Emma, a hypnotherapist and strengths coach, shared her journey of healing from depression and her pursuit of a more flexible and fulfilling career path. She emphasised the importance of seeking help, embracing one’s strengths, and practicing self-care to overcome mental health challenges. Both Emma and Jacky discussed the value of differing healing journeys and the potential for increased empathy and compassion gained through these experiences.
Find Emma on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/theemmaobrien/
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Until next week, happy healing.
welcome to the Diary of Discovery the podcast where we delve deep into The Human Experience of healing and transformation I’m your host Jackie car and each week we will sit down with inspiring individuals who have embarked on their own personal journeys of healing and self-discovery from overcoming trauma to navigating life’s challenges our guests share their raw and honest stories offering insights wisdom and hope to all who tune in so grab your favorite cup of tea find a cozy spot and join us as we uncover the power of resilience courage and the pursuit of authenticity this is the Diary of Discovery welcome to the podcast Emma it is so good to have you here thank you for joining me do you want to just take a moment to tell our lovely listeners who you are and where you’re from in the world yes indeed so I’m em obrien I am a a hypnotherapist and strengths coach and I work with professionals and experts and leaders to help them really overcome things like impostor syndrome so they can fully step into and own their expertise so they can share it with the world and make the impact in their own lives and then the lives of others that they really want to and I’m based in the UK in the middle of the UK in a in a place called kidderminster which is in Worcester oh amazing amazing amazing okay Emma so you know why we’re here today our listeners know know why we’re here today and we are going to be talking about your own healing journey and kind of how you got to this place in your life um as we kind of go through so the first question is always take us back to the start like what was the moment that you realized you needed to heal that it sort of became a conscious thought for you that you kind of noticed that something had to change what take me back to that moment okay so we’re zipping back to um about 12 years ago probably now um when I a number of things came to a real kind of head for me as they do when you kind of hit rock bottom so a little before that a little before that I had been um head down progressing my career I decided that I wanted a career in HR I wanted to be in reward management specifically so that’s an aspect of HR where we manage bonus schemes and um incentive schemes and things like that and the pay and benefits for employees and and I was like yes that’s the place to be it’s it pays well it’s a good career um and so I’d had my head down and I was pursuing that and i’ got to a great leveling um as a specialist um within that within that field and um on paper I was ticking all of the boxes because not only did I have that career um but then I had a baby a new baby um and I was like I had everything that I’d wanted um but uh the problem was that I didn’t actually have everything I wanted because I wasn’t very happy I’d realized that having my head down and pursuing that career was was was putting me a situation I just didn’t want to be in I didn’t feel comfortable I didn’t feel confident um I felt like I was wearing a mask and I also thought that I’d really screwed my life over in my early 30s um and it was all ruined and I’d painted myself into this career corner and really didn’t know how to get out of it um getting pregnant happened at exactly that moment and and felt like a great opportunity for me to step out legitimately um rethink things but of course when it was time to return to work the problems were still there and all needed to be faced um and that is when the healing Journey really needed to begin yeah I I can uh I can relate with the career climbing and Ticking all the boxes and it just still not feeling good and still not working and you’re kind of thinking what the hell have I done wrong I did everything I was supposed to and it still hasn’t worked out how it was supposed to it’s it’s quite a surreal feeling I think when you when you kind of realize that for the first time it is and it’s incredibly disconcerting because I think my my initial response as I probably alluded to was kind of like it’ll go away like there’s a sit and wait kind of thing I don’t know what to do um couldn’t see a way out um but then when I went back into the workplace it was an opportunity for me to start to kind of address those those feelings and that was incredibly um vulnerable oh absolutely yeah it it meant admitting to myself that I needed to do something to change direction and not only admitting to myself but revealing to other people in the workplace that I wasn’t in the right place and that I needed to do something different I think there’s there’s a massive vulnerability in admitting to other people that you are not as happy as you have pretended to be because there is a pretense in you know you’ve done all of the things you feel like you should be happy and I don’t know about you but I kind of had this feeling of like oh maybe I’m going to seem really ungrateful because I’ve got