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Heal with Dr Mari, Epsom (2026)

05/03/2026

Under stress (load), the Hypothalamic-Pituitary Adrenal (HPA)axis increases cortisol, sympathetic activation rises, and executive access narrows (McEwen & Wingfield, 2003; Miller & Cohen, 2001). When that happens, external regulation becomes metabolically efficient — or metabolically expensive — depending on early learning.

Over time, the nervous system calibrates:

• Is reaching for support low cost and reliable? → Secure
• Is support inconsistent? → Amplify signal (often labeled anxious)
• Is support rejecting or costly? → Self-contain (often labeled avoidant)
• Is the caregiver also the threat? → No stable strategy (disorganized)

From a Bandwidth lens, attachment patterns are regulation strategies under constraint.

They are adaptive responses to predicted relational cost.

This perspective doesn’t replace Bowlby.
It extends him.

Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.

McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J. C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 43(1), 2–15.

Miller, E. K., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 167–202.

14/02/2026

Love can feel familiar rather than healthy.

If someone has an insecure attachment style, they often attach to:

• Emotionally unavailable partners
• People who mirror childhood dynamics
• People who trigger old wounds

That doesn’t mean it’s love.
It means it feels known.
However, it also means open to working together on your attachment even it feels scary.

Secure love is different.

It’s a mutually chosen bond built through consistent, emotionally safe behaviour the kind that regulates both partners’ nervous systems instead of activating survival mode.

Secure love requires:

• Becoming more securely attached yourself
• Choosing partners capable of secure bonding
• Not rewarding inconsistency
• Valuing calm over chaos

You cannot build secure love with someone who refuses secure attachment behaviours.

Familiar isn’t the same as safe.

11/02/2026

Your blueprint is shaped by your genes, your epigenetics, and your attachment patterns.

It’s the invisible architecture behind your choices, your relationships, your fears, and your resilience.

Can it change?
Yes.

But let’s be honest, upgrading your blueprint isn’t easy.
It takes awareness.
It takes courage.
It takes sustained effort.

When you begin to change, you may notice something interesting:

• You start repelling certain people.
• You attract people who challenge your old beliefs.
• Some relationships fall away because you’re no longer the version of you they knew.

Growth reorganises your world.

The real question is —
Are you prepared to change your blueprint in 2026?

My journey began in 2014.
And in 2026, I’ve renewed that commitment to growth.

Evolution is not a one-time decision.
It’s a continual choice.

SelfAwareness

01/02/2026

As I approach the fourth month since my mother passed away, I find myself reflecting on what she passed on to me, how she cared for me, loved me and shaped who I am today.

Our attachment is largely shaped by how our parents interacted with us from infancy to around age 3. These early patterns are created to help us feel safe and changed our biochemistry that produces peptide hormones or not produce some. They can shift slightly over time, but they’re often deeply resistant to change and they show up in our adult lives in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

It’s important not to blame our primary caregivers. They were shaped by their own primary caregivers too, doing the best they could with the inner resources they had.

I wouldn’t be me without my mamma. I wouldn’t be doing the work I do, helping children around the world to have a voice.

As children, we seek our parents’ approval because our safety depends on it. Toward the end of her time on earth, my mother said to me:
“Mari, not everyone in this world gets to help so many people around the world in the way that you do. It is God’s work that you are doing.”

The insecure parts of my attachment are now my responsibility to work on as an adult.
But the foundation: love, purpose, compassion, that came from her.

Thank you, Mamma, for giving me such a rich life, filled with colour, opportunity, and experience 🤍

02/01/2026

🧠💙 Understanding Intimacy, the Brain & Connection

Human closeness and intimacy are influenced by our brain chemistry, not just choice or behaviour.

Two key hormones, oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (VP), play an important role in how we experience connection:

✨ Pleasure & Emotional Meaning
OT and VP activate brain reward pathways during intimate experiences, helping them feel positive, reassuring, and emotionally significant. (PMC)

✨ Recognition & Familiarity
These hormones support a sense of emotional familiarity, helping people feel more comfortable and connected with those they know and trust.

✨ Connection Over Time
Intimacy is closely linked with bonding. OT and VP help connect moments of closeness with longer-term attachment and feelings of safety.

🌱 Early attachment matters
Early childhood attachment experiences play a key role in shaping how we understand closeness, trust, and boundaries, and in our capacity to experience healthy, mutual intimacy later in life.

🔎 Why this matters
Our biology can strengthen emotional bond, sometimes very quickly. For individuals with past trauma, disrupted attachment, or vulnerability, this can make boundaries harder to recognise or maintain.

