Hayley Barker-Smith - Psychotherapy & Breathwork

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Spiritual Psychotherapy

Conscious Connected Breathwork

Certified ADHD Specialist supporting those with/without diagnosis

PMDD/trauma informed cyclical business leader working with the Mind, Body, & Spirit bringing balance to aching hearts
❤️‍🔥

01/04/2026

One of the worst things about PMDD is that for a week or so it shows you how life could be.

For that week, you might feel like you’re on cloud nine, feeling capable and more able to cope with the challenges life presents you with, and then it’s like the ground goes out from underneath your feet.

Your mood drops, your thoughts become harsher and things that felt manageable suddenly feel overwhelming or impossible. You might feel hopeless, irritable, exhausted or completely out of control. It can feel like you’ve become a different person.

Then your period comes and the clouds are lifted temporarily.

This is one of the things that makes PMDD so confusing and so painful. You get a glimpse of how life could feel, and then it’s taken away again.

For a long time, I didn’t even recognise that there was a ‘good’ part of the cycle, it all just felt relentless. It was only when I started tracking that I could begin to see the contrast, and separate the times where I felt more like myself from the times that felt completely unbearable.

And this is a cycle that repeats month after month. I remember so clearly how difficult it was to navigate, especially when you end up being passed from pillar to post between doctors and psychiatrists who each seem to think it’s someone else’s responsibility.

PMDD is still widely misunderstood and often misdiagnosed, although research is beginning to recognise just how complex a condition it is.

If you’re suffering with PMDD, you’re not alone and you deserve to be supported by someone who really understands what you’re going through. If you, or someone you know, would like support - send me a message, I’d love to help.

I was a very depressed teenager.I carried a lot of shame, hurt and anger, and I was trying to make sense of feelings I d...
23/03/2026

I was a very depressed teenager.

I carried a lot of shame, hurt and anger, and I was trying to make sense of feelings I didn’t have the words for.

Back in the 80s, this wasn’t something people spoke about and I spent a lot of time masking how I felt and trying to hold everything together.

Over time, through therapy, writing and a lot of self-inquiry, I began to understand more about what was going on. I started to connect the dots between my experiences, my body, PMDD and later, my ADHD.

Breathwork was a turning point for me. It gave me a way to access emotions that were underneath the surface, without needing to explain or analyse them. For the first time, things started to shift in a way that felt real and lasting.

That experience is what led me to offer this work to others.

I am so passionate about breathwork, it’s hard to explain just how much of an impact it’s had on me and on those I have worked with. If you would like to experience it for yourself, send me a message and we can explore it together.

16/03/2026

Many of us were taught that certain emotions weren’t welcome.

We might have heard things like, “chin up” or, “don’t cry”, so we learned to push our feelings down and pretend what we’re really feeling isn’t happening.

The problem is that emotions don’t just vanish because we’ve decided not to feel them, the body keeps a record of all of it, even if it’s subconscious.

This is why I love working with the body as well as the mind.

Breathwork is a fantastic way to start to release emotions that are stuck in your body. In our sessions, we breathe in a way that supports you to access what’s underneath the surface. People often describe feeling a sense of relief afterwards, as though something they’ve been carrying for a long time has finally shifted.

The next time you find yourself holding something in, pause for a moment and notice your breath.

Take a slow inhale through your nose and breathe it all out through your mouth.

You don’t need to force or fix anything, just give your body a moment to breathe and see what you notice.

If you’d like to explore working together to go more deeply and release emotions that are being held beneath the surface, send me a message, I’d love to support you.

13/03/2026

I overheard a man in a café the other day saying, “Everyone has ADHD these days,” and he laughed as he said it.

It was meant as a jokey throwaway comment, but it made my blood boil!

So many of us have spent decades wondering why life feels harder than it seems to for other people. We’ve been labelled all kinds of things: messy, disorganised, hot-headed, emotional, difficult, so now that there’s more information, we can finally understand our experience without judgement, which is such a relief!