the good job and I’ve got the properties and I mean I didn’t have kids but you know like I I was going on regular holidays and like doing all of the things that apparently should make you happy and I felt kind of like I was being really ungrateful to actually be like oh actually I’m really not happy did you kind of feel that yeah so that resonates a lot with me I actually felt quite selfish I was like thinking you know who are you to ask for to be feeling this way actually that was the that was the the thing hang on a minute you’re so self-absorbed so self-centered um you know those were the thoughts that were going on in my mind um and what I was experiencing um so just for a little bit of context when I went back to work um I did say look you know I I don’t want to go back full-time and and and I don’t believe I can do the role that I was doing full-time anyway and um so I was able to um switch into a project role which gave me something different to do um during that period of time which kind of again took me away from the the initial thing but the the problems weren’t going away from me and what I realized was that I was still like in this hole now sleep deprived on top of it as a as a mom coming back to work still getting up a couple of times a night um still feeling massively vulnerable and a bit like an impostor in the workplace um and on top of that dealing with these feelings of feeling feeling shame and selfish and self-absorbed and why aren’t I happy and all of those sorts of things and going through this routine every day of crying like as a release on the way to work but knowing that if I stopped at a certain point in my journey that people wouldn’t know so I had to make sure I stopped crying by this point so that I could like freshen my face up and then appear at the desk um with my mask on and then the same thing would happen on the way home where I would be like release release release stop here because if you don’t your husband’s going to like Mark’s going to know that you’ve been crying and and he’ll be worried so I was literally in this like pressure container um feeling this way oh gosh oh my gosh oh that it just it’s so like I know the process is so worth it but when you hear things like that like it it’s so hard when you get started it’s so hard and one of the things I always like to ask people is like what did you what did you have to embrace in yourself like what darkness and I think a lot of that you’ve kind of said you know that shame that guilt like your own darkness that you had to kind of embrace in order to get through to the other side of this and like is there anything else that you think that you had to really Embrace in yourself in order to to start this journey and and move through yeah I I well I think there’s a couple of things in terms of Darkness I think I it was in that process of in at that point in time with that um mindset and that those physical that physical pressure I could feel it like pins and needles in my scalp it was it it really was like hitting that kind of you know point of like it couldn’t go on um and I pranked my car like I was driving and I like was so not um resourceful enough really to be driving and I and I hit the car off the off a curb and I was like that was my moment I’m I could kill myself driving if I’m not careful and so I had to embrace that like I didn’t know what to do I didn’t know what the solution looked like but I knew that I had to had to do something and that was going to need me opening up you know and that was like to actually kind of bear that and like when I I think when I reflect back on it it’s like it’s no wonder because we were a family that didn’t really talk about our feelings you know everything we sort of kept a lid on and you know normal family no scandals no this you know and and all of all of that kind of it looks perfect on the surface but I think what I appreciate Looking Back Now is that no nobody’s perfect no family is perfect but the need to sort of maintain that picture and that mask and then suddenly realizing that if I was going to get through this I had to take it off I had to let go of all of that image of of that you know and and and get gritty get get vulnerable and just go this is me like this is the real me and I’m in trouble and I need some help um and I think that is probably the biggest sort of yeah Darkness as you as you call it but that moment of like oh I’m GNA have to do this absolutely and what happened when you admitted that to yourself and started to have those conversations with you know the people around you what was the the sort of process because you know we’d love to say oh I decided and then it was fixed and everything was great but like it’s it’s never that quick it’s a it’s a process yeah it was like I I guess there was relief you know for me there was initial sort of like ah so some of this like pressure cooker you know it’s like as if the valve had been opened a little bit and I was at least you know so I knew I knew that that relief was was was worth it and really the option for me back then I didn’t know any fraction of what I knew now and I don’t I don’t think there’s there was as much awareness um or narrative around mental health and depression at that point in time really at all people just didn’t talk about it um and so the the option for me really was to go to the doctors and so I went to the doctors and and I just you know it’s such a transactional process when I think