A Change of Mind

31/07/2026

Why anxiety therapy does not always work, and four great questions to ask yourself to begin breaking the cycle

Have you had counselling or CBT for anxiety, kind of understood how the anxiety sustains itself and works, and yet found that the anxiety itself did not really change?
This is something I hear quite often. Anxiety is one of the most common complaints people seek me out to help with.

People often describe negative self-talk, catastrophising or avoiding things. They will often know that their thoughts are irrational or that their behaviours do not truly serve them. Some clients can trace their problems back to childhood. They may feel the anxiety clearly in the body, or describe it as a background sense of uncertainty or even dread.

All of this can be useful. But understanding anxiety is not always the same as changing it.
The difficulty is that anxiety rarely exists only at the level of thought. It can become woven into the way a person experiences themselves and the world, and on some level it is often a felt sense in the body. The nervous system remains on alert, while the mind continually searches for what might go wrong. Certain feelings become difficult to tolerate.

Avoidance is a common attempted solution which, unfortunately, gradually narrows life. Confidence declines, and eventually the person may no longer trust their own ability to cope. In this way, anxiety can become a downward spiral.

Someone may know intellectually that they are safe while their whole system continues to prepare for danger. This is utterly confusing until they learn that the rational mind and the nervous system can function as two relatively independent systems, often with different agendas.

This is why I often work with anxiety on several different levels.
There is the thinking itself. Some thoughts need to be questioned, while others need to be interrupted rather than endlessly analysed. Anxiety has a way of turning thought into a form of compulsive problem-solving, as though one more hour of thinking might finally produce complete certainty.

There are also the emotions beneath the thinking. Anxiety can keep us in the head because being in the head feels safer than meeting fear, grief, anger, shame or helplessness directly. Learning to experience emotion without either becoming overwhelmed by it or immediately trying to get rid of it can be an important part of recovery. But there is an art to this. It is not simply a question of endlessly diving into emotion.

Then there is identity.

Many people with chronic anxiety have gradually come to see themselves as fragile, unsafe, incapable or fundamentally less able to cope than other people. Treatment therefore needs to involve more than calming down. It may also involve rebuilding self-trust, self-esteem and a sense of personal strength. In fact, a damaged sense of identity, driven by limiting beliefs, is often one of the main drivers of the anxiety itself.

The body matters too. A nervous system that has been rehearsing danger for years does not simply relax because it has been given a convincing explanation. It needs repeated experiences of becoming activated and then discovering that nothing catastrophic follows. This is where new learning begins to take place. In recent years, neuroscience has contributed a great deal to our understanding of how these patterns can be changed and how the nervous system can learn greater safety.

The same is true of avoidance and reassurance. They can bring relief in the moment, but they often strengthen anxiety over time. Every time we escape a situation, check again, seek reassurance or wait until we feel completely safe, the brain receives the message that danger was present and that the protective behaviour saved us.

A useful exercise is to pause when anxiety appears and ask four questions:

What is my mind predicting right now?

What am I feeling in my body?

What am I doing to try to make myself safe?

What would I do differently if I trusted that I could cope with the discomfort?

The final question is usually the most important. As simple as these questions are, they may take several minutes to answer honestly. That process itself can begin to interrupt the anxiety pattern.

The answer does not need to be dramatic or earth shattering. It might mean waiting a little longer before seeking reassurance, staying in a situation for another few minutes, sending the email without checking it repeatedly, or allowing a feeling to be present without immediately trying to suppress it.

These small moments matter because they begin to create a different kind of evidence.
The first piece of evidence may simply be that, once you connect with yourself more fully, the anxiety either reveals itself more clearly or, in many cases, begins to settle. We learn to allow emotions to move through us, and we begin to discover that we can deal with the uncertainty of life without needing to control everything or feel completely safe first.

This is the kind of work that may be needed when counselling has brought insight, or CBT has helped with certain thoughts, but the deeper pattern remains.

Anxiety can be complex. Effective treatment often needs to be equally comprehensive, working with thought, emotion, the body, behaviour, identity and the deeper expectations through which a person has learned to experience life.

My approach to helping people with anxiety is drawn from many different modalities, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, hypnotherapy, transformational coaching, Focusing, neuroscience-informed approaches and trauma-informed psychotherapy.

