When I wrote about masking recently, a friend messaged me saying, “I don’t even know when I’m doing it.” That makes sense. Masking is rarely a conscious decision. We don’t tend to say to ourselves “right, I’m going to abandon myself so others feel comfortable.” It’s...
I was listening to Chris Moyles on Radio X recently when something made me laugh out loud and then stop and think. It was about phone numbers. Specifically, the way we read them out. When we give someone our phone number, most of us start with “Oh seven…” Not zero...
We live in a world designed to chase dopamine. Notifications, likes, endless scrolling, productivity hacks, sugar, caffeine, hustle culture. They all give us a quick hit of pleasure, motivation, or relief. Dopamine has become the currency of modern life, and we’ve...
As a coach, I deeply respect people’s agency. My clients are not projects to fix, and I don’t have their answers. They make their own choices, at their own pace, in the context of their own lives. My role is not to tell them what to do, but to help them raise...
Many of us didn’t learn to suppress our emotions because we were incapable of feeling them. We learned because it felt safer. From an early age, we pick up subtle and not-so-subtle messages about which emotions are allowed and which are not. Crying is “too much.”...
Masking - hiding emotions, needs, traits, or parts of our identity - often begins as a way of feeling accepted in environments that feel unsafe, invalidating, or conditional. It helps us belong. It helps us avoid conflict, rejection, or punishment. In many systems,...