Written by Janice Elsley, Leadership Expert, International Author, and Podcast Host Janice Elsley is a leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker who helps CEOs and leaders elevate their impact. As founder of Harissa Business Partners, she blends neuroscience, change management, and human design to drive success. I thought I was doing everything right. I ate clean. I didn't drink or smoke. I exercised. I checked all the boxes that were supposed to equal health and energy. And yet, I was exhausted. Not the kind of tiredness that a good night's sleep fixes, but the bone-deep fatigue that makes you wonder if something is fundamentally broken inside you. I went to the doctors. They ran tests. Everything came back normal. "You're fine," they'd say, handing me pamphlets about stress management or suggesting I just needed more rest. But I wasn't fine. I was running on fumes, showing up for my family, my work, my life, but not really present in any of it. I was switched on all the time, but never effectively engaged. That's when I realized the problem wasn't my habits. It was my nervous system. I'd spent years in fight-or-flight mode, treating my body like a machine that just needed better fuel. But no amount of kale or morning runs could fix a system that was stuck in survival mode. My amygdala, the brain's alarm system, was running the show. My prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for clarity, decision-making, and presence, was offline. So I stopped looking for external fixes and started working from the inside out. These five shifts didn't just change my energy. They changed my life. Shift 1: I stopped treating rest as a reward For years, I believed rest was something you earned after you'd pushed hard enough. But my body didn't need permission to rest. It needed regulation. I started building in what I call "tranquilize the system" moments throughout my day, not just at the end of it. A few minutes lying on the grass in my backyard. Sitting outside without my phone. Just being, without doing. It felt uncomfortable at first. My brain screamed that I was wasting time. But those moments of stillness weren't laziness. They were recalibrating. They signaled safety to my nervous system, allowing my body to shift out of sympathetic overdrive and into the ventral vagal, the state where healing, connection, and clarity actually happen. Shift 2: I learned to breathe like my life depended on it I know, I know. Everyone talks about breathing. But here's what I didn't understand. Most of us are breathing in a way that keeps us stressed. Short, shallow breaths signal danger to the body. They keep the amygdala activated and the prefrontal cortex suppressed. I started using the physiological sigh, a specific breathing pattern that down regulates the nervous system in real time. Two quick inhales through the nose, one long exhale through the mouth. It sounds simple, but it works because it's biology, not fluff. That exhale activates the vagus nerve, the main highway of the parasympathetic nervous system, telling your body it's safe to relax. I did this before meetings, in the car, when I felt tension rising. It became my reset button. Unlike meditation, which I struggled to stick with, this took seconds and worked immediately. Shift 3: I stopped ignoring what my body was telling me I used to override every signal my body sent. Tired? Push through. Tense? Keep going. Hungry? Eat later. I treated my body like an inconvenience, something to manage so I could get on with the real work of life. But the body doesn't lie. It was trying to tell me I was running on empty, that my stress patterns were costing me my health, my relationships, my presence with the people I loved. I started paying attention. Not in a vague self care way, but with genuine curiosity. What was I feeling? Where was I holding tension? What did I actually need at that moment? This wasn't about bubble baths or spa days. It was about reconnecting with the most fundamental source of information I had, my own nervous system. When I started listening, I could catch the early warning signs before they became full burnout. I could intervene before my body forced me to stop. Shift 4: I gave myself permission to be human I'd spent so long trying to be everything to everyone. The high performer. The dependable one. The woman who could handle it all without breaking. But that version of me was a performance, not a person. It was exhausting. I had to grieve the identity I'd built around being unshakeable. I had to accept that I wasn't a machine. I had hormones, cycles, emotions, limits. Instead of seeing those as weaknesses, I started seeing them as data. My body wasn't failing me. It was protecting me, trying to get my attention the only way it knew how. When I stopped fighting my humanity and started working with it, everything shifted. I set boundaries. I said no. I let things be imperfect. Instead of falling apart, I became more grounded, more present, more effective in every area of my life. Shift 5: I realized transformation isn't linear I used to think healing meant fixing myself once and for all. But nervous system regulation isn't a destination. It's a practice. Some days I'm calm and clear. Other days I'm triggered and reactive. The difference now is that I have the tools to return to the center. I built a personal regulation menu, a list of practices I can reach for depending on what I need at the moment. Grounding through my senses. A walk outside. The five five five breath reset. Lying on the floor and just letting my body be heavy. These aren't luxuries. They're the foundation of everything else I do. Because here's what I know now. You can't lead, create, or show up fully for the people you love when your nervous system is in survival mode. Internal transformation isn't separate from your work, your relationships, or your impact. It's the fuel for all of it. The ripple effect Healing my nervous system didn't just change how I felt. It changed how I showed up. I became more patient with my family, more focused on my work, and more connected to myself. The energy I used to spend just surviving became available for the things that actually mattered. That's the thing about this work. It's not selfish, it's foundational. When you regulate your own system, you change the energy you bring into every room, every conversation, every relationship. You stop leading from depletion and start leading from clarity. You stop performing and start being. It starts with you. Not because you're broken, but because you're the only one who can do this work. When you do, everything else shifts. If your nervous system has been running the show, you don’t have to keep pushing through exhaustion and calling it strength. Janice’s programs help you understand your energy, regulate your system, and lead your life from a place of clarity instead of depletion. Explore Janice’s programs and start building the inner steadiness that changes how you show up in every part of your life. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Janice Elsley Janice Elsley, Leadership Expert, International Author, and Podcast Host Janice Elsley is a leadership expert, author, and keynote speaker helping CEOs and executives future-proof their leadership with neuroscience-driven strategies. As founder of Harissa Business Partners, she drives performance, inclusivity, and talent retention. Her book Leadership Legacy and programs, Leading Edge Women, The Leading Edge, and First 100 Days of Leadership, equip leaders with the confidence and strategies to make an impact. Whether coaching executives or delivering transformational keynotes, Janice creates real results.

Written by Teela Hudak, Burnout Recovery Strategist Teela Hudak is a burnout recovery strategist with 15 years in psychology and social services. She helps high-achieving professionals restore energy, clarity, and focus through evidence-based, person-centred strategies. Many leaders work hard to look polished. They want to appear calm and strong under pressure. People often think this calm look means a leader has a high capacity for work. But often, that polish is just a performance. It is not a sign of how much a person can actually handle. It is often a sign that a leader is hiding parts of themselves to fit a certain mold. This hiding is a process called editing. It might mean holding back real opinions to avoid trouble. It might mean changing a communication style just to meet what others expect. It might even mean ignoring a gut feeling when making big decisions. Research shows that when people pretend to agree just to fit in, they feel more tired and less happy with their work. Editing is not a personality trait. It is a limit on how much a leader can do. Every time a leader filters their words or hides their thoughts, they use up brain power. This creates a hidden load that slows down response times. It makes it harder to think clearly during high-stakes moments. At high levels of leadership, success depends on how an internal system is built, not just on how hard a person tries. The cognitive load of self-suppression Every act of editing creates a hidden tax on the brain. Hiding your true thoughts or feelings is not a mentally free activity. It requires active control in the brain to stop an emotion or an opinion from showing. Managing your internal state in this way takes up cognitive bandwidth that is needed for other work. Because making many small choices about what to say or hide impairs later self control, editing adds a heavy decision load to every meeting. This cost shows up in your work as overthinking simple decisions. It causes delayed execution because the brain is busy managing its own image. When you spend your day scanning for social cues and adjusting your behavior to fit, your attention is redirected toward self monitoring. This means less energy is available for strategy. It also means your leadership becomes less sharp in high stakes moments when your mental resources are already overtaxed. Leading while managing yourself is like running two big computer programs at the same time. One program is focused on leading the team, while the other is focused on watching yourself. Managing your expressions and emotions becomes much more effortful over time. This makes your capacity inconsistent. Your success stops being about your talent and starts being about how much pressure your internal system can hold. Why high-performers default to editing This pattern often starts as a tool for success. Early in a career, being able to adapt to social expectations helps a person get along with others. Many leaders learn that being easy to work with helps their ideas land. These high performers receive rewards for fitting in. They might pretend to align with every company value just to move up. In these cases, editing feels like a useful skill rather than a problem. However, what worked at the start becomes very costly at scale. As responsibility grows, there are more people to manage and more risks to calculate. A leader might soften their views because they fear being judged by other stakeholders. In complex groups, the pressure to over edit increases because one wrong word can feel like a threat to a leader's reputation. Hierarchy and company culture can make it feel unsafe to be precise. What worked before starts creating instability behind the scenes. The same habits that drove early success now require more energy to maintain. Relying on a system that has not evolved means you must use more effort to stay balanced. This makes it harder to stay consistent even though your talent has not changed. The structure that once helped you climb is now the thing that holds you back. The performance impact: Where it breaks down When a leader edits their identity, the quality of their decisions begins to drop. Decision makers lack the best information when ideas and concerns are withheld. Teams work best when everyone shares their unique perspective. If a leader seeks harmony over truth, the team stops looking for the right answer. This leads to more hesitation and less accuracy. Innovation also stops when people are afraid to take risks. Original thinking is filtered out early because it might not seem safe to share. Ideas are often shaped to be acceptable rather than effective. When leaders hide their true values to fit in, they lose the chance to offer a fresh perspective. This creates a culture where people do not feel safe to admit mistakes or ask hard questions. The signal a leader sends to their team becomes weak. Trust decreases when there is a gap between what a leader says and what they actually do. Teams receive mixed cues and become unsure of the direction. The issue here is not about being authentic. The issue is signal distortion. When the leadership signal is distorted, it is hard for a team to follow with confidence. From self-suppression to structural alignment Moving away from self suppression is not about simply expressing every impulse. The goal is to reduce unnecessary internal friction by aligning your identity with how you operate. Authenticity at work means acting in line with your core values and self determined motivation. This alignment is a structural change that removes the need for constant self editing. When your self concept fits your social environment, you experience higher work engagement and lower burnout. Leadership performance is governed by an internal system made of identity, beliefs, boundaries, and energy regulation. Your work identity shapes how you interpret and act out your role. Boundaries are also a key part of sustainable capacity because they protect the fit between your different life roles. Managing energy involves resisting inner resistance and distractions, which are known stressors that can lead to job strain. When this internal system is misaligned, performance becomes very costly and your capacity becomes unstable. Managing displayed emotions against your felt emotions is a direct path to exhaustion. Constant demands for availability can also destabilize your energy and lead to work family conflict. However, when your system is aligned, your energy stabilizes and your output becomes more consistent. Clear goals and a stable team structure reduce ambiguity, which allows for faster decision making and higher engagement. The ROI of an unfiltered operating system Removing the filter from your leadership leads to faster and cleaner decisions. When a leader provides clear direction, it reduces confusion for the entire team. Sharing information more openly improves the quality of every decision the team makes. Reducing the act of hiding your thoughts also protects your brain power. This helps you stay efficient and sharp throughout the day. An unfiltered system also allows for more consistent work under pressure. Hiding emotions before a task leads to slower work and higher exhaustion. Leaders with a stable internal system can regulate themselves better during high stakes moments. This stability helps preserve performance and accuracy even when stress is high. Instead of reacting to the pressure, you can stay focused on the execution. You also gain better access to original thinking. When a leader stops over filtering their own ideas, it encourages the rest of the team to take risks. This psychological safety is a necessary condition for innovation to happen. Employees are more likely to speak up and share new ideas when they see their leader acting with integrity. This process supports original contributions and higher work engagement across the company. Finally, an aligned system gives you a stronger presence without any additional effort. You can strengthen your impact without relying on charisma or extra emotional labor. When your words and actions match, it builds a high level of trust within your team. This consistency strengthens your leadership signal. A system that works with you stabilizes your performance instead of increasing your strain. Reclaiming strategic capacity Most leaders can see where they are editing themselves to fit the room. They recognize the cost of holding back opinions and the strain of managing their own image. However, few people have a structure that allows them to stop doing it. Understanding that you have a capacity constraint is a powerful first step. But knowing you have a problem is not the same as fixing it. Insight without a new system will not change your performance. The choice is simple. You can continue refining how you show up and absorbing the internal strain. Or you can reconfigure the system that requires you to filter yourself in the first place. To move from a state of exhaustion to reliable, high level output, you must master your internal capacity. This is how you protect your focus and your long term success. If you are ready to stop managing stress and start managing the system that causes it, join an upcoming live masterclass. These sessions are designed to help you identify your specific capacity constraints and improve your decision quality. You will learn how to build a leadership structure that supports your ambition instead of causing burnout. Secure your spot to begin building a system that works with you. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Teela Hudak Teela Hudak, Burnout Recovery Strategist Teela Hudak is a burnout recovery strategist and writer who helps professionals restore clarity, energy, and steadiness. With 15 years in social services and a degree in psychology, she draws on proven techniques, evidence-informed practices, and her own lived experience to guide people in creating tools that fit their lives. Each person she works with walks away with a customized approach designed around their needs, values, and rhythms. Her work offers a clear, supportive framework that helps people move out of survival mode and into sustainable ways of living and working.