Contact me to discover more: [email protected], or send me a direct message.

10/06/2026

What You Focus On Changes how you Feel

One of the biggest changes we can make in our emotional life is not always changing our circumstances.

It is becoming more aware of what we repeatedly focus on.

This sounds simple, but it is deeply connected to how the mind and nervous system work.

The brain does not passively record reality. It filters, selects and interprets reality all the time. Out of the millions of pieces of information available in any moment, the mind and nervous system highlight what seems most relevant, familiar or important. What the brain shows us is based on what we focus on.

This is a little like the algorithms of social media. They become an echo chamber.

If we have lived through stress, emotional pain, criticism, rejection or trauma, the nervous system can become organised around protection. Without meaning to, we may begin scanning for threat, disappointment, disapproval, danger or signs that something is about to go wrong.

This does not mean we are pessimistic or negative.

It is the mind and body trying to keep us safe. This is how our nervous system works.

But over time, this protective focus can begin to shape our whole inner world. We notice more evidence for what we fear. We feel more contracted. We become more anxious, guarded or self-critical. We may start to relate to life through the lens of old pain rather than present possibility.

Healing often begins when we can notice this with kindness and then gradually train ourselves to change our focus.

Instead of seeing threat we start to focus on what the opportunity might be.

Instead of reflecting on what went wrong we notice what went well.

Instead of focusing on the faults of our partner we remember to appreciate their gifts.

It is not that we deny our current reality.

But we slowly widen the frame until we can shift it signficantly.

We begin to ask: What else is true here? Is there any safety in this moment? Is there support available? Is there another way to understand what is happening? Is this old pain speaking, or is this the whole truth of now?

When attention begins to soften and widen, the nervous system can gradually learn something new. The world may not change instantly, but our relationship with the world begins to change. More space appears. More choice appears. More compassion appears.

Here are three gentle places to begin:

1. Notice what your mind's habitual focus is - what does it automatically scan for?
Pause during the day and ask yourself: What am I looking for right now? Threat? Rejection? Failure? Approval? Something going wrong?
The aim is not to judge yourself, but to understand the lens you are looking through.

2. Gently widen the frame
Ask: What else is true in this moment? Is there anything supportive, steady or safe here too?
This does not erase difficulty. It simply helps the nervous system discover that difficulty may not be the whole picture.

3. Take one small action from the wider view
This might mean resting, reaching out, setting a boundary, speaking kindly to yourself, or taking one small step forward.
Healing becomes more real when a new perspective is gently lived, not just understood.

Therapeutic change often begins here.

Not by trying to become someone else.

But by becoming more aware of the lens through which you have learned to see yourself, others and the world.

The future often begins to change when we stop giving all our attention to the old story.

And we allow a new story to slowly emerge.

19/05/2026

Freedom From the Conditioned Mind: Are You Living Your Life, or Running an Old Script?

Most people have not yet realised that their life is scripted.

It is scripted from childhood traumas, early experiences, parental role models, school experiences, attachment wounds, how well they were loved or not, and how they responded to all of that.

These experiences create schemas: collections of beliefs, protective strategies, physical tensions, emotional reactions, and ways of relating to the world and to people.

An example of a simple schema would be: deep down I feel inferior and unlovable, but this is too much to feel, so I will build and enact a protective strategy of proving how successful and amazing I am so that the world has a positive view of me.

Many successful people have this schema. Outwardly, the schema makes them look good, and they may get short-term joy from their efforts, but the underlying core feelings remain and continue to invade their emotions, relationships and sense of self.

The collection of schemas becomes a script through which life is experienced and responded to. Consequently, similar patterns keep repeating, reminders of past traumas surface, and self-doubt, anxiety or even depression reappear despite previous therapy, self-help, nervous system work or personal development.

And these schemas and beliefs feel like one’s identity:

* The world is hard, so you have to fight hard: I’m a fighter
* I feel I can’t really trust anyone, so I stay closed: I am a reserved person
* I never get what I want, so I keep trying harder: I am someone who just can’t stop
* I am too compassionate: I always feel responsible for everyone’s problems
* I feel there is something fundamentally wrong with me: I am a f**k-up

But often we are not describing who we truly are.

