Skip to content

About
Therapy
How I work
Articles
Connect
- Complimentary Consultation
- General Contact & Enquiries

Knowing yourself
is the beginning
of all wisdom.

Aristotle

Connect with me for a
Complimentary Consultation

Read my Personalised
Words of Wisdom

Ask any
Question

chele_yntema

I offer psychotherapy for Burnout, Breakdown, & Trauma. Connection, Compassion, & Clarity that moves you toward a life of joyous wonder & hope.

Have you ever wondered about curiosity? What drive

Have you ever wondered about curiosity? What drives us to SEEK and to FIND?

I have always been a really curious person, I was the "why-child" and "the-doodler" ... The one always stopping to look around in awe soaking up the world around her. I still am. Yet the world seems so much busier these days and I know I have to mindfully cultivate those moments of curiosity and awe...

These are the moments when our deepest felt sense of Self can connect with the authentic meaning of the moment - the gentle inner enquiry that comes with stillness. The inquisitive discovery of inner depth and detail.

This is not the pressure driven ache of "why" or "how" that we sometimes cry out amidst pain and turmoil - no. This is the gentle niggle that finds its rhythm in patience and pleasure in engagement with in a World of being.

Read more about why your brain loves curiosity - https://cheleyntema.com/why-your-brain-loves-curiosity/

#curious #curiosity #trauma #psychotherapy #hope #neurobiology

Repost from @lexyflorentina • Our body loves sim

Repost from @lexyflorentina
•
Our body loves simple. And this is why “somatics” is not meant to be complicated or big and performative. It’s meant to be subtle, soft, slow.

In Somatic Experiencing - titration is one of the biggest principles for this very reason. The body needs a drop before It can take a whole drink. And that’s not a defect of our system that’s how we’re hardwired.

We’re not looking to blow up our systems with deep and intense trauma releases or diving head first into the biggest core wound we have. This isn’t what “somatics” and certainly not what Somatic Experiencing is about.

It’s about reconnecting to our rythym. Remembering our body’s language.
Reengaging our right to feel.

It’s a practice of relationship with our own body.

And sometimes that practice doesn’t look glamorous at all. But just, human.

So no matter where you are on your journey, if it’s all feeling too complex, it might be because it is.

Pause. Peel back. Try simple. And notice what happens inside 🤍

Understanding the Push and Pull Inside – The Bin

Understanding the Push and Pull Inside – The Binds that Break Us

There is a kind of ache that holds no words. A push and pull deep inside. A feeling without name. A dread without logic. And yet, this truth is a truth of survival.

Sometimes the person who was meant to protect you was also the one who hurt or ignored you. We learn the impossible truth: “I need you… but you hurt me.”

We bend ourselves into the shape most likely to keep us safe. One part tries to please. Another hides the pain. Another disappears.

These are not flaws. They are protectors.
But they do not always know that “back then” is over.

A sharp word. A cold glance. Suddenly, we are small. Scared. Enraged. Alone.

This is an emotional flashback —
not madness, but the body remembering what the mind cannot name.

The past, living in the present.
The parts still trying to shield us.

And sometimes, we go quiet…
into numbness