Written by Debi Wimberley, Medical Cannabis Educator Debi Wimberley is a TEDx speaker, author, Medical Cannabis educator, and quality health advocate redefining the conversation around wellness. She empowers others through science-backed insights, lived experience, and bold conversations that challenge the status quo. In 'How to Put Yourself Back Together When the Health System Couldn't', Humpty taught you about reassembly. You discovered the pieces were never lost, they were just waiting for you to bring them back into conversation. You learned that your internal blueprint was always there. Now comes the part that changes everything, actually seeing who you are in the process of putting yourself back together. To do that, you have to be willing to enter the Looking Glass. A mirror that reflects the truth A Looking Glass appears in stories across cultures and centuries. Sometimes it's magical. Sometimes it's just glass. But it always serves the same purpose. It shows you what's actually there. Not what you wish to see. Not what others tell you is there. But what's really reflected back. A Looking Glass doesn't care about your shame or your self-judgment. It doesn't respond to your fears or your doubts. It simply reflects truth. Without distortion. Without bias. Your inner Looking Glass works the same way. When you're willing to look into it with genuine curiosity, it shows you the truth about yourself that no one else can see. Not because it's hidden. But because you're the only one who lives inside your own body 24 hours a day. You have access to data no one else has. Are you brave enough to look? The moment before you look You’re standing at the threshold. Behind you are years of other people’s opinions about your health, their labels about your condition, their expectations about what’s possible for your healing, their versions of who you should be. In front of you is the Looking Glass, clear, reflective, waiting. But underneath all of that noise, you’ve sensed things they don’t see. Perhaps you’ve sensed what’s “just right” for your body, that knowing that lives inside you, even if you’ve talked yourself out of trusting it. Perhaps you’ve had questions rise up, “What if there’s more?” even if you learned to push them down. Perhaps you’ve felt your body trying to tell you something, even if you overrode it. You might sense places inside you that feel disconnected, parts that learned to shut down, a rhythm that got interrupted. These signals are what invite you to look deeper into your reflection. But none of that matters if you can’t see it, if you can’t witness what you’re becoming, if you can’t trust your own reflection. You stand at the threshold. Behind you, the noise. In front of you, the glass. This is the moment. Will you reach your hand toward the glass? Will you take a breath? Look! What happens when you step through The moment you step through, something happens. The fog of everyone else's opinions and definitions about your health starts to clear. All the voices that told you who you should be, what was possible for your health, how dependent you had to be on the system begin to fade. But something shifts. You begin to hear your own voice underneath them. Quieter at first. But yours. This is playful curiosity at work. Not the desperate searching of Alice, first falling down the rabbit hole. But the grounded, centered curiosity of someone who's on the path to becoming aware. You get to explore your own reflection with wonder. "What do I actually see when I look at myself without shame? Who have I become? What's really true about me?" These are questions only you can answer. Your Looking Glass, your inner mirror, is ready to show you. Finding your inner guides Here's something remarkable that happens when you look in the mirror of your healing. You start to recognize patterns. Teachings. Wisdom that's waiting to guide you. Throughout this series, characters have shown you different ways of approaching health. But now comes the real work. Discovering which of these teachings you already recognize in yourself. Where does curiosity show up in your healing? Where do you ask questions about your body? Where do you experiment instead of just accepting what you've been told? That's your Alice or whichever character you find to relate to. Where have you already found what's "just right" for you? Where do you know, without anyone telling you, that something works? Where have you rejected the one size fits all and trusted your own knowing? That's your Goldilocks moment. Where does your sensitivity serve you in healing? Where can you feel what others miss? Where do you notice signals in your body that guide you toward what helps? That's your Princess and the Pea, that finely tuned awareness that's actually your superpower. Where are you putting pieces back together? Where are you learning to reconnect with parts of yourself you've been hiding from? Where are you discovering harmony? That's your Humpty Dumpty at work, the reassembly that's already happening. These aren't someone else's characters. They're reflections of wisdom you're already discovering about your own healing. So as you face the Looking Glass, stay curious. Where do I see myself in these discoveries? What am I already noticing? What characters are guiding my healing? The answers are already there. You just have to be willing to acknowledge them. Through the fog of others' opinions One of the most powerful things the Looking Glass shows you is how much of what you believed about yourself came from someone else. The doctors' version. Your family's version. Society's version. Your own internalized version. The fog was never confusion. It was the natural result of trusting systems that were never designed to see all of you. When you're willing to look in the mirror, the fog begins to lift. Once it does, you can't unsee what's there. The expertise you didn't know you had Here’s what shifts everything. The moment you realize you are your best health partner. Not the doctors. Not the protocols. Not the experts who studied thousands of people but have never lived inside your body. You! Because you have something no one else has. Direct access to your own experience. Real time feedback from your nervous system. Immediate data about what works and what doesn't. The ability to notice patterns that only you can see and feel because you're the only one living this life. Your Looking Glass shows you you've been gathering evidence of your own wisdom all along. Every time you notice something about your body. Every time you asked a question. Every time you experimented and observed what happened. Every time you trusted your sensitivity, even when others dismissed it. That's expertise. Your expertise. Yes, there will be times when collaboration makes sense. When working with a trauma informed therapist, a somatic practitioner, or a Cannabis educator who understands the Endocannabinoid System (ECS). These partnerships can accelerate your healing. But you're not waiting for them to save you. You're inviting them to walk alongside you. You are the lead guide on your own health journey. Always. Curiosity as your compass Your Looking Glass also shows you something else. Curiosity has become your compass. Not the desperate, frantic questioning of someone trying to fix oneself. But grounded, centered curiosity. The kind that comes from self-trust. You ask questions like. What is my body actually telling me right now? What does this signal mean? What happens when I listen instead of override? Who am I becoming as I honor my own wisdom? These questions don't have right or wrong answers. They're open ended invitations to know yourself more deeply. Your Looking Glass responds. It shows you truth with every answer you discover. This is curiosity as navigation. It points you toward your own path. It shows you what's true for you, not what's true for others. The ECS doesn't lie There's one mirror inside you that never distorts reality. Your Endocannabinoid System. It doesn't care what you think you should feel. It doesn't respond to your self-judgment or shame. It simply reflects what's actually happening in your body, moment to moment. When you're in balance, your ECS shows you ease, clarity, connection, flow. When you're out of balance, it shows you signals, inflammation, anxiety, brain fog, pain, disconnection. These aren't failures. They're your ECS speaking truth, reflecting what's actually happening so you can respond accordingly. The ECS doesn't lie. It can't. It's simply the system that coordinates your whole being, constantly asking, are we in balance, are we safe, what do we need. Your job is to learn to read it, to trust its reflections, to honor what it's telling you, especially when it contradicts what you've been told. This is the deepest magic of the Looking Glass. It shows you that the truth you're looking for isn't external, it's inside you, in your body, in your ECS, in the wisdom you've been gathering all along. Sometimes transformation lands as quietly as a butterfly. You only see it when you're still enough to look in the mirror. What comes next You've seen what the Looking Glass can reveal. You may have started to recognize your characters. You may be discovering your own wisdom. But there's one more piece. These characters aren't meant to work alone. They're meant to work together. In Article 7, you'll discover how these teachings come together in Health in Wiserland, the Curious Questioner. This is where the integration deepens. Where you discover what it means to become your own guide. But first, keep looking in your mirror. The reflections are just beginning to reveal who you really are. Your Looking Glass doesn't lie. Trust what it shows you. Curious to capable when healing has direction Now you've seen what reassembling looks like. The Looking Glass lets you witness what starts to take shape when the pieces begin talking to each other again. Your Looking Glass is waiting. It's not asking you to be someone else. It's not comparing you to anyone else. It's simply reflecting back what's true. You may be wiser than you thought. Stronger than you believed. More capable of guiding your own health than any external authority. All you have to do is look. Your next step can be as simple as staying connected. For the truly curious healers. Follow on Instagram for daily reflections, mirror work prompts, and invitations to see yourself clearly. Subscribe to the Effective Cannabis Newsletter, where fairy tale endings meet real life science, and every issue plants seeds of possibility in minds ready to grow. Join the Waitlist for Your HealthStory Book and you'll get exclusive access to reflections and tools, insights that won't be available anywhere else. This is your invitation to see yourself, truly see yourself, the way your own mirror reflects. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Debi Wimberley Debi Wimberley, Medical Cannabis Educator Debi Wimberley is a trailblazer in the Medical Cannabis space, blending lived experience with clinical insight. After surviving decades of chronic pain and lung disease, she transformed her journey into a mission to educate and empower. With a background in medical technology and oncology and certifications in Cannabis applications and patient care, she brings science and compassion together with a focus on health and improving quality of life. As founder of Effective Cannabis and the global EC Newsletter, Debi unites certified educators, coaches, and professionals to deliver fact-based, stigma-free education that inspires real change.