We are describing old conclusions the mind came to when we were too young to question them. Conclusions formed in the emotional atmosphere of childhood. In the need to belong. In the need to stay safe. In the need to receive love, avoid shame, manage a parent, keep the peace, stay invisible, perform, please, withdraw, or harden.

Of course, the child does not consciously create these conclusions, though occasionally they do. Mainly, they are formed by the brain as adaptive responses.

Beliefs, protective responses and behaviours become stories and habits, all of which become identities. In this way, the conditioned mind is created. You may think you are making free choices, but many of your choices are being made by your conditioning.

Psychology and neuroscience even know that the brain does not see the world objectively. Instead, based on our conditioning, it anticipates what it is going to see, restricts and redirects attention, and creates an experience to correspond with what it believes is happening or is going to happen.

Take that in, because it is so significant.

So when people come for therapy, they often present with symptoms such as anxiety, low mood, relationship problems, trauma responses, emotional overwhelm, low self-esteem, chronic stress, or the feeling that life never seems to properly work.

But they rarely know that these are the tip of the iceberg.

Below the surface are the schemas holding them in place.

The schema shapes what you notice, how you interpret things, what you expect from others, what you feel in your body, and what possibilities are even available to you.

If the schema says “I am not safe”, then the world will keep looking dangerous.

If the schema says “I am not enough”, then no achievement will ever be quite enough.

If the schema says “I will be abandoned”, then even love can feel threatening.

If the schema says “I must hold everything together”, then rest can feel like danger.

And this is why surface change often fails. So much of what people do is doomed to fail:

You can put a positive affirmation on the fridge. You can read endless self-help books. You can listen to the podcasts that make such sense but leave you not knowing what to do with them. You can understand your family history and take a good guess at why you are the way you are. You can have really good insight and understanding that explains your problems.

But insight alone does not always free the pattern.

Because the pattern is not just in your thinking. It is a deeply ingrained learning held in the brain, the nervous system, the emotional reflexes, and the body’s sense of what is safe and unsafe.

It is in the deep, almost invisible feeling of “this is just how life is”.

This is why people can know exactly what they are doing and still keep doing it.

They know they are people-pleasing.

They know they are overworking.

They know they are avoiding intimacy.

They know they are attacking themselves.

They know they are choosing unavailable people.

They know they are holding back.

But the deeper system still believes the old strategy is necessary.

And that is it. An unconscious part is running the script, and you can feel powerless to change it.

Much of what I do as a therapist is help people find freedom from such scripts. It is deep work. It is not about judging the pattern, blaming yourself, or trying to force yourself to be different. It is about understanding what the pattern has been protecting, how it was formed, and how it can begin to change.

But I would like to share some key starting points so you can begin to free yourself:

1. Understand that what you thought were negative habits, self-sabotage, clinical symptoms, bad luck, low self-esteem, anxiety or relationship problems are often unconscious adaptive protection programmes that were formed before you were old enough and mature enough to properly navigate life. So stop fighting yourself. Stop blaming yourself.

2. Decide to grow your awareness. Start to notice your scripts in action. Some are thoughts, some are feelings, some are body reactions, and some are behaviours. Notice them and realise: this is not me, this is a script! This is a decisive moment because when you see this, you start to gain some distance from the script, and you need some distance to intelligently defuse the script.

3. Catch the beliefs, slow down, return to your self, come out of the emotional brain and back into your conscious self, and simply ask: is this really true?

4. If you want to go a bit deeper, notice there is a sense of knowing that notices the script being played out. That sense of knowing is actually closer to the real you, and is able to simply let go of the script, but that may require more experiential learning first.

There is a lot more I could say about this. Much of my therapeutic work is about undoing such patterns, and there are some amazing approaches that can profoundly, and often quickly, undo such schemas.

Please share in the comments your experiences with schemas and old emotional patterns, and how you handle them, or don’t.

01/05/2026

Where you place your attention will grow and three ways you can harness that understanding

It is one of the simplest principles in psychology, and one of the most overlooked: how you habitually focus your attention literally filters and therefore changes your experience of the world.

The mind is not neutral. It is constantly shaping itself around what it repeatedly notices.

If your attention is drawn, again and again, to what is wrong, what is missing, what might go wrong, the mind body system begins to organise around that. Not just in thought, but in feeling, in the body, even in what you perceive in the world around you.

