About Me

My Journey

 

In my career, after a period of poor mental, emotional and physical health I realised that I needed help. I had spent many of my years in management stressed, practising poor self-care (eating my emotions and drinking alcohol to ‘relax’) I had been in education for 12 years, I put work and everyone else’s needs before my own and I felt broken.

I noticed I was exhausted but I couldn’t sleep. When I visited the GP I was told I had depression. The news was devastating. I didn’t want to have depression, mostly because I thought it meant I was weak. I spent 10 years struggling with poor mental health. My physical health wasn’t great either.

 

In 3 years I developed so many physical conditions (too many to list here!) but to name a few;  glandular fever, an auto-immune response in my skin, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid arthritis, IBS and I was weighing nearly 18 stone.

 

The irony was that the minute I started admitting I wasn’t coping as well as I would have liked and stopped beating myself up for not being perfect, I allowed myself to say “it’s OK not to be OK”, I started to feel more sane.

 

That was the first step.

 

Rather than being in denial, I was in a state of acceptance and understanding. I didn’t feel so alone and after speaking openly about my physical, emotional and mental health I realised how many of my friends/acquaintances were also struggling and on antidepressants. And there were a lot…

 

I accessed heavily oversubscribed mental health NHS services. After a long waiting list, online forms I finally for 6 session face to face counselling session. For me, counselling was great in helping me see what I was feeling but not why I was feeling that way or what I could do about it. I then allowed myself to open up to the idea that I could make improvements to my thinking and my life.

 

I started coaching myself. Setting small goals and working to achieve them. As I started to care about myself I started feeling better. I started to exercise, eat well, be mindful of who I really was (not what my negative intrusive thoughts told me I was) I challenged myself in the ‘up’ periods and tried to love and be kind to myself in the down times. Soon, the down days became less and the up periods lasted longer. I was coping with life really well and I was happy (not jazz hands, hysterical happy – just calm, confident and in control) I was also 8 stone lighter.

 

Already having qualifications in aspects of psychology, I decided to retrain in counselling and C.B.T. But there was something still missing… and then it made sense. I had forgotten about my coaching experience and how I coached myself every day. I continued to retrain in Life Coaching and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).

 

I spent hours and hours researching medical and psychological papers, reviewing case studies to understand how I was getting myself well. I also realised the importance of nutrition on mental and physical health, so I became a Nutritionist along the way. I realised what I was doing wasn’t available out in mainstream mental health services. I had developed a technique between counselling and coaching that was the best of both and most importantly, effective!

 

I developed the philosophy of TruWellbeing and set up TruWellbeing in 2016. I have seen hundreds of clients since then and have continued to develop my knowledge. My work is something that continues to give me pleasure, hope and pride every day – I’m one of the lucky ones who get to say they have the best job in the world!

 

For me, happiness is about embracing the journey, being grateful and enjoying what life has to offer (and finally being able to love myself -it took me 2 years to be able to look in the mirror and say I’m amazing!… and whilst I do believe it, I still blush if people compliment me as I get a little embarrassed – it’s something I’m working on!.