Understanding ADHD is about making sense of patterns that never made sense before and learning to treat yourself with more compassion, it’s not some trend we’re all jumping on.

People seem to believe it’s about excusing our behaviour or building an identity around it, but it’s really just about separating your character from your brain-based difficulties so that you can go more gently with yourself and find ways to live life in a way that actually works for you.

Comments like the one in that café might seem harmless, but they keep the misunderstanding alive and they reduce something complex and often painful to a punchline.

To all those of you who’ve spent years feeling defective, I see you, and I know how freeing it is to finally understand what was going on all along.

I didn’t say anything to that man (I think I’d have exploded) but in hindsight, I wish I had. So I’m saying it here instead: No, everyone doesn’t have ADHD these days. Many of us simply lived for years without knowing we did and I’m very glad we know now.

11/03/2026

Most of us don’t breathe fully. We hold back our breath and have been doing so for most of our lives. When we’re feeling discomfort, our breath changes. It slows down, speeds up or even momentarily stops, rather than allowing us to process and feel our emotions.

Those emotions then get trapped in the body and stay with us, causing all kinds of discomfort, stress and armouring.

You couldn’t possibly keep track of everything you’ve held in over the years, but your body does.

Breathwork gets directly to those stuck emotions. It takes you beneath the noise of the mind and supports the clearing of old patterns, conditioning and feelings that haven’t had space to move.

It’s not a coincidence that many of my clients say they feel “lighter” after a session. There’s a physical relief that comes from working in this way, because carrying unprocessed emotion is heavy.

If you’ve never tried it before, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Send me a message if you’re curious. I’d love to work with you.

07/03/2026

So many people I work with start in the same place: they want to feel calmer, be more organised, less emotional, better at keeping on top of things, and what I really hear when I hear all of this is, “If I could just change myself, life would finally be good”

But what if living well with ADHD isn’t about becoming someone else?

What if it’s about learning your limits, understanding your capacity and recognising what you need in order to function well?

You are not rubbish, your brain just works differently, and when you can separate your sense of self from the brain-based difficulties you experience, you’ll find that you start to feel less like you’re swimming upstream and more like you’re working *with* yourself.

02/03/2026

I’ve been practicing breathwork for 25 years now, and there’s a reason I continue to use it for myself, in groups and in my 1-1 work.

Breathwork can be the ultimate act of knowing your whole self.

It’s a safe, simple and profound healing approach that creates a bridge between your conscious and unconscious mind, so you can tap into the unexpressed emotions stored in the body.

You don’t need to understand or explain what’s happening, you can simply feel your emotions, acknowledge, hear and release them.

This can really help to soften that harsh inner voice and support you in embracing your ADHD as part of you, rather than something to battle against.

28/02/2026

Shame impacts us all, but it’s really intensified in women with ADHD.

Many of us are tenacious and brilliant at what we do, but in spite of our best achievements, we still see ourselves through a lens of deficiency.

Once we’ve entered that shame spiral, we end up falling back on coping behaviours that are self-limiting or self-sabotaging and then we hold ourselves back because the idea of trying again and embarrassing ourselves feels unbearable.

We limit ourselves and focus on trying to manage our symptoms perfectly in the hope that our ADHD might just magically go away.

If this sounds like you - you’re not broken and you’re certainly not alone.

Trying to minimise your ADHD or find strategies to “fix” yourself is just going to lead to more stress and more shame.

What really starts to shift things is learning to separate who you are from the difficulties you experience. ADHD may be part of you, but it’s not the whole of you.

I very often work with clients who experience these shame spirals and I’ve absolutely been there myself.

If you’d like to break out of your shame spirals so you can actually feel how brilliant you really are - send me a message, I’d love to support you.

24/02/2026

For many people with ADHD, the hardest part of an appointment isn’t the appointment itself, it’s getting there.

Leaving the house at a specific time, navigating traffic, finding parking, finding the right door, managing noise, people and small talk. All of that can feel overwhelming before you’ve even started.

