Written by Aide Roxanna Reyes, CEO & Founder, Mental Health Counselor Aide Reyes, LLC Aide Roxanna Reyes is a Licensed Mental Health Clinician, LMHC-D, MSEd. She is the Founder and CEO of Mental Health Counselor Aide Reyes, LLC. Aide Roxanna Reyes is the author of the book "I Am Who I Think I Am" and the host of the podcast Mental Health Counselor Aide Reyes. A song can give us words to return to when our own inner dialogue becomes harsh. Positive affirmation songs bring supportive language into music, creating an opportunity to practice self-respect, acknowledge difficult feelings, and choose a helpful next step. Their potential is meaningful, especially when the words feel believable and connect to daily life. As a licensed bilingual mental health counselor and the creator of I Am Who I Think I Am™, I write affirmation songs to encourage a kinder relationship with ourselves. My intention is to make emotional learning accessible through English and Spanish lyrics that listeners can remember and use. Understanding their power also requires clarity about the research, the role of repetition, and what a song can reasonably offer. What are positive affirmation songs Positive affirmation songs are songs built around encouraging statements about worth, growth, identity, or helpful choices. A phrase such as “I am learning to trust myself” becomes part of a verse or chorus, giving the listener a repeatable message within a musical experience. The lyrics may also model breathing, setting boundaries, questioning an unhelpful thought, or asking for support. The words matter as much as the mood. A useful affirmation makes room for reality. “I can feel nervous and still take one small step” allows anxiety and courage to coexist. A song that insists we must always be happy can leave a struggling listener feeling misunderstood. I want my songs to help people respond to their feelings with care. How music and affirmations may help Music can support stress reduction. In a 2020 review, de Witte and colleagues analyzed 104 randomized controlled trials involving 9,617 participants. Music interventions showed average effects of d = 0.380 on physiological stress outcomes and d = 0.545 on psychological stress outcomes. These are standardized effect sizes, roughly small to moderate and moderate in magnitude; they are not 38 percent and 54.5 percent reductions in stress. The studies included varied interventions and settings, so the findings do not establish the effects of my songs. [1] Self-affirmation research offers another useful perspective. Epton and colleagues’ 2015 meta-analysis included 144 experimental tests. Average effects were small for accepting health messages (d = 0.17) and intentions to change (d = 0.14), and somewhat larger for subsequent health behavior (d = 0.32). However, these studies generally involved reflecting on important values, personal qualities, or relationships. They did not simply test repeating “I am” lyrics. Their findings suggest a role for values-based reflection, rather than proving that affirmation songs produce the same results. [2] Together, these bodies of research give us reasons to explore songs as supportive tools. They do not tell us that combining music and affirmations adds their effects together. I see a practical opportunity: an enjoyable song may encourage someone to return to words and coping practices they otherwise forget to use. Whether that helps a particular listener depends on the song, the situation, and the person. A psychological perspective on inner dialogue From a cognitive behavioral perspective, the useful question is whether an affirmation helps us examine a thought and respond more constructively. Imagine preparing for a presentation while thinking, “If I make one mistake, everyone will think I am incapable.” A song can prompt a pause and a question: What evidence supports that prediction? What else could be true? A more balanced response might be, “I can prepare, make mistakes, and still communicate something valuable.” My songs use this sequence creatively. They invite listeners to notice an emotion, question a harsh interpretation, practice compassionate words, and take a manageable action. This is CBT-inspired psychoeducation within lyrics; it does not make a song equivalent to individualized CBT. Believability matters. In two experiments reported by Wood and colleagues in 2009, participants with low self-esteem who repeated a strongly positive self-statement felt worse than comparison participants. Benefits for participants with high self-esteem were limited. This does not mean all affirmations are harmful. It shows why an affirmation should fit the listener rather than demand agreement. “I am learning to treat myself with respect” may feel more accessible than an absolute claim that feels untrue. [3] Self-compassion is central to my approach. Strength includes resting, feeling sadness, and seeking help. Emotion regulation means choosing how to respond to feelings; it does not require eliminating them. I want the listener to hear that their worth remains even on a difficult day. The elements of my positive affirmation songs My I Am Who I Think I Am™ songwriting framework combines the following elements. They describe my creative intentions and lyric design, rather than measured treatment outcomes. Identity affirmations and a memorable refrain First-person statements give the listener words to rehearse. In my women’s song “I Am Strong,” the refrain includes “I Am A Warrior, I am strong, I am resilient.” The brand phrase returns throughout the song. I use identity language to encourage agency in self-talk while recognizing that thoughts alone do not determine a person’s health, safety, opportunities, or circumstances. Reframing and critical thinking The lyrics invite listeners to question a fearful interpretation. In “I Am Strong,” the line “What else could be true?” opens space for another explanation. An affirmation becomes more useful when it encourages reflection and a realistic alternative to self-criticism. Emotional awareness and practical coping My lyrics include naming a feeling, taking a comfortable breath, noticing the feet on the floor, or choosing one small step. Boundaries and help-seeking belong in the same message. For children, that can mean asking a trusted adult for support. For women, it can mean recognizing that a respectful no is compatible with kindness. Self worth and compassionate strength “I am worthy when I rest” and “I am strong enough to feel” are affirmations in “I Am Strong.” They express the belief that worth does not have to be earned through constant productivity or emotional toughness. My broader catalog explores self-acceptance, self-love, self-respect, authenticity, and resilience. Repetition and supportive imagery Repeated choruses, optional call-and-response, and future-self imagery give the words a familiar structure. A listener can picture responding to a challenge with a little more care. I use these devices to make practice inviting, without treating repetition as proof that a belief has changed. Bilingual and age-appropriate expression My English brand, I Am Who I Think I Am™, has the Spanish expression Yo Soy Quien Creo Que Soy. Spanish identity affirmations begin with “Yo soy,” such as “Yo soy resiliente.” I adapt the language to its audience so children, adolescents, and adults can encounter supportive messages that make sense in their lives. My production briefs often favor approximately three minutes, a warm female lead, and inspirational pop with R&B and ambient textures. Preferences such as 88 BPM or A4 = 432 Hz are artistic choices. I do not present them as therapeutic doses or evidence that a recording has a special healing frequency. An RTT-inspired perspective on beliefs Rapid Transformational Therapy, or RTT®, describes its approach in terms of hypnosis, examining the meanings attached to experiences, reframing beliefs, and reinforcing personalized suggestions through audio. That is the method’s own description, rather than independent proof of its effectiveness. [4] My RTT training informs the creative themes I bring to songwriting: compassionate reflection, considering a more supportive interpretation, and imagining a future self who acts with greater self-respect. For example, “I must please everyone to deserve love” can become “My needs deserve care, and I can practice a respectful boundary.” I use “reprogramming the subconscious” as a metaphor for practicing more supportive habits of thought over time. A public affirmation song is not an RTT session, a personalized hypnosis recording, or evidence of access to a hidden root cause. The listener retains choice about which words to accept, change, or leave aside. A neurolinguistic perspective on language In the scientific sense, neurolinguistics studies language and the brain. Neurolinguistic programming, commonly called NLP, is a separate collection of communication and behavior-change approaches. My neurolinguistic-inspired songwriting uses deliberate word choice, repetition, imagery, and shifts in perspective as creative tools. Consider the difference between “I always fail” and “I am learning how to try again.” The second sentence leaves room for a specific action and a less punishing interpretation. A repeated lyric can serve as a cue to pause and practice that alternative. This is a plausible songwriting rationale, not a demonstrated neurological mechanism for my recordings. Evidence for NLP as a health intervention remains limited. A 2012 systematic review included 10 experimental studies, of which five were randomized trials. Four of those trials found no significant differences between groups. The reviewers identified high or uncertain risk of bias and little evidence of improved health outcomes. These limitations are why I distinguish NLP-inspired creative language from an established treatment claim. [5] Are affirmation songs subliminal When a listener can clearly hear and understand “I am worthy,” the message is an audible, conscious affirmation. Subliminal messages are intended to be presented below conscious awareness. A soft backing vocal or repeated chorus does not automatically make a message subliminal. Lyrics alone cannot establish whether a finished recording contains hidden audio layers. My songwriting framework calls for transparent, supportive repetition. I have no verified basis for describing my recordings as containing subliminal messages. A refrain that comes to mind later may reflect familiarity or learning; that experience does not prove that hidden messages have reprogrammed the subconscious. In a double-blind study reported by Greenwald and colleagues in 1991, 237 participants used subliminal self-help tapes for a month. The tapes did not produce their advertised memory or self-esteem effects. More than one-third of participants perceived improvement in the area named on the label, illustrating how expectations can influence perceived results. That study concerns specific commercial tapes, but it gives a clear reason to be cautious about hidden-message claims. [6] What neuroplasticity can and cannot tell us Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to change with experience and learning. NIH educational material describes learning as a form of plasticity. This provides a broad context for practicing new skills, but it does not establish that an affirmation song rewires particular brain pathways, changes brain-wave states, or produces permanent belief change. Familiarity with a chorus is not a measurement of those outcomes. [7] How to bring a song into daily practice Choose a song with words you can accept or adapt. Listen at a comfortable volume and notice one phrase that feels useful. If “I am confident” feels too distant, try “I am learning to speak with more confidence.” You can sing, speak, or simply reflect on the line. Then give the affirmation a concrete expression. If the phrase is “I am worthy of respect,” your next step might be stating a need or asking for support. If it is “I am resilient,” it might mean trying again after a setback while allowing time to rest. With children, invite a conversation about what kindness or courage looks like that day. Notice whether the practice helps you respond differently, rather than judging success by whether you feel positive immediately. If the words create pressure or shame, revise them or choose another song. These songs are educational and supportive resources; ongoing or significant distress deserves appropriate professional care. My hope for I Am Who I Think I Am™ is that listeners carry a compassionate phrase into an ordinary moment when they need it. The power I aim to offer is the opportunity to practice a kinder inner response and support it with action. “I am learning, and I am worthy while I grow” can be a meaningful place to begin. My positive affirmation album is coming soon My positive affirmation song album, “I Am Who I Think I Am,” is coming soon. Written by Aide Roxanna Reyes, this collection brings together my passion for music and mental health education to encourage supportive inner dialogue, self-worth, self-compassion, and resilience. I look forward to sharing these songs and inviting listeners to practice words of encouragement in their everyday lives. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Aide Roxanna Reyes Aide Roxanna Reyes, CEO & Founder, Mental Health Counselor Aide Reyes, LLC Aide Roxanna Reyes is a licensed mental health counselor who has implemented RTT in her therapy sessions to help her patients reprogram their thinking and heal their childhood traumas and adult traumas. Aide Roxanna Reyes helps her patients heal from their traumas, reprogram their thinking, and help them create their best versions of themselves by using CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), hypnotherapy, etc. References: Numbered sources support the research and method descriptions in the article. Research on music, values-based self-affirmation, NLP, or subliminal tapes should not be presented as a clinical trial of this song catalog. [1] de Witte, M., Spruit, A., van Hooren, S., Moonen, X., & Stams, G.-J. (2020). Effects of music interventions on stress-related outcomes: A systematic review and two meta-analyses. Health Psychology Review, 14(2), 294–324. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2019.1627897 [2] Epton, T., Harris, P. R., Kane, R., van Koningsbruggen, G. M., & Sheeran, P. (2015). The impact of self-affirmation on health-behavior change: A meta-analysis. Health Psychology, 34(3), 187–196. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000116 [3] Wood, J. V., Perunovic, W. Q. E., & Lee, J. W. (2009). Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others. Psychological Science, 20(7), 860–866. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02370.x [4] Rapid Transformational Therapy. (n.d.). What is RTT? Official description of the method; not an independent efficacy study. Accessed October 11, 2026. https://rtt.com/whatisrtt/ [5] Sturt, J., Ali, S., Robertson, W., Metcalfe, D., Grove, A., & Bridle, C. (2012). Neurolinguistic programming: A systematic review of the effects on health outcomes. British Journal of General Practice, 62(604), e757–e764. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp12X658287 [6] Greenwald, A. G., Spangenberg, E. R., Pratkanis, A. R., & Eskenazi, J. (1991). Double-blind tests of subliminal self-help audiotapes. Psychological Science, 2(2), 119–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1991.tb00112.x [7] National Institutes of Health. (2007). Information about the brain. In NIH Curriculum Supplement Series, The Brain: Our Sense of Self. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20367/