Written by Jodie Lockey Duesling, Holistic Healer and Neurodivergent Advocate Jodie Lockey Duesling is a holistic healer and neurodivergent‑affirming practitioner integrating cutting‑edge neural science with mind-body-soul work. She helps clients release stagnant trauma, repair attachment wounds, and reconnect with their protective parts through grounded consciousness practices. There are moments when something rises inside us. An emotion, a memory, a wave of sensation, and the body reacts before the mind can make sense of it. The shoulders lift. The breath tightens. The jaw locks. The mind speeds up. This is the nervous system bracing against internal intensity. For many people, this moment feels like being pulled forward by the energy, or “falling behind” what is happening inside. It is one of the most unsettling sensations the brain can register, not because the energy is harmful, but because the system has never been taught how to meet it. FALL BEHIND™ is a simple, counterintuitive technique that teaches the body to relax and release instead of brace and resist. It helps the nervous system stay with the rising energy rather than fall behind it. Why rising energy feels threatening When internal energy builds, whether emotional, somatic, or sensory, the brain often interprets it as danger. The brain’s job is predictability, not flow. Anything intense or unfamiliar triggers a threat response. The system responds with: tightening holding resisting shutting down overthinking This is not a psychological flaw. It is a conditioned survival reflex. The body learned long ago that intensity meant overwhelm, so it braces, even when the intensity is simply energy trying to move through. What “falling behind the energy” really means The sensation of falling behind the energy is the nervous system saying, “This is rising faster than I can process.” It is a mismatch between the speed of the energy and the capacity of the system. The goal is not to push through or suppress the energy. The goal is to slow the system so it can meet the energy. This is where FALL BEHIND™ comes in. FALL BEHIND™ relax and release instead of brace and resist FALL BEHIND™ teaches the body to soften at the exact moment it wants to tighten. The core cue is simple. Drop. Drop the shoulders, let the arms hang, soften the chest, loosen the jaw, let the belly expand, exhale fully. This “drop” is not collapse. It is permission. This signals to the nervous system, “You don’t need to fight this. You can meet it.” When the body drops, the energy that once felt overwhelming becomes something the system can move with rather than brace against. Why the drop works: The nervous system learns through association Every time the body softens instead of tightening, the nervous system forms a new association. “Intensity does not equal danger.” Over time, this rewires the system. Energy becomes less frightening. Release becomes more natural. The system learns to stay present instead of shutting down. The drop becomes a bridge between the rising energy and the body’s capacity to hold it. Protective parts and the FALL BEHIND™ response When energy rises, protective parts often activate: the controller the critic the avoider the overfunctioner the numb or shut down part These parts brace because they believe bracing is safety. FALL BEHIND™ communicates something new. Safety can come from softening, not tightening. When the body drops, protective parts often step back. They no longer need to manage the intensity alone. Energy moves when the system feels safe Energy is not meant to be held. It is meant to move through. When the system feels safe enough to soften, the energy that once felt overwhelming begins to rise, peak, move, release. This is not force. It is cooperation. The body is not being pushed. It is being met. FALL BEHIND™ helps the psyche integrate, not fragment When the system can meet rising energy without bracing, the mind becomes clearer, the body becomes steadier, protective parts relax, emotional waves complete, the deeper self becomes accessible. This is the foundation of integration. Healing is not about eliminating intensity. It is about teaching the system how to stay with itself when intensity arrives. FALL BEHIND™ gives the nervous system a way to do exactly that. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jodie Lockey Duesling Jodie Lockey Duesling, Holistic Healer and Neurodivergent Advocate Jodie Lockey Duesling (The Soul Doc) is a holistic healer and neurodivergent‑affirming practitioner known for her innovative blend of neural science, somatic awareness, and consciousness work. She supports clients in unwinding stagnant trauma, integrating protective parts, and repairing attachment wounds with clarity and compassion. Her approach bridges mind, body, and soul, offering a grounded path for those navigating identity shifts, emotional regulation, and deep inner work. Jodie’s practice is rooted in justice, sovereignty, and the belief that healing becomes possible when the nervous system feels safe enough to expand.

Written by Slobodan Nesovic, CA licensed Clinical Psychologist Introducing Slobodan Nesovic, an experienced psychologist whose journey from the tumultuous landscapes of Serbia to the bustling streets of San Francisco has shaped his profound understanding of human nature. What would it take for your understanding of reality to crack open? I am not talking about a slight shift that makes you uncomfortable for a week. But genuinely crack. The way ice does when the temperature beneath it changes and what seemed solid turns out to have been moving all along. On February 19, 2026, President Trump ordered the Pentagon and federal agencies to begin releasing classified files on UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), including materials that touch on evidence of what officials have called "alien and extraterrestrial life." As of late May 2026, credible reports indicate that White House officials have been quietly meeting with religious leaders across multiple denominations to help prepare communities for the possibility of confirmed non human intelligence (Coulthart, as cited in ibtimes.co.uk, 2026). Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, who has covered this story for years, has publicly warned of what he calls "catastrophic disclosure." He is referring to a release of information so jarring it could destabilize institutions, financial systems, and individual psyches overnight. The term that has quietly entered the conversation among psychologists and policy analysts is ontological shock. It refers to the psychological disorientation that occurs when someone's foundational assumptions about reality are suddenly and irreversibly disrupted. It is not the ordinary surprise of bad news, but the deeper shift of discovering that the ground you were standing on is fundamentally different from what you thought it was. As a psychologist, I find this moment clarifying rather than alarming. I have spent almost twenty years helping people navigate exactly this kind of internal disruption, the person who received an impossible diagnosis, the veteran who came home to a world that no longer made sense, the man who survived something his mind had no category for. The outer trigger changes, but the inner mechanism does not. You do not need to know whether the files are real, exaggerated, or politically motivated to benefit from what follows. What you need is a grounded psyche, and that is entirely within reach. When your map of reality no longer matches the territory Sociologist Anthony Giddens coined the term ontological security to describe the quiet, background confidence most people carry that the world is stable, knowable, and continuous. We rarely notice it because we rarely lose it. But when we do, the nervous system responds as though facing a physical threat. Cortisol rises. Attention narrows. The mind urgently scans for a narrative that restores the feeling of order. This is why conspiratorial thinking spikes during periods of collective uncertainty. Your nervous system finds a pattern and holds onto it. Psychology Today noted in April 2026 that "people with high intolerance of uncertainty may struggle more when familiar assumptions about reality change." Research suggests that deep discomfort with not knowing is present at clinically significant levels in roughly one in ten people and is one of the strongest predictors of anxiety and obsessive compulsive thinking patterns. But here is a remarkable piece of information, most people do not shatter. Psychologist Tim Lomas, in a 2024 study published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, analyzed public reactions to congressional UAP hearings and found that ontological disruption is better described as fracturing rather than collapse. Dr. Lomas suggests a gradual cracking of assumptions, not a sudden total breakdown. People asked deep questions and struggled, but the majority found ways to widen their frame rather than abandon it entirely. This is not new, it is just now becoming visible As I explored in my previous article introducing PsychoEnalysis, Nikola Tesla proposed that everything in the universe is best understood through energy, frequency, and vibration. His theory of the universe's underlying structure, explored by physicist and consciousness researcher Djuro Raković, describes individual and collective human consciousness as part of a quantum holographic field, a web of informational energy that extends far beyond the limits of the biological brain. Tesla did not limit consciousness to the human body. He never believed the universe's intelligence began and ended with us. Neither do I. Carl Jung, whose depth psychology informs a significant portion of PsychoEnalysis, wrote about the UFO phenomenon directly. In Flying Saucers, A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, published in 1959 near the end of his life, Jung described the space guests from flying saucers as a kind of "technological angels," a projection of humanity's collective unconscious longing for transcendence, for contact with something greater than the merely human. What Jung was pointing to was not the extraterrestrial question specifically, but the psychological question underneath it, what do we do when the universe is bigger than our current story about it? PsychoEnalysis offers a direct answer to that question. The "E" at the center of the name stands for energy, the recognition that human beings are not only biological and psychological organisms, but energetic and spiritual ones, embedded in a field of consciousness that the quantum sciences are only beginning to formally describe. From this vantage point, the disclosure of non human intelligence is not a destabilization of reality. It is a confirmation that the field of consciousness extends beyond our species, as Tesla's equations and virtually every wisdom tradition in human history have always suggested. I remember standing in the Arizona desert when I was nineteen, alone under a sky so dense with stars it seemed to be alive. Something in me knew that the universe was populated in ways science had not yet admitted. That knowing never left me. It eventually became part of how I understand consciousness, energy, and healing. Ontological shock will strike those whose worldview was too small to begin with. The work of PsychoEnalysis is to expand that worldview so that no single disclosure can shatter it. Three practices to stay grounded when reality shifts Whether the UAP files ultimately reveal something world altering or something carefully managed and inconclusive, your nervous system will need tools. What follows are the three practices I recommend to higher functioning clients in clinical sessions when one is navigating changes in a reality that has stopped being reliable. 1. Tap out the fear before it becomes a narrative: EFT tapping Left unaddressed, fear does not stay a feeling. It hardens into stories that make the fear feel permanent. This is why catching fear early, before it builds a story around itself, is the whole point. This is the clinical reality behind Emotional Freedom Techniques, commonly known as EFT tapping, a method developed from Roger Callahan's Thought Field Therapy that involves tapping on specific acupuncture meridian points while verbally acknowledging a distressing emotion. In 2022, a comprehensive systematic review published in Frontiers in Psychology formally classified clinical EFT as an evidence based practice for anxiety, PTSD, and a range of psychological conditions, a classification aligned with APA Division 12 criteria. The mechanism is worth understanding. Tapping on meridian points while naming a fear sends a calming signal directly to the amygdala, the brain's threat detection structure, reducing cortisol levels measurably within minutes. This happens independent of whether the fear is "rational." You do not need to resolve whether non human intelligence exists before you can settle your nervous system. EFT works on the feeling, not the fact. For those unfamiliar with the protocol, the basic sequence is explained in my YouTube video titled 'How to Improve Your Mental Health Starting Today' as Tip number four. EFT could be a five minute intervention. No equipment required. It works for UAP anxiety the same way it works for the fear of a medical procedure, a difficult conversation, or the middle of the night when the mind will not stop running. 2. Anchor yourself in the unified field: Complete meditation When ontological shock takes hold, the first thing that happens neurologically is a surge into beta brain wave activity, the rapid, analytical, high alert frequency associated with stress, overthinking, and the constant scanning we recognize today as doomscrolling. The antidote is not more information. It is a deliberate descent into alpha and theta brain wave states, where the analytical barrier quiets and the practitioner makes contact with what Serbian energy worker Zoran Gruicic describes as the unified field of Infinite Power, Infinite Love, and Infinite Knowledge. I have been practicing and teaching a specific kind of meditation that teaches you how to lower brain waves for years. The reason it is the first tool I reach for in moments of existential disruption is precisely because it does not ask you to think your way through the problem. It asks you to go beneath the problem, to access a layer of reality that remains stable regardless of what any government announces. You are not going into denial. You are touching the ground beneath the ground. Pick a meditation practice such as Complete Meditation that will help you lower your brain waves and go past the analytical barrier into a calm space that allows for nervous system regulation. 3. Expand your worldview before the world does it for you: Psycho spiritual centering The third practice is the most distinctly PsychoEnalysis in nature and, in some ways, the most important. It is less a technique and more a reorientation. A paradigm shift. Ontological shock, at its deepest level, is a failure of worldview expansion. People who build their sense of self entirely at the level of the ego, what Freud called the psychic structure that manages the boundary between inner experience and outer reality, are uniquely vulnerable when that outer reality changes. Because if the ego's story about the world collapses, the ego loses its footing entirely. Those who have developed a relationship with what Roberto Assagioli called the transpersonal self carry a different kind of stability. They are not immune to disruption, but they have an anchor that does not depend on any particular version of reality being true. When you feel reality shifting, I invite you to sit with three questions, not to answer them intellectually, but to feel into them: Is my sense of self dependent on this belief being true? If the answer is yes, that belief was a borrowed anchor. Real groundedness does not outsource itself to facts about the universe. What in me is not shocked, what remains stable? Turn your attention toward the observer within, what Jung called the Self with a capital S, the witnessing presence beneath every thought and feeling and breaking news alert. What does this expand in me rather than destroy? Every time the horizon of reality has moved outward in human history, human beings have become, eventually, after the disorientation, larger. This moment carries the same invitation. The universe was always bigger than we thought Before anyone had coined the phrase "ontological shock," mystics sat with the enormity of the cosmos and called it home. Shamans traveled to realms beyond ordinary perception and returned with medicine. Physicists stared at equations that implied a universe of staggering interconnection and did not flinch. They were not destabilized by what was out there. They were enlarged by it. The fifth wave of psychology that includes PsychoEnalysis offers the framework of a bio psycho spiritual architecture robust enough to hold expanded realities without collapse. A worldview that includes the possibilities of other dimensional existence, unlike the closed view of Newtonian physics, which limits our thinking to a three dimensional time and space. PsychoEnalysis provides the flexible strength of one who has already made peace with not knowing everything. In that not knowing, something spacious rather than frightening is found. Whatever the files eventually reveal, one truth will remain constant, the quality of your inner foundation determines whether new information breaks you open destructively or opens you up into something more whole. If you find yourself navigating existential anxiety, an unsettled sense of groundlessness, or the particular discomfort of a world that has stopped making familiar sense, I invite you to explore PsychoEnalysis. For a free 20 minute consultation, visit Psy-e or reach out directly at +1 (747) 327-6333. Healing is not about having every answer. It is a journey that you take within yourself. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Slobodan Nesovic Slobodan Nesovic, CA licensed Clinical Psychologist Slobodan Nesovic, PsyD, is a seasoned California-licensed clinical psychologist with a deep-rooted passion for psycho-spiritual development spanning over two decades. Inspired by spiritual experiences in the Arizona desert during his late teens, Slobodan embarked on a journey of self-discovery, delving into the works of Plato, Lao Tzu, Jung, and Nikola Tesla. With over 17 years of experience, Slobodan integrates a unique approach to therapy—PsychoEnalysis—blending energy psychology, psychodynamic methods, and spirituality. As a psychologist and a Complete Meditation (CM) teacher, he empowers clients to navigate their journey to healing and self-discovery, leveraging his holistic understanding of human nature. Beyond his professional pursuits, Slobodan is a dedicated father, quantum medicine enthusiast, and admirer of Nikola Tesla's work. A basketball lover, he even shared the court with future NBA player Marko Jaric. For a transformative experience tailored to mind and spirit, connect with Slobodan for a free 20-minute phone consultation at +1 747 327 6333 or click here.