about it so really it was a process of like I I did a tick sheet and they were like yes no wonder you feel so bad you’re moderately depressed here have some tablets you know and I never wanted to have tablets that’s one thing I did know but like I didn’t have anywhere else to go I was like I just need some relief from this and so that’s that was what what happened next was this period of time which gave me some breathing space but like of going and telling my story to a stranger over a day and then kind of looking at their computer and going here have some tablets and then the next time it be prescription how are you feeling well I’m kind of okay right do you want some more tablets well I kind of guess so you know we’d recommend you stay on them okay you know and this kind of happened for a period of time and I was like I just don’t want to be on these anymore and um so I I talked to them about reducing it C came off but unfortunately hadn’t I hadn’t addressed the real issue surprise surprise yeah so when the symptoms and the feelings all started to come back again I was like oh that wasn’t the answer and I felt really disappointed and then a little bit ashamed like why can’t I sort this out you know why why is this come back I need to just accept that I need the tablets again and so kind of it was it was a bit like that for probably about 18 months and then there was a little bit of a turning point it’s really really interesting because so many people don’t I think understand even now that we talk about depression and we talk about healing way more than we used to a lot of people don’t understand that healing is actually a skill it’s actually a skill set that you learn how to do it’s not just you know something that you magically do or you know magically just process through or like there’s there’s no um there’s no magic behind it like it is genuinely a skill and hard work and like you have to take the action so I think it’s so um it’s so normal for you know you take the tablets you come off the tablets nothing’s changed because nothing’s changed because you’re still living exactly the same way you were just kind of numbing and I mean I’ve got nothing against tablets you know if if people need to take them them it’s absolutely fine like everyone’s journey is their Journey it’s it’s perfect but I think that they have to be in conjunction with other things and I think that that’s something that again so many people didn’t really recognize or understand when we kind of first came into this process of discussing depression and healing and all of that so what um what was that kind of like change once you once you realized okay this hasn’t worked like what were the what were the things that you changed well there was a there there’s been a few distinct moments um like real kind of like turning points and this was this was the the the first of them I went to um the GPS again cuz I’d quite often just made an appointment and there’d been a different GP each time I’d gone you know no one was really interested in my story and who I was and you know it was just like I say this transactional process and then the one day I went to the GP that my my parents went to her and they said oh she’s really lovely really lovely go to her so I went to I went to this this different GP and and um she looked at me and she said how are you and I just chatted to and she went you know one in four of us experienced this and it was like one in four of us like she was seeing me because she’d been there like she knew what was in front of her so she knew what to ask she knew to look me in the eye and actually kind of go and relate to me and it was the first time I had felt like seen in this whole journey I was like oh my God I’m not alone like there is somebody else that understands and then I was like right and she said look there’s a guy I’m going to recommend to you if you can afford to go and see him go and see him um cognitive behavioral therapist and he said she said he really helped me um and um so I was I was fortunate I had private medical insurance I was able to go through that process and and I saw this guy but again yet another stranger across another desk to tell my story too you know and and I don’t think you can get over like those that part of it that part of healing can be like you’ve got to open doors you’ve got to reveal yourself maybe in lots of different situations until the right thing sort of starts to stick with you and you kind of go oh this feels this feels like it’s giving me something so I think that’s a really interesting part of the whole kind of period of time was that having to sort of be be open to revealing that and and try trying different Avenues or different knocking on different doors in order for the something helpful to come along absolutely and I think like it’s so interesting because everyone’s journey is different with healing and what helps me might not help you you know what helped your GP might not have helped you so I think that there there does have to be that willingness as you said to kind of knock on all of the doors and try all of the things and figure out actually what is it for me that makes a difference and then once you figure those things out just going all in and and doing the things and making like that the the real sort of focus and I guess like I know from my own Journey as I was going through like even even after having some really good breakthroughs and finding some really