Written by Flora Lemaire, Spiritual Sovereignty Guide & Expert in Resilience Flora Lemaire, known professionally as Flora Ossaya Sorona, is a Spiritual Sovereignty Guide and Resilience Expert. Founder of OSSAYA, she holds a Master's from a top French business school with a scientific thesis on happiness at work. Drawing from her own lived experience, she developed bespoke multidimensional healing and resilience methods. Do you ever feel like your energy is drained without knowing why? You feel it before you can name it. A weight. A drain. Like something is inside you that isn't yours. That's not just stress. Sometimes, it comes from negative energy sticking to you or from a lack of Spiritual Protection, and it can lock you in a state of consciousness that keeps you from accessing your full potential. That kind of problem is impacting more people than we may think. Whether you are a spiritual worker or not, these tips can be applied by anyone to strengthen their Spiritual Inner Sovereignty. Here is what almost everyone gets wrong in Spiritual Protection, and how to make it last. What is spiritual protection really protecting you from? Spiritual Protection, also called Energetic Protection, is usually described as the way to preserve our energies from negative energy, entity attacks, spells, or possessions. Spiritual Protection can also be useful to avoid feeling threatened by the evil eye or having a tendency to absorb other people’s frequency, also called the “sponge effect.” In my Spiritual Protection practice, the work is to remove all these foreign energies from us and from our homes. But the truth is, it goes much further than that. Many people tend to forget the full spectrum of Spiritual Protection. It is not only reached through a ritual or a prayer, but mainly through deep spiritual hygiene. Day-to-day care is strongly needed if you want your Spiritual Protection to be effective and lasting. Avoiding these five mistakes is a good start for your daily Spiritual Hygiene. If your fatigue persists, see a doctor too. Spiritual Protection can complement medical care but never replace it. Mistake 1: Working only on your spiritual plane We exist in several layers of existence (also called bodies, realms, or planes of consciousness): Physical, Etheric, Astral-Emotional, Mental, Causal, Spiritual, and many more. So why approach Spiritual Protection through the Spiritual Plane of Consciousness only? Working uniquely on the spiritual level to reach real Energetic Protection is a mistake. You can meditate every morning and still be wide open to potential threats if your emotional body is flooded or your mental body is running in a loop. It is essential to work your Spiritual Protection on every layer of your existence, or it's not protection. It's a temporary bandage that will not last through time. Each layer of your being must be considered in this journey. Mistake 2: Letting people disrespect you while claiming spiritual protection As explained in the first mistake, everything is connected. If you let people treat you badly in the Physical realm, it will be reflected in the Invisible realm too, as well as in your other layers of existence, namely: Etheric, Astral-Emotional, Mental, Causal, and Spiritual. If you let someone cross your limits and say nothing, you teach your whole system that crossing is allowed. In my practice, I see the same pattern in the invisible. In Esoteric Traditions, this principle is called the Law of Correspondence: what is outside tends to be reflected inside our Inner Kingdom, as a mirror. What happens Below echoes Above. You cannot ask the invisible world for Protection you refuse yourself in the visible one. Letting people take advantage of you in the Physical realm without saying anything will impact all of your other planes of consciousness, and so increase the risks of Spiritual abuse. Your limits have to be strong and proudly affirmed. You need to stand for yourself, even if it may sound scary or new for some of you. No one teaches that at school. As I explained in my previous interview with Brainz Magazine, we were never taught how to stand for ourselves. Spiritual Inner Sovereignty starts exactly there: with the boundaries you refuse to give up. Do not worry about doing it imperfectly. Remember why you do it: for you. Related interview: How Spiritual Sovereignty Transforms Deep Wounds into Strength – An Interview with Flora Lemaire Mistake 3: Focusing on what is bringing you down Focus brings Abundance. Fixating your mind on what's wrong grows what's wrong in your Inner World. When you focus on a fear or an external problem too much, you give power to that thing over yourself. If you are projecting your existence only in your problems, it will structure your reality around them. The key is not to avoid it or pretend it does not exist, but simply to focus on what you want to see grow. It can be a solution, something that makes you feel alive, or your next dream to reach. It does not matter, as long as you want it in your Life. This is where the Law of Pure Potentiality comes in: you are a being of infinite potential, and your reality is strongly influenced by the result of the consciousness you choose to hold. The moment you connect to that frequency, the problems in front of you shrink down to their real size. Energetic Protection isn't about fighting darkness with more darkness. It's about where you choose to place your focus and what you decide to feed in your mind. Mistake 4: Blaming yourself for what you attract No matter the strength of your focus, you do not always attract who you are, contrary to what many people say about the Law of Attraction. If a toxic person enters your Life, it doesn’t mean it is your fault, nor does it mean you are one. Sometimes what we attract isn't a mirror of who we are; it's something we still need to understand or move through. Blaming yourself for things that are not your responsibility will only make you feel discouraged and guilty for nothing. Do not see your problems as something you attract, but think about your Level of Tolerance toward them. How much do you tolerate your problems in your Life? Are you seeing them as something inevitable you need to put up with? You know, that famous “it is what it is, that’s Life”? That behaviour has to stop. You are not responsible for your problems, but you are responsible for making space for them (or not) in your Life. Many people tend to do nothing because they lock themselves in the “Good Person status.” Being a good person for others does not mean being good to yourself. Serving your well-being first is not selfish. It is Self-Love. Remember: your power is never gone, even when it feels out of reach. Taking it back is a choice, and it can start small. Mistake 5: Valuing other people’s beliefs over your own experience In the Spiritual Industry, we can hear many opinions. It is so easy to get lost in that ocean of ideas. Being exposed to people’s spiritual ideas can bring a new vision, but it is also a risk to fall into extreme Spiritual beliefs that can end in manipulation or spiritual control. Many find themselves locked into sects and extreme cults, and become strangers to themselves. To avoid risking losing yourself, let me remind you of a quote by Napoleon Hill: “Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them” (Hill, 1937). Opinions are cheap: they can be found everywhere, but just because someone is sharing their opinion with passion, it does not mean it is true, or at least true for you. Sounding determined may be impressive, but it is not a fact or an inherent truth. What I invite you to understand is that every soul carries its own Will, and no path is meant to be a copy of someone else's. Losing yourself in someone else's dogma is how people become easy targets. Your own experience is your only real compass, because it is tangible: this is where you can find your truth. If your experience becomes your reference, it can prevent you from living inside other people's realities, especially when they don't match your Soul. This is also the behaviour I invite you to adopt with the knowledge I shared in this article: take what resonates and leave the rest to make space for your Truth. Start protecting your energy today Being true to yourself, living in authenticity, and daring to be different can be scary because it can expose you to judgements. But if you surround your uniqueness with Love, however you define it, that is where you will find your Spiritual Protection. I promise it will last. Never forget that Spiritual Protection is not given; it has to be taken. If you can feel your protection needs work right now, Nyx Healing clears negative energies and draining attachments from you and your home. Book your Nyx Healing session so you can feel protected again. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Flora Lemaire Flora Lemaire, Spiritual Sovereignty Guide & Expert in Resilience Flora Lemaire, known professionally as Flora Ossaya Sorona, is a Spiritual Sovereignty Guide and expert in resilience. Founder of OSSAYA, she holds a Master's from a top French business school with a scientific thesis on happiness at work. After overcoming 10 years of chronic PTSD through her own initiatic path, she developed bespoke multidimensional healing and resilience methods rooted in esoteric traditions and high mysticism. She channels Light Language Codes, manifested as original works of art and sacred artifacts. She has since dedicated her work to guiding individuals to transmute their deepest wounds into absolute sovereignty. Her mission: reclaim your inner kingdom. Reference: Hill, N. (1937). Think and Grow Rich. The Ralston Society.

Written by Caroline Graydon, Keynote Speaker, Coach & Author Caroline Graydon is an author, keynote speaker, and human resilience coach who supports people navigating life-changing disruption. Drawing on 30 years of leadership and her own survival story, she helps others rebuild their identity, reclaim self-trust, and choose who they become next. Have you ever been surrounded by people and still felt completely alone? Feeling lonely even when surrounded by people can seem contradictory, but loneliness is not always about how many people are around us. Sometimes, it is about whether we feel seen, heard and recognised within those relationships. A human network is more than a collection of people who know one another. It is built through family, friendship, work, community and shared experience. Through those relationships we exchange trust, support and belonging. Yet being part of a network does not automatically mean we feel connected within it. This is where my idea of the invisible network begins. What is the invisible network? Our visible network is easy to identify. We can name the people in it and recognise the relationships around us. The invisible network sits beneath that. It is created through the conversations and ordinary moments in which we feel understood, valued and recognised as a person rather than simply acknowledged for the role we play. Someone can know our name, work beside us, live with us or love us deeply and still not fully know what is happening underneath the surface. That is one reason loneliness can exist even in a crowded room. Why can you feel lonely around people? We often imagine loneliness as obvious isolation, yet loneliness can hide remarkably well. It can look like the colleague who attends every meeting and meets every deadline but goes home feeling as though nobody really knows them. It can look like the friend everybody calls in a crisis who has quietly stopped telling anyone when they are struggling. Sometimes, loneliness can even look like strength. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s research on social isolation and loneliness, an estimated 15 per cent of Australians experienced loneliness in 2024. The research also reminds us that loneliness and social isolation are not necessarily the same experience. A person can spend considerable time alone without necessarily feeling lonely, while somebody else can have a full calendar, a loving family and a busy workplace and still feel deeply disconnected. Perhaps the better question is not, “How many people are around me?” Perhaps it is: “Do I feel recognised within those relationships?” When I felt invisible In November 2018, a catastrophic motorcycle collision changed the direction of my life within seconds. I lost my right leg above the knee, underwent multiple surgeries and spent a significant amount of time surrounded by medical professionals and conversations about my recovery. My husband and family were close, and I was rarely physically alone. Yet it became one of the loneliest periods of my life. Everybody could see what had happened to my body. What they could not see so easily was what had happened to my identity. Before the collision, I knew myself through familiar roles. I was a wife, mother, businesswoman and practice manager. I was used to helping, organising and solving problems. Suddenly, many of those reference points had moved. I was still Caroline, but I no longer understood what being Caroline meant within this new version of my life. About a year later, my husband took me shopping. I was sitting in my wheelchair when a stranger approached us, looked at him and asked, “How did she lose her leg?” She asked him. About me. While I was sitting directly in front of her. For a brief moment, I felt physically visible yet socially invisible. The wheelchair and missing leg had become more noticeable than the woman sitting within them. That interaction helped me understand something important: our invisible network is not simply about whether people are present in our lives. It is about whether we feel recognised within those interactions. Connection beneath the surface There is a metaphor from nature that helps me explain this. The mushroom we see above the soil is only one visible part of something much larger. Beneath the surface, mycelium can spread through the soil as networks of tiny fungal threads, with some forming relationships with the roots of plants. Human connection can work in a similar way. Above the surface, we see roles, responsibilities, achievements and familiar answers to the question, “How are you?” Beneath the surface may be grief, exhaustion, uncertainty, disability, redundancy, changing relationships or questions about identity. We can work beside someone every day without knowing what they are carrying. Proximity is not the same as connection. The World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Connection reported in 2025 that approximately one in six people worldwide experience loneliness, reinforcing the importance of meaningful, high-quality social connection to health and wellbeing. Brainz Magazine has also explored this modern contradiction in Connected to Everyone, Close to No One, and the Hidden Mental Health Cost of Modern Life, considering how constant communication can coexist with a lack of meaningful connection and the experience of feeling unseen. The issue is not simply whether relationships exist. It is what happens inside them. Brainz offers a complementary perspective in Why Connection Is The Medicine We Are Missing, exploring the importance of meaningful relationships, belonging and genuine human connection. 5 ways to strengthen your invisible network Strengthening connection does not necessarily mean adding more people to our lives. Sometimes the relationships we most need are already present. They simply need more honesty, curiosity and depth. 1. Notice where you feel seen Pay attention to the relationships in which you can speak without carefully preparing what you are going to say. Who allows you to admit uncertainty without immediately trying to fix it? Who gives you room to say, “Today is difficult”? These relationships show us what meaningful connection feels like. 2. See beyond the role We all use roles to make sense of one another: colleague, manager, parent, partner, carer, leader. Yet the capable person may be exhausted from always being capable. The leader who has the answers may privately be questioning their direction. The friend who makes everyone laugh may be struggling when the laughter stops. Seeing beyond the role means remaining curious about the person underneath it. 3. Ask the second question “How are you?” is one of the most common questions we ask, but it is also one of the easiest to answer without saying anything meaningful. “Fine.” “Good.” “Busy.” We know the script because we use it ourselves. The first question may open the conversation, but sometimes it is the second question that opens the connection. “How are you, really?” “What has that been like for you?” There were periods after my collision when I became very good at saying that I was fine. Sometimes, I needed somebody to ask again. 4. Stay for the answer When someone says they are struggling, we often rush to offer advice because we want to help. Yet our rush to solve can move the conversation away from what they are trying to tell us. Staying for the answer means listening without preparing our response, allowing silence to exist and resisting the urge to repair everything we hear. Sometimes there is nothing useful to say. Sometimes, “I’m here” is enough. Ask the second question, then stay long enough to hear the answer. 5. Make room for becoming Perhaps the deepest part of the invisible network is having relationships that give us enough room to become somebody different tomorrow. After my collision, I initially believed recovery meant finding my way back to the woman I had been before November 2018. Eventually, I understood that my life had rerouted. The relationships that mattered most were not the ones that continually measured me against who I had been. They were the ones that gave me space to discover who I was becoming. We can offer that same space to other people. Sometimes loving someone means recognising who they have always been. Sometimes it means becoming curious about who they are becoming rather than continually pulling them back towards the version of themselves that feels familiar to us. Deeper, not simply more A strong invisible network does not require hundreds of relationships, nor does every relationship need to carry the same depth. What matters is that somewhere within the network around us there are places where we can stop performing, tell the truth, feel recognised and have enough room to continue becoming. Perhaps somebody in your invisible network needs that from you today. Or perhaps, if you are honest with yourself, you are the person who needs it from somebody else. Connection can begin with something remarkably small: one person noticing another, becoming curious enough to ask and caring enough to stay. Notice. See. Ask. Stay. Become. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Caroline Graydon Caroline Graydon, Keynote Speaker, Coach & Author Caroline Graydon is a transformational keynote speaker, resilience coach, and international bestselling author who helps people rediscover who they are when life no longer goes to plan. After surviving a life-changing motorcycle collision, she rebuilt her identity while adapting to disability, trauma, and profound personal change. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience across legal, finance, healthcare and leadership, Caroline brings practical insight to conversations about identity, resilience and the Power to Choose. She founded Living Life with Caroline and wrote When Life Reroutes You. Her message is clear: you are not broken, you have been rerouted.

