My TMS Journey - your stress illness survival guide

19/11/2025

I thought I was getting better. More resilient. More self-aware. Doing more healing work.

But what if the things you praised yourself for
were actually the ways you'd always kept yourself safe and weren't helping your healing at all?

Hyper-independence, high-functioning and helpfulness look like strength. But underneath? There's probably fear, fawning and a frazzled body doing everything it can to stay afloat.

That’s not failure my friend that's the survival patterns we carry that run deeper than you think.

You can't earn your safety by performing through your healing.

Inside my trauma informed coaching and membership spaces we rebuild safety from the inside out. The kind that doesn’t depend on gold stars, the kind your body has been craving all along.

It's softer, slower and more aligned with a pace that serves you right now and focuses on reducing the threat responses you're currently swimming in. This creates a more stable foundation of capacity for you to make the important long lasting changes that support your nervous system, not perpetually burn it out.

Let me know if any of these stand out to you, what's keeping you from progressing is probably simpler than you realise.

All the love,

Dani 🌹🌹
mytmsjourney.com

19/11/2025

I thought I weas getting better. More resilient. More self-aware. Doing more healing work.

But what if the things you praised yourself for
were actually the ways you'd always kept yourself safe and weren't helping your healing at all?

Hyper-independence, high-functioning and helpfulness look like strength. But underneath? There's probably fear, fawning and a frazzled body doing everything it can to stay afloat.

That’s not failure my friend that's the survival patterns we carry that run deeper than you think.

You can't earn your safety by performing through your healing.

Inside my trauma informed coaching and membership spaces we rebuild safety from the inside out. The kind that doesn’t depend on gold stars, the kind your body has been craving all along.

It's softer, slower and more aligned with a pace that serves you right now and focuses on reducing the threat responses you're currently swimming in. This creates a more stable foundation of capacity for you to make the important long lasting changes that support your nervous system, not perpetually burn it out.

Let me know if any of these stand out to you, what's keeping you from progressing is probably simpler than you realise.

All the love,

Dani 🌹🌹
mytmsjourney.com

18/11/2025

Way to go Louise ❤️❤️❤️❤️

17/11/2025

Your nervous system doesn’t need a complete overhaul or an intense ten point protocol every day that burns you out and costs you the remainder of your sanity (and bank balance).

It needs consistent, compassionate tweaks and real-time care that speaks YOUR body’s language.

Want to start your own patchwork quilt of healing support? (I love that name I'm borrowing from 😍❤️) I invite you to start with these simple ideas.

Safety can come in many flavours, but they ALL start and end with your compassionate presence. Nothing really works or sticks without it.

Which one are you keeping? Save this for a moment when you don't know where to turn or what to do.

Dani ❤️👏
mytmsjourney.com

14/11/2025

She’s still with you.

The little girl who tried so hard to be good.
To be easy.
To be no trouble at all.

The girl who grew up reading faces like weather reports. Who felt responsible for the moods in the room. Who learned to overgive, overfunction and overthink long before she had language for any of it.

The girl who swallowed her needs to keep the peace. Who became “mature for her age” because she had no other choice. Who learned that safety wasn’t a feeling, it was a performance.

She didn’t disappear, she adapted.

She grew into a woman who can handle anything, all while quietly wondering why everything feels so heavy.

But she’s still here. In the way your chest tightens before you say something important. In the way you apologise before you’ve done anything wrong. In the way you care too much and break yourself to keep others comfortable. In the way you hold everything together on the outside but crumble on the inside.

And she isn’t asking you to be perfect. She’s asking you to see her. To soften for her. To choose yourself so she can stop waiting for others to choose her.

Healing isn’t becoming someone new. It's returning to the girl you were before you learned to brace.

And she’s been waiting for you, all this time.

You will never hear another person's voice more than you will hear your own, be intentional about how you speak to yourself, she's carried enough already.

Dani 🤍
mytmsjourney.com

12/11/2025

What if, when you numb with substances it's because feeling everything at once once feels unbearable?

What if when you overwork and overthink it's because keeping busy distracts you from your feelings and makes you feel safer?

And when you try to prove yourself by helping others because being useful felels like the only way to be loved.

Or when you “peacock” and put on a show even though you feel insecure underneath because attention feels safer than rejection.

When you take care of everything on your own and pretend you don’t need help because needing people and trusting people gets you hurt.

When you brush things under the carpet because conflict is a kind of chaos you cannot face.

When you dissociate from emotional vulnerability because closeness could mean danger.