good people to help there was Still Moments where I would sit by myself and I would think I don’t think I’m going to make it like I don’t think I’m going to get through this I don’t think this is ever going to get better did you have moments like that where you just thought like I’m not like I’m not going to be able to change this or I’m not going to be able to get through this I did I did um I think that was probably During the period of time when I was on antibiotic um anti anti-depressants even um and where I kind of felt that this was not a longterm solution and then when I found the CBT guy that was like a massive um aha moment because it’s probably around the same sort of time that I’d heard someone talking on the radio as well around depression and it totally reframed it in my mind um around it being the curse of the strong I was like oh it’s not because I’m weak it’s just it’s because I’m strong and I’m trying to put too much through my own brain if you like that’s creating this issue and I think the combination of those two things started to make me kind of totally reframe my situation from one of helplessness into one of hopefulness because it it it it enabled me to see that okay so it’s not because I’m weak it’s it’s because I’m I’m trying to do too much I’m just like P I’m I’m striving too much I’m expecting too much of myself and the other aspect of it was ah it’s my thoughts the way I’m thinking and some of the habits that I’ve got into around how I’m thinking that’s massively affecting how I’m feeling and so actually I have more dominion over my own situation than I ever thought possible I think I was looking at how could I fix myself and what would help me fix myself rather than realizing that actually the answers were all going to come from within me and that I just needed a facilitator for that that um rather than a fix or a cure yeah absolutely do you think that that was the biggest change in your outlook as you kind of went through this process do you think that was the biggest sort of shift in your beliefs as you went through I think it was so I think in terms of like um I suppose the image that just came into my mind was like sinking downwards in underneath water you know like when you’re kind of going down towards bottom and you feel like you’re kind of just like you’ve almost let go of the side and you’re sinking down you’re feeling like oh my gosh you know this is horrible versus sort of looking up and seeing that there’s a light and you can see the surface that was like the first sort of like oh there’s this there’s the light to swim towards that was it like that was the start and I can remember that giving me a huge amount of relief and um um it was a strategy as well and it was something that I had the power and control over which felt extremely empowering to me um but I can remember going through several um um like maybe eight sessions with this guy and I got to the last one and I was a bit like you know what I feel like I’m done with this but I still don’t feel like I’m you know like I feel okay I still feel like there’s more and um I remember the words that he said to me he said em I think you’re waiting for an aha moment that’s never going to come and I was a bit like I sat with that for a bit I thought no I’m not going to accept that I don’t believe that to be true I believe that there is more to life and that we don’t have to just survive it we can thrive in it and that’s like it totally ignited a movement within me to go right let’s let’s ramp this up a bit now we’re going to we’re going to keep on this path we’re going to find out more and discover more and I think the biggest thing that I learned around this was that you which was different to how I’d approached my entire career before that which was instead of having like I’m going there I’m going to achieve that I’m going to get my head down and get there so actually like I don’t know where the end like I I can’t really see the whole journey ahead of me but I’m going to trust it’s like driving in fog where as you drive and you head off in a direction like the next I don’t know 6 10 feet what however many feet ahead of you you can see and I just was like and so I think from an Outlook perspective that was what happened was I was just like it doesn’t have to be this planned your life doesn’t have to be this planned of Step by Stepping Stones to a certain destination that actually you can you can form that as it goes and and and lean into that and see where it leads um and and so yeah big to Big that was a big shift oh absolutely and again like I can absolutely resonate with that in when I was younger and sort of starting out my career and my life I had such a set plan I had a 10-year plan and I was going to bearing in mind that I didn’t I wasn’t even dating my partner at this point I was going to um be married own a house have kids like I was going to do all of these things didn’t even know who the person was I was going to do them with at that point um and I had such a strict plan as to what everything had to look like and as we were kind of going through we I mean we did end up following most of that plan but as we did more and more of it and I got further into that plan I started to think I don’t know I don’t know if I like this plan I don’t know if this is the plan that I want to follow and it was this real kind of wakeup moment of just being like Oh my gosh like I set this plan when I was like 15 had no idea