Written by Manuel Wotsch, Founder of AURA Silent Disco Manuel Wotsch is the founder of AURA, a Barcelona silent disco and wireless headset company that has produced over 1,200 events across 14 countries. He writes about experiential events, wellness formats, and how personal audio channels are reshaping the way people gather. The future of live experiences is quieter, more personal, and more respectful of the individual inside the crowd. I spend my days at the point where technology meets human gathering, and from there, you see the shape of things before they arrive. In 2026, after producing events across 14 countries, I keep seeing the same three currents pulling in the same direction: personalisation, quieter cities, and gatherings designed around individual choice. Here is where we are heading and why organisers who feel it early will build the experiences people remember. From one loud room to many private channels Events are moving from one loud room to many private channels, so each person chooses their own sound instead of accepting an average. For most of history, a gathering meant one sound source and one volume for everyone. If it was too loud for you, tough. If you wanted a different language, a different energy, or a quieter corner, there was nothing on offer. The room decided, and you conformed. That model is ending. When people each choose their own channel and their own volume, the whole logic of an event changes. With wireless audio, you can run up to three simultaneous channels in one space, so within a single room, one group follows a live talk, another follows a translation, and another moves to a completely different soundtrack. Picture a family celebration where the teenagers dance to one channel while their grandparents chat on a quiet ambient channel a few metres away. Nobody has to shout, and nobody has to leave. The switch happens with a single dial on the headset, so a guest can move between the talk, the translation, and the dance floor as the evening changes. That freedom to move between channels is what turns one shared room into three rooms that happen to share a floor. Nobody is asked to settle for an average that fits no one. This is the deeper shift. We have been personalising everything else in life, our music, our news, and our schedules, while events stubbornly stayed one-size-fits-all. That gap is closing. The events that win the next decade will treat the individual as the unit of design, even inside a shared moment. Why are quieter cities coming? Quieter cities are coming because city halls, neighbours, and noise rules are turning volume into a regulated resource. Cities across Europe are tightening limits on outdoor sound. Residents are less willing to absorb bass through their walls until two in the morning. Venues that used to shrug off complaints now face real consequences. Noise is becoming a regulated resource, like water or parking. For a long time, the events industry treated volume as free. It never was. It was simply paid for by the neighbours. As that bill comes due, organisers are discovering that you can hold a full, high-energy experience with no speakers filling the street because the sound lives in people’s ears instead of in the air. A rooftop hosts a dancing crowd while the apartment below hears nothing. A park holds a sunrise session that ends with birdsong, not a police visit. The physics behind it is simple. Because the sound travels to a headset rather than through a loudspeaker, an outdoor crowd can spread across a range of 500 metres without amplified sound spilling into the street. An eight-hour battery carries a full morning of programming, so the event never depends on mains power or a generator humming in the background. With no speakers and no cables, the same field can host a workout at seven and a market at nine, and the neighbours never know the first one happened. This is not a loss. It is a maturing. When you remove the constraint that an event must broadcast itself to everyone within half a kilometre, you gain the freedom to hold experiences in places that were always off-limits. Quieter cities do not mean fewer gatherings. They mean gatherings in libraries, galleries, courtyards, and residential streets that could never have hosted them before. The professional world is catching on The professional world is adopting personal audio fastest because its tolerance for wasted attention is low and its need for clarity is high. Some of the most interesting movement is happening in workplaces and conferences. When you run a conference on personal audio channels, you solve problems that have plagued events for decades. Two sessions share one hall without bleeding into each other. Attendees hear speakers directly and clearly rather than through a muddy public address system. Live translation flows to each person in their own language, on their own channel, with no clumsy booth or handset. The multi-channel format is a genuine upgrade for how professionals gather. A summit runs three tracks in one space. A workshop splits into breakout streams without anyone leaving the room. International audiences stop being second-class citizens straining to follow along because everyone receives content tailored to them. The technology disappears, and what remains is a clearer, more inclusive event. For organisers, personalisation is not a luxury feature to bolt on at the end. It is becoming the baseline expectation. The audience already tailors everything else in their day. The moment they put on a headset and realise they can choose, there is no going back to the muddy shared speaker. Designing for the individual inside the crowd Put these currents together, and you get a new design brief for anyone who gathers people. The old brief was to fill the space, dominate the senses, and make it big. The new brief is to give each person agency inside a shared experience. That means letting people choose their channel, their volume, and their language. It means respecting that the person who wants to go deep and the person who wants to socialise can coexist in the same room without one ruining the experience for the other. It means treating silence and control as features, not compromises. And it means understanding that the strongest sense of togetherness often comes not from forcing everyone into one identical experience, but from letting many individual experiences happen side by side in the same moment. There is something almost poetic in a silent gathering. Everyone is having their own private experience, in their own ears, at their own volume, and yet they are unmistakably together. You look up and see a room full of people moving to the same beat and laughing at the same line, and you realise connection was never about shared noise. It was about shared presence. What should organisers do first? Start by auditing where your event forces everyone to accept one average, then hand that decision back to the individual. The fastest place to begin is sound because it is the loudest compromise in most rooms. Give people up to three channels, their own volume, and a language option, and you have personalised the single element that shapes how a room feels. From there, apply the same test to everything else. Where does your event assume one pace, one path, or one intensity for a crowd of different people? Walk through your own run of show and mark every point where the whole room is told to do the same thing at the same time. A forced group photo, a single food queue, or one talk everyone must sit through. Each of those is a moment you can split, stagger, or make optional. You do not need to fix them all at once. Changing even one turns a passive crowd into people making choices, and that shift is what they remember. It is a chance to design for choice instead of conformity. Organisers who run this audit once tend to run it at every event afterwards because the difference in how present and satisfied a crowd feels is immediate and hard to unsee. What this means for the rest of us You do not have to run events to feel where this is going. The broader message is that the future belongs to experiences that hand people control instead of overwhelming them. In a world drowning in stimulation, the premium offering is the one that lets you choose, tune out what you do not want, and go deep on what you do. Organisers who understand this will stop asking how to make things bigger and start asking how to make things more personal. Cities will keep tightening volume restrictions, and that pressure will produce more creativity, not less. And the individual, so long asked to conform to the room, will finally get to pick their own channel. That is a future worth building towards, and it is already arriving. If you are planning a conference and want every attendee to hear clearly, explore personal audio for your conference and get in touch, and we will help you run it. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Manuel Wotsch Manuel Wotsch, Founder of AURA Silent Disco Manuel Wotsch is the founder of AURA, a silent disco and wireless headset company based in Barcelona. Since 2021, he has grown AURA from an equipment provider into a full experience producer, delivering more than 1,200 events for 250,000 attendees across 800 venues and 14 countries. His work focuses on experiences that thrive inside real constraints, from city noise limits and venue curfews to inclusive access and corporate wellbeing. He writes about silent disco, sunrise sessions, wellness formats, and the shift from events to designed experiences. Through AURA, he helps brands, wellness practitioners, and companies bring people together around sound without disturbing anyone nearby.

Written by Sarah Wittl, Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach Sarah Wittl is a Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach and founder of Sarah’s Wellbeing Hub. She helps individuals and organisations build sustainable physical, mental, and emotional health through self-guided tools, coaching, and leadership wellbeing programs. You've followed the plan before. The one that worked for someone else, the influencer, the friend, the article that promised results if you just stuck to it. For a while, it did work. Then life happened, and it quietly fell apart. That's not a willpower problem. It's a map problem. What is a Personal Wellbeing Blueprint, and why do you need your own? If you don't understand yourself, what you actually need in a given moment, you can't respond to that moment properly. That's the whole premise of a Personal Wellbeing Blueprint, and it's simpler than it sounds. Most people approach health and wellbeing the same way: they hear about something that worked for someone else, and they try it. A routine, a trend, a piece of advice picked up from a podcast or a friend. The problem isn't the advice itself. The problem is that it was built for someone else's personality, someone else's responsibilities, someone else's real life, and then handed to you as if it would fit. A Personal Wellbeing Blueprint is the opposite of that. It's your own way of understanding what you need to feel well and healthy in any given moment, especially inside the chaos, not just outside of it. Why a generic plan never actually holds Here's what feels almost too obvious to say out loud: every person lives a different life, carries a different personality, and has different needs attached to that personality. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to health and wellbeing, because health and wellbeing were never one-size problems to begin with. The real difference between a generic plan and your own Blueprint isn't really about the plan at all, it's about which environment you're paying attention to. Your external environment is the obvious one: the home you live in, the work you do, the people around you. But the real information, the part that actually determines whether anything holds, sits in your internal environment. Your thought patterns. How your body responds under pressure. The emotional patterns that have shaped you, often since childhood. Think of it as a default operating system. It was installed early, children between roughly one and eight take in everything around them, unfiltered, through pure observation. Whatever environment, caregivers, and emotional patterns surrounded you at that age became the blueprint you're still running today, whether or not you ever chose it. Unless you've actively interrupted it, you still are. This is exactly why generic plans feel so rigid. What often looks like a motivation problem is actually a mismatch problem: a template built by one person, for their life, applied to yours. The result is usually a stop-and-go cycle, full commitment, then falling off, then starting again, not because you lack discipline, but because the plan was never flexible enough to move with your actual life in the first place. Your body already knows this. It's not resistant. It's not lazy. It's misaligned. That's why the plan that worked for your colleague, your sister, or your favorite wellness account keeps quietly failing you, not because you didn't try hard enough, but because it was never yours to begin with. The moment most people notice this is the moment something stops fitting, and that discomfort is information, not failure. It's the signal that you're running someone else's routine, not one you chose. If you asked every person on the planet what true alignment feels like, you'd get eight billion different answers. That's not a problem to solve. That's the whole point. This ties directly to the default operating system most of us are still running from, something I unpacked in The Hidden Cost of Being the Reliable One. The 4 pillars that make up your Blueprint Your Blueprint has two sides: your external environment and your internal environment. You need both, because navigating only one always leaves the other out of balance. That splits into four pillars, S.P.M.E. Set-up & environment (external). Everything from the moment you wake to the moment you go to bed: home, work, circle of influence, and the small setup practices that create enough distance to actually observe what's happening around you. Physical (internal). Sleep, energy, movement, nutrition. Not a fixed formula, but one that shifts by season. Before grief, high-intensity training and running gave me energy. During grief, my body needed gentle walks and yoga instead. Same pillar, completely different expression. Mental (internal). Stress relief, thought patterns, capacity, focus. Some people release stress through intensity. Others through breathwork or stillness. Neither is more correct, it depends on where you are in your season. Emotional (internal). Personality, values, needs, how you use emotions as data rather than something to manage away. For years I identified as an extrovert, thriving in busy, loud environments. Then, around 2016, that shifted, I needed quiet, space, solitude. Put an extrovert in total isolation for a week and they decline. Put an introvert in a loud, open-plan office and they lose the ability to concentrate. Same mismatch, opposite direction. Knowing which one you actually are is the starting point. The pillar most people neglect isn't always obvious. Physical tends to go first, simply because it's the easiest to cut. But the bigger pattern sits one level up: when chaos hits, most of us focus on controlling the external environment, because it feels like the one thing we can control. The internal environment, physical, mental, emotional, gets skipped entirely. That's backwards. You need the internal data first, who you are, what you need, how your body responds, before any change to your external world will actually hold. The four pillars aren't separate boxes. They're a net, everything connected, one shift rippling into the rest. Your default operating system runs a loop: adopted emotions trigger thoughts, thoughts trigger behavior, behavior determines how you move through your environment. Or it runs the other way, something in your environment triggers a thought, the thought triggers an emotion, the emotion triggers a behavior. Either direction, it happens beneath the surface, invisibly, every single day. Once you can see the loop, you can interrupt it, a pattern I go deeper on in Why You Know What to Do and Still Don't Do It, and that interruption is how the shift from old operating system to new one actually begins. How you actually build yours There's no universal starting point, everyone begins somewhere different, because everyone is mapping something different. But building the Blueprint always starts the same way: with data. There's no data without observation. Try this, one minute a day, at the end of your day. Laptop closed. Sit. Run through the four pillars, gently: S – What in your environment today created friction? Home, work, a person? P – What did that friction do in your body? M – What thought popped up as you noticed it? E – What emotion did you attach to it? That's it. No fixing. Just observing. One member I've worked with for almost four years identified something she calls her "excellence operating system", an all-or-nothing pattern where anything less than a high-intensity workout felt unacceptable to even attempt. It wasn't a motivation issue. It was a blueprint issue: her system only recognized 10-out-of-10 effort as valid, so on a 5-out-of-10 energy day, she'd do nothing at all. Once she named that pattern and understood where it came from, she gave herself permission to run "excellence" differently, a 10/10 day gets a 10/10 workout, a 5/10 day gets a 5/10 workout. That single shift, giving herself permission to match effort to actual capacity, broke years of an all-or-nothing cycle. That's what building your Blueprint actually looks like. Not a dramatic overhaul. One piece of real data, noticed and acted on. Where you go from here However you learn best, there's a way in. Some people build their Blueprint through journaling and quiet reflection, in their own time. Others prefer to watch and implement through structured learning. Some want the exchange of a weekly community check-in; others want to do the same work entirely in their own space, at their own pace. Some want a fully personalized, one-to-one approach. If this piece stirred something, that quiet recognition of this is what I've been holding onto, start by finding out where you actually stand. Take the free Wellbeing Independence Score and get your own personal snapshot across all four pillars, plus one practical next step for each. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Sarah Wittl Sarah Wittl, Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach Sarah Wittl is a Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach and founder of Sarah’s Wellbeing Hub. With over a decade of experience in executive coaching, neuroscience-based leadership, and physical training, she bridges personal and organisational wellbeing through her unique self-guided approach. Her work empowers individuals and teams to create lasting balance across body, mind, and emotions by focusing on sustainable habits and self-leadership. A former Australian National Karate Champion and lifelong martial artist, Sarah blends strength, compassion, and science to help others thrive from the inside out.