When you don't speak up to keep the peace because silence is the safest option.

When you say you’re fine because honesty will make things worse than they already are.

When you apologise continually because shrinking feels safer than taking up space.

All of it tracks, it all makes sense. Every pattern began as protection. They’re not faults, they’re survival strategies.

And they all deserve grace and forgiveness, particularly from you.

It's really hard to heal a body that's swimming in behaviors that you're at war with but can't let go of. So, I invite you to consider seeing yourself through a slightly warmer lens, even just for a moment, you might be surprised at what you find underneath.

The compassion you discover might just plant the seeds that will grow into your bridge out of survival. Comment if that makes no sense 😂 I couldn't think of another way to say it ♥️.

Dani 😍🙏
mytmsjourney.com

12/11/2025

11/11/2025

I’m not healing chronic symptoms anymore and my body doesn’t live in survival the way it used to.

But healing sometimes doesn't end end just because pain stops, sometimes we have deeper patterns to attend to and healing changes shape.
For me, now, it’s about tending to the smaller, quieter layers that were previously out of reach because the pain was so loud: the patterns of self-abandonment, the overthinking, the instinct to earn rest or love.

My nervous system isn’t fighting to survive, but it still needs safety every day and this is a glimpse into how I do it, as our relationship to ourselves may need a little extra effort!

If you’re here too, I see you. Save this for when you forget that healing doesn't have to be a full time job that's harsh and feels like a cruel dictator. It can be soft and warm and steady - a remembering of who you are instead of a desperate push for something far out of reach.

I hope this reaches whoever needs it today.

All the love, the cats and the comfy moments to soften the edges of this incredibly difficult journey.

Dani ❤️🙏
mytmsjourney.com

10/11/2025

I don't know who needs to hear this, but I learned this lesson the hard way and like a lot of what I share here, I want to help prevent you suffering in the same way.

Pay attention to where your effort and energy go when you’re desperate to have your pain validated, soothed, or even acknowledged and yet it keeps falling on deaf or dismissive ears.

It doesn’t mean your pain isn’t real.
It doesn’t mean you “shouldn’t need” support.
It just means your body is tired.
Tired of waiting.
Tired of hoping.
Tired of knocking on doors that only re-open old wounds (or create new ones even deeper than the first).

So instead, what if you met that ache another way? What if you let your body grieve what it never received?

Sit with it.
Speak to it.
Let it rage.
Let it rest.
Let it feel relief even momentarily from letting go of the intensity just a little.
Let it reclaim the energy it’s spent chasing proof that you’re worthy of care.

Because healing doesn’t happen in proving your pain is real to people who benefit from pretending it’s not. It happens in becoming someone who stops abandoning themselves, hoping they might finally change.

And yes, sometimes people do change. Sometimes they learn how to listen. Sometimes they grow the capacity to repair, but that change cannot come at the cost of your safety. It cannot be the thing you sacrifice yourself waiting for.

You didn’t imagine the hurt.
You didn’t exaggerate the harm.
You’ve likely spent years explaining, forgiving, questioning yourself, minimising and trying to make it work with people who never once tried to truly understand you.

That’s where your power is and that’s where the shift toward freedom begins.

Sending love to those that felt this.

Dani ❤️🙏
mytmsjourney.com

09/11/2025

The first step in healing is often dismissed or demonized, but it's crucial to making any change at all.

Witnessing what's here and meeting yourself there is imperative.

What of for right now, for at long at our takes, you only put effort into getting sas comfortable as possible right where you are?

To me, this is an imperative step in healing work taking root long term. If it's rushed, pushed or forced before safety is available then it's likely just going to add fuel to the fire.

Let's honor the s**t out of that grotty cocooning phase where we sit with what's present without running away, regulating or bypassing with tools and protocols.

What healing actually looks like is really messy, first taking stock, witnessing, holding, acknowledging, titrating, sequencing, not rushing steps to the finish line before your systems are capable of even looking at those steps.

If it feels too much, it probably is. Take as long as you need building your foundations, your walls, your squishy resting nest, your circle of trust, your warming soothing steps that don't require more pressure, more strict protocols or masses of investment.

Is OK to hunker down first. Meeting your body where it’s at, not forcing it where you think it should be. And that’s not avoidance. It’s radical attunement.

Save this for when you feel like you’re not doing enough - sometimes the most powerful healing lies in the permission to pause, not in pushing for progress!!

Right there with you friend. Wishing you a gentle squishy Sunday.

Dani ❤️🙏
mytmsjourney.com