http://www.activemindshypnotherapy.com/

Active Minds Coaching, West Kirby (2026)

08/09/2026

There was a stretch of time that was genuinely hard for me. I was not OK. But to everyone else I seemed OK, because I’ve always been good at that bit, looking fine on the outside while something totally different is going on underneath. Some days I didn’t even have the words for what I was feeling. I just knew I needed to move. So I’d walk my dog past this tree, and something about how steady it was, how it just kept standing there, kept co ming back every year, settled something in me. It didn’t ask anything of me. It was just there.

I really love this tree. It gave me hope. Still does honestly.

It’s still here. Still doing its thing, completely unbothered by whatever’s going on in my life. Makes me wonder how many other people have walked past this very tree feeling lost and it did the same for them.

If you’re someone who seems fine but isn’t always fine, I see you. Anyone else have a spot like this? A place that held you when things were hard? Would love to hear, share a photo if you’ve got one.

04/09/2026

I asked a straightforward question. What came back wasn’t an answer, it was a wall.

I was chatting to a lady recently, properly into what she was saying, my brain was firing off loads of sparks, that’s when the questions come. So I asked one, then another. Then BOOM, her face changed so fast and the conversation just shut down.

Old me would’ve gone home and replayed it over and over, thinking that I’d somehow screwed up. I don’t do that anymore though. Doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, because it wasn’t about me anyway.

This is the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012). When autistic and non-autistic people misunderstand each other, it’s a mismatch, goes both ways. Two different processing styles colliding, neither one’s wrong. Autistic people paired with other autistic people actually report better rapport than mixed pairs do.

Whatever happened in her in that moment wasn’t a judgement on me. Maybe we all just want to be seen the way we see ourselves, and anything else is confusing.

Often we’re translating across a gap most people don’t even know is there.

02/09/2026

I bought the school uniforms over a week ago. The bags have been sat on the floor since!

Tonight I had my teens shouting “Mummmmm” “I haven’t got this,” “where’s that,” “I need this now,” and I’m just stood there, rabbit in the headlights.

It’s what I’d call the last 20%, and it’s the bit I get clients stuck on all the time. We’re 80%ers. We get 80% of the task done, then the last 20% just doesn’t happen.

The last 20% is that final, boring step.
With the uniforms: buying them was the 80%. Done. One shop, one trip, and I was proud of myself for getting it sorted on time. Unpacking the bag and putting everything away was the last 20%. Nothing was making me do it. So it sat on the floor for a week until my teens needed it all at once tonight.

Doesn’t matter how organised you are or how hard you worked that day. If the task has no natural cue, it doesn’t happen on its own.

Dr Russell Barkley, one of the biggest names in ADHD research, found that it’s more of a performance gap than a knowledge gap. You can know exactly what you’re meant to do and still not be able to do it in the moment. He also found the fix isn’t more willpower or more reminders floating round your head, it’s putting the cue somewhere in your actual environment, right where you need it. There’s a study backing this too, adults with ADHD are less able to use environmental cues to guide their behaviour compared to people without ADHD. So the bag sat there for a week not because I forgot. It never had a cue in the first place.

This is the bit I’d get a client to look at. Not “unpack the bag” as an instruction, but the question underneath it: what would make this impossible to miss? Where could it sit so you trip over it instead of forgetting it? The answer’s different for everyone, that’s the work.

I’m an ADHD person. I know this process inside out. And I still didn’t ask myself the question. That’s the point really, knowing it doesn’t put you above it. I need these reminders as much as anyone I coach 🤍

30/08/2026

Seventeen and a half years ago I had my first baby. Nobody in that hospital room knew I was autistic and ADHD. Neither did I.

What followed was postnatal depression and OCD that I hid from everyone, because I didn’t have a name for what was happening to me.

It took until my own daughter’s ADHD diagnosis, years later, for me to look at myself properly and understand what I’d actually been carrying that whole time.