Written by Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, PC, Founder & CEO Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, is a licensed clinician, industrial-organizational psychologist, and communication coach. As the founder and CEO of Measures4Success Academy, she empowers individuals, leaders, and organizations to master communication through Kendall’s Life Languages™ Framework, also known as Communication Intelligence (CIQ). Two people can live through the same moment and carry different accounts of it. Somewhere inside that moment is the truth of what each pair of eyes saw and felt. Facts are what a record can hold, such as a 911 call, a police report, or a clip from a body camera. When truth and facts drift apart, the secrets in their eyes live in the gap, and one reaction can end up speaking louder than the history behind it. This is Part 1 of a three-part series for National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If you are in danger now, call 911. For confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. What is reactive abuse? October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a fitting time to look at a dimension of intimate partner violence that is easy to misread. Reactive abuse describes what happens when a person who has endured sustained provocation or mistreatment reacts with behavior that looks abusive out of context, such as shouting, name-calling, or physical aggression. The person causing the harm then points to that reaction as proof of who the real abuser is. It is a popular term and a useful psychoeducational concept. It is not a formal clinical diagnosis. The phrase is also contested, and rightly so. The word "abuse" can suggest that someone reacting to provocation is an abuser too. Many professionals prefer "defensive reaction," "reactive response," or "self-defense," language closer to what researcher Michael Johnson (2008) called violent resistance. I use "reactive abuse" here because it is the phrase people type into a search bar when they are trying to understand what happened to them. I use "defensive reaction" when I mean the behavior itself. The distinction matters because a label shapes how a reaction is judged, and in a courtroom, the label can influence who is believed. Violent resistance is Johnson’s term for violence used to resist a partner’s control and violence. One more term will come up in this series. Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO) is a response to being held accountable that Part 2 explains. I first explored this topic in an earlier Brainz article on how reactive abuse can make victims appear as the aggressors. This series goes further into the data, the courtroom, and the cycle behind it. Where did the term come from? The roots reach back to the battered women's movement of the 1970s. In 1979, psychologist Lenore Walker described a cycle of violence with recurring phases, which helped advocates and clinicians see abuse as a pattern rather than a string of isolated blowups (Walker, 1979). Later researchers sharpened the picture. Johnson (2008) separated intimate terrorism, violent resistance and situational couple violence, and placed the reactions of many survivors in the middle category. Stark (2007) argued that the heart of abuse is coercive control, a pattern of domination that physical incidents only partly reveal. Jennifer Freyd named deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO) in 1997 to describe how those who cause harm respond when they are held accountable.[1] "Reactive abuse" surfaced later, largely through online communities that discuss emotional and narcissistic abuse. Public attention spiked in 2022 during the Depp and Heard defamation trial, when some experts questioned whether the phrase accounts for the power dynamic between two people. Advocates at DomesticShelters.org raise a practical concern as well, abusers have been known to claim reactive abuse in court to build their own case. What does the data show? Intimate partner violence is common. The CDC's 2016/2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey measured lifetime contact sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner. It found that 47.3 percent of women and 44.2 percent of men had experienced it.[5] Numbers on reactive behavior and its misreading are harder to find, and that gap is part of the problem. No national dataset counts reactive abuse as its own category. A reaction enters the record as an assault, a disturbance or a mutual conflict, and the context drops out at the moment of coding. What exists are studies of the systems that respond. Four of them are summarized here. Hirschel et al. (2021) analyzed 10 years of incident reports from 5,481 jurisdictions in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Primary aggressor laws appear to make officers reluctant to make any arrest, although the study measures arrest decisions, not misidentification. It also bears on dual arrest, when both partners are taken into custody. In England, Hester (2012) found that women identified as primary aggressors in police records were three times more likely than men to be arrested. The study covers one country. Reeves (2023) interviewed 18 legal practitioners in Victoria, Australia. They described courts as poorly equipped to catch misidentified women and said some clients consented to orders that should never have been made. The sample is small and qualitative. Swan et al. (2008) reviewed research on women's use of violence with male partners and linked it more often to self-defense and fear than to control. It describes patterns, not every case. These findings describe patterns, not every case, and Part 2 returns to that point. Key takeaways Reactive abuse is a popular term, not a clinical diagnosis. Defensive reaction is more precise language. The idea builds on decades of work, from Walker’s cycle of violence to Stark’s coercive control, Johnson’s typology and Freyd’s DARVO. No national dataset tracks reactive abuse, so the evidence comes from arrest, court and credibility research. The research describes patterns, not every case. In the United States If you or someone you know is in danger, or you are unsure whether what you are living through is abuse, help is available now or whenever you are ready. In an emergency, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline offers confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or TTY 1-800-787-3224. You can also text START to 88788 or chat online at thehotline.org. An advocate can talk through safety planning with you, and you do not have to have it figured out before you call. Outside the United States If you are outside the United States, call your local emergency number. To find a domestic violence or crisis helpline in your country, visit here. Next in the series In Part 2, I look at how a courtroom, a police report and a body camera capture one minute, and how DARVO can turn that minute into proof against the person who was provoked. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and visit my website and BlueSky handle for more insights and updates! Read more from Dr. Veronica Powell Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, PC, Founder & CEO Veronica Powell, PhD, LPC, is a licensed clinician, industrial-organizational psychologist, and communication coach. As the founder and CEO of Measures4Success Academy, she empowers individuals, leaders, and organizations to master communication through Kendall’s Life Languages™ Framework, also known as Communication Intelligence (CIQ). Dr. Powell is a Senior Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine and the creator of the Communication Matters Global Movement, where she teaches professionals how to build trust, empathy, and relational intelligence in every conversation. References: [1] Harsey, S., & Freyd, J. J. (2020). Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (DARVO): What is the influence on perceived perpetrator and victim credibility? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 29(8), 897–916. [2] Hester, M. (2012). Portrayal of women as intimate partner domestic violence perpetrators. Violence Against Women, 18(9), 1067–1082. [3] Hirschel, D., McCormack, P. D., & Buzawa, E. (2021). A 10-year study of the impact of intimate partner violence primary aggressor laws on single and dual arrest. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(3–4), 1356–1390. [4] Johnson, M. P. (2008). A typology of domestic violence: Intimate terrorism, violent resistance, and situational couple violence. Northeastern University Press. [5] Leemis, R. W., Friar, N., Khatiwada, S., Chen, M. S., Kresnow, M., Smith, S. G., Caslin, S., & Basile, K. C. (2022). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 report on intimate partner violence. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [6] Reeves, E. (2023). A culture of consent: Legal practitioners’ experiences of representing women who have been misidentified as predominant aggressors on family violence intervention orders in Victoria, Australia. Feminist Legal Studies, 31, 369–390. [7] Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press. [8] Swan, S. C., Gambone, L. J., Caldwell, J. E., Sullivan, T. P., & Snow, D. L. (2008). A review of research on women’s use of violence with male intimate partners. Violence and Victims, 23(3), 301–314. [9] Walker, L. E. (1979). The battered woman. Harper & Row.

