Welcome Change Therapy

27/04/2026

Such a useful article and confirms the usefulness of EMDR therapy in processing what wasn’t processed during/after the original event(s).

There’s a certain kind of anxiety that doesn’t respond to reassurance.

You do everything you can to ward it off: you tell yourself you’re safe, you build a stable, reliable life. You say no more often than yes, without realizing you’re organizing your life around avoidance.

But you feel it. You always feel it. Something is coming for you; something catastrophic and irreversible.

You fear you'll have a breakdown and you know you won’t recover from it.

So you do everything you can to prevent it. You tighten your grip on your children. You stay braced and stay inside. You're in a state of constant anticipation thinking that will prepare you for when it finally hits.

Your life gets smaller; your dread gets larger.

In 1974, the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott offered an idea radical for its time: the thing you’re most afraid of has already happened.

He meant this literally.

At some point early in life, something overwhelming happened. You were abandoned, rejected, disappointed. Whatever it was happened at a stage of development so young, there was no "you" to experience it as an event. So it never become integrated as a memory.

It wedged itself into your nervous system as fear.

And when it returns later, when you're a developed self, it doesn’t feel like something that happened. It feels like something that will happen, and so you feel dread.

Which is why avoidance doesn’t work.

Because you can’t escape something that already occurred.

I wrote about this fear, D.W. Winnicott, and the strange relief that comes when you finally understand that the breakdown you're afraid of already happened.

Read the full article in the How to Live Newsletter. The link is in the comments

29/03/2026

Honouring and appreciating the younger parts of ourselves who helped us to survive is a huge part of working with complex/developmental trauma. What remarkable beings we are to be able to adapt to sometimes terrible failings in our environments in order to survive ❤️

💜

06/02/2026

Healing from developmental and relational trauma may not always feel like relief first.
As someone's capacity increases, they often become more aware of sensations, emotions, or internal conflict that were previously held at a distance.

In NARM, we understand this not as something going wrong, but as part of a reorganization process—where disconnection gives way to greater contact with actual experience.

Healing isn’t about chasing relief.
It’s about increasing capacity to be with what’s real.

12/01/2026

17/12/2025

Scapegoats - You experience a lack of emotional support or connection within your family and a sense of isolation. It's possible that you won't be included in family gatherings.

06/11/2025

09/10/2025

💜

09/10/2025

💜 And not forgetting dissociation. 💜

17/09/2025

2. The scapegoat.

08/08/2025

Some parents are not able to let their child be separate and continue to consider the child as an extension of themselves, beating back all attempts made by the child to become separate. This can be especially common in parents with a destructive narcissistic pattern.