Sometimes you might cancel at the last minute even though you’d really like the support, but it all just suddenly feels like too much.

One of the things I love about working with clients online is that it removes so many of those barriers.

You don’t have to factor in travel time or sensory overload. You can stay home with your own cup of tea, in your own space - you can even wear your pyjamas and wrap yourself in a blanket, if you like!

Then, when the session ends, you’re already home.

There’s no immediate transition back into traffic or noise, you can just sit with what’s emerged and take your time before you move onto the rest of your day.

For many of the people I work with, this makes therapy more accessible and more sustainable in the long run. So, if you’ve been thinking of reaching out for support but the thought of actually doing it has felt like too much, this might be a great way to get started.

Send me a message and I can share more about what we might do together.

Have you ever replayed a conversation so much it ruined your mood, even though nothing ‘bad’ happened?I know I have. Tho...
22/01/2026

Have you ever replayed a conversation so much it ruined your mood, even though nothing ‘bad’ happened?

I know I have.

Those of us with ADHD often also struggle with something called RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria).

Scroll along the post to see if this might be you.

I never knew any of this when I was younger and I really suffered as a result. Just knowing this exists, and that there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with you can be really supportive.

In the first video of my free video series, I talk all about RSD and share with you what works for me in those moments when my thoughts about rejection completely take over.

Click the link in my bio to receive it.

20/01/2026

If you tend to over-explain, this is for you.

Have you ever had one of those moments, where you’re talking and talking and talking and you just can’t seem to stop? I know I have! Here are some tried and tested strategies that help:

1. Pause before you speak and take one deep breath.
2. Ask yourself: “Do I need to explain this, or is it ok as it is?”
3. Practice saying “I don’t need to justify this” silently to yourself.
4. Give people the information they actually need, not everything you can think of.
5. Use short, clear sentences instead of long explanations.
6. Notice your body - tension often triggers overexplaining.
7. Focus on listening as much as talking.
8. Say “Let me get back to you on that” instead of feeling pressured to explain immediately.
9. Remember: other people’s reactions are not your responsibility.
10. Accept that people won’t always fully understand you, and that’s ok.
11. Share one key example instead of the whole story.
12. Repeat this mantra to yourself: “My feelings are valid, even if I don’t explain them.”
13. Ask clarifying questions before explaining yourself.
14. Recognise patterns: when do you feel compelled to overexplain?
15. Notice when fear of judgment is driving what you say.
16. Practice setting boundaries: “I don’t want to say more about that”
17. Accept that silence is a natural part of conversation, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.
18. If you find yourself in the moment, you can stop mid-sentence and say “I have a habit of overexplaining, let me take a second to gather my thoughts before I say more!”
19. Give yourself permission to be concise and still be understood.
20. Don’t forget to pause and take a breath when you need to gather your thoughts. This can be more powerful than filling the space by talking.

I know just how much you cringe after you’ve overshared or overexplained because I’ve been there more times than I’d care to admit. If I can help even one of you out there to avoid some of the pitfalls that can trip those of us with ADHD, I’ll consider it a job well-done

All of us have a shadow which represents all those old wounds we hold inside and out of our conscious awareness; its mis...
14/01/2026

All of us have a shadow which represents all those old wounds we hold inside and out of our conscious awareness; its mission is self-preservation and keeping us safe.

In order to thrive, we have to confront our shadow – our obstacles, our resistances, our self-loathing, our terror, our self-doubt, the places we have shame around.

When we grow conscious of the patterns in our life, we free ourselves from the patterns of our programming. We finally stop self-sabotaging and at last, start to change and see different results.

If we have the courage to face ourselves with integrity and a willingness to allow the parts of ourselves we have concealed to be visible, we can begin making wise choices that no longer make us a victim of circumstance. There is such relief in coming out of hiding. When we are truly seen for who we are, and likewise, when we truly see another for who they truly are, LIFE flows.

Address

Leigh-on-Sea
Leigh-on-Sea
SS91AD

Telephone

+447903410027

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