Written by Catherine (Katie) Ruffino, NLP Master Practitioner Katie Ruffino, PA-C, NLP Master Practitioner, and founder of Pure Pathways Collective, merges medicine, mindset, and artistry to inspire holistic transformation. Known for her work in detoxification, subconscious rewiring, and her Katie in the Kitchen series, she helps leaders embody health, vitality, and authentic self-expression. I never expected that my pursuit of health would eventually become one of the biggest sources of stress in my life. Like many people, my journey began with good intentions. I learned how food affects the body and was fascinated by the impact nutrition could have on energy, digestion, inflammation, mood, and overall well-being. As I started making changes to my diet, I noticed tangible improvements in my health. I felt better, had more energy, and experienced fewer symptoms. Naturally, I assumed that if eating healthier helped, then eating even healthier must be better. What I didn't realize at the time was that my desire to optimize my health, food as well as labs and other lifestyle activities was slowly transforming into an obsession. The rise of wellness culture and the pursuit of perfection We live in a world where information about health is more accessible than ever before. Social media feeds are filled with nutrition advice, elimination diets, supplement protocols, biohacking strategies, and endless opinions about what we should and shouldn't eat. While much of this information can be valuable, it can also create an unintended consequence, the belief that health is something to be perfected. Many people begin their wellness journey seeking relief from symptoms, increased energy, or a greater sense of vitality. But somewhere along the way, the pursuit of health can become the pursuit of control. This was certainly true for me. As I learned more about nutrition, I became increasingly focused on eating "clean." Foods were no longer simply foods. They became categorized as good or bad, healing or harmful, safe or dangerous. The more I learned, the more restrictive I became. What started as awareness slowly evolved into hypervigilance. When food consumes your thoughts For years, food occupied an enormous amount of mental space. I thought about what I was going to eat, what I shouldn't eat, how my body might react, whether I was following the "right" protocol, and whether a particular ingredient might trigger symptoms. Meals required extensive planning. Dining out felt stressful. Social events became complicated. Food wasn't just nourishment anymore. It had become a source of anxiety. The irony was that I genuinely believed I was helping myself. From the outside, my behaviors appeared disciplined and health conscious. But internally, I felt trapped. I cycled between restriction and overindulgence. I would follow strict rules for a period of time, only to eventually feel deprived and swing in the opposite direction. Then the guilt would arrive, followed by another attempt to regain control. This cycle repeated itself for years. The hidden problem with seeing food as both the cure and the enemy One of the most challenging aspects of my journey was living with chronic symptoms and sensitivities. I experienced autoimmune related issues, digestive disturbances, and reactions to foods that many people would consider healthy. Fruits, vegetables, and other nutrient dense foods sometimes seemed to trigger symptoms just as much as highly processed foods. As a result, food became both my greatest source of hope and my greatest source of fear. I believed food could heal me. I also believed food could harm me. That mindset created a constant internal battle. Every meal carried pressure. Every food choice felt significant. Every symptom felt like evidence that I had done something wrong. Without realizing it, I had tied food to my sense of safety. When food becomes tied to safety, it becomes incredibly difficult to trust yourself around it. The missing piece: It wasn't just about food The turning point came when I stopped asking, "What food should I eliminate next?" and started asking a much different question. "Why does food have so much power over me?" That question changed everything. I began to see that food wasn't the entire problem. My relationship with food was. Even deeper than that, my relationship with myself was. I realized I had been using food to create certainty in an uncertain world. Food gave me a sense of control. It gave me rules to follow. It gave me something tangible to focus on when emotions felt uncomfortable or overwhelming. The issue wasn't simply what I was eating. The issue was what food had come to represent. Healing beyond the plate The greatest breakthroughs in my health did not come from discovering another diet. They came from addressing the deeper layers underneath my relationship with food. I began releasing emotions I had spent years suppressing. I worked on rebuilding trust with my body rather than viewing it as broken. I addressed underlying gut dysfunction, environmental stressors, and toxic burden. I examined the subconscious beliefs that drove my need for control and perfection. Most importantly, I stopped viewing myself as a problem that needed to be fixed. That shift changed everything. Because true healing isn't just about improving physical symptoms. It's about changing the relationship you have with yourself while navigating those symptoms. Food as feedback, not a measure of worth Today, my relationship with food looks dramatically different. I still care about nutrition and still believe food can support health and healing. But food no longer dictates my emotional state or consumes my thoughts. Food has become nourishing, creative, pleasurable, and fun again! Instead of viewing food as a test I must pass, I view it as feedback. Feedback about what supports my body, environment, stress levels, and habits, and not feedback about my worth as a person. That distinction is critical. Because when we stop attaching our identity to our food choices, we create space for flexibility, self trust, and genuine well being. The real goal is freedom Many people begin their health journey because they want freedom from symptoms and discomfort. But somewhere along the way, they become imprisoned by the very strategies they hoped would set them free. I've been there. What I've learned is that health isn't merely about eating the right foods. It's about cultivating a relationship with yourself that allows you to feel safe, connected, and whole regardless of what is on your plate. Nutrition matters, and so does joy, trust, connection, flexibility, and peace. Food was never meant to consume your life. It was meant to help you live it. If this article resonated with you, explore my Food as Feedback course and Trust Your Gut Collective, where I help you rebuild self trust and create a healthier relationship with food, health, and yourself. Learn more here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Catherine (Katie) Ruffino Catherine (Katie) Ruffino, NLP Master Practitioner Katie Ruffino, PA-C, NLP Master Practitioner, and founder of Pure Pathways Collective, is a recognized voice in functional and regenerative medicine. She helps leaders and entrepreneurs achieve holistic transformation through detoxification, nervous system regulation, and subconscious rewiring. Her work emphasizes emotional release and deep reconnection to the self, creating space for clarity, vitality, and freedom. Drawing from her medical background and her passion for creativity, Katie also created the Katie in the Kitchen series, where she shares stories, interviews, and lessons on authentic living. Her mission is to help others enhance their human experience, living in alignment with their truth.