This isn’t just my story. Autistic and ADHD parents face around a 60% risk of postnatal depression, against a general average closer to 12% (Maternal Mental Health Alliance, 2025–26). Most of it goes uncaught, because most of us are still undiagnosed at that point — around 75% of ADHD women, and 80% of autistic women, are misdiagnosed or missed entirely (National Autistic Society; UK studies on late diagnosis in women, 2022–2026).

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a system that wasn’t built to see us.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to: how do we create spaces where people feel safe enough to sit in their vulnerability, and find the courage to say the thing out loud for the first time?

That’s the work I do now. If this speaks to you, or to someone you know, tell me in the comments🤍

29/08/2026

What they say is: “Can you help me understand my brain?” And I do. I share frameworks, language. It’s helpful, but given enough of a pause, something else surfaces. Just the wish for someone to be there.

You can be self aware and still be starving for intimacy, not romantic, just open, honest presence with someone else, no agenda or performance.

I was once coached myself, and realised just how valuable it was to be in a real, intimate space. A place my brain could sigh. Release.

If this speaks to you, you already know what it’s pointing to. That’s usually where coaching starts.

23/08/2026

My daughter struggled with her mental health. I did what I always do, rushed into the fire to try to put it out. I’ve lived my whole life thinking it’s my responsibility to keep the peace by fixing everything.

As a result, my own health deteriorated because all I could think about was helping her. It became all my brain could focus on.

I watched my life fall apart:
👉I couldn’t work a job I’d been doing for years
👉I put the needs of my family aside
👉I used words like “I can’t do this anymore” out loud in front of her, when really I was so tired from lack of sleep and chronic stress.

I understand now why my teen couldn’t tell me things when I was falling apart myself. She was protecting me. There is nothing like a teen’s mental health crisis to really bring home your own.

If you find yourself here right now, as a parent watching your child struggle, I want to say something to you:
🤍This is one of the most distressing things you will go through
🤍Nothing prepares you for it
🤍There is no rule book that gets you back to your old life
🤍You do not have to hold it all together
🤍It is absolutely ok to talk to someone about this

I delayed seeking help because I felt so ashamed. I thought I’d failed my daughter, that everyone else seemed to have it all together, their kids were thriving. I know now this was my anxiety, an intrusive thought that kept me stuck. It isn’t true.

The truth is, when you don’t know you’re neurodivergent, the systems you’re navigating can make you feel like you’re the problem. I want to state ADHD is real and sometimes it can hurt.

I want you to know this: you are not a bad parent, and it is absolutely ok for you to not have all the answers. In fact, the reality is no one has the answers.
I’m Khalie, an AuDHD coach. I work with ADHD/AuDHD people of all ages, including parents navigating this exact kind of overwhelm. If any of this resonates, come find me — link in bio.

22/08/2026

Arrow pointed straight at me. Harmless, it’s a statue, but it’s not far off how some family gatherings feel.

A client told me they were dreading a family trip. They really wanted to go and loved their family, but one relationship always left them exhausted. Their go to was to avoid it and not go at all.

Turns out that’s more common than people admit. YouGov surveyed nearly 2,000 Brits this year and found over a third don’t think of their own family as close, and almost 4 in 10 wish it was.

The question my client asked me was this: how do I get through this without losing myself?

So what’s the answer? You can’t control the room. You can’t control the person who takes it over or drains it. What small thing can you control so their behaviour stops costing you your whole week afterwards?

They said:
💚 A five minute reset before you walk in 💚 Deciding in advance how long you’re staying 💚 Deciding what you’re not going to engage with

Something I keep noticing: the people I work with don’t have less conflict than anyone else. They’ve just got better at not absorbing it.

If you’ve got something like this coming up, maybe it’s worth asking yourself, what’s the one boundary that’d actually make it easier?

19/08/2026

We all know that having boundaries can mean healthier relationships. And it’s not true that you can’t say no. You say no all the time to things that don’t matter. It’s the NO that might cost you the relationship you go quiet on.

Somewhere along the way you created a pattern: please people and you stay in the group. Say what you actually think and you risk getting pushed out of it.

Social exclusion activates the same brain regions involved in physical pain. Your nervous system genuinely cannot tell the difference between losing a friendship and getting hurt!