what my life was going to hold you know what type of person I was going to be like literally just no idea who I was going to marry what they were going to want from their life like there was just no consideration for anything else other than these are the five steps that everyone’s supposed to fulfill so I’m going to fulfill them in the best possible way and you know get them done regardless of if they actually make me happy or not and so I can really resonate with that change of like now I’m very much like the next thing will come and it’ll be great and who knows what it is but it’ll be wonderful I know because my life is always wonderful like it’s a very different Outlook so I absolutely love that so as you were going through and I think like I could already see the kind of pattern and the the link here but would you say that as you went through your own healing Journey you started to find this kind of new purpose obviously I know massively what your business does um and I can see the link so like how did that link start forming how did you move across into this new way of working and sort of link that like purpose bit um through your healing yeah so there’s kind of two tracks that were happening sort of simultaneously in my life so there was The Depression that was happening um and then there was the career aspect where I was like right I wasn’t happy I needed to make a change I came back from maternity leave I picked up I managed to pick up some Project work but it was the manager that I had at that point in time again another defining moment um just got me to see things very very differently she asked me this question she said what are your strengths and I was like I don’t know and I was like I really don’t know and now I feel embarrassed and ashamed that I actually don’t know like I kind of know what I don’t like um I certainly don’t like the work that I was doing you know and I was I know what I’m not good at like but can I really articulate do I even have a language for what I am good at no um and so I took a a strengths assessment and I got massively into the whole strength psychology movement because as I looked at it I was like this makes so much sense to me because psychology up until the sort of 1920s had focused purely on sort of what’s wrong with people and then this guy Don Clifton asked the question what if we focus on what’s right with people instead of what’s wrong with them and this whole sort of idea of you know this shift that I’d gone from sort of what can I find to fix me and cure me it’s I actually suddenly became a question of what’s right about me what’s already good about me and that’s when I started to realize just how much as human beings we don’t see ourselves like we don’t understand ourselves at all we don’t come with a manual in fact what we do come with is a heap of conditioning about what other people have said we are and what other people expect of us Etc and it’s only when you have these like moments where you kind of go this isn’t right and you butt up against it that you suddenly realize you don’t know yourself that you’ve kind of you know been swayed along with all of this other people’s um you know kind of all of the labels you pick up all the expectations from parents and other people around you and and things and then you got to kind of unravel it and kind of go well what’s the truth of who I am and how can I build from there and so that was really what happened and I got to do that from a career perspective through the strength stuff because that gave that enabled me to see then what was you know what was in front of me and and and and make have a a form of reference of making decisions against a that feels like it would fit really well with this set of qualities and I can see the set of qualities in me I probably didn’t experience them as strengths I probably thought they were weaknesses and or nothing special like everyone does if something comes naturally to you of course you don’t think it’s anything special so like that whole process of just starting to go well I I believe that these things are actually who I am I can see these and the more I lent into them the more I started to trust in them and the more I made decisions against them and and using them those decisions turned out to be great decisions where people would say oh you’re really in your element you’re really thriving in your work etc so that was like a major major major factor for me but then of course this journey is never linear is it and there was another moment that happened it never is it never is I call it a roller coaster it’s never linear again it would be lovely if it was just a nice straight neat line but that’s not how healing works so what happened next what was the what was the other moment so so this whole kind of career transition got me into transformational change and I got to work on some of the biggest transformational change programs in the organization and I was put in charge of being HR lead on some of these you know because of my strengths of you know being able to kind of manage stakeholders really well across the business Etc and I became a coach because I needed coaching skills Etc and um this one day I was at a coach’s uh meet up in a great place it was like a church Hall in Birmingham it was brilliant and there was this woman who um who had written a book called um the the the the coach’s case book uh the 12 traits that trap us and um she was talking about these