Written by Andy Hall, Executive Leadership & Business Coach Andy Hall is an executive coach, leadership development specialist, and founder of Andy Hall Coaching. Through Leader As A Coach, he helps organizations retain their best people by developing leaders who build trust, ownership, and performance every day. If your team keeps coming to you for every answer, every decision, and every difficult conversation, the problem may not be their lack of ownership. It may be the way they have been led. That can be uncomfortable for leaders to hear, especially leaders who care deeply and work hard to support their people. Dependency is often created by good intentions repeated too often. The leader wants to help, so they answer. They want to protect, so they rescue. They want to move quickly, so they decide. Then slowly, without realizing it, they remove the thinking from their people. Coaching style leadership starts with a different belief: the leader’s role is not to be the answer. It is to develop the thinking, confidence, and ownership of others. Why thinking is the real work of leadership The most powerful leaders do not simply give people better answers. They help people become better thinkers. That distinction matters because many organizations still reward leaders for being the person with the answer. Leaders are praised for being fast, decisive, knowledgeable, available, and able to solve problems quickly. Those qualities can be valuable, but they can also become dangerous when they stop others from developing their own judgment. A leader who always has the answer may feel helpful. A leader who solves every problem may feel supportive. A leader who steps in quickly may feel responsible. Over time, however, that style of leadership can quietly train people to wait, depend, comply, and escalate. The leader becomes the answer, and the team becomes less confident in its own thinking. That’s not leadership development! That’s dependency dressed up as support. Coaching style leadership changes the pattern. It does not mean leaders stop giving direction. It does not mean leaders never advise, mentor, or make decisions. That would be unrealistic and unhelpful. It means leaders become more intentional about when to tell, when to ask, when to challenge, when to support, and when to stay silent long enough for someone else to think. Because every leadership conversation either protects and develops thinking or removes it. What happens when leaders carry too much of the thinking? When leaders carry too much of the thinking, the cost is rarely obvious at first. The team may still be busy, work may still get done, problems may still be solved, and the leader may even be seen as committed, responsive, and helpful. Yet underneath the surface, something starts to shift. People ask for approval before acting, they bring problems without recommendations, they wait to be told what to do, they lose confidence in their own judgment, decisions slow down, the leader becomes overloaded, and the team becomes cautious. Eventually, the leader looks around and wonders why people are not taking more ownership and responsibility. Ownership and responsibility do not grow where thinking is constantly removed. If leaders want people to take more responsibility, they must create more opportunities for people to think, decide, act, reflect, and learn. That begins with noticing the everyday leadership habits that create dependency. Here are the 7 ways leaders remove the thinking from their people without realizing it: 1. They answer too quickly The leadership truth is simple: when leaders answer every question too quickly, they do not just solve the problem. They train people to stop thinking. A team member walks in and says, “I’m not sure how to handle this client issue.” Before they have fully explained the situation, the leader says, “Here’s what you need to do.” The issue may get resolved faster in that moment, but the person leaves with an instruction, not a stronger thinking process. Over time, the team learns that the fastest route to certainty is not deeper thinking. It’s asking the leader, and the leader becomes the shortcut. A coaching style alternative is to pause before answering. Ask: “What do you think is really going on here?” “What options have you already considered?” “What would you recommend if I wasn’t available?” “What outcome are you trying to create?” The leader may still need to give direction, but they create space first. That space matters because it develops confidence, judgment, and ownership. The goal is not to withhold help. The goal is to avoid taking away the thinking too soon. 2. They confuse support with rescuing Support helps people grow. Rescuing keeps them dependent. This is one of the most common traps for caring leaders. Someone misses a deadline, struggles with a difficult colleague, or feels overwhelmed by a project. The leader steps in, smooths it over, finishes the work, has the difficult conversation, or removes the pressure completely. In the moment, everyone may feel relieved. The leader feels helpful, the team member feels protected, and the work moves forward. But the lesson underneath can be dangerous! The person may learn, “When this gets uncomfortable, my leader will take it from me.” That does not build resilience. It does not build skill, and it does not build ownership. A coaching style leader still supports, but they do not automatically take over. They might ask: “I can see this is challenging. What part do you need to own?” “What support would help you move this forward?” “What do you need to learn from this, so you are stronger next time?” The better question is not, “How quickly can I remove this problem?” The better question is, “How can I help this person become more capable through this problem?” That is the difference between rescuing and developing. 3. They leave ownership too vague Dependency grows in the gaps where ownership is unclear. A meeting ends with everyone nodding. The conversation felt useful, the decision seemed obvious, and then a week later, nothing has moved. The leader is frustrated because they assumed someone had picked it up. The team is frustrated because nobody was completely clear who owned what. This is not always a motivation issue. Often, it’s a clarity issue. When ownership is vague, responsibility drifts, and most of the time, it drifts back to the leader. A coaching style leader makes ownership explicit before the conversation ends. They ask: “What are you taking ownership of from here?” “What is the next visible action?” “When will that happen?” “What support do you need?” “What do you not need me to take over?” These questions may sound simple, but they prevent confusion, frustration, and quiet dependency. People cannot take ownership of something that has not been clearly handed to them. Clear ownership is not micromanagement. It’s respect. It tells people, “I trust you enough to be clear with you.” 4. They reward upward delegation Upward delegation happens when someone brings a problem to the leader and quietly leaves it there. It often sounds innocent. “I’m not sure what to do about this.” “The team is confused.” “The client is unhappy.” “I think you may need to speak to them.” The leader then steps in, takes the issue, owns the decision, and carries the emotional weight of fixing it. The team member walks away lighter, and the leader walks away heavier. Do that often enough, and the leader becomes the holding place for everyone else’s problems. Here is the sharper leadership truth: if every problem ends up with you, your team is not becoming more accountable. They are becoming more dependent. A coaching style leader does not reject the problem, but they keep ownership in the right place. They might ask: “What have you already tried?” “What do you believe needs to happen next?” “What part of this conversation belongs to you?” “What support do you need from me so you can handle it?” This keeps the person engaged in the solution, and it also makes support available without allowing the whole issue to be transferred upward. Strong leaders do not simply collect problems. They build people who can solve them. 5. They interrupt the thinking Many leaders say they want their people to think, but then interrupt the very space where thinking happens. A leader asks, “What do you think we should do?” The team member pauses. The pause feels uncomfortable. The leader jumps in with, “What I would do is.” or “Let me make this easier for you.” The intention is often good. The leader wants to help, they want to keep the conversation moving, and they may even think they are reducing pressure. But silence is not always a lack of ability or not knowing what to do. Always, silence is the sound of someone thinking. When leaders fill every gap, they will unintentionally teach people that there is no real space for their thinking. People learn to wait, comply, or accept the leader’s view. A coaching style leader becomes comfortable with silence. That kind of silence can feel uncomfortable at first, especially for leaders who are used to moving quickly, but it’s where ownership begins. If leaders want better thinking from their people, they must stop rescuing them from the discomfort of thinking. 6. They give advice without permission Advice can be valuable, but automatic advice can shut down ownership. A team member starts describing a challenge. Within seconds, the leader says, “I’ve seen this before,” or “Here’s what you should do.” The leader may be right! Their experience may be useful, but the conversation has now shifted from the team member’s thinking to the leader’s answer. That matters! When advice becomes the default, people will stop developing their own judgment. They will also start bringing half formed issues to the leader because they know the leader will do the thinking for them. Coaching style leadership does not mean leaders never give advice. That would be crazy! Sometimes people need direction, sometimes they need mentoring, and sometimes they need the benefit of experience. The difference is that a coaching style leader contracts the conversation first. They might ask: “Would it be helpful if I coached you through this, or would you prefer some advice?” “Do you want me to listen, challenge your thinking, or offer a perspective?” “Would you like my view now, or do you want to think it through first?” This creates respect and clarity. It also prevents the leader from assuming that every conversation requires their answer. The best leaders know when to coach and know when to mentor. They do not use the same setting for every conversation. 7. They make themselves the centre of every decision Some leaders become the bottleneck and call it control. Every decision comes through them, every issue waits for them, every meeting needs them in the room, and every person checks before moving forward. At first, this can feel efficient. It can even feel flattering. The leader feels needed, important, and close to the detail. Yet, over time, the cost becomes obvious. Decisions slow down, people hesitate, initiative reduces, the leader becomes exhausted, and the team becomes cautious. The leadership truth is this: if your people cannot move without you, you have not created alignment. You have created dependency. A coaching style alternative is to build decision making confidence closer to the work. The leader can ask: “What decision do you believe you can make without me?” “What principles should guide this decision?” “What level of risk are we comfortable with?” “What would help you feel confident to move this forward?” This does not mean leaders disappear or abandon responsibility. It means they create the clarity, trust, and capability that allow others to act. The goal is not to be involved in every decision. The goal is to develop people who can make better decisions because of the leadership they have experienced. How can leaders put the thinking back where it belongs? Moving from dependency to ownership does not require leaders to stop caring, stop supporting, or stop giving direction. It requires them to become more intentional about taking a coaching approach. A coaching style leader still leads, they still set standards, they still give feedback, and they still make decisions when needed. But they also understand that every conversation either develops or diminishes the other person’s capacity to think. The shift begins with a few simple changes. Ask before telling. Pause before rescuing. Clarify ownership before ending the conversation. Invite recommendations, not just problems. Hold silence long enough for thinking to happen. Give advice with permission, not assumption. Create decision making confidence in the team. These changes may look small, but their impact can be significant. When leaders change the conversation, they change the behavior. When they change the behavior, they change the culture. When they change the culture, people are more likely to feel trusted, valued, challenged, supported, and responsible for the work they do. Start protecting the thinking that drives performance Dependency is not created overnight, and it’s not solved by one leadership workshop, one engagement survey, or one motivational message. It’s changed through everyday leadership behavior. Every time a leader answers too quickly, rescues too often, fills the silence, or carries too much of the thinking, they risk creating dependency. Every time a leader asks a better question, listens more deeply, clarifies ownership, and challenges someone with care, they create the conditions for ownership. That matters because thinking is not just a leadership idea. It’s a business necessity. When people are trusted and developed to think well, decisions improve, accountability strengthens, leaders become less overloaded, teams move faster, and problems are solved closer to the work and the customer. Confidence grows, engagement improves, and good people are more likely to stay because they feel valued, challenged, supported, and trusted to contribute. This is the heart of coaching style leadership. The work is not simply to get more from people. The work is to build more in people. At Andy Hall Coaching, our Leader As A Coach approach helps organizations develop leaders who stop being the answer and start building the thinking, confidence, and ownership of their people. The result is stronger everyday leadership behavior, better conversations, higher trust, improved engagement, greater accountability, and reduced employee turnover. If your organization wants stronger leaders, more accountable teams, and people who take greater ownership, start by changing the quality of the conversations your leaders have every day. Because when leaders protect and develop the thinking of their people, they do more than improve conversations. They improve performance. Follow me on Facebook and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Andy Hall Andy Hall, Executive Leadership & Business Coach Andy Hall is an executive coach, leadership development specialist, and founder of Andy Hall Coaching. He helps organizations reduce employee turnover, improve performance and strengthen trust by changing the everyday leadership behaviors that shape how people feel, contribute and stay. After more than two decades in senior corporate leadership roles across the UK and US, Andy created Leader As A Coach to help leaders stop creating dependency and start building ownership. His work focuses on practical conversations that improve accountability, engagement, confidence and results. Andy believes retention is not just an HR challenge, it is a leadership behavior challenge.

Written by Anna Marson, Registered Psychotherapist Anna Marson, Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), registered psychotherapist (RP), and Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC), is the founder of Heartfulness Psychotherapy. With 14 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), she helps adults who perform at a high level understand their nervous systems and create lasting change. Why overworking can become a way to regulate emotions, maintain self-worth, and avoid the discomfort of switching off. In a culture that rewards productivity, working long hours can look like ambition, dedication, or success. But sometimes, the drive to keep working has less to do with what needs to be accomplished and more to do with what happens internally when we stop. For some people, work provides structure, stimulation, validation, or relief from difficult emotions. Being busy can feel safer than being still. Achievement can temporarily quiet self-doubt, while constant activity can keep painful thoughts and feelings at a distance. The question, then, is not simply how much we work, but what work provides psychologically and what becomes difficult when we step away from it. When hard work becomes hard to control Working long hours does not automatically mean someone has a work addiction. The terms workaholism and work addiction are defined differently across the research, but concerns extend beyond hours worked to a person's relationship with work: difficulty disengaging, feeling compelled to work, and continuing despite negative consequences for health, relationships, or functioning.[1] [2] Two people might work equally long hours for very different reasons. One may find meaning in their work and feel able to switch off, the other may feel restless, guilty, or anxious whenever they are not being productive. Understanding this distinction requires looking beneath the behaviour to the psychological needs it may be serving. Work as emotional regulation The self-medication hypothesis, developed by psychiatrist Dr. Edward Khantzian (1997), proposes that people may use substances to manage painful emotional states.[3] More broadly, people may gravitate toward experiences that temporarily relieve distress or help them manage feelings they struggle to regulate. Although developed primarily in relation to substance use, this framework offers a useful lens for considering how compulsive working may also serve a regulatory function. Work can provide temporary relief from anxiety, shame, loneliness, uncertainty, or feelings of inadequacy. Dr. Gabor Maté (2008) has also explored how addictive patterns can develop in the context of emotional pain, adversity, and unmet needs.[4] His work emphasizes understanding the function a behaviour serves rather than viewing it simply as a failure of willpower. Applied to overworking, these perspectives invite a compassionate inquiry: What might working be doing for me? Is it helping me avoid, soothe, or feel something? For example, checking email may briefly relieve anxiety about falling behind. That relief reinforces the behaviour, making it more likely to recur. Over time, work can become a familiar way to regulate discomfort, even when it creates additional stress. This does not mean every hardworking person is avoiding emotional pain. Work can be genuinely meaningful, financially necessary, or demanding. The concern arises when it becomes a primary or increasingly inflexible way of managing inner experience. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the pull of work For some adults with ADHD, the relationship with work may also involve differences in attention regulation, motivation, and responsiveness to immediate rewards. Tasks that offer novelty, urgency, challenge, or rapid feedback can be especially engaging. Under these conditions, some people experience hyperfocus: periods of intense absorption that can make disengaging difficult.[5] Work may also provide external structure and a sense of competence, particularly for those who have experienced years of criticism or struggled to meet conventional expectations. However, ADHD does not inevitably lead to overworking, and hyperfocus is not unique to ADHD. Some people work excessively to pursue stimulation, others may overprepare or remain constantly busy to compensate for perceived shortcomings or fear of making mistakes. These patterns can overlap with anxiety, perfectionism, and shame. Understanding the individual pathway matters more than assuming a single explanation. The cost of relying on work When work becomes a central source of emotional regulation or self-worth, stepping away can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. Unfinished tasks may trigger anxiety, rest may evoke guilt, and quiet moments may allow difficult feelings to surface. Over time, this reliance can narrow a person's sources of satisfaction and stability. Relationships may receive less attention, physical needs may be postponed, and exhaustion may become normalised. The very strategy that once offered relief can begin to undermine wellbeing. Workplace culture also matters. Constant availability, understaffing, financial pressure, and expectations of relentless productivity can reinforce overworking. Not every long workday reflects an individual psychological difficulty, sometimes the demands are genuinely unreasonable. Personal reflection should not obscure the structural conditions that make disengagement difficult. 5 areas worth exploring If switching off feels uncomfortable, consider what may be happening beneath the urge to keep working. These are possibilities to explore, not diagnoses. More than one may apply, and the reasons for overworking can change over time. Emotional regulation: What feelings arise when you stop? Anxiety, sadness, restlessness, loneliness, or guilt may point toward emotions that work helps you manage. The aim is not to eliminate these feelings, but to develop additional ways of responding to them. Stimulation and engagement: Does work provide challenge, novelty, or momentum that is difficult to find elsewhere? If so, consider whether other meaningful activities could offer stimulation without requiring constant productivity. Self-worth and identity: Does being productive help you feel capable, valuable, or deserving of respect? If your sense of worth depends heavily on achievement, rest may feel like evidence of inadequacy rather than a normal human need. Relationships and connection: Does work sometimes provide a reason to postpone difficult conversations, vulnerability, or closeness? This is not always conscious, and work may genuinely compete with connection for time and energy. Consider whether busyness is occasionally easier than being emotionally present. Control and certainty: Does staying busy help you feel prepared or in control? When life feels uncertain, work can offer measurable tasks and clear goals. Yet some uncertainty cannot be resolved through greater effort, and trying to control every outcome can become exhausting. Beginning to change the pattern Change does not require abandoning ambition or forcing yourself into extended periods of inactivity. It begins with noticing the relationship between discomfort and the urge to work. Pause before responding. When you feel compelled to check email or start another task, briefly notice what you are feeling and what you hope working will provide. Practise small moments of disengagement. Take a short break or leave a task unfinished until the next work period. Notice any discomfort without immediately trying to resolve it. Broaden your sources of wellbeing. Invest in relationships, movement, creativity, rest, or other meaningful experiences that support connection and self-worth outside achievement. If overworking feels difficult to control or is significantly affecting your health and relationships, psychotherapy or coaching can help explore the underlying patterns and build alternative ways of regulating emotions. The goal is not simply to work less, but to develop greater choice in how you respond to internal discomfort. A different relationship with work Work can be a meaningful source of purpose, connection, and accomplishment. The difficulty arises when it becomes the primary way we feel capable, worthwhile, or emotionally safe. Understanding what keeps us working can open the door to change. Rather than judging the behaviour, we can become curious about the needs beneath it and begin meeting those needs in more flexible ways. Sometimes, the most important step toward a healthier relationship with work is learning that we do not have to earn our right to rest. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anna Marson Anna Marson, Registered Psychotherapist Anna Marson, PsyD, RP, CCC, is a registered psychotherapist and founder of Heartfulness Psychotherapy, with a Doctor of Psychology and 14 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma, ADHD, attachment, brain injury, and addiction. Her doctoral research established a trauma-informed framework for understanding ADHD's interpersonal neurobiological roots. Drawing on this work, she helps clients understand their nervous systems and build lasting pathways to change. She was a guest presenter on PESI's webinar, "Rethinking ADHD with Gabor Maté and Terry Matlen: From Origins to Healing." She believes every brain holds the capacity to heal and that the right map makes all the difference. References: [1] Andreassen, C. S. (2014). Workaholism: An overview and current status of the research. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 3(1), 1 to 11. [2] Griffiths, M. D., Demetrovics, Z., & Atroszko, P. A. (2018). Ten myths about work addiction. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 7(4), 845 to 857. [3] Khantzian, E. J. (1997). The self-medication hypothesis of substance use disorders: A reconsideration and recent applications. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 4(5), 231 to 244. [4] Maté, G. (2008). In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction. Knopf Canada. [5] Kooij, J. J. S., Bijlenga, D., Salerno, L., Jaeschke, R., Bitter, I., Balazs, J., Thome, J., Dom, G., Kasper, S., Nunes Filipe, C., Stes, S., Mohr, P., Leppämäki, S., Casas, M., Bobes, J., McCarthy, J. M., Richarte, V., Kjems Philipsen, A., Pehlivanidis, A., Asherson, P. (2019). Updated European consensus statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD. European Psychiatry, 56(1), 14 to 34.