This can have both a negative or positive consequence.

On the negative side this can become a bias towards anxiety or low mood. It starts to feel like “this is just how life is”.

If attention is mostly on what is wrong, uncertain, or threatening, the mind becomes quicker at finding those things. It starts to expect them. It starts to see them everywhere. A small pain in the body turns into health anxiety; an unexpected bill turns into financial anxiety; a bad moment with the boss turns into fear of encountering the boss again. That is how anxiety and low mood can build over time.

But the same mechanism works in the other direction.

When attention is deliberately and consistently brought to what is working, what is supportive, what is already okay, something shifts. Initially, this requires some dedicated, mindful focus, and it may feel a little forced. But through training yourself to refocus, you also begin to retrain your nervous system to feel safer with positivity. Your brain starts to filter out the negative that is not essential for your survival, and it begins to fill your experience with more positive, life-enhancing observations, a greater sense of potential, and thinking patterns that support your wellbeing and health.

Gradually, your baseline shifts so that you feel better more often, calmer, more confident, and more optimistic, until eventually this becomes your norm.

You go for a walk and notice the air, the light, the feeling of your body moving. Or you have a good conversation, and instead of rushing on, you stay with the sense of connection for a few seconds longer. Or you finish a task and actually register the small sense of completion. When attention rests there, even briefly, something in you settles. Do that repeatedly, and the mind starts to lean in that direction more often.

The important point is this: your mind learns from where you place your attention. Not once, but repeatedly.

This is not some fake pretending everything is positive. It is about recognising that attention is not passive. It is an active force that shapes your internal world and how the external world appears to you. When properly understood, it is life changing. It forms the basis to eradicate many emotional problems and to create a much happier more successful life.

Three simple ways to begin:

1. Catch the negative loop early
Notice when your mind starts rehearsing problems or worst-case scenarios. You do not need to suppress it. Just name it to yourself: “there’s the mind focusing on threat”, or “there’s the mind doing its negative thinking again”. That alone creates a small gap.

2. Deliberately include what is okay
In any moment of stress, ask: what is also okay or great right now? It might be something very simple. Your breath. The chair you are sitting on. A part of your life that is stable. Or something such as – “actually life is going really well. Financially we are doing really well”. This widens the field of attention.

3. Stay with positive moments a little longer
When something good happens, even something small, pause for 20 seconds and actually feel it and soak it in . This is where change really happens – the brain has negativety bias which means normally it stores threats not wins. With this technique the brain starts to actively remember and focus on the positive. This is how you teach your mind .

And as a consequence, slowly though very noticeable, your world and experience changes.

I cannot emphasise how powerful this simple technique is.

22/04/2026

When everything is kind of fine. But also not!

Very often, when you have built a reasonable life with many of the apparent ingredients of happiness, but when if you were asked is anything wrong you would say “no, all is fine”. It just doesn’t really feel like it. Yet you can’t quite put your finger on it.

It is not that you are massively stressed, anxious or depressed.
Life is relatively OK without significant problems other than the usual ups and downs of life.

And yet something is missing. But what is it?

Maybe it feels as if the excitement has gone out of life or that it is starting to feel mundane.

But in part it still feels enjoyable and you continue to get done what needs to be done, have a social life with good chats, and your relationship seems good.

When you really check, it is as if you are no longer strongly connected to your life. You have started to go through life without fully showing up.

You might even be compensating with a few too many glasses of wine or even some thing else ..

And it might not be obvious that actually there is something to be addressed.

Because life is very short!

What is happening here is often very simple yet not so obvious.

The “system” (nervous system, emotional responses, ways of thinking, cooping patterns) has, for good reasons, somewhat pulled back and disconnected. It happens automatically at times.
It pulls back in general – not just with difficult things but with experience as a whole.

It is a form of protection but it does not feel like that. It is just experienced as a bit of flatness.

The instinct then is to try to get back to how things “should” feel.

You might try and work out what is going on and think your way through; or you might try to introduce new things that will stimulate you. In other words you do the obvious things to try and fix it.

That rarely works.

Because the issue is not that something is missing that needs to be added.

The issue is that your system decided to pull back and partly shut down.

The solution is not what most people expect.