traits uh and and she handed out this this sheet that we could use with our clients around how these different traits were trapping clients or or or how could we keep these traits in balance and I looked at this one called impostor syndrome and I and I read read down the list of the symptoms and I went oh my God I’m taking all the boxes like I I was the embodiment of this so even though I kind of knew and was now making decisions based on my strengths much more and I was being put into all of these you know people were seeing in me the strengths and and putting me in these really responsible positions I was like dying inside like going what did they see me who am I to be doing this someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder any moment and say you don’t belong here um anytime I had any any compliments or praise I was just like oh it was nothing you know anyone could do that when it came to performance reviews you know when you rank yourself I would talk myself D i’ would be like yeah but I didn’t quite meet that and I was like literally that was what I did the crowning Glory I did a change leadership certification a graduate leadership certification and change leadership and um there was a peer peer assessment process so we we all kind of did this portfolio of work created this paper on on a study that we’ve done and I was doing my own we had to do our own um review of IT first of all and I and I literally heard myself failing myself in my ownie so you did the work and then you failed your own work yes I did I’m very um embarrassed but also find it very amusing that I did that and um all of the other people around the table said um well actually we thought before you said that we actually were were going to say it was a pass you know and there was stuff in there that I’d done that I just didn’t shout about like the the facilitator was like well haven’t you created a new model there like is is that your own unique work that you’ve put in there and I’m like well yeah and she was like right you need to you need to tell people that this is your unique stuff and like you need to be telling and it was that moment because at this I I’d kind of had this aha moment of seeing I ticked all the boxes of imposter syndrome and then I had this experience of where literally I had failed myself literally I was like you got to do something about this oh my gosh yeah no absolutely that’s a a blinding light so what did you do what was the what was the next step well I um created a summit um at the time CU I was starting to build up my own coaching business on the side and I did this Summit um called surviving to thrive driving and it was all about helping moms uh who didn’t feel good in any area of life to kind of feel good in their career as a mother you know and feel more confident and as I was doing my I was reaching out to authors and I was and I was uh interviewing all sorts of people who’d written books and spoke on the to these these topics um and I contacted Marissa Pier because I’d seen that she had written this book on confidence and um I I said to her would you speak on my Summit and she said yes yes yes no problem and I was like oh brilliant she seems like a good author and and you know quite up up up there in her game so um anyway I couldn’t pin her down but somebody else who had trained with her very recently in her rapid transformational therapy this is back in 2017 she she was doing a speaking circuit and I said would you come and speak to me about this and she did and and we got chatting afterwards about rapid transformational therapy and hypnotherapy and how the mind works and how the conditioning and the the labels and the expectations that we have growing up and the conclusions that our mind comes to you know form how we our identity and how we show up today and how that limits us you know um or it creates the area of what’s possible for us let’s put it that way um but that we can shift that and we can transform that and and develop and evolve that through hypnotherapy it was just so mindblowing to me I was like what you can do that I literally signed up to become a rapid transformational therapist the next day because I was like oh this is what I need this is what the people I coach need and see them bumping up against the same patterns all the time you know this is what we need in the world um and so that’s that’s what I did wow I love that I love how like everyone that I speak to there’s always a connection between the purpose that they found in life and the healing Journey they wenten on because isn’t it always that the thing we need the most is the thing that we can then teach in the world like that’s it’s such a a natural progression I think so from your point of view what do you what would your advice be for somebody who’s in barking on this journey of healing Awakening like what you know whatever it is that people want to call it but like they’ve they’re at the beginning they’ve realized something isn’t right like what what would your advice be to somebody to get started I think what I would love my my my former self to know you know and having been privy and worked with people I mean as a hyp therapist I’ve worked now with people with depression anxiety and all sorts of things to overcome various things I now specialize more in the professional um Development Area around imposter syndrome confidence self-belief and really owning your expertise but I I it doesn’t matter what