SelfCare. Tom Evans Therapy

08/07/2025

28/06/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/771CvRoANSc?si=gCPoLfNcTiQopUgn

28/06/2025

Happy 🏳️‍🌈

09/06/2025

Miley Cyrus Reveals She Uses EMDR Therapy for Anxiety. What Is That, Exactly?

Miley Cyrus told The New York Times that she tried EMDR therapy to help her relieve anxiety and trauma. Our experts break down what exactly EMDR is, how these therapy sessions work, and if its safe for you.

01/06/2025

The first rule of the Bank of Mum and Dad is you do not talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad – to paraphrase Fight Club – the cult 1990s novel and film that riffed on generational angst.

01/06/2025

Why breathing out through your mouth plays a significant role in emotional trauma healing:
( 1 minute read )
Mouth exhalation is used in mindful breathing and healing therapies (like somatic therapy, breathwork, and some forms of meditation) due to its physiological and psychological effects. Here’s how and why it helps:

✅ 1. Triggers the Parasympathetic Nervous System (Relaxation Response)
• Exhaling slowly through the mouth (especially with a sigh or “haaa” sound) signals safety to the body.
• This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping to calm the heart rate, lower blood pressure, and reduce cortisol (stress hormone).
• Result: You feel relaxed, grounded, and safe.

✅ 2. Promotes Emotional Release
• Mouth exhalation allows for more expressive and full releases, which is why it’s used in trauma-informed breathwork.
• Exhaling with sound (e.g., sighs, hums, or gentle moans) helps discharge stored tension or emotional energy in the body.
• This is key in healing practices like somatic experiencing or bioenergetic breathing.

✅ 3. Enhances Awareness and Intentionality
• Breathing out through the mouth feels deliberate—unlike automatic nasal breathing.
• It increases mindfulness by encouraging you to slow down and stay present.
• Therapists often guide clients to “let go with the exhale,” making each breath a conscious release.

✅ 4. Regulates CO₂ and Oxygen Balance
• A longer, controlled mouth exhale helps optimize carbon dioxide retention, which can be calming and improve oxygen delivery to tissues (via the Bohr effect).
• This can be therapeutic in practices like coherent breathing or pranayama, when guided properly.

✅ 5. Physical Relaxation
• Tension is often held in the jaw, throat, and diaphragm. Mouth breathing can help relax these areas when practiced mindfully.
• A soft exhale helps relax the vagus nerve, supporting rest, digestion, and emotional balance.

⸻

🌀 Common Practices That Use It:
• Box breathing: Inhale (nose), hold, exhale (mouth), hold.
• Somatic therapy: Uses sighing, sounding, or shaking during exhalation.
• Yoga breathwork (Pranayama): Sometimes includes audible exhales (e.g., “lion’s breath”).
• Trauma release work: Often emphasizes exhaling through the mouth with sound to support processing.

📝 Final Thought:

Mouth exhalation isn’t inherently “better” than nasal exhalation—it’s just different, and in therapeutic or mindful contexts, it can be deeply regulating and healing when used with intention. Think of it as a way to tell your nervous system: “It’s okay to let go now.”

31/05/2025

Do you feel more distressed during gentle breathing exercises that are supposed to help you relax? ( 2 minute read )
This can feel confusing, especially since these techniques are meant to reduce stress. However, this reaction is not uncommon, and it can happen for several reasons:

1. Heightened Interoception
When you slow your breathing and tune inward, you might become more aware of physical sensations—such as tightness, racing heart, dizziness, or emotional tension—that you typically ignore. This increased awareness can amplify discomfort rather than reduce it.
It’s especially common in people with anxiety, PTSD, or panic disorder.

2. Trauma or Anxiety Triggers
Slowing down and becoming still can feel unsafe if your body is wired to associate calmness with vulnerability. For example:
• A trauma survivor might associate stillness or breathing with past events.
• People with chronic anxiety may fear losing control or being “trapped” in their own body.
Result: Breathing deeply may unintentionally trigger a fight-or-flight response.
3. Incorrect Breathing Technique
If breathing exercises are done in a way that mimics hyperventilation—like too much focus on deep inhales without balanced exhales—it can lead to:
• Light-headedness
• Tingling
• Increased anxiety or distress

4. Resistance to Letting Go
Your nervous system might not be ready to shift from a high-alert state to calm. The body may resist relaxation because it’s unfamiliar or perceived as unsafe.

5. Mismatch Between Tools and Needs
Not every calming strategy works for everyone. Some people benefit more from active grounding techniques (like walking, shaking, or humming) before attempting calm breathing.

What You Can Try Instead:
• Shorter, gentler sessions: Try just 1–2 minutes at first.
• Exhale-focused breathing: Emphasize longer exhales (e.g., inhale 4, exhale 6).
• Movement before stillness: Light exercise or shaking can help discharge excess energy.
• Grounding tools: Try naming five things you see, hear, or feel before breathing.
• Guided support: Use audio guidance or work with a therapist if trauma may be involved.

If this reaction happens often, or causes significant distress, working with a trauma-informed therapist or somatic practitioner can be especially helpful. They can help tailor regulation strategies that feel safe and effective for your unique nervous system.

09/05/2025

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07/03/2025

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07/02/2025

Conflict isn’t the adversary of connection... (-from my book, ‘Hearticulations’)

07/02/2025

Much of our wounding occurs prior to the acquisition of language and is not able to be healed through questioning and reorganizing patterns of thinking. We can’t think our way out of trauma. A more tactile, sensual, sensitive alchemy is required.

When our capacity to process psychic states of terror, panic, shame, and rage is overwhelmed, unmetabolized material (pieces of soul) are relocated into underground storage (shadow) and held in subcortical and bodily circuitry – in our muscles, cell tissue, belly, throat, heart, breath.

From here, the disowned ones long to come out of their crystallized state and return home.

Encouragement to “just get over it, you can’t really believe that; you know that’s not true, come back to the present moment, that’s ‘just’ your story,” is experienced by an inflamed nervous system as profoundly misattuned, aggressive, even violent.

In response, the orphans retreat deeper into the subtle body. Of course they do. This is the activity of intelligence.

This “advice” – even if well-intentioned – is experienced as an autonomic form of gaslighting and reflects a deep misunderstanding of traumatic organization and the workings of implicit memory.

In addition to the terrifying and shattering emotional pain is a profound sense of aloneness. No one can understand; no companionship into the dark night.

As relational beings, this core experience of aloneness is equated with death, especially in the heart and fragile psyche of a little one.
That one is here now.

Though it may appear they are a remnant of the past, from time to time they move through the veil and appear. Not as an obstacle on the path, but as a radiant manifestation of the path itself.

17/01/2025

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