Written by Louise Rachael Mwape Miller, Founder, CEO, Author & Wellbeing Writing Coach Louise Rachael Mwape Miller is a wellbeing and writing coach, author, and founder of Jemoza Wellbeing Academy, helping women reclaim their identity, heal from within, and step into purpose through faith, mindset transformation, and creative expression. Have you ever felt as though life was over because you could no longer do the things you once never even had to think twice about? Before chronic illness and ongoing health complications, life may have felt carefree. Or perhaps your body simply bounced back more easily after a flare up. But when chronic illness enters your life long term, fear quietly begins shaping how you live. Fear of another setback. Fear of spiralling physically again. Fear of pushing your body too far. Over time, fear becomes a safety net, one that feels protective, yet unknowingly keeps you trapped within limitation. For a long time, that was my reality too. Eventually I realised I did not want survival mode to become my permanent identity. I wanted to learn how to live again, even if life no longer looked the way it once had. “How do you learn to live again when survival mode becomes your normal?” When survival mode becomes your identity Following chronic illness, fear often becomes subconscious. You begin carefully calculating energy levels, symptoms, pain levels, and whether your body will cooperate from one day to the next. Tasks that once felt effortless suddenly require planning, pacing, adaptation, or recovery time. Slowly, you begin losing parts of your identity beneath the pressure of simply making it through what others would consider a normal day. Living in an unpredictable body is exhausting physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. “Little by little life changed, until one day I realised I was surviving more than I was truly living.” Grieving the version of you that existed before chronic illness came to stay Chronic illness changes more than the body. It can change your confidence, lifestyle, identity, relationships, and future plans. Many people living with chronic illness do not realise they are also grieving. We grieve the body that once moved freely. The energy we once possessed. The version of ourselves we once knew. For a long time, I hoped life would simply return to normal. But healing often begins with acknowledgement. Because until we acknowledge loss, it becomes difficult to embrace the person we are becoming. “Different does not mean less.” Learning that life may need to look different, not stop Something shifted once I accepted that life had changed. Chronic illness reshaped me physically and emotionally, but it also forced me to rethink what living actually meant. Ironically, I now realise I was far more limited mentally before becoming chronically unwell than I am now. Life slowed down, but slowing down taught me how to breathe again, over time. I stopped fighting my body quite so aggressively and instead began learning how to work alongside it. I adapted. Perhaps that is where healing quietly begins. How I chose to keep moving forward Whilst journeying through chronic illness, one of the biggest decisions I made was choosing to learn how to drive. Driving represented far more than operating a vehicle. It represented movement. Progress. Freedom. Possibility. There were many days I questioned myself. Pain, fatigue, anxiety, stop start lessons, and physical limitations often made me wonder whether I would ever succeed. I took breaks. I doubted myself. I cried. But I kept returning. My instructor, close friends, family, and faith helped me continue when my own confidence disappeared. Eventually, after years of setbacks, I passed my driving test in early 2026 at over 40 years old. That moment represented far more than passing an exam. It symbolised freedom. “Learning to drive was about far more than a car, it was about reclaiming parts of myself I thought I had lost.” Learning that support tools are not weakness One of the greatest lessons I have learned is that adaptation is not failure. Support tools gave me access to life again. Kitchen gadgets reduced strain on painful joints. A bath bench improved safety. Walking and driving aids improved mobility. A mobility scooter allowed me to participate in life more fully. These tools did not take my independence away. They helped me keep it. “I realised these tools were not taking my independence away, they were helping me keep it.” The hidden cost of normal experiences with a chronic illness Living with chronic illness means many “normal” experiences are no longer simple. Travelling, socialising, shopping, or attending events may require preparation, recovery, pacing, medication planning, accessibility considerations, or significant rest afterwards. People often see the event itself. They rarely see the cost. Learning to prepare, pace myself, and give myself grace became essential. Because only you truly understand the hidden cost your body may pay. “People often see the destination, but not the physical price the body may pay afterwards.” Learning that life may need to look different not stop One of the greatest lessons chronic illness has taught me is that sometimes you must first lose parts of yourself in order to rediscover who you are becoming. Whatever trauma, illness, grief, or life altering experience you may be facing, my encouragement would be keep moving forward, even if those movements feel small. Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, change and healing take time, and growth is often painful whilst it is happening. Yet there is still beauty within becoming. For me, learning to live again meant accepting that life now moves at a different pace. It meant honouring my body’s boundaries whilst still allowing myself permission to experience joy, purpose, growth, and fulfilment. There is no universal timeline for healing. Everybody’s journey looks different, so release comparison and create boundaries that support what is safe, sustainable, and healthy for you. Keep adapting. Keep rediscovering yourself. Most importantly, allow yourself permission to live again. “My life may have slowed down, but I never completely stopped moving forward.” You are allowed to live fully even if you are still unwell If chronic illness has taught me anything, it is this: Life may need to change, but it does not have to stop. Grieve honestly. Adapt where needed. Protect your mental diet. Set boundaries. Celebrate small wins. Allow yourself grace. Above all else, keep moving even if those movements feel small. Because healing rarely happens all at once. Sometimes it looks like surviving one day, adapting the next, and eventually realising you are living again. “My life may have slowed down, but I never completely stopped moving forward.” Because every small step forward eventually becomes part of a much larger journey of healing, growth, and rediscovery. How to take your next steps If any part of this article resonated with you, know that you do not have to navigate healing, identity loss, chronic illness, or personal transformation alone. You are welcome to book a 1:1 peer support coaching session with me, where we can explore your healing journey together in a supportive and compassionate space. If your experiences have inspired you to share your story, but you do not know where or how to begin, you may also wish to transform your lived experiences into a message that empowers and impacts others through writing by joining my self-publishing and writing programme through Jemoza Wellbeing Academy. If you are ready to begin confronting the deeper wounds, limitations, fears, and traumas that may still be keeping you emotionally bound, you can also pre order my upcoming healing course, Exiting Egypt, designed to help individuals begin leaving behind the emotional “Egypts” that have kept them spiritually, emotionally, or mentally restricted, whilst preparing to step into healing, freedom, and renewed purpose. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Louise Rachael Mwape Miller Louise Rachael Mwape Miller, Founder, CEO, Author & Wellbeing Writing Coach Louise Rachael Mwape Miller is a wellbeing and writing coach, author, and founder of Jemoza Wellbeing Academy. Following a life-altering sickle cell trait crisis in 2020, she transformed her personal journey into a platform that supports healing, identity restoration, and creative expression. Her work combines lived experience, professional expertise, from a Biblical foundation to guide others in reclaiming their voice and purpose. She is the author of multiple books, including Symptomatic: Life of A Sickle Cell Carrier, and is recognized within the sickle cell trait community for her advocacy. Through her courses, writing programme, and community platforms, she empowers individuals globally to heal, create, and transform. References of related articles underlined above: Ncc, D. R. T. P. (2020, June 30). Spending too much time in survival mode has its consequences. Psychology Today. Garywise. (2025, May 14). What would I do if I had no fear? Wise Humanity. Lcsw, K. W. V. M. J. (2023, March 14). The dual process model of coping with loss. Psychology Today. The Hidden Grief of Chronic Illness: Mourning the Life You Expected Jemoza Wellbeing Academy. (n.d.). Jemoza Wellbeing Academy Ltd. From Blank Page to Bestseller: Your Path to Amazon KDP Success. (n.d.). Jemoza Wellbeing Academy Ltd. Exiting Egypt: Biblical Trauma Healing Course. (n.d.). Jemoza Wellbeing Academy Ltd.

Even without the busy-brags taking over the Internet, chronic fatigue has become almost like a badge of honor. It’s a closed loop: the more you push through the hours, the more willpower you get to push through even more grueling hours. The problem is, fatigue doesn't really care about your career, ambition, or the next meeting. It strikes when it pleases. You can power through a rough week, then another, but eventually, the bill will come due. Concentration eventually slips. Small decisions take longer, and not even the trusted morning coffee seems to be working anymore. There's a solution for all this, and no, it's not called a cryotherapy chamber. Forget the inane motivational advice and strip away the expensive gadgets, and what you're left with is the story as old as time: making small lifestyle adjustments goes a long way, starting with how much water you drink. Drink enough water If there were a performance-enhancing substance that improved focus, reduced headaches, boosted physical performance, and cost next to nothing, every executive in the world would be using it. There is. It's called clean water. Dehydration is one of the sneakiest causes of fatigue. Just like with overworking, symptoms include staring at the same spreadsheet for ten minutes, reading the same email three times, and the like. The wellness industry is enamored with complexity. They’re trying to sell you supplements that do help, but also cost a bunch. Water is about as unsexy as it gets, which is probably why people ignore it. If you're constantly tired and haven't paid attention to your water intake in months, start there. It's one of the easiest variables to fix. But how much water are we talking about exactly? That depends on your age, gender, height, weight, and activity level. Free tools like a daily water intake calculator can help you find the optimal amount of water you should take to keep the dehydration demon at bay. Sleep Nobody wants to hear that they need more sleep. It's the least exciting advice in the world. A new supplement sounds interesting. A sleep-tracking gadget sounds interesting. Going to bed an hour earlier sounds like something your parents would tell you. Unfortunately, your parents were probably onto something. You’ve probably gone through periods where you convinced yourself that six hours was enough. Then five. Then four and a half. And for a while, it seemed fine. Then little things started creeping in. You'd forget details from conversations. Tasks that normally took twenty minutes somehow stretched into an hour. The scary thing is that sleep deprivation doesn't sound any alarm bells. You don't suddenly become useless overnight and instead become slightly worse every day until that lower level starts feeling normal. Sleep is so often the answer, even when nobody wants it to be. Get some sunlight This fix is almost embarrassingly simple. It isn't flashy, doesn't come in a bottle, and surely nobody is selling a masterclass on it for $997. Making sure that you see the Sun before the spreadsheet should be one everyone’s daily list. A surprising number of people spend their entire day under artificial lighting, trudging their bodies between the bedroom, car, office, and back again. Deprived of sunlight, your body has no clue what time it is. Natural light plays a huge role in regulating your sleep-wake cycle. Get some sunlight in the morning and you'll often feel more alert during the day and sleep better at night. Skip it for long enough and everything starts feeling slightly off. Take micro breaks Newsflash: breaks are not something productive people don't need. Sitting in and grinding like there’s no tomorrow works just as well as you’d expect. But move away from the table, leave the spreadsheet alone for a minute at a time, and you’ll be amazed how the solution to a problem rarely appears while you’re staring directly at it. It usually shows up while making coffee, walking outside, or doing something completely unrelated. These are the times where you allow the subconscious part of your brain do the work for you. The modern workday encourages people to remain glued to a screen for hours at a time, particularly if you’re a business owner. The “one more email” culture seeps in because it feels way more productive than it actually is. Then everyone acts surprised when they feel mentally exhausted by mid-afternoon. Getting up for five minutes isn't laziness, but can sometimes be the most productive thing you'll do all day. Fix nutrition once and for all Don’t you wish there were a more exciting answer than "eat better"? There isn't. You already know which meals leave you feeling sharp and which ones leave you wanting a nap fifteen minutes later. Yet we keep mixing the two. Most people don't need a nutritionist to tell them that a pastry and two coffees isn't exactly an elite performance strategy and that late-night pizza isn’t gonna magically solve the latest budget concerns. The challenge, as ever, is convenience since when work gets busy, and the schedule gets tight, we tend to grab whatever is nearby and promise ourselves we'll eat properly tomorrow. Then we end up repeating the same routine the next day. Just for this once, try to plan your meal in advance. With dozens of plans and meal prep tips available online, there really is no excuse. Or even better, just go by the gut. Too much sugar and too much caffeine equals not enough actual food. Simple isn't always easy, but it tends to work. Simple advice works best The funny thing about biohacking is that most of the effective stuff doesn't feel like biohacking at all. It's mostly boring, to be frank. Nobody is building a personal brand around those ideas because there's nothing particularly glamorous about them. It’s much easier to push vitamin B12 in combination with Magnesium and pack it inside a flashy molecular packaging. You should get more vitamin B, but only after you’ve got enough sleep (at least 7 hours, according to the CDC), drank enough water, and eaten well. Not because they're revolutionary, but because they work.