the issue is that people are coming to me for like what I have understood now through working with so many people is that we are all flawed like we we all have stuff and it’s always disconcerting to realize that for ourselves that we you know there is stuff like everybody has conditioning that’s how we are as human beings like we have to have limiting beliefs otherwise we wouldn’t know how to operate and get on in the world it’s just that when we’re striving for something in life we realize that we’re then busting up against it and so I think that the first thing I would would let people would want people to really fully accept and get and trust is it’s really really normal and that there’s nothing wrong with you like you’re not broken is the first because if you spend time feeling like you’re broken and you need to be fixed guess what that’s what you’re going to get more of so it really serves no purpose and the second thing is is really from my own experience is getting to know who you are and what’s right about you because there is so much that is right about people and if you can tap into an understand what that is then you get to live you get to do more of it and the more you do of that the more better days you have the more better days you have the more better days you will have and you get this upwards you know swimming towards the light effect in your life and it is you do get more synchronicities you do get opportunities that open up for you when you are more in alignment with who that person is and I think the other thing is that it’s okay to get help because there are so many it’s so accessible now to get support but that to not expect somebody else to be a fixer of you look for somebody else to be a facilitator with you and I think that’s something that my own Journey has led to me to really kind of how I approach how I work with people is I like to feel like I’m alongside you on this journey like tell me where you want to get to let me help you help you get there but I’m not going to do it for you I make anything happen we’re going to do this like together I’m going to help show and facilitate and guide but you know and I think that’s a really empowering um approach as well I love that yeah I I absolutely love that idea of you know nobody can fix you but somebody can help facilitate your learning into perception changes and belief changes and like as you said if you if you don’t know what’s possible you can’t aim for it like if you don’t know that it’s available to you and you’re living in that limited space you can’t even begin to believe that there’s something out there for you so I think actually surrounding yourself with people who have got the outcomes that you want or are further ahead in the journey than you or you know can show you another way of of being is really really important so I absolutely love that so as we’ve said healing is not linear and it also never ends as we know um so what is your next kind of focus for your own healing Journey what’s your next sort of area that you’re working on so well I’ve I I was reflecting on this like where am I at now and and what’s happened in the sort of more recent past and I um lost my sister very suddenly um in 2022 and that was like a major major thing at the age of 53 like here one day gone the next that was a very um significant shock um and it made me question a lot of things um and it made me pull back in terms of some areas of what I was doing I didn’t have have the capacity like grief is a whole different episode it is not linear we don’t we don’t have a manual like on how to deal with this like I don’t think we’re very equipped really um I it’s similar to the depression journey I think I think the fact that I had that depression Journey was helpful because I was like right okay well what do I know from that like breathe just if if nothing else just breathe um whatever you know all of those things coming back to my strengths like really leaning into the stuff that I knew um really thinking about how my own mindset um was was was playing out within all of that but even so like getting through all of that now I’m really focused on my vision and my mission and my direction in my business I really want to there are things that I want in my life um that I need to step up my game for it’s the reality and so coming back to this identity work and who’s the person that achieves that and I think what I’ve noticed and I can reflect on is that my area of the possible during that grieving period shrank so just you know to use the language that I was using before you know our our sense of who we are what we’re capable of it grows and it can shrink and I think that’s one of the things that I’ve really learned it’s like oh like when you take your eye off the ball or life gets life fears we sometimes say you know that it’s like you could resent that you could say oh that that made me a victim actually like that took those chances away from me or you can accept that there are times when we can feel expansive and and full of um and we have capacity for growth and for things to happen quickly for us and then there are times when through no fault of our own things can shrink and I really reflect that I’ve been through that period of time and so what was starting to happen was I was having all of these Ambitions again and I really wanted to plug back in and I was expecting of myself that I could just plug myself back in at the mains and go right