Alessia Manzoli - Registered Psychotherapist

09/12/2025

You know something isn’t quite working for you…but you can’t pinpoint what you need to let go of.

That’s the thing about letting go. It’s not always obvious what isn’t really working anymore.

Sometimes what needs to be released is internal:
Old roles. Perfectionism. A belief that once protected you.

Other times, it’s more external:
A boundary. A goodbye. A decision to stop proving yourself.

If you’re navigating this and need support, you’re not alone. Feel free to reach out.

✨ And if you’re unsure where to begin, stay tuned for journaling prompts to help you unpack what might be ready to release.

Your clarity doesn’t have to come all at once. It all starts with getting curious. ✨

🤍

07/29/2025

Not everyone feels light in the summertime.

If you’re moving through this season feeling low, anxious, or out of sync, you’re not alone. 🌿

There are many quiet reasons summer can be hard: disrupted routines, overstimulation, body image pressure, or just a feeling you can’t quite name.

Here I’ve shared some gentle ways to care for yourself and help you move through it with softness and self-compassion. 🤍
Take what resonates, leave the rest.

Remember: you’re allowed to slow down, even when the world is speeding up.

If you’d like to learn more, read my latest blog post on summertime depression at www.alessiamanzoli.com

If you find that you need some extra support moving through this season, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be honoured to support you 💌

05/12/2025

05/01/2025

We talked about the why, now let’s talk about the how. How do we sit with emotions?

♥️ Acknowledge and name your emotions. “I’m feeling sad/nostalgic/happy/irritated”

♥️ Notice how this shows up in your body. Are your eyebrows furrowed? Is your heart racing? Is your knee bouncing? Becoming aware of our bodies can help us identify our emotions and needs more easily.

♥️ Validate your emotion. Acknowledge that it’s okay to be experiencing this feeling. It’s part of the human experience.

♥️ Allow and accept the emotion without needing to fix, deny, downplay, or suppress it. Let it be present.

♥️ Explore it with curiosity to understand what brought it on, if there were any activators, and if you have any underlying needs. If possible, meet those needs or make a plan to do so.

Most importantly, move through this with compassion. Approach yourself the same way you might approach a friend who is experiencing that emotion. Know that it might be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it’s unsafe. You got this.

Comment below with a strategy that works for you when you are sitting with your emotions! Reach out if you’d like to learn more, or need extra support with emotional regulation through therapy.

💫💫💫

04/30/2025

“Sit with it.” We hear it a lot these days, don’t we?

But what does this really mean? WHY should I sit with it? If it’s uncomfortable and time-consuming, what’s the point?

Fair questions, and I hope to answer them for you here.

Most importantly, emotions are information. They are not good or bad, right or wrong. Rather, they’re here to inform us of what is going on in our body and in our environment. Beneath every emotion is wisdom about our experience and our needs.

For instance, let’s say you’re finally at a concert you’ve waited months for. You’ve been in line all day and feel irritated, overstimulated, and drained. You push through it, but end up snapping at people, struggling to focus, and not enjoying the show like you hoped.

Now, same scenario, but you pause. You “sit with” the irritability and realize: you haven’t eaten all day (we’ve all been hangry, right?!) You grab a snack, feel more grounded, and actually ENJOY the concert.

That’s the power of sitting with it. You tune in, meet your needs sooner, and stay more present.

Sometimes, though, it’s deeper.

Maybe you feel shame after realizing you had food stuck in your teeth on a date. If you ignore the emotion, you might ghost the person, start an argument, or spiral with self-doubt and seek constant reassurance.

If you sit with that shame, though uncomfortable, you might uncover a fear of rejection, or a limiting belief. Now that you’re aware of it, you can begin to challenge it with self-compassion. Over time, this helps you build confidence, release shame, and build stronger, more authentic connections.

So, “sitting with it” is really a practice of self-awareness and compassion. It helps us respond, not react. We learn to regulate, rather than suppress, which opens the door to more fulfilling decisions, healthier communication, and deeper self-trust.

More on HOW to sit with emotions coming soon ✨🧘

11/20/2024

🤍🩵

Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.
Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs.
Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle.
It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.
Doing those deeply unfashionable things; slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting ...

