Calista Goh

12/12/2025

I’ve heard it all too often amongst people around me - the mistaken confusion of runner-chaser, push-pull “chemistry” for love.

Brutal truth for sobriety :

🦋Butterflies,
🦄“when the good is good, it is so good, when it is bad, is god awful”,
🌪️confusion, or
🔥constant relationship tantrums & drama

Are *NOT* love.

It’s not compatibility.

It’s very often, a trauma bond.

According to scientific brain scans & neuropsychology, such chaotic high-low relational dynamics activate the same pathways of addiction.

Inconsistency, lack of accountability, emotional manipulation, apologies without change, bread crumbing & chaos of an abusive relationship results in emotional exhaustion & fear.

When emotional exhaustion & fear pathways are activated, a person becomes hyper-vigilant. They begin to *survive* the relationship. They become trapped. It’s no longer love. It’s addiction.

This is emotional manipulation. In its extreme, it can become gaslighting.

Overtime, an unhealthy relationship drains you of who you are. You begin to forget your personal worth, standards & confuse self-abandonment for compromise.

Love requires action, accountability, vulnerability, integrity, affection, reciprocity, shared reality & stability.

Change needs action.

Apologies alone aren’t good enough.

Reach out if you & your partner wish to transcend your negative cycle; or if you are seeking to achieve a more grounded perspective on your relationship.

I’m here to help.

10/12/2025

In our quest to heal, to grow, to learn & to evolve, we have learnt to embrace the art of self-reflection, truth speaking and self-ownership of our shortcomings.

It is often said, the first step to change is the alchemical combination of

Self-awareness
Remorse
Growth Mindset
Resilience

When we start on our journeys to heal, we can take on the mantle of looking first at
- how *we* are contributing to the pain & suffering
- what might *our* past pains, conditionings, thought patterns & perspectives might be involved here, &
- how might we take responsibility for our part of the dynamic

As we get habituated into the cycle of self-ownership, depending on our internal self-talk, some of us might become too harsh, take on far too much responsibility than warranted, martyr ourselves or even self-flagellate in a dramatic demonstration of remorse.

Pause.

When is too much, too much?

Are you still kind to yourself? Still gentle? Still compassionate? And still self-loving?

The balance is found in the emotional maturity of accepting own’s fault WHILE still being present with another’s suffering.

Some times, when our pain takes over another’s, it no longer is about accountability but hurt people hurting people. Instead of healing the grief & loss we feel beneath the pain, we express passive-aggressive anger through our tears & victimhood.

So, for today, should we all take a breath? Let’s be kind in the way we talk to ourselves & let’s share that kindness with others in our world today.

02/12/2025

29/11/2025

When we pick a partner, we’re choosing far more than a person. We are choosing an entire emotional & psychological ecosystem that will shape our lives.

Do you know who you’re really in bed with?
Can you trust them with your life, heart, feelings, emotions & loved ones?

How have they shown up during critical moments? When under the influence of friends, family, substances, work etc.

27/11/2025

24/11/2025

A sensitive & potentially triggering topic. But one that has been surfacing in circles around me (especially in the region I’m working from at the moment), which I think is worth exploring together.

Please know that this post is not intended to shame, blame or be used as ammunition against anyone.

This is meant for educational purposes, and a hope to shed light on a topic that many of us engage with consciously & unconsciously.

I’ve seen it in spiritual & non-spiritual circles. Therefore, no one group is better or immune from this as another.

In fact, muchof addiction is normalised in our culture that celebrates some of it.

This post to encourage personal reflection on how this topic sits with you.

It might be uncomfortable. Please be kind to yourself and others.

Addictions aren’t just about the substance or the act. It’s about the pain beneath it.

Please be kind. 🙏🏽

21/11/2025

In my years travelling around the world, meeting people from all walks of life, listening to their stories & then guest lecturing at MBA & eMBA courses on entrepreneurship/conscious leadership, I have discovered one thing:

The most brilliant people don’t chase money.

They don’t chase goals, or fame, or fortune.

They don’t chase validation.

Rather, they chase only themselves - the best version of who they can be in every moment & opportunity. They are in relentless pursuit of more. Not more milestones or achievements or accolades… No.

The most brilliant people are quiet, humble, ethical, do more good than ill & need no validation apart from their own. The most brilliant people aren’t selfish. But they are self-cherishing. They love themselves & are evergreen learners.

While the world sprints after milestones, they move toward what pulls at their soul.

They study their fears.

They push their edges and strip away every borrowed belief until all that’s left is what’s undeniably & authentically theirs.

They aren’t afraid of talking about their past. Because they they’ve made peace with the pieces of their history that used to hurt.

There is a resilience & grit borne from the fires of their pain, that shaped the blades of their person. Honed to sharpness by the blunt courage of honesty & dignity, they are intimidating in their authenticity.

Such brilliant people have an energy about them. A main character energy. Not from seeking to be seen, but because they have met themselves so fully that everything else is orbiting them.