off we go again we’re going to achieve this we’re going to achieve that not realizing that that there was a whole load of capacity building that I needed to do to get me to get me plugged in fully at the mains and so that’s where I’m at you know and that’s the reality again another lesson learned that it’s like it’s okay that we can have those times when we shrink again but we’ve got to meet ourselves where we’re at and grow from there and and and allow that sort of growth and and sometimes a little bit of shrinking back and then and then growth again but knowing the the perception of like how how we perceive of that Journey for ourselves is so important because actually keep looking back and seeing that you’re traveling a distance is still moving forwards is so important during that period of time so yeah that’s where I’m at right now um fascinating I love it yeah it is and I think like I always say to people like my clients and my friends and you know the people who I speak to as guests on the podcast like healing is such an amazing journey like it’s really hard when you’re going through it but every time you cycle through another thing that you have to heal it does almost build a level of um resilience in like oh you’ve learned the skills and now you can transfer those skills from like the depression into the grief or you know whatever the journey is the pattern that you take like whatever that looks like and I like I can absolutely see that as well in those skills that you learn as you go through this process are so valid and so transferable and so helpful if you can give yourself the grace to see them if you can give yourself the grace to actually tap back into them because I mean I can speak from a grief experience massively we lost five of my immediate family members in an 18-month period and it was so hard to sort of stay afloat in that way of running a business and trying to run a household and trying to you know look after everyone around me and make sure everyone was okay and you know all of that kind of like additional stuff that comes with the grief and having that ability to pull back on things like my strengths and the things that I’d learned before and the coaching skills that I had and you know all of those different skills from being in different roles and different areas of life it was so valid and so um I was so grateful as I went through that process and I think that that’s one of the beauties of every time you go through a cycle of healing it does get easier it’s not easy but it does get easier to kind of go through because you have more of a toolkit to pull back on and say like you know this is what this is about like this is I know that this is how I think about things or how I spiral or how I react and it’s easier to kind of catch yourself and do something different whereas the first time you go through it you have no base of what it is and what it means so it’s like it’s impossible to catch yeah I think you’re right I think I think like nothing nothing really prepared me for for grief but it did it it did kind of um the way I you know I did did come back to S of what what do I know what can I do what you know and I think that kind of what can I do what can I take control of how can I support myself had come from as you say that that Journey but the other thing that I think that I you know might be a good point to kind of like almost almost kind of leave it with is that these things happen and I’ve some started to realize or appreciate them as new levels of Being Human because I think before like I was I Emma you knew nothing before you had depression and then all of a sudden you could see all these people and you could see all this stuff this world that you didn’t even know existed and the same thing when I lost my sister I was like oh my God so this is what so many other people walking around the pain that they’re experiencing in their life that’s what that’s what other people experience and I was like I didn’t really know it i’ I’d had the privilege of not knowing that and I’m like oh I guess this gets to make me a better human and I think like painful and difficult and challenging as it is that’s one thing that I think if it leaves you with a little bit more compassion for others and an ability to see people which as you know from my story is is important to me I wanted to be seen you can see others that’s a really powerful thing to to be able to offer yeah absolutely and what a what a beautiful ending point like I ending on compassion for the world that is exactly where we should where we should close this off so Emma I’m gonna I’m going to wrap it up there thank you so much for joining us today it’s been absolutely incredible to talk to you um and have you on the podcast thank you thank you for listening to another inspiring episode of the Diary of Discovery if you found value in today’s conversation don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends family or anyone else you think might benefit from the stories of Hope and transformation your feedback means the absolute world to us so please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform your reviews help us to reach even more listeners and continue to bring this meaningful content to the world until next time remember your healing journey is valid you are never alone alone and you have the strength to get through this keep shining bright and we’ll see you in the next episode of the Diary of discovery