Katherine May ✨

Artist Credit: Lisa Aisato

10/10/2024

On and every day, we work to ensure that and are given the level of attention they deserve.

Together, let’s break the silence and take action to reimagine a world free from , where we recognize that . ❤️

10/01/2024

Happy October! We’re entering the time of year when we start to feel a shift in weather, the sunshine, and our overall energy levels. A slow down. A release. The old falling away so we can eventually start anew. This is a beautiful process in many ways, but it can also be painful or dark at times.

As we start to come down from the high energies of summer, I invite you to practice this loving kindness meditation. Traditionally, you will start with offering yourself loving kindness, and then you will repeat the mantra a second time directing it towards someone you love, a third time towards a stranger, and a fourth time towards someone you dislike or hold negativity for. This practice will nurture your compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, and warmth - towards others, and also towards yourself. Ahh, the gift of creating softness in this sometimes very hard world. 🍂

05/23/2024

There are so many ~ t h i n g s ~ out there that try to convince you that you don’t know what you’re doing. Or that you’re not necessarily allowed to do the thing you’re doing. Whatever position you’re in, you’re not enough as you are.

I’m talking about the ads that tell you you have a problem to be fixed, the social norms that create “us vs them” dynamics, and then the fast fixes, the “hacks”, the “5 quick ways to change your life” kinds of ~ t h i n g s ~

Sadly, these ~ t h i n g s ~ can be tempting to listen to, because they often are paired with binary, clear cut solutions, which are enticing to most (if not all) humans. We love order!

But here’s the thing: life doesn’t inherently have order. In fact, it’s inherently chaotic. Things are not so binary, and there are no well-rounded cookie cutter fixes. So when you defer your choices, and the permission to make those choices, to someone outside of yourself, you risk putting yourself into the “all or nothing” box. You risk losing your truest self. You risk losing the life that authentically align with you. You risk losing your empowerment, and you risk living a life that is rooted in the expectations of everyone around you.

Remember: It’s you who gets to decide the “how”. And it’s you who gets to permit yourself to carry out the how. Even if it’s unconventional. ✨

05/08/2024

Check out my newest blog post about the importance and function of emotions! www.alessiamanzoli.com/post/importanceofemotions

What's the point of our emotions? Why do we have to "sit with them"? Why can't I just figure out why I feel this way, so I can figure out how to "fix it"? These are all questions I've heard before. They're even questions that I've contemplated in my own healing journey. What's amazing about this par...

03/31/2024

Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Both include circular motion. Both include repetition. Both can feel like spiralling 😵‍💫

This repetition can be confusing. We often wonder why we get “stuck” on something and repeat certain cycles. Unfortunately, we also often shame ourselves for being in these cycles.

But the truth is, the way we learn is through repetition. There is no shame in that. When we accept that, we can start to incorporate a self check-in along the way. Each time we notice the cycle, we can ask ourselves, “am I revolving or am I evolving?”

Revolving is more often the initial response to a situation or a pattern, where it’s important to acknowledge and be with your emotions. We might spend a lot of time replaying a scenario or repeating it in different contexts. This happens when we aren’t ready, for one reason or another, to look at how we are contributing to a situation. It’s okay to be here and to feel out the emotion. However, it can hurt to be here longer than we need to. And sometimes we trap ourselves here.

The process of evolving is where we can add a new element to our experience. Where we can take a step - yes, even a tiny micro step - into the direction that serves us better. Here, you may ask yourself, “how am I contributing to this?” (Or “how did I get here?” 🎶)

In the process of evolving, there is curiosity, intention, and awareness. Its important to note, this does not mean that there will be ~life changing paradigm shifts~ overnight. Boundaries might still be hard to set, but you are more aware of when they’re necessary, and you practice setting them. You might not find the love of your life immediately, but you know you are no longer willing to accept the bare minimum. You might not feel suddenly inspired or motivated to write your book, but you’ll know when the discipline is necessary.

Baby steps baby steps baby steps.

This is how we evolve.

Through progress, not perfection.