26/12/2025

“The Genetic Architecture of Narcissistic Traits Empirical evidence from twin, family, and adoption studies reveals a substantial genetic contribution to narcissistic traits. Neuroimaging studies further corroborate this view by showing structural and functional abnormalities in narcissists’ brains-including reduced gray matter volume in the anterior insula and prefrontal cortex, and disrupted frontostriatal connectivity —affecting emotional regulation, empathy, and decision-making.
These biological impairments result in a rigid and self-centered mode of interacting with the world. Children who later meet criteria for NPD often display behavioral dysregulation, poor impulse control, and manipulative tendencies that are present despite nurturing or prosocial caregiving. In these cases, parenting is not the cause — it is the context in which genetically predisposed traits are expressed.
Environment Still Matters -But Not How We Thought
This does not mean that environment is irrelevant.
It means we must understand environment more precisely. Traditional psychological models focus on shared environmental factors — parental influence, family structure, socioeconomic status-as causal mechanisms”. Book- Nature and Nurture of Narcissism, Page 178.

12/12/2025

Brain Chemistry & Attachment 🧠💞

Oxytocin and vasopressin are powerful brain chemicals linked to bonding, trust, and positive social behaviour. They’re often described as the biology behind love and connection. But relationships are complex, and so is the chemistry behind them.

✨ Oxytocin – warmth, safety, bonding
✨ GABA (Gamma-Aminobutric Acid)– calms the stress response
✨ Vasopressin – teamwork, cooperation, problem-solving with others
✨ Serotonin – social wellbeing
✨ Dopamine – motivation, reward, pleasure

These systems are shaped early in life through our interactions with primary caregivers. They influence how we connect, communicate, self-soothe, and form relationships as adults.

Attachment truly is foundational.
When early needs aren’t met consistently, it can have long-term effects on emotional health and relationships, but the good news is, patterns can be understood, healed, and changed.

If you’re wondering why your relationship feels difficult, or why certain patterns keep repeating, book a session with me at .
Let’s understand your attachment story and build healthier connections. 💛

26/11/2025

GIVING UP THE HOPE THAT THE PAST COULD BE ANY DIFFERENT! -

When I train facilitators for parenting I lead a session on forgiveness. People share about a religious requirement of 3 days to forgive - that we cannot remain in a state of upset, anger, furious, rage, hurt, sad, towards someone that hursts you. And I hear so many stories and journeys people have taken in forgiving from people whose child has been killed to victims whose fathers have sexually abused them.

Even though I teach and lead these sessions there are incidents that I too grapple with and it takes me long time - first to get over the trauma before I can forgive the person who hurt me.

Would like to hear your stories.

23/11/2025

On my first day at the new job, I joined a team away day. Hardly anyone knew me, except the three who interviewed me. At the end, everyone received a card celebrating what they bring to the team.

Mine said: “Accomplished.”

It meant a lot. Because yes, I’ve worked hard to get here. But I’ve also stumbled, needed help, and faced parts of myself that aren’t perfect. Real confidence comes from seeing your flaws and still choosing growth.

This weekend, a friend pushed me to finally focus on my health after two incredibly tough years. And another reminded me something I didn’t expect to hear:
“I always knew you’d be an international leader. You always had an air of greatness, a passion for helping. You are a beautiful person.”

Those words stayed with me.

Because here’s the truth:
✨ We all need people who lift us, not tear us down.
✨ We grow stronger when supported by those who believe in us.
✨ Strength isn’t about doing everything alone, it’s allowing others to walk with you.

Here’s to new chapters, honest growth, and the people who see our beauty and potential even when we forget. ❤️.

19/11/2025

A complex mix of emotions. I agree with

18/11/2025

In some cultures, girls are still treated unequally to boys and the consequences run deep. When women are conditioned to prioritise their sons over their daughters, a cycle of inequality continues within the very place meant to offer safety: the family.

Boys grow up entitled without even realising it, never given the chance to fully develop empathy or compassion. Girls grow up learning to fend for themselves, carrying wounds that shape their relationships, their sense of self, and their futures.

As we approach the 16 Days of Activism, I reflect on the culture I grew up in, one where controlling and coercive behaviours are normalised, divorce rates are among the highest in the world, and insecure attachment becomes a common reality.

Discrimination within families is not just harmful it is abhorrent. And as Nelson Mandela so powerfully said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

It’s time to break the cycle. It’s time to choose equity, compassion, and safety for every child, in every home.

09/11/2025

“All trauma is preverbal,” the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has written. 4 His statement is true in two senses. First, the psychic wounds we sustain are often inflicted upon us before our brain is capable of formulating any kind of a verbal narrative, as in my case. Second, even after we become language-endowed, some wounds are imprinted on regions of our nervous systems having nothing to do with language or concepts; this includes brain areas, of course, but the rest of the body, too. They are stored in parts of us that words and thoughts cannot directly access—we might even call this level of traumatic encoding “subverbal.” As Peter Levine explains, “Conscious, explicit memory is only the proverbial tip of a very deep and mighty iceberg. It barely hints at the submerged strata of primal implicit experience that moves us in ways the conscious mind can only begin to imagine.” Caption from book “The Myth of Normal” p. 18

Heal with Dr Mari

05/03/2026

14/02/2026

11/02/2026

01/02/2026

02/01/2026

26/12/2025

12/12/2025

26/11/2025

23/11/2025

19/11/2025

18/11/2025

09/11/2025

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