Written by Victoria (Vicky) Russ, Managing Director and Leadership Coach Vicky Russ is a leadership coach and former CEO with 20+ years’ experience across the public, health and education sectors. She specialises in leadership, transformation and helping leaders navigate complex change and life transitions. Redundancy, restructure, toxic leadership, forced career change, these experiences can shatter a person’s identity, confidence, and mental health. So why does society still treat them as inconveniences rather than what they actually are, trauma? Imagine telling someone that you are struggling, that you cannot sleep, that you feel a deep sense of shame, a loss of identity, a fear of the future so paralysing that some days you cannot get out of bed. Now imagine the response: “But nobody died.” This is the reality for hundreds of thousands of professionals in the United Kingdom who are living with the aftermath of career trauma, the psychological injury caused by redundancy, toxic workplaces, forced career transitions, or prolonged periods of professional uncertainty. It is a form of suffering that is widespread, well-documented in research, and almost entirely unacknowledged by the people around them. We live in a culture that validates grief when someone dies, when a relationship ends, or when a health crisis strikes. But when someone loses their career, the role that gave them purpose, identity, structure, income, and social connection, the expectation is that they should dust themselves off and move on. Apply for another job. Stay positive. Be grateful for the redundancy payment. The grief is invisible, and that invisibility makes recovery immeasurably harder. What is career trauma? Career trauma is not a term most people have heard. But it is increasingly recognised in psychological research as a legitimate and significant source of human suffering. A landmark review published in the Academy of Management Annals synthesised over 1,500 studies across management, health sciences, and behavioural science to develop an integrated definition of work-related psychological trauma. The researchers found that despite being recognised in psychology and medicine for nearly four decades, trauma arising from work remains profoundly underexplored in organisational contexts and profoundly misunderstood. The review defines work-related psychological trauma as a dynamic, individualised process triggered by exposure to workplace stressors that overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope. It is not simply stress. It is not a bad day at the office. It is an experience that fundamentally disrupts a person’s sense of safety, competence, and identity, and it can have lasting effects on mental and physical health. The causes are varied: redundancy, bullying, harassment, toxic leadership, organisational betrayal, restructure, discrimination, and the chronic insecurity of precarious employment. What unites them is the depth of psychological injury they inflict and the extent to which that injury is minimised, dismissed, or simply not seen. The grief that nobody validates In 1989, the psychologist Kenneth Doka introduced a concept that helps explain why career trauma causes such profound isolation. He called it disenfranchised grief: grief experienced when a person incurs a loss that is not, or cannot be, openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned. Career loss is one of the clearest examples of disenfranchised grief in modern life. When someone is made redundant, they lose far more than a salary. They lose their professional identity, daily structure, sense of competence, social network, and place in the world and status. Research published in the Journal of Loss and Trauma found that the grief process surrounding redundancy begins before the news is even confirmed and involves a prolonged sequence of psychological injury: something changed, loss commenced, loss confirmed, and afterwards. Yet the social response is almost always practical rather than emotional. Friends ask whether you have updated your CV. Family members suggest you see it as an opportunity. Colleagues send encouraging messages about doors opening and the perfect opportunity being just around the corner. The underlying message, however well-intentioned, is clear: this is not something to grieve, it’s just a job, move on. But the research tells a different story. A study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry in 2022 identified that job loss can trigger complicated grief, a condition characterised by negative cognitions, avoidance strategies, and an inability to integrate the loss into autobiographical memory. When people cannot make sense of what has happened, when the grief is unprocessed and unvalidated, it does not diminish; it deepens. A crisis hiding in plain sight The scale of career trauma in the United Kingdom is staggering, even if it is rarely named as such. The Health and Safety Executive reported that in 2024/25, 964,000 workers in Great Britain were suffering from work-related stress, depression, or anxiety, a 24 per cent increase on the previous year and the highest figure ever recorded. These conditions accounted for 22.1 million lost working days, with each affected person taking an average of 16.4 days off work. The Centre for Mental Health’s Big Mental Health Report 2025 estimated the total cost of mental ill health to England at £300 billion a year, encompassing economic, human, and health care costs, and equivalent to double the entire NHS annual budget. Meanwhile, the redundancy crisis continues to deepen. Over 315,000 jobs were flagged for potential redundancy in 2025, with forecasts suggesting 327,000 or more in 2026. Behind these numbers are people with feelings and lives to balance. The Priory Group reports that individuals made redundant are twice as likely to develop serious mental health conditions in the months following the event. The British Psychological Society has described redundancy as carrying a “double jeopardy”, the practical loss of income compounded by the psychological loss of status, identity, companionship, and self-worth. Yet, as Mind has highlighted, the vast majority of people experiencing mental health difficulties connected to work or career loss receive very little professional support. Why friends and family get it wrong One of the most painful dimensions of career trauma is loneliness. Not because people do not care, but because they do not understand. The cultural script around career setbacks is relentlessly optimistic: every ending is a new beginning; when one door closes, another opens; everything happens for a reason. These platitudes, offered with genuine kindness, can feel like a second injury to someone whose world has collapsed and whose confidence is dropping with every rejection or recruiter “ghosting.” The truth is that most people have no framework for understanding career loss as trauma. We understand that losing a loved one requires time, compassion, and space. We understand that divorce is painful and complex. But a job ending? That is seen as a logistical problem, not an emotional one. The expectation is resilience, not grief. Activity, not reflection. The person suffering learns very quickly that their pain makes others uncomfortable, so they hide or suppress it, believing they are overreacting. Doka’s research warns that when grief is disenfranchised, the griever is denied the social support essential for recovery. They internalise the message that their suffering is disproportionate, that they should cope better. The shame compounds the grief, and the grief, unprocessed and unsupported, begins to affect everything: relationships, confidence, physical health, and the capacity to imagine a meaningful future. When career trauma lives in the body Career trauma does not only affect the mind. Research increasingly shows that prolonged psychological distress from work-related events triggers genuine nervous system dysregulation. The body’s stress response, designed to protect from acute physical danger, becomes chronically activated. Sleep is disrupted. Concentration fragments. The immune system is suppressed. Some people develop symptoms that meet the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. A 2020 study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that toxic leadership styles significantly increase PTSD and depression symptoms among employees. These effects persist long after leaving the workplace or role. Trauma is not located in the job, but in the person, in their nervous system, beliefs about themselves, and their relationship with work. This is why simply finding another job, if possible, does not resolve career trauma. The psychological injury follows the person. It shows up as imposter syndrome in the new role, hypervigilance around organisational change, reluctance to invest emotionally in work again, and a chronic lack of confidence. The wound does not heal because the desk has changed. From functioning to flourishing: What coaching makes possible Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun introduced the concept of post-traumatic growth in the mid-1990s to describe positive psychological change emerging from highly challenging life events. They identified five domains of growth: increased appreciation for life, more meaningful relationships, greater personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer sense of purpose. This is the territory that coaching occupies, not avoidance of pain, but transformation of it. Trauma-informed coaching honours the grief, names the trauma, and creates conditions for rebuilding a professional identity that is authentic, resilient, and deeply connected to the person’s true self. Functioning is finding another job and getting through the day. Flourishing is designing a career that aligns with life purpose, values, goals, and strengths, making work a source of energy and meaning rather than anxiety and obligation. Coaching begins with acknowledgement. Naming the experience as trauma, not failure, weakness, or overreaction, is profoundly healing. The work then focuses on rebuilding: reconnecting with strengths, clarifying values, and creating a future vision that is genuinely theirs. This is not about positive thinking. It is deep, honest, evidence-based work addressing the whole person: confidence, identity, nervous system, relationships, and life purpose. It transforms crisis into catalyst. The conversation we need to have Career trauma is real, widespread, and backed by decades of research. The current wave of redundancies, restructures, and workplace toxicity across the UK means more people than ever experience this form of suffering, most in silence, because others do not recognise it. We need to change the conversation. Stop treating career loss as a logistical problem and start recognising it as grief, identity crisis, and trauma. Offer the same compassion and support as for major life losses. Invest in professional support that does not just help people find the next job, but helps them find themselves again. Financial support addresses practical loss. Coaching addresses the human one. In a crisis of this scale, the human cost can no longer be ignored. If you are living with the aftermath of a career transition that felt like a loss, know this: what you are feeling is not weakness. It is a normal response to an abnormal situation, and with the right support, it can become the beginning of something extraordinary. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Victoria (Vicky) Russ Victoria (Vicky) Russ, Managing Director and Leadership Coach Vicky Russ is a leadership coach and former CEO with over 20 years’ experience across the public, health and education sectors. She specialises in leadership, transformation and helping leaders navigate complex change and life transitions. Her work focuses on supporting leaders to maintain performance while creating psychologically safe, high-performing cultures. Vicky is also a teacher of Positive Psychology Leadership and brings a practical, human approach to even the most challenging situations. She is passionate about “protecting the protectors” and helping leaders move from pressure to purpose. References: Doka, K.J. (1989). Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. Lexington Books. Doka, K.J. (2002). Disenfranchised Grief: New Directions, Challenges, and Strategies for Practice. Research Press. Bedi, A. et al. (2024). Work-Related Psychological Trauma Research: A Multidisciplinary Review and Integrated Trauma Response and Adaptation Model. Academy of Management Annals, 18(2). Cairns, D. and Malloch, M. (2009). Journeys Into Grief: Exploring Redundancy for a New Understanding of Workplace Grief. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 14(5), 401-419. Van Eersel, K.A., Taris, T.W., and Boelen, P.A. (2022). Job loss-related complicated grief symptoms: A cognitive-behavioural framework. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 933995. Van Eersel, K.A., Taris, T.W., and Boelen, P.A. (2019). Development and initial validation of the Job Loss Grief Scale. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 33(2), 193-206. Tedeschi, R.G. and Calhoun, L.G. (2004). Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18. Powers, J.J. and Duys, D.K. (2020). Toward Trauma-Informed Career Counseling. The Career Development Quarterly, 68(2), 173-185. Health and Safety Executive (2025). Work-related stress, anxiety and depression statistics in Great Britain 2024/25. hse.gov.uk Centre for Mental Health (2025). The Big Mental Health Report 2025. centreformentalhealth.org.uk British Psychological Society (2020). Double jeopardy: The surreptitious consequences of redundancy. The Psychologist. bps.org.uk Priory Group (2024). Maintaining your mental health after being made redundant. priorygroup.com Liquidation Centre (2026). UK Redundancy Statistics 2026. liquidationcentre.co.uk

Written by Kate Taylor, Registered Nutritionist Kate is a Registered Nutritionist and the Founder of Eat Drink Think Nutrition Limited. Kate supports systemic health & wellness through personalised nutrition, diet and lifestyle strategies & recommendations, and particularly specialises in Brain health, cognitive function and Dementia risk-avoidance. One of the infinite benefits of food is that it influences us to feel better, whether that feeling is satiated, nourished, or simply an uplifted mood. The crucial element is that we want this feel-better factor to have longevity. Instant gratification is fleeting; the real pinnacle of wellness is to feel your best for the longest time possible. Our food and diet can achieve both, but to positively influence our overall Brainspan and healthspan, we need to delve a bit deeper into daily dietary habits. We are the sum of, and indeed the reflection of, our daily habits, not our temporary trends. In this way, we can be our own example and live in a way that positively influences our Brainspan and healthspan. Then, perhaps, our reflection will instigate positive influence and ripple effects of the infinite benefits of long-lasting, radiant health. On this thought, here are three foods you can share to influence and support Brainspan and healthspan longevity: Dark chocolate: By this, I mean chocolate with at least 75% cacao content. It is a shareable and sociable food, and socialising itself benefits Brainspan. There are few barriers (excluding allergies and health conditions) to including it in your diet. Several reasons explain why dark chocolate is considered healthspan beneficial: it has considerably lower refined sugar content, which is increasingly identified as one of the fastest ways to speed up physiological and aesthetic aging; it is associated with skin elasticity and anti-wrinkle benefits; and it is rich in polyphenol flavanols, which support blood flow to the brain, are naturally anti-inflammatory, enhance concentration and focus during endurance tasks, and help regulate mood stability, reducing anxiety and depression risks. Dark chocolate also contains notable fiber, iron, magnesium, and zinc, all of which benefit whole-body health. In moderation, typically a square or two daily, dark chocolate may indeed be a win-win for brain and body. Extra virgin olive oil: It is easy to drizzle onto food, often stored in standalone bottles on a table, and once one person adds it, others at the table may follow. Nutrient-wise, extra virgin olive oil is rich in polyphenols (when harvesting, extraction, and storage are optimal), contains beneficial essential fats (Omega-9 oleic acid) supporting brain health and structure, the brain’s dry weight is 60% fat, and provides oleocanthal, a potent anti-inflammatory compound. Extra virgin olive oil is closely associated with the Mediterranean diet, which not only offers nutrient density but also encourages socializing in good company while eating. Thus, it supports Brainspan and healthspan both nutritionally and socially. Berries and leafy greens: Colourful berries and leafy green vegetables are highly supportive of brain health and mood. Are they inherently social? It depends. Hosting a gathering with crudités or fruit salad makes them socially influential. Sometimes, making healthier choices to impress others at a social event can also influence behavior. Perhaps the most studied impact is on mood, which is socially significant. Berries and leafy greens are rich in polyphenol flavonoids, which are neuroprotective, regulate inflammation, and support cognitive longevity. They are also protective of the gut microbiome, the gut-brain axis, and vagus nerve function, influencing neurotransmitters (e.g., dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline) and behavioral reactions (such as anxiety, depression, or impulsivity). A deficiency in polyphenol-rich foods may therefore significantly affect mood, cognition, and social influence. To conclude, aspiring to live as well and as long as possible, remember that food and diet are robustly evidenced to be major influences in achieving this. Nutrition and diet are the benchmarks and starting points, recognised since 1903 when Thomas Edison commented in The Newark Advocate, “The doctor of the future … will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” Medical sciences advance rapidly, but underpinning health, especially brain health, is a healthy respect for fresh, nourishing food, a balanced diet, and a wholesome lifestyle. If a functional medicine perspective for nurturing and supporting your brain health and cognitive function is of interest, the time to act is now. Why postpone what could be actioned today? Investing in your brain health and Brainspan could be one of the wisest decisions you ever make. Please note that these are general recommendations. They are not personalised and do not account for individual health imbalances or medical conditions. Consult a medical professional or a qualified nutritionist/dietician for tailored advice. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kate Taylor Kate Taylor, Registered Nutritionist Kate is an advocate of proactive and preventative healthcare through optimising and personalising the basics, nutrition, diet, and lifestyle. Kate's experiences watching those around her develop and decline from Dementia instilled in her a mindset of 'prevention is better than cure' and that, particularly when it comes to Brain health and Dementia risk-avoidance, the perception 'false hopelessness' should not triumph over health optimism. Whilst sensitive to the fact that Brain health and Dementia risk-avoidance is multifaceted and cannot be solely addressed by nutrition, Kate's professional nutritional aspiration is to empower & inspire people that diet and lifestyle are integral foundations to health, healthspan, and importantly, Brainspan. References: Nehlig, A. (2013). The neuroprotective effects of cocoa flavanol and its influence on cognitive performance. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2125.2012.04378.x Zeli, C., Lombardo, M., Storz, M.A., et al. (2022). Chocolate and cocoa-derived biomolecules for brain cognition during ageing. Antioxidants (Basel). doi: 10.3390/antiox11071353 Shahabi, M., & Idrees, R. (2023). Flavanols for age-related memory loss: A promising nutritional intervention. Annals of Neurosciences. doi: 10.1177/09727531231195683 Jennings, A., Thompson, A.S., Tresserra-Rimbau, A., et al. (2024). Flavonoid-rich foods, dementia risk, and interactions with genetic risk, hypertension, and depression. JAMA. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.34136 Gratton, G., Weaver, S.R., Burley, C.V., et al. (2020). Dietary flavanols improve cerebral cortical oxygenation and cognition in healthy adults. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-76160-9 Sasaki, A., Mizuno, K., Morito, Y., et al. (2024). The effects of dark chocolate on cognitive performance during cognitively demanding tasks: A randomized, single-blinded, crossover, dose-comparison study. Heliyon. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e24430 Samanta, S., Sarkar, T., Chakraborty, R., et al. (2022). Dark chocolate: An overview of its biological activity, processing, and fortification approaches. Current Research in Food Science. doi: 10.1016/j.crfs.2022.10.017 Zoe [Website]. (2025). Health benefits of dark chocolate and how much you should eat. https://zoe.com/learn/dark-chocolate-health-benefits?srsltid=AfmBOoo2oE721KiYfKhxYOmXKMq-PfrDzzRiL14meqWctcWtBxuxModR Shin, J.-H., Kim, C.-S., Cha, J., et al. (2022). Consumption of 85% cocoa dark chocolate improves mood in association with gut microbial changes in healthy adults: A randomized controlled trial. The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955286321002746 Mazza, E., Fava, A., Ferro, Y., et al. (2017). Impact of legumes and plant proteins consumption on cognitive performances in the elderly. Journal of Translational Medicine. doi: 10.1186/s12967-017-1209-5 Schönfeld, P., & Reiser, G. (2021). How the brain fights fatty acids’ toxicity. Neurochemistry International. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuint.2021.105050 Flynn, M.M., Tierney, A., & Itsiopoulos, C. (2023). Is extra virgin olive oil the critical ingredient driving the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet? A narrative review. Nutrients. doi: 10.3390/nu15132916 Mazza, A.D. (2025). Olive oil and longevity: A review of evidence linking Mediterranean fats to healthy aging. Journal of Nutrition and Health Sciences. https://www.annexpublishers.com/articles/JNH/12102-Olive-Oil-and-Longevity-A-Review-of-Evidence-Linking.pdf Morkovin, E., Litvinov, R., Koushner, A., et al. (2024). Resveratrol and extra virgin olive oil: Protective agents against age-related disease. Nutrients. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16244258 Wei, L., Li, Z., Shi, M., et al. (2025). Neuroprotective properties of extra virgin olive oil polyphenols in Alzheimer’s disease: A multi-target mechanistic review. Frontiers in Nutrition. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1736633 Tessier, A.J., Cortese, M., Yuan, C., et al. (2024). Consumption of olive oil, diet quality, and risk of dementia-related death. JAMA Network Open. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11074805/#H1-5-ZOI240363 Millman, J.F., Okamoto, S., Teruya, T., et al. (2021). Extra-virgin olive oil and the gut-brain axis: Influence on gut microbiota, mucosal immunity, and cardiometabolic and cognitive health. Nutrition Reviews. doi: 10.1093/nutrit/nuaa148 Vendrell Calatayud, M., Li, X., Brizzolara, S., et al. (2024). Storage effect on olive oil phenols: Cultivar-specific responses. Frontiers in Nutrition. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.138255 Kılıç, T., & Koyuncu, G. (2024). Effect of early harvest on the aroma compounds and bioactive properties of natural olive oils. DOI: 10.29050/harranziraat.1516474 Bernardi, E., & Visioli, F. (2024). Fostering wellbeing and healthy lifestyles through conviviality and commensality: Underappreciated benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Nutrition Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nutres.2024.03.007 Royle-Davies, L. (2024). Is healthy eating contagious? Zoe Website. https://zoe.com/learn/is-healthy-eating-contagious? Heidari, M., Khodadadi Jokar, Y., Madani, S., et al. (2023). Influence of food type on human psychological-behavioral responses and crime reduction. Nutrients. doi: 10.3390/nu15173715 Jie, S., Fu, A., Wang, C., et al. (2025). A comprehensive review on the impact of polyphenol supplementation and exercise on depression and brain function parameters. Behaviour and Brain Function. doi: 10.1186/s12993-025-00273-2 Grabska-Kobyłecka, I., Szpakowski, P., Król, A., et al. (2023). 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Written by Esther Christopher, Trauma Pain Support Esther Christopher is the founder of Trauma Pain Support Ltd, a speaker, writer and trauma-informed systems thinker whose work explores the overlooked spaces between crisis, recovery, leadership and long-term human resilience. Through her writing and framework development, she examines how lived experience can reveal what formal systems often miss. We assume the work that matters happens inside roles, inside the job title, the defined responsibility, the part each of us has been handed at work, at home, in a family, or in the middle of a crisis. We assume the space between those roles is empty. A gap. Dead air. Nothing happening there worth naming. It is one of the most expensive assumptions we make. Because that space is not empty at all. It is where much of the work of holding things together actually happens, quietly, continuously, and almost always without credit. It is the work of someone who notices what is about to fall between two teams and steps in before it does. It is the work of a person carrying the mental ledger of an entire household alongside a demanding job. It is the work of a partner who, in the months after someone they love is discharged from hospital, holds together what no single specialist is responsible for anymore. It is the work of a founder who has been building something quietly for years and is still surprised when someone calls it leadership. None of it appears in a job description. None of it shows up on a performance review. None of it fits inside an org chart. But it is real, it is consequential, and the systems around it, at work, at home, in care, and in everyday life, depend on it being done. The space between roles is not empty. It is where much of the work of coordinating modern life now sits. It is where one of the most overlooked forms of leadership now lives. A conversation that named something A recent exchange with another leadership thinker, about how leadership has to evolve in collaborative, high-pressure environments, finally gave me language for something I had been circling for a long time. There is a category of work that belongs to no single role and is therefore invisible to all of them. It is the connective tissue of modern life. It is the in between. The texture of the in between Picture an organisational chart. The boxes are the roles; the lines are who reports to whom; and the space between them is simply white, which we read, without thinking, as empty. It is, in fact, the most occupied empty space in the building. If you have ever held this kind of role, you will recognise its texture. It is rarely written into a job description, and it never shows up on a performance metric. It is holding context across the meetings the most senior person could not attend. It is reading a room, translating tone, catching the signal that needs attention, and routing it to whoever is best placed to act. It is carrying the small, ongoing situations so the people running the larger ones can keep a clear head. It is carrying what cannot yet be delegated and what no one else has thought to claim. It is work that matters enormously and is credited almost not at all. In most organisations, it is carried by someone who is never formally named as the person carrying it. I have watched this pattern play out across very different settings, corporate offices, healthcare, and mission-led organizations operating under real complexity. Wherever responsibility is distributed, and no structure quite holds the whole picture, someone, somewhere, is quietly holding the in between. Earlier this year, I was named to the Santander W50 UK 2026 list for leadership. The recognition surprised me, and perhaps the surprise itself proves the point. I had founded and built Trauma Pain Support, but I had not always placed the word "leader" around that work. Like many people who build from lived experience, I was focused on the problem in front of me. SW50 made me stop and look again. What I saw was the same blindness this article describes, only turned inward. The leadership we celebrate is the visible kind. The leadership that actually keeps systems running and builds new ones quietly, over time, in spaces no one is yet watching, is usually the kind no one can see. Including, sometimes, the person doing it. Why this matters more now There is a reason this is becoming a leadership conversation and not simply an operational one. The conditions organisations work in have changed. Sustained uncertainty, rising complexity, fragmented decision rights, distributed teams, relentless pace, and continual adaptation have all changed what leadership asks of people. What used to be exceptional, operating under pressure, holding several unresolved threads at once, and working across boundaries, has quietly become ordinary. In that environment, more of the real work of running an organisation sits in the spaces between roles. More depends on coordination than before. More requires interpretation. More rests on someone, somewhere, noticing what nobody has yet been asked to notice. The risk is not that this work has stopped. In most organisations, it is still happening. The risk is that nobody names it, values it, or designs for it, and that the people carrying it do so without recognition, without authority, and often without rest. Strain becomes normalised. Signals get missed. Things break in places nobody was watching, because nobody had been asked to watch. When that happens, the instinct is to look for the individual who fell short. The more honest question is structural: who was supposed to be holding that, and did our system ever actually give it to anyone? The same pattern at home That structural question does not stop at the office door. The in between is not only an organisational phenomenon. For many women in particular, the same architecture appears twice, once at work and again at home. A person can hold a complex professional role through the day and then hold an entire household through the evening, tracking who needs what, anticipating what is about to slip, coordinating schedules and appointments, and carrying the mental ledger of everyone else's lives. That work is rarely called leadership. It is rarely described as strategy, coordination, or sense-making, even though it is unmistakably all three. It is described, if at all, as "managing", a word that has quietly lost its weight. If we are going to be honest about what leadership now looks like, we have to name it in both places. The same skills that keep a complex organisation running quietly keep many households running too. The same strain gathers in both. The only difference is that one is beginning to be recognised, and the other is still treated as background. When formal systems step back Some of the clearest examples of in-between leadership appear where formal systems have a defined endpoint. After a serious road traffic accident, clinical care eventually ends. Discharge happens. The acute pathway closes. In the months that follow, many people enter a stretch of time that no single specialty or service is fully responsible for. What determines how that period unfolds is rarely the medicine. It is whether anyone is leading in the space the formal system has left behind. A family member holding the whole picture across specialties. A partner noticing what the discharge letter did not say. A practitioner staying quietly involved beyond their remit. None of them are usually called leaders. Most would never describe themselves that way. But what they are doing, holding the whole, anticipating what is about to fall through, translating between systems that do not speak to one another, and sustaining attention over time, is leadership in one of its most undiluted forms. Leadership without title, without org chart, without anyone asking them to lead. The same shape appears in organisations whenever a formal process closes but the work it set in motion has not finished. A project ends; its consequences continue. A team disbands; the relationships it managed do not. In each case, what happens next depends on whoever is willing to lead in a space that no longer has an owner. Questions worth sitting with I am not proposing a framework. I am proposing a shift in attention. If you lead an organisation, a team, a function, or a household, it may be worth asking: What work is happening between roles in our system that we have never actually named? Who is carrying responsibility without authority? Where are we relying on invisible coordination, and what would happen if the person quietly providing it stepped back? What keeps working only because someone is absorbing the strain? Perhaps the one I have had to sit with myself: if you have spent years quietly holding this kind of space, what have you been calling it, and is it time to call it leadership? These questions are not designed to produce quick answers. They are designed to make the in between visible. Once you can see it, you can begin to value it, resource it, and lead for it, instead of depending on it without ever quite admitting it is there. The space between roles is not empty. It is where much of the real work, and much of the real strain, of modern life is now carried. Leadership in this environment is not only a matter of strategy, performance, or authority. It is also a matter of noticing what sits between the formal structures and being honest about who is actually holding it. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Esther Christopher Esther Christopher, Trauma Pain Support Esther Christopher is the founder of Trauma Pain Support Ltd. (TPS), a trauma-informed recovery program helping RTA survivors rebuild physically, emotionally, and mentally. After overcoming her own life-changing road traffic accident, Esther developed the TPS framework to bridge the gap between medical recovery and long-term healing. A certified Total Breakthrough Coach, author, and nutritionist, she combines professional expertise with lived experience to guide others toward sustainable transformation. Her memoir, Triumph Over Tragedy, chronicles her journey from survival to purpose, inspiring others to reclaim their strength and identity.