What is required is to “come back” to yourself and feel what is happening, be willing to sit with the feelings and often explore the underlying message of the body. Reconnection with yourself!

Sometimes you find that without knowing it you have been running on empty, have been overwhelmed, have not been attending well to your real needs or a multitude of other discoveries.

People are often surprised by this.

They expect they will feel better simply by doing more with their lives

That may be part of the solution but first they need to reconnect to themselves. That includes making contact with that underlying dullness.

This is very common.

Once you recognize this description you may find you can fix it yourself

Or you may find you need some help.

17/03/2026

Excellent Series of Essays by Donnacadh Hurley on CSA

I have known Donnacadh for many years and am familiar with his own long battle with the consequences of CSA. Over the past decade, he has extensively researched the field and written a meticulous and searching book. He has recently begun publishing a series of ten essays on the subject on Substack.

Essay 3 is particularly hard-hitting and is a must-read for anyone professionally involved in the field of trauma or CSA therapy, or for survivors of CSA. It outlines the massive psychological impact it had on his life.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/191003259?inbox=true&triedRedirect=true

I applaud his vulnerability and bravery in looking so honestly at himself and in exposing this pervasive, entrenched and insidious reality within our society.

What it feels like to be caught in the current

22/02/2026

Support as a mature choice

There is a point in life where support takes on a different meaning.

It is no longer about fixing what is broken or compensating for weakness. It becomes about refinement, integration, and completion.

For capable adults, asking for support can feel unnecessary or indulgent. “I am functioning. Others have it worse.” This belief is often held by people who have been carrying more than they realise for a long time.

Support at this stage of life is not about dependency. It is about no longer doing everything alone simply because you can.

Sometimes what is needed is not more effort, insight, or discipline, but the right conditions for something old to finally settle.

That is not a failure of independence. It is a sign of maturity.

If you find yourself at this point, it is worth knowing that there are forms of support designed specifically for people who are already capable, conscious, and functioning, but who sense that something in them is ready to shift.

15/02/2026

Coping versus resolving (Deep Resolution)

Most high functioning people cope extremely well.

They regulate themselves. They manage stress. They know how to bring themselves back into balance, at least enough to keep going.

But coping is not the same as resolving.

Coping requires ongoing effort. There is a sense of monitoring, adjusting, managing internal states. For many people this becomes so normal that they no longer question it.

Resolution feels different. There is less management because there is less to manage. The system no longer needs the same strategies because the underlying drivers have softened or completed.

This is not about becoming passive or losing edge. In many cases, it frees energy, clarity, and responsiveness that were previously tied up in self regulation.

The difference is subtle, but once experienced, unmistakable.

If this distinction matters to you, it is often a sign that you are no longer looking for better coping strategies, but for conditions that allow something deeper to resolve.

08/02/2026

Old survival patterns in a new life

One of the most confusing experiences for successful adults is this.

Life is stable. There is more choice, more safety, more agency than there once was. And yet the inner system still behaves as if something is at stake.

Urgency without necessity. Vigilance without danger. Self monitoring without a clear reason.

This is not a failure of growth. It is a sign of how deeply early adaptations are wired.

Patterns formed under pressure do not dissolve simply because circumstances improve. In fact, success can stabilise them. The very strategies that helped you function early on are often rewarded later in life.

The system does not automatically update itself just because the context has changed.

Understanding this can be quietly relieving. It shifts the question from “What is wrong with me?” to “What is still operating as if the past is present?”

This is often the point where self understanding stops being enough on its own, and something more relational and experiential becomes necessary.

04/02/2026

The hidden cost of being competent

There is a cost to being the capable one.

The one who adapts. Who carries responsibility. Who figures things out rather than falling apart.

Over time, competence can become an identity. Not in an obvious or arrogant way, but as a quiet organising principle. “I handle things. I do not need much.”

This works, until it does not.

What often gets missed is that self regulation without support slowly becomes self containment. Emotions are managed internally. Stress is absorbed rather than shared. Vulnerability is allowed in theory, but rarely inhabited.

From the outside, this looks like strength. On the inside, it can feel like effort.

Many people do not realise how much energy is going into holding themselves together until they experience what it is like not to have to do that anymore.

If you are honest with yourself, it may be worth asking how much of your current stability is being actively maintained, rather than naturally present.