Written by Nansia Movidi, Relationship Specialist & Hypnotherapist Nansia Movidi is a relationship specialist, hypnotherapist, and holistic practitioner focused on presence, emotional regulation, and secure connection. Through transformative hypnotherapy, she helps individuals reprogram subconscious patterns, break cycles of emotional unavailability, and build relationships rooted in safety, clarity, and depth. It is easy to postpone happiness until we feel more confident, achieve another goal, or finally have everything figured out. But life is already unfolding in the ordinary moments, uncertain days, and unexpected joys along the way. This article explores how we can keep growing while allowing ourselves to enjoy who we are today. The illusion of arrival We spend so much of life believing the journey is taking us somewhere. Somewhere better. Somewhere clearer. Somewhere we finally become the person we are meant to be, preferably with emotional stability, a healthy relationship, and an inbox that no longer requires courage to open. We imagine a future version of ourselves who has worked everything out, and we quietly give that person permission to enjoy life. The current version gets a list of things to improve. There is always something standing between us and arrival. One more achievement. One more conversation. One more breakthrough. We tell ourselves we will relax when things settle down, feel confident when we know more, and be happy when the next piece falls into place. Except the pieces keep moving. We reach one destination and immediately start negotiating with the next. At some point, we have to ask ourselves how much of our life we are willing to spend preparing to live it. You are the journey You are not separate from the journey. You are the journey. Every experience moves through you and becomes part of how you see, feel, choose, and relate to the world. You do not become yourself only once everything makes sense. You are becoming yourself while it does not. We often speak about our lives as if we are observers watching events happen around us. Yet a conversation can change what we are willing to accept. An ending can reveal how much of ourselves we have been setting aside. A moment of kindness can reach a place within us that years of explanation never touched. We walk into an experience with one understanding and leave with another. Even when our circumstances look the same, something within us has shifted. I do find life intriguing, even in my darkest moments. I love the shifts and the ups and downs, although I would appreciate being consulted about the scheduling here and there. There is something extraordinary about discovering that we can feel differently, see differently, and make choices we could not have made before. What once felt essential can lose its hold. What we barely noticed can become deeply meaningful. We are allowed to change our minds about what a good life looks like as we experience more of it. Finding meaning in the highs and lows Of course, it is easy to appreciate movement when life is moving in a direction we enjoy. We welcome the opportunity, the connection, the unexpected good news. We are considerably less enthusiastic when movement arrives as grief, uncertainty, or an ending we did not choose. Nobody wakes up hoping for a character development emergency. Yet those experiences belong to our lives too, even before we know what to do with them. That does not mean every painful experience was necessary or that we have to be grateful for everything that happened. Some things hurt without offering a tidy explanation. We can acknowledge that honestly. We can wish something had been different and still decide how we want to live from here. Meaning can emerge through the care we give ourselves afterward, the boundaries we learn to hold, or the people we allow to help us. We do not owe our pain a flattering review. There is also no deadline for making sense of it. When something hurts, we do not need to immediately turn it into wisdom. We can feel it, rest, ask for support, and allow our understanding to develop at its own pace. Becoming includes the days when we have very little insight and simply manage to get through the afternoon. Those days count. Our lives do not become less real because we cannot produce an inspiring caption about them. When happiness becomes “when” The mind loves destinations because they give us something to organize ourselves around. A goal offers direction, and direction matters. I am certainly not suggesting we throw away the calendar and wander around waiting for enlightenment. We can build a business, develop our craft, nurture a relationship, and work toward something we care about. The challenge begins when we make our right to enjoy the present dependent on completing those things. “I will feel enough when” is a sentence that can occupy an entire lifetime. Every achievement becomes temporary evidence, and every setback becomes another reason to postpone feeling comfortable in our own skin. We keep moving the conditions without questioning the agreement. Who decided we had to finish becoming before we could appreciate being here? Living while we are becoming This version of you deserves to be lived too. The one who is still learning. The one who has changed direction. The one who knows what they want in one area and feels completely confused in another. We are all working on something. We can take responsibility for our growth without treating ourselves as an endless correction project. There is room to improve and room to enjoy who we are today. Being present often happens in ordinary ways. We listen to someone without rehearsing our reply. We taste our food. We notice that we are tired and stop arguing with the information. We allow ourselves to laugh in the middle of an unresolved week. We make a decision based on what matters now, instead of what might finally make us acceptable later. These moments bring us back into contact with the life we already have. There is more to that life than what it teaches us. A beautiful evening can simply be a beautiful evening. A conversation can be meaningful without changing our entire direction. Joy does not need to contribute to our development to justify its existence. We can experience something fully without asking what it is preparing us for. Some moments deserve our attention because they are here and because we are here to experience them. A life we can say we lived I want to grow. I want to discover what else is possible. I also want to notice my life while I am living it. When my life flashes before my eyes, I do not want to see someone who spent their days waiting to arrive somewhere else. I want to recognize the laughter, the love, the courage, the confusion, and the moments I allowed myself to be fully there. I want to smile and say, “I lived.” We can keep our goals and loosen our grip on the idea that they will finally complete us. We can welcome change without demanding that every shift make immediate sense. We can smile at the confusion, say thank you where we mean it, and grow. There will always be more to discover, and we are allowed to enjoy the discovering. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and my website for more info! Read more from Nansia Movidi Nansia Movidi, Relationship Specialist & Hypnotherapist Nansia Movidi is a relationship specialist, hypnotherapist, and holistic practitioner focused on presence, emotional regulation, and secure connection. Her work explores how attachment patterns, nervous system states, and modern conditioning shape the way we love, often causing intensity to be mistaken for depth. Through transformative hypnotherapy and her writings, Nansia helps individuals reprogram subconscious patterns, break cycles of emotional unavailability, and cultivate relationships rooted in safety, clarity, and embodied self-trust.

Dr. Lonna Gordon is an Adolescent Medicine physician and founder of The KNOBS, a coaching and speaking practice that helps parents, youth-serving professionals, and teens navigate adolescence with more understanding and less conflict. Drawing on 15 years of clinical experience, the Enneagram, and her proprietary PCOS framework (Pause, Connect, Open, Secure), she translates the science of adolescent development into practical tools that help adults respond instead of reacting and connect before correcting. In this interview, Dr. Gordon explains why adolescence is best understood as a “threshold moment,” what adults often misread in teen behavior, and how small shifts in our responses can decide whether a young person opens up or pulls away. She shares how to rebuild trust without forcing conversations, what drives behavior beneath the surface, and the one message she believes every tween and teen needs to hear. Dr. Lonna Gordon, Board-Certified Adolescent Medicine Physician & Enneagram-Informed Coach What first drew you to helping young people and the adults around them understand adolescence differently? I noticed early that the most important conversations in adolescent medicine rarely happened when I expected them to. They happened at the door. A teen would sit through an entire visit, then, when my hand was on the doorknob, say the thing that actually mattered most to them. Those "doorknob confessions" taught me that young people are almost always trying to be understood, even when they look like they're pulling away. What they need is an adult who stays long enough to hear it. I also saw how often adolescents are misunderstood by the adults around them, including parents, teachers, coaches, and clinicians. They were well-intentioned, but they judged the behavior without understanding the person. I realized I could help from both sides of the door. I could translate adolescent development into language families and professionals can use, and I could help teens feel seen rather than managed. That became The KNOBS. My goal is simple: to illuminate this threshold moment so no young person walks through it convinced they don't belong. What have 15 years in adolescent medicine taught you about what teenagers need from adults when they are struggling? Fifteen years in Adolescent Medicine have taught me that struggling teenagers rarely need adults to have the perfect answer. They need adults who are steady. When a teen is overwhelmed, their brain is often operating from a place of threat. A calm, predictable adult becomes the anchor they can borrow regulation from. However, you must connect before you correct. I've watched teens shut down in seconds when they sensed judgment. I've also watched them open when an adult simply says, "That sounds really hard. I'm here." Teens also need to be taken seriously. Their feelings can seem outsized to adults, but to them the stakes are real, and dismissing that confirms their fear that no one gets it. Finally, they need adults who will stay. Struggle isn't resolved in one conversation. Showing up repeatedly is what tells a young person they are worth the effort and don't have to carry it alone. How does the Enneagram help you uncover what is driving a teen's behavior rather than simply reacting to what you see? The Enneagram gives me a way to look beneath the surface. Two teens can do the exact same thing, such as shutting their door, skipping practice, or snapping at a parent, for completely different reasons. One may be protecting a need for independence. Another may be terrified of disappointing someone. Another may be withdrawing because they feel unseen. The Enneagram describes nine core motivations: the fears and desires that drive how we move through the world. When I bring that lens into a conversation, the question shifts from "How do I stop this behavior?" to "What is this behavior trying to protect?" That shift changes everything. It helps adults respond to the need rather than react to the symptom. It also helps adults recognize their own patterns, because the conflict often isn't just about the adolescent. It's about how two personalities collide under stress. I use it as a compass or a guide, never a box. It opens curiosity that creates connection. Why can an adult's response determine whether a teenager opens up again or starts pulling away? Every time a teenager shares something vulnerable, they are running a quiet test. Is it safe to tell this person the truth? The adult's response is the result of that test. If a teen is met with panic, lecturing, or punishment, they learn that honesty costs too much, and next time they'll share less or nothing at all. If they're met with calm and curiosity, they learn that this adult can handle hard things, and the door stays open. Adolescents are wired to be highly sensitive to social evaluation, so they read our reactions quickly and remember them. That doesn't mean adults can't set limits or have feelings. It means the first response should be about receiving, not resolving. We can say, "Thank you for telling me," then address the rest after. A single reaction can shape months of communication. The goal isn't to get it perfect. It's to leave space for repair when we don't. What do parents and professionals often misunderstand when they approach adolescent behavior as something that needs to be fixed? When we approach adolescent behavior as a problem to fix, we communicate that the teen is the problem. Teens get that message from so many spaces – school, family, society at large. This pushes them toward defensiveness or silence. What adults often miss is that much of what looks like defiance, moodiness, or withdrawal is normal development doing its job. Adolescents are supposed to question, test boundaries, and pull back to figure out who they are apart from the adults who raised them. That's not dysfunction. It's growth. The fix-it mindset also puts adults in a position of control, and control tends to invite resistance. A more effective stance is partnership. That means being curious about what's underneath, offering support, and letting the young person be part of the solution. I often remind families that the goal isn't to make adolescence smoother. It's to help young people thrive through it, not just survive it. That requires understanding before intervention and connection before correction. Your PCOS framework starts with "Pause." What needs to happen in that moment before an adult responds? Pause is the moment between what happens and how we respond, and it's where everything is decided. The first thing that needs to happen is noticing our own reaction. Is my heart racing? Am I scared, embarrassed, angry? Adults are often reacting to their own fear about what this behavior might mean or what others might think, rather than to the teen in front of them. The pause gives us space to regulate first, because a dysregulated adult cannot calm a dysregulated teen. Practically, that might be one deep breath, a sip of water, or saying, "I want to talk about this. Give me a minute." The second thing is shifting from judgment to curiosity by asking what might be going on underneath this. A pause isn't passive, and it isn't avoidance. It's a deliberate choice to respond instead of react. It requires time, and it models for young people the exact skill we hope they'll learn. When communication has become tense or distant, what can a parent do to begin rebuilding trust without forcing a conversation? When things feel tense or distant, the instinct is often to sit a teen down and "talk it out." Forced conversations usually feel like an interrogation, though, and they tend to push teens further away. Trust is rebuilt through small, low-pressure moments of connection. I encourage parents to show up in side-by-side spaces like car rides, cooking together, walking the dog, or watching a show your teen enjoys. Shoulder-to-shoulder feels safer than face-to-face. Show interest in their world without an agenda. Ask about the music, the game, or the friend, and then just listen. If there's been a rupture, owning your part goes a long way. A simple "I didn't handle that well, and I'm sorry" shows them that repair is possible. Finally, be patient with the timeline. Trust is rebuilt through consistency, not one conversation. When teens see that you're steady and available, they often come back to you on their own terms. You describe adolescence as a "threshold moment." What does that perspective change about the way we support young people? A threshold is the space between one room and the next. You're no longer where you were, but you haven't fully arrived. That's adolescence. When we see it as a threshold moment rather than a phase to get through, the whole posture of support changes. Instead of trying to hurry young people along or hold them back, we recognize that they're in a sacred and sometimes uncomfortable in-between space where identity is being formed. That perspective invites patience. Uncertainty, experimentation, and mixed emotions aren't signs of something wrong. They're signs someone is in transition. It also changes our role. We aren't meant to carry teens across the threshold or block the door. We're meant to walk alongside them, holding the light, reminding them of who they are, and trusting that they can find their way. My work is about illuminating that path so no young person crosses while believing they don't belong. What is one thing you wish every tween or teen heard from the adults in their life while they are figuring out who they are? I would want every tween and teen to hear this: "You don't have to have it all figured out in order to belong here." So many young people carry a quiet belief that they are too much, not enough, or somehow getting life wrong. They compare their insides to everyone else's outsides and assume they're the only one who feels lost. Hearing an adult say, "You are allowed to be in progress, and I'm not going anywhere," can change how they move through the world. It separates their worth from their performance. It tells them that their questions, mistakes, and changing ideas about who they are are just part of growing, not proof that something is wrong. It also gives them permission to come back to that adult when things get hard. Belonging isn't earned by becoming someone finished. It's the foundation that makes becoming possible. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Dr. Lonna Gordon