For a lot of my younger and AuDHD clients, this often shows up as a fear of social exclusion. Some call this RSD, rejection sensitive dysphoria: not an official diagnosis, but if you’re neurodivergent you may recognise it instantly.

Here’s the hopeful part. That intensity isn’t fixed. It’s neuroplasticity at work, the same wiring that made rejection feel unbearable can be gradually reshaped. It’s not always about assertiveness. This can be more about avoidance, your brain has flagged it as an actual threat to survival!

“Just set better boundaries” is such useless advice. You’re asking someone to override a threat response with logic, in real time, while your body is telling you something entirely different.

What actually works is slower, and it starts in the body, not the head 👇
💚 Notice the physical signal first, tight chest, speeding speech, the urge to fill silence
💚 Pause before responding, take a breath and then another
💚 Let the awkward feeling sit longer than feels natural
💚 State the boundary in as few words as possible
💚 Resist the urge to check in afterwards, especially when the doubt creeps in
💚 Treat every uncomfortable “no” as a repetition, not a judgement on the relationship

If a friendship doesn’t survive that, it probably wasn’t rejection, it just means they weren’t ready to sit in that same discomfort themselves. ✨

18/08/2026

You can be walking through the nicest street in the world and still be somewhere else entirely.
“I know overthinking is making me anxious. I just don’t know how to stop.”

I hear some version of that most weeks. Overthinking isn’t just unpleasant, it’s building something. Every time you replay the same worry, the same “what if,” you’re strengthening the neural pathway underneath it. Neurons that fire together wire together — Hebb’s Law.

Your brain doesn’t hugely distinguish between a rehearsed threat and a real one. So the more you ruminate, the more engrained that anxious loop gets.
Which is also why “just stop thinking about it” has never worked for anyone, ever. It is not a willpower issue.

What tends to help more 👇
💚 Naming the pattern out loud, the second it shows up, without turning it into another thing to judge yourself for
💚 Paying attention to the body rather than just the thoughts, anxiety usually turns up there first, before you’ve even clocked the worry consciously
💚 Actual nervous system regulation; breathwork, progressive relaxation, something your body connects with. Everyone is different.
💚 Slowly building some tolerance for not knowing, because a lot of overthinking is really just a way of trying to control something that was never yours to control in the first place.

The same plasticity that built the anxious pathway can build a new one. It just takes repetition. I’m Khalie, AuDHD coach and clinical hypnotherapist, fascinated by neuroplasticity and the brain’s capacity to keep changing, at any age.

13/08/2026

I’m Gen X. I had all the freedom in the world. And I was still so lonely.

Bike rides till dark. My mum’s kiss in the morning, not seeing me again till dinner. No one watching. And still, as a teenager, I struggled to connect.

Yesterday I sat on a beach and watched the eclipse with my daughter. I told her how beautiful she is. How something this old, this cosmic, was happening right now, just for this moment. She probably won’t see another one for years.

It got me thinking about the last time I watched one.

I was 22. Sat on a beach with my brother. Just finished uni. Struggling with disordered eating. No idea where my life was going. Lonely.

Back then, support meant a GP appointment. A relaxation class. Some medication. That was it. Real talking therapy on the NHS didn’t exist until 2008. Over a decade after that beach.

27 years later, I’m 49. A mum of three. Diagnosed with ADHD. On the pathway to an autism diagnosis. Built a career I never studied for, then built my own thing. I work with brilliant people. I travel. I do work I love. There’s a lightness now that just wasn’t there at 22.

I think every generation carries something heavy at that age. It just has a different shape now. FOMO. A very public stage.

I used to think lightness came from having it all figured out. Now I think I was just so busy being certain, I forgot how to be curious.

If you’re carrying something heavy right now, at any age, it doesn’t have to still be there next time the sky does this again.

What do you think 🖤

Active Minds Coaching

08/09/2026

04/09/2026

02/09/2026

30/08/2026

29/08/2026

23/08/2026

22/08/2026

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13/08/2026

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