pm
Tuesday 10am - 8pm
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+12892044945

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