Tata Islem is a Human & Business Strategist, speaker, and Executive Contributor known for her unique approach to leadership, self-trust, embodiment, and human transformation. With a background in biomechanics, movement analysis, nervous system work, and integrating neuroscience into her work, she helps individuals, leaders, and entrepreneurs reconnect with themselves, make aligned decisions, and create success without sacrificing their authenticity. Having completed advanced trainer development programs, she also trains and mentors others in communication, leadership, and personal transformation. In this interview, Islem shares her perspective on why so many high performers become disconnected despite achieving success, how self-trust shapes leadership and decision-making, and why true visibility, fulfillment, and personal growth begin with staying connected to who you truly are. Tata Islem, Human and Business Strategist What first made you realize that success without self-connection can become a form of self-betrayal? Success without self-connection becomes self-betrayal when we stop trusting our own way of moving through life and begin forcing ourselves into systems, processes, or identities that are not aligned with who we are. For me, the signal was always in the body. The more disconnected I became from myself, the more tension, overthinking, and effort appeared. The moment I returned to my own rhythm, clarity, execution, and aliveness returned as well. How has your background in biomechanics and nervous system work changed the way you understand leadership? My background in biomechanics and nervous system work completely changed the way I understand leadership because I realized that big problems rarely start as big problems. Most of the time, they begin with small habits, small patterns, and small daily decisions that are repeated over time. When I was working with people, I noticed that physical pain was often not the real problem. The real problem was usually something much deeper: the way they breathed, the way they moved, the habits they repeated every day, or the things they were no longer paying attention to. When the root cause was addressed, the pain often disappeared. When it was ignored, the problem kept returning and became chronic. Over time, I started seeing the same pattern in leadership. Small moments of self-disconnection, repeated over time, create confusion, overthinking, fragmentation, and a loss of clarity. People begin hiding parts of themselves and adapting to what they think will bring success instead of staying connected to who they truly are. What I learned is that leadership is not primarily about leading others. It starts with leading yourself: your body, your energy, your decisions, and the way you move through life. Because people do not only follow your words. They feel who you are, and they follow that. People feel you before they listen to you. What do most people misunderstand about embodiment when they try to apply it to business or visibility? Most people misunderstand embodiment because they think it is something they need to perform rather than something they need to become. They focus on strategies, visibility, content, and external results, but there is often a mismatch between what they say they want and how they actually live. The first thing I notice is that their actions do not match their words. They say they want to grow a business, become visible, or build a personal brand, but they are not consistently doing the things that bring them closer to those goals. They often follow external expectations instead of listening to themselves. For me, embodiment is the alignment between what you truly want, what you say, and how you act. When people start listening to themselves, their decisions become much clearer. They stop wasting energy on things that do not matter and become very precise in their actions. They know why they are doing something and where it is leading them. As a result, their communication becomes coherent. They speak what they genuinely feel, and people can sense that authenticity. That creates trust, credibility, and resonance. They attract the people who are aligned with their message because they are no longer trying to be someone else. In business and visibility, embodiment creates clarity, precision, and consistency. It allows people to move through life and work with less friction and more trust in themselves. That is what makes a business unique, authentic, and ultimately scalable. Why do you think so many high performers feel disconnected from themselves even after achieving success? I believe many high performers become disconnected because they start valuing external success more than their relationship with themselves. They keep chasing one goal after another, believing that the next achievement, milestone, or result will finally make them feel fulfilled, complete, or at peace. In the process, they stop listening to themselves. They adapt to external expectations, follow rules that others created, and slowly disconnect from their own truth. Many people believe that success requires sacrificing parts of themselves, so they learn to conform rather than remain authentic. Over time, they become so identified with the persona they created that they forget who they are underneath it. They get what they wanted, but they lose the person who wanted it. For me, the signs are very clear. Even when someone is successful, I can feel when they are no longer fully present. They are more in their head than in their body. Their decisions become predictable, their energy changes, and they lose a sense of aliveness. True success is not only about what you build externally. It is about staying connected to yourself while building it. I believe it is possible to create success without abandoning your own truth, and that is the kind of success that brings both achievement and fulfillment. What patterns do you notice in people who constantly overthink instead of moving forward? One of the biggest patterns I notice is that people become identified with their thoughts. They believe that overthinking, fear, doubt, or uncertainty are the problem, when in reality, they are often a normal part of the journey. When someone tells me they are stuck, I rarely see a lack of knowledge. Most of the time, I see someone who is trapped in an identity or a story about themselves. They keep thinking about the next step instead of taking it. I often use the example of climbing a mountain. When you climb a mountain, you cannot jump from the bottom to the top. You have to focus on where you place your hands and feet, one step at a time. If you keep looking at the entire mountain, you become overwhelmed. But if you focus on the next move, you keep progressing. Overthinking works the same way. People become so focused on the whole journey that they stop moving completely. The irony is that overthinking itself is part of the journey. Fear, doubt, and uncertainty will appear whenever you step into something new. The difference is that some people believe those thoughts and stop, while others acknowledge them and keep moving. For me, the people who move forward are not the ones who think less. They are the ones who know how to speak to themselves when fear appears. They can say, “It’s okay. This is part of the process. Let me do it anyway.” What I have observed is that once they take action, most of the overthinking disappears. Action creates clarity. Staying still creates more thinking. What is one practical way someone can reconnect with their intuition during periods of pressure or uncertainty? One of the simplest things I tell people is to stop trying to force the answer and instead change their state. If someone comes to me feeling overwhelmed, confused, or unable to make a decision, I often tell them to go get a massage, take a walk, go swimming, stretch, or do something that allows their body to relax. Most people try to think their way out of uncertainty, but the more pressure they put on themselves, the more external noise enters the process. They start hearing the opinions of mentors, social media, friends, experts, and everyone else except themselves. For me, intuition is not something mysterious. It is something that becomes easier to hear when the noise becomes quieter. When the body relaxes, the nervous system relaxes, and suddenly there is space to listen. Most people live life on autopilot. Intuition requires participation. It requires taking the time to ask yourself what you truly want and having the courage to listen to the answer. The reason I trust the answer that comes after rest more than the answer that comes after three more hours of overthinking is that it is usually my answer. It is not influenced by external expectations or other people's opinions. It comes from a place of clarity, not pressure. In my experience, the decision that brings the most fulfillment is often the one that remains when all the external noise is gone. How can entrepreneurs build a personal brand that reflects who they truly are instead of who they think they should be? One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is trying to build a brand based on who they think they should be rather than who they truly are. They follow rules about how they should look, what they should post, how they should speak, and what image they should present. Over time, they start building a brand around a fixed persona instead of allowing themselves to evolve as human beings. A personal brand is not about creating an image. It is about expressing the truth of who you are. That truth will naturally evolve as you evolve. I have never wanted to fit myself into one identity because life continuously changes us. My brand has always been a reflection of my journey, my observations, my experiences, and the ideas I choose to share with the world. People do not only buy products or services. They buy the energy around them. Everybody can build a brand, but not everybody can build an authentic brand. Authenticity creates trust, and trust creates connection. The easiest and most sustainable way to build a personal brand is to build it on truth. It requires less energy, less performance, and less pretending. It allows you to keep growing while remaining connected to yourself. For me, that is what makes a brand powerful, Expensive, unique, and truly alive. You often speak about trusting yourself deeply, so what helped you develop that trust in your own life? What helped me develop trust in myself was observing the difference between what happens when I trust myself and what happens when I don't. Every time I followed someone else's process without adapting it to myself, I noticed the same pattern. I would start overthinking, analyzing everything, and moving further away from the actual action that would create the result. What could have taken me one week would sometimes take two or three months because I was trying to follow a path that worked for someone else instead of listening to myself. When I trust myself, things become much simpler. I have an idea, I take action, and I move. There is less effort, less resistance, and less wasted energy. I feel alive while doing it. I love learning from other people, and I believe we can learn from everyone. But I also believe that nobody knows me better than I know myself. No mentor, expert, or system can fully understand what I feel, what I have lived, or how I naturally operate. For me, self-trust is not about rejecting advice. It is about listening to yourself first. I can learn from many people, take what resonates, and leave the rest. But if I am giving myself the time, attention, and care to listen clearly, then I trust that the final decision should come from me. Because nobody can know me more than I know myself. What do you hope people remember about themselves after experiencing your work? More than anything, I hope people remember that they are already whole. I want them to realize that no part of them is wrong. Not the confident parts, not the fearful parts, not the strong parts, and not the vulnerable parts. They are all part of being human. The moment we stop fighting ourselves and start accepting all parts of who we are, something changes. We stop searching outside for permission to be ourselves. I also hope people remember that they are far more powerful than they have been taught to believe. I truly believe we are born with greatness already inside us. Life is not about becoming someone else. It is about remembering who we are and learning how to express that fully. In many ways, I see human beings as magical creatures living in a magical world. We have the ability to create, transform, evolve, and build lives that reflect our deepest truth. If people leave my work remembering anything, I hope it is this: there is nothing missing in you. There is only more of you waiting to be discovered, expressed, and lived. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tata Islem