Written by Rosie Hewat, Founder & CEO of Rosie’s People Rosie Hewat is a Board and Executive Advisor and the Founder & CEO of Rosie’s People, a leadership and organisational advisory platform. She works with founders, boards, and senior leaders navigating complexity, scale, and high-stakes decision-making across global and regulated environments. There was a time when contacting somebody required effort. You made a telephone call, wrote a letter or arranged a meeting. Somewhere in that process, you probably considered whether what you wanted justified interrupting somebody else. Technology has removed much of that friction. Today, I can contact hundreds of people before breakfast, automate follow-ups, find their LinkedIn profiles and work emails, and potentially reach them through other channels. AI can even write the messages. That sounds wonderfully efficient. But efficient for whom? In my previous Brainz articles, I have explored how technology and changing labour markets are reshaping work: from The Apprenticing Gap and what happens when we remove the experiences through which people once learned, to Designing the Enterprise Beyond Jobs and Headcount, and most recently The Expertise Penalty, where I questioned why career progression still so often requires people management. There is another part of the future of work that I think deserves considerably more attention: how are we going to behave towards one another in it? Because somewhere in our pursuit of frictionless communication, productivity and scale, I wonder whether we have forgotten something rather important. The person on the other side of our efficiency is still a person. When sending becomes free, receiving becomes expensive Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index found that 80% of the global workforce surveyed said they lacked enough time or energy to do their work. Its Microsoft 365 telemetry also found that, during core working hours, employees were interrupted by a meeting, email or notification on average every two minutes. That statistic captures a familiar contradiction: technology intended to make work efficient has also made almost everybody accessible, almost continuously. The costs are not evenly distributed. Another automated message costs the sender virtually nothing. Receiving it still requires me to decide whether it matters, whether to respond, delete, archive, unsubscribe, block or simply ignore it. Multiply that by email, LinkedIn, Teams, Slack, text messages, WhatsApp and every other channel through which modern professionals can be reached, and something supposedly insignificant becomes administrative and cognitive labour. The problem, therefore, isn’t simply that we receive too many messages. It is that the cost of initiating communication has collapsed while the human cost of receiving and processing it has not. Access is not consent, and it certainly isn’t an obligation I run businesses and conduct business development myself. If I see a problem Rosie’s People could genuinely solve, I may approach someone and explain why. Professional outreach is not inherently inappropriate; arguing otherwise would be hypocritical. I do, however, have a personal rule. If I am approaching you because I want to sell you something, I will tell you why I am contacting you. I may then send you a connection request. If you accept it after receiving my message, I may send one follow-up because I think it is reasonable to interpret your acceptance as potential openness to a conversation. If you don’t respond after that, I stop. People sometimes tell me: “But people forget.” Of course they do. But I also run businesses, and when I genuinely need a particular service, I generally don’t forget to respond to the person offering it. If I don’t need what you’re selling today, repeated messages are unlikely to manufacture that need. If we remain connected and six months from now I suddenly do need it, however, I may remember you. There is a commercial lesson in that which I think relentless-outreach culture sometimes misses: restraint can also be business development. When did accepting a LinkedIn connection become consent to a sales sequence? LinkedIn is where I see this tension most clearly. LinkedIn describes itself as a professional space for jobs, learning and relationships. Its Professional Community Policies prohibit untargeted, irrelevant, obviously unwanted or gratuitously repetitive promotional messages. Yet my LinkedIn inbox increasingly feels less like professional networking and more like another piece of infrastructure I have to administer. I have well over a thousand messages in my LinkedIn inbox. I have read many, but I cannot spend my working day, let alone my personal time, individually declining services I never requested. Increasingly, there is a particular choreography to the approach. Recently, for example, I accepted a connection request from someone who said they were connecting with business owners to hear what was really happening “behind the scenes”. Nothing wrong with that. I accepted. The following day came another message, this time explaining that they worked with founders and MDs of growing businesses. Then came another message explaining the actual proposition: an opportunity, associated services and a request for a discovery call. There was nothing inherently wrong with the proposition. In fact, I might have been more inclined to engage had the third message effectively been the first. What irritated me was the performance preceding it. If the reason you want to connect with me is commercial, why manufacture the appearance of casual professional interest first? Why not simply say, “Rosie, this is what I do, this is why I think it may be relevant to you, and I’d like to connect”? Another recent connection immediately followed acceptance with a detailed pitch for executive coaching and corporate services aimed particularly at “bright female leaders with (specific disability)”. I have never told this person that I have this disability, nor have I ever been diagnosed with it, but I know how serious an issue it can be for those who have to navigate life and work with it. Perhaps that wasn’t what they intended to imply, but poorly judged personalisation can sometimes make an approach feel less personal rather than more. Another connection opened with: “How are things going in the UK?” I don’t know this person. The question is harmless. But accepting a connection does not mean agreeing to a conversation, any more than accepting a business card means agreeing to a sales meeting. That distinction matters. Connection is not conversation. Conversation is not consent to solicitation. And accessibility is not an entitlement to attention. Ironically, genuine business enquiries have sometimes reached me late because they were buried among sales pitches, candidate messages and repeated follow-ups I had mentally classified as noise. Everybody loses when that happens. The sender, prospective client and candidate all lose. Eventually, so does the network. LinkedIn itself warns that invitations may be restricted when sent in high volumes, repeatedly ignored or marked as spam, or when automation is suspected. Perhaps the problem isn’t networking. Perhaps we have confused network-building with audience acquisition. “I applied for your job” doesn’t automatically create a meeting with me Recruitment is another area where the distinction becomes particularly important. Candidates are urged to “stand out”: find the recruiter, message the hiring manager, contact the founder, email the CEO, send the CV separately, bypass the ATS. I understand why. The job market is difficult and brutal, and candidates want to be noticed. But consider what happens when everybody receives the same advice. At Rosie’s People, an ordinary advertised vacancy can attract 200-300 applications within 24 hours of publication. Particularly attractive remote opportunities have generated around 2,000 applications within 48 hours. Imagine even a fraction of those applicants deciding that the way to distinguish themselves is to contact me personally. If we already know each other, that’s different. If someone in my existing professional network messages me and says, “Rosie, I noticed your company is advertising this role. Are you handling it? I’m potentially interested and would love to know a little more if you are,” I see absolutely nothing inappropriate about that. There is already a relationship. But if I don’t know you from Adam, you send me a connection request because my company advertised a vacancy, tell me you have applied and then ask me to make time to discuss personally how you meet the requirements, you have created an expectation I never agreed to. You also haven’t necessarily established whether I am even handling the assignment. For senior professionals in particular, I think there is a judgement question here. If you’re applying for an executive appointment, part of what you’re implicitly demonstrating is judgement. Did you establish who was managing the recruitment? Did you follow the stated process? Did you consider whether attempting to bypass it was actually appropriate? Recruitment processes exist for good reasons: consistency, fair handling and protection of candidate information. An unsolicited CV in an unrelated inbox is not automatically an ATS application. At Rosie’s People, applications sent outside the designated process are not treated as applications; personal-data attachments may be deleted under our data-handling policies rather than manually transferred. If you emailed me a CV directly and heard nothing, it may never have been opened. Employers are not exempt. If you invite candidates through multiple interviews, assessments or presentations and then disappear, that is poor professional conduct. The difference is who solicited the investment. Two hundred applicants independently messaging a CEO do not create 200 personal obligations. But asking a candidate to spend five hours on a selection process creates a greater obligation to respond. Those aren’t contradictory positions. They are the same principle applied consistently. Global communication does not mean global availability I feel this particularly strongly because I travel frequently. Messages arrive from different time zones. That is not inherently a problem: email and LinkedIn are asynchronous, and senders need not know my location. The problem is not when you send something. It is the expectation you attach to when I should respond. I have family spread across different places and, like many people, I want to remain accessible if somebody I love genuinely needs me. For years, that meant keeping my phone relatively available. Increasingly, however, professional noise has forced me to create much harder boundaries. At 7 p.m., my notifications go off and my phone goes onto silent. My children are adults now, thankfully, and they know how to signal to me separately if something genuinely needs my attention. Think about the absurdity of that for a moment. We have made communication so noisy that some of us need separate systems to ensure the people who matter can still get through. The same principle applies organisationally. Rosie’s People has worked a four-day week since April 2025. We ordinarily do not work Fridays. That does not prevent anyone emailing us then, but you most certainly should not expect a response. Someone else’s need to finish something before their weekend does not automatically turn Friday into our working day. Your urgency does not automatically become somebody else’s working day. Global and flexible working will require us to become considerably better at understanding that distinction. Silence is not always rude Here is the essential qualification: professional etiquette does not entitle everybody to everybody else’s time. An unsolicited sales pitch, connection request or CV may deserve consideration, but it does not automatically require a personal response. Sometimes silence is simply attention management. Otherwise, people receiving the most messages would spend their working lives politely declining other people’s demands. But the equation changes when I invite your investment. The obligation should rise with the investment we solicit Ghosting debates often miss the distinction between ignoring unsolicited outreach and disappearing after asking someone to invest significant time. If I invite you through interviews, an assessment and a presentation, my obligation changes. You still aren’t entitled to the job. But I think you are entitled to closure. The same applies commercially. Competitive procurement is normal: organisations should compare providers, challenge proposals and choose the best fit. But if you invite a consultancy into a discovery process, ask them to diagnose the issue, request a proposal, subsequently provide a detailed brief, ask them to undertake additional thinking and then request a revised proposal ahead of your final decision, you have deliberately solicited intellectual labour. If you choose someone else, fine. If the project is cancelled, fine. If your budget disappears, priorities change or somebody internally decides to do it themselves, also fine. But close the loop. That is not entitlement. It is reciprocity. I think the obligation should be proportional: the greater the investment of time, expertise, emotional energy or intellectual labour we deliberately solicit from another person, the greater our obligation to close that interaction properly. Sometimes the thinking is the product In professional services, there is a tendency to treat everything before an engagement as costless. At Rosie’s People, for example, we offer prospective clients a complimentary 15-minute consultation. The purpose is straightforward: understand the problem, determine whether it is something we can help with and establish whether there is a sensible basis for working together. Few of those conversations naturally end at exactly 15 minutes. Often the questions keep coming. “What would you do about this?” “How would you structure that?” “What do you think the problem is?” “What would you recommend?” These are reasonable questions individually. But at some point discovery quietly becomes delivery. Maintaining the boundary sometimes means reminding people that the free consultation is ending and further advisory time is chargeable. That can feel awkward. It shouldn’t. My expertise is part of what my business sells. A lawyer’s legal judgement has value. A designer’s creative thinking has value. A recruiter’s understanding of where to find a difficult candidate has value. A strategist’s ability to identify the real problem rather than the presenting symptom has value. An organisational consultant’s knowledge of which intervention not to recommend has value. The thinking isn’t simply the warm-up before the product. Sometimes the thinking is the product. That creates an increasingly difficult boundary in procurement too. Where does demonstrating capability end and giving away the solution begin? If several consultancies must diagnose, design, sequence, risk-assess and refine a solution before appointment, how much unpaid professional work has effectively been commissioned? Businesses absolutely need to evaluate suppliers. We should distinguish asking someone to prove they can solve a problem from asking them to start solving it before payment is agreed. For smaller consultancies, a day of speculative intellectual work is a day of capacity that cannot be sold elsewhere. AI creates a rather uncomfortable paradox The paradox is that basic professional courtesy has never been easier. An ATS can send a rejection. A CRM can remind someone that a conversation needs closing. A calendar can prompt a follow-up. AI can draft a courteous two-paragraph update in seconds. Yet the same tools can generate thousands of apparently personalised sales messages and automated follow-ups, each costing almost nothing to send. Technology can therefore make us more considerate or considerably more intrusive. It doesn’t determine which. We do. This is not ultimately an article about technology. It’s an article about the standards we choose when technology removes the friction that once moderated our behaviour. 