They own their shadows. They respect their truth. They distill their brilliance. They share their goodness. They seek help when needed. You will not see brilliant people lie, cheat, steal or gossip. They have no time for that.

They follow their ever evolving brilliance until they become the blueprint.

Are you fine tuning your personal blueprint?

13/11/2025

I love Jungian & Depth Psychology - i.e. exploring the unconscious mind to understand how it affects our daily lives. We use dreams, symbols, and inner conflicts to understand and integrate the hidden parts of the self.

Here are 18 of my favourite Jung quotes. Perhaps each one is a mirror for your soul 🪞

Save this for when you need perspective.

29/10/2025

One of the things I’ve learnt over my 15+ years being a therapist is that the power of , infused with warmth, & are sometimes all anyone needs to move through rough emotions.

3 things you can do to “be present” with someone:-

1️⃣ Listen actively : Listen to understand. Avoid listening just to reply.

Often, when we give others the space, time and presence to “talk it out” in their own way, we will learn something about their experience. This helps create a mutual sense of understanding + being understood.

When a person feels heard, they feel seen & accepted. Most times, they become open to being disagreed with or shown a different perspective.

Cutting in because you want to justify or explain on their behalf, is (frankly) rude & impolite. If someone is being vulnerable with you, they likely don’t have it all “figured out”.

Listen - Understand - Respond

2️⃣ Be comfortable with the pause / silence

Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can experience with someone is the shared weight of silence. Practice being ok with the pause.

Be ok not reacting, not filling in the space & not taking up the space.

Not everything meaningful is expressed verbally. 90% of our understanding & connection with others is non-verbal anyway. If you rush to fill in the silence, you might be missing out on what the current connection needs.

You would’ve moved away from ‘being with’ someone to ‘making it all about you’

3️⃣ Stay with your own emotions; Resist intellectualising

Do you often find yourself dropping out of emotional connection with yourself when you’re feeling the feels and another person wants you to justify or explain yourself?

While intellectualising is useful for making sense of our inner world. Most of us jump too quickly into it because we aren’t able to be present with uncertainty & not-knowing.

One of the most powerful gifts you can give someone is to express how YOU are feeling in the moment, instead of trying to seek intellectual understanding & box a complex human experience into the claustrophobic confinements of language.

09/10/2025

Back at dance :) this time, I put on my flamenco heels after a 5-year long hiatus & a 6-month break from dancing as I’ve moved countries & worked on settling down in Singapore.

There is a gorgeous wisdom to learning new steps & rhythms:

To learn, we must unlearn.
To find stillness, we acknowledge constant movement.
To move, we must embody.
To keep time, we must forget time.
To be present, we must have no-mind.
No-mind does not mean No thoughts.
On the contrary,
It is the embodiment of all thoughts without prejudice & judgment
Letting go
Surrendering
& relinquish illusionary control
To the Power of Now.

In learning new choreography, my psyche takes on new forms through unfamiliarity; unlocking new limitless potentials within me.

If you don’t dance, do. It changes your inner reality by developing deep intimacy with yourself while being join with & in the presence of others.

06/05/2025

There’s a little something to the power of sisterhood & femininity

In my youth, I leaned more towards masculinity. In hindsight, I suppose I veered that way because I am a late bloomer, suffered adverse circumstances (so I needed to feel less small & more powerful), had trust issues & I also desired to be whatever my mother was not.

Before, I’d intellectualise to fix. I’d fight & unconsciously play the blame game. I’d never ask for help, I’d stay hyper independent, hold all my feelings in & shut my doors to cry… I’d never let anyone see me “weak”. Back then, being soft was a weakness. Being feminine was dangerous. Being around women was dangerous - because my mother was dangerous & unhinged.

I had many male friends & learnt to think in a masculine way. It never fulfilled me. I always came back to dance, to fashion, to art & story writing. It was my sanctuary. Revealing that part of myself is always extremely special for me. Sharing that part of me with someone is a deep gift - because you’re seeing my feminine (now you know ;))

I always say: Watch me dance/move/draw/sing & you shall know me, my truth & my essence.

Yes, I still love “boy things” - FPS video games, paintball, extreme sports, camping, lifting weights, having a t**e, grunging it out in hip-hop & heavy metal, fast cars, careening down rice fields on a back of a scrambler bike, hiking in the wild, sailing regattas, martial arts, sharpening my mind etc

But nothing beats being in sisterhood - I.e. friends, creativity, presence, Mother Nature, stillness, Love (I love relationship!) & myself.

Nothing beats choosing to feel over argue. Nothing beats choosing an intentional touch/caress over an over-explanation. Nothing beats taking it slow to understand & listen rather than fight to be heard.

I love the woman I am & the woman I know I will continue to become.

I have sisterhood & the power of femininity to thank for that.

My personal goal this year? To get over my insecurity about taking photos because of my disfiguration from my accident 🙃 going through my old files & discovering hidden gems (like this photo) makes me value making new memories & collecting snapshots of this precious life 📸

11/03/2025

Back from the Wild 🏞️ What's everyone been up to?