5 principles of professional reciprocity We do not need an enormous new etiquette manual. Five principles may suffice. Be transparent about your intent. If you’re approaching somebody because you want to sell something, there is nothing shameful about that. Say so. Don’t manufacture familiarity or disguise commercial intent as spontaneous friendship. Make pursuit proportionate. Following up is reasonable. Repeatedly demanding somebody’s attention because your automation platform allows you to is something else. A connection request is not a subscription to your sales sequence. Respect the channel and the boundary. Being technically capable of finding someone’s personal email address, telephone number or social profile does not necessarily mean they invited professional communication there. Similarly, asynchronous communication means you can often send something when convenient to you without expecting the recipient to respond according to your working hours. Close what you opened. If you deliberately invite substantial investment from a candidate, supplier, consultant or collaborator, communicate the outcome. The obligation should increase with the investment you requested. Honour the exchange. When somebody gives you time, expertise, intellectual contribution or work within an agreed professional exchange, recognise that contribution as having value, and honour the terms on which it was given. The final principle opens a larger conversation about commercial integrity, payment and the cost of broken agreements transferred to smaller suppliers. UK government-commissioned research published in 2025 estimated that late payments cost the economy almost £11 billion a year, affecting over 1.5 million businesses. Firms spending staff time chasing overdue payments lost an average of 86 hours annually. The Government’s 2026 Commercial Payments Bill reflects the scale of the issue. That deserves a conversation of its own. Conclusion: Efficiency without reciprocity isn’t progress I don’t think professional standards are disappearing because human beings suddenly became worse. Technology has removed frictions that once encouraged us to consider the cost of an interaction. Work is faster, networks are larger, and professional and personal communication increasingly overlap. We haven’t yet developed equally strong norms for what we should do with that access. We discuss productivity, automation, AI and the future of work. Perhaps we should also ask something simpler, "What do we owe one another while we’re doing all of this?" Not unlimited access. Not an answer to every message. Not agreement. Not a job. Not a contract. Certainly not somebody else’s time simply because technology has made them easy to find. But when we invite somebody’s participation, expertise, effort or trust, I believe we acquire a reciprocal responsibility. Sometimes that means feedback or closure; respecting a 15-minute consultation instead of stretching it to 45; or accepting silence rather than sending message number seven. It means recognising another person’s time has value even when access is almost free. A future of work that becomes technologically frictionless while becoming increasingly humanly inconsiderate isn’t progress. It is simply efficiency achieved by transferring the cost to somebody else. Perhaps there is one final responsibility in all of this: the one we owe ourselves. I increasingly believe we should give ourselves permission to become deliberately unavailable sometimes, perhaps even going properly offline for a period each week. No email. No LinkedIn. No WhatsApp. No little red notification badges demanding attention simply because somebody, somewhere, has decided they would like access to us. Constant accessibility is not the same thing as professionalism, and protecting our attention is not selfish. In a world that increasingly treats availability as the default, choosing to disconnect may be one of the simplest ways we can protect our mental wellbeing and make sure we still have attention left for the people and things that actually matter. I’d genuinely like to know what other people are experiencing. Where, for you, does persistence become intrusion? When does networking become solicitation, competitive pitching become extraction, or silence become disrespect? What professional behaviour has caused you to reconsider a person or an organisation? Perhaps the more uncomfortable question for all of us, "Which of these behaviours have we started accepting (or practising ourselves) simply because they have become “normal”?" Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Rosie Hewat Rosie Hewat, Founder & CEO of Rosie’s People Rosie Hewat is a Board and Executive Advisor and Founder & CEO of Rosie’s People, a leadership and organisational advisory platform. A former Group Chief People Officer and Non-Executive Director, she has supported leadership teams and boards operating in high-growth and regulated environments. Rosie is also a trustee and an Executive Contributor to Brainz Magazine, where she writes on leadership, governance, power, and organisational risk. References: Microsoft – 2025 Work Trend Index: The Frontier Firm Is Born. Particularly useful for the “capacity gap”: 80% of surveyed workers reporting insufficient time or energy to do their work, alongside Microsoft 365 telemetry showing that employees are interrupted by a meeting, email or notification, on average, every two minutes during core working hours. LinkedIn – Professional Community Policies. LinkedIn describes standards for participation in its professional community and specifically prohibits untargeted, irrelevant, obviously unwanted, unauthorised or gratuitously repetitive commercial or promotional messages. LinkedIn – Types of Restrictions for Sending Invitations. LinkedIn says accounts may face restrictions for sending large numbers of invitations in a short period, having invitations repeatedly ignored, left pending or marked as spam, or where the use of automation tools is suspected. Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter & Ng – Justice at the Millennium: A Meta-Analytic Review of 25 Years of Organizational Justice Research. A meta-analysis of 183 studies examining distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice and their relationships with organisational outcomes including job satisfaction, commitment, withdrawal and performance. Department for Business and Trade – Late Payments Research: Impact on the UK Economy. Government-commissioned research into the economic and operational effects of late payment on UK businesses. The study estimates that late payments cost the UK economy almost £11 billion annually, affect more than 1.5 million businesses each year and result in affected businesses spending an average of 86 staff hours annually chasing payments. Department for Business and Trade – Late Payments Research: Performance and Practices Across Business. Particularly interesting on power asymmetry. Microbusinesses were less likely than large businesses to pursue late payments formally, while protecting customer relationships was the most commonly reported reason for not formally pursuing overdue payments. UK Government – Commercial Payments Bill: Overview. Useful further reading on the policy response and why payment conduct has moved beyond a question of business etiquette into economic policy. Introduced to Parliament in May 2026, the Bill includes measures covering maximum payment terms, mandatory interest on late payments and stronger enforcement powers for the Small Business Commissioner.

Written by Monique Farmer, PR & Communications Consultant Monique Farmer, APR, is the founder of Avant Solutions, a PR and communications consultancy that helps nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and small businesses elevate their messaging and build stronger connections with their audiences. She created Anvil Ready, an online communication strategy builder that aids the communication professional in creating communication plans. Professional uncertainty has a way of making even accomplished women question themselves. A contract ends and business slows down. The company reorganizes, and leadership disappoints you, closing the door on your tenure without warning. Suddenly, the woman who has carried teams, solved problems, and made hard things look easy finds herself sitting in the quiet, wondering, “Can I really keep doing this?” The answer is yes. But not by pretending it does not hurt. Resilience is often misunderstood as the ability to keep going no matter what. We treat it like emotional concrete, hard, unbreakable, and unmoved by pressure. But real resilience is more like a tree in a storm. It bends and breathes. It stays rooted. It tells the truth about the wind. Real resilience asks for help. It recovers and recalibrates. It doesn’t confuse exhaustion with strength. The research is detailed. Women are carrying high levels of professional strain. Gallup found that 31% of women, compared with 23% of men, say they “very often” or “always” feel burned out at work. Among leaders, the average burnout rate from 2022 through 2025 was 29% for women leaders and 19% for men leaders. That means many women aren’t failing to be resilient. They’re being asked to be resilient inside systems that are poorly designed for their humanity. Resilience is not the same as overfunctioning Women receive praise for being dependable, available, and strong. We know how to step in and how to make a way out of no way. We know how to hold the room together while quietly falling apart in the parking lot. But strength without recovery becomes depletion. There’s a difference between resilience and self-abandonment. Resilience says, “I can face this with wisdom.” Self-abandonment says, “I must ignore myself to survive this.” Resilience asks for clarity. Self-abandonment accepts chaos. Resilience uses support. Self-abandonment performs invulnerability. Resilience learns from setbacks. Self-abandonment turns every setback into a private indictment. Professional uncertainty requires resilience, yes. But it also requires discernment. Because sometimes the bravest thing a woman can do is stop calling dysfunction an opportunity to prove herself. The recenter framework When uncertainty rises, women leaders need practices that bring them back to center. Not in a decorative, inspirational quote kind of way, but in a practical, “I need to breathe and make my next wise decision” kind of way. Here are four anchors: 1. Clarify what you control Uncertainty feels heavier when everything is floating in the same mental bucket. Use three columns: What I control What I influence What I must monitor You may not control the economy, the board decision, the client’s budget, the reorganization, or someone else’s timeline. But you can control your preparation, your outreach, your documentation, your visibility, your rest, and your next wise step. Clarity doesn’t remove uncertainty. It reduces emotional fog, and when the fog begins to lift, you can stop swinging at shadows and start deciding from solid ground. 2. Ask for priority clarity One of the quiet drivers of burnout is ambiguity. When everything is urgent, nothing is strategic. When expectations are unclear, women often compensate by doing more. More emails and more meetings. More emotional labor. More invisible work. More “I’ll just handle it.” That isn’t sustainable leadership. It’s slow erosion. Ask direct questions: “What are the top three priorities right now?” “What can wait?” “What does success look like by Friday?” “What should be paused so this can be done well?” These questions aren’t signs of weakness. They are signs of leadership maturity. Resilience grows when expectations become visible. 3. Build your resilience board No woman should have to navigate uncertainty with only her own internal monologue. Because let’s be honest, when we’re tired, scared, or overwhelmed, that inner voice isn’t always the best strategist. Sometimes she is catastrophizing. Sometimes she is replaying old wounds. Sometimes she is trying to protect us by making the world smaller. You need a resilience board of directors. A truth teller who will not flatter you into confusion. A strategist who can help you see options. A safe person who can hold your emotion without judging it. A sponsor who can speak your name in rooms you are not in. A peer who understands the road because she is walking one too. The report highlights that women rely on emotional, informational, instrumental, and appraisal support during transitions. That means support isn’t one thing. Sometimes you need comfort. Sometimes you need contacts. Sometimes you need perspective. Sometimes you need someone to help you move the couch. Build the board before the storm gets loud. 4. Protect Recovery as Leadership Work Rest isn’t a reward for finishing everything. Rest is part of how leaders remain wise. Burnout narrows perspective. Recovery restores it. Build recovery into the calendar before your body forces it into your life. Take the walk. Close the laptop. Use the paid time off (PTO). Leave the meeting when your part is done. Stop treating your nervous system like a machine that should run without maintenance. You can’t lead well while constantly bracing. You shouldn’t have to break down before you give yourself permission to pause. The leadership lesson Professional uncertainty will test your plans, but it doesn’t have to steal your center. Sometimes resilience looks like courage. Sometimes it looks like asking for help. Sometimes it looks like taking one clean step instead of trying to solve the whole future before dinner. You don’t have to be unshaken to be strong. A tree survives the storm not because it is rigid, but because its roots know where home is. Come back to your roots. Come back to your values. Come back to your breath. Come back to what is true. Then lead from there. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Monique Farmer Monique Farmer, PR & Communications Consultant Monique Farmer, APR, runs a PR/Communication Consultancy, Avant Solutions, and is the creator of Anvil Ready, an online communication strategy builder that aids the communication professional in creating communication plans. She teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. Farmer spent 12 years working in the federal government prior to working in corporate communications for ConAgra Foods (now ConAgra Brands), then leading communication strategy for Nebraska’s largest school district. In March 2024, she published her first book, Chart Your Path: A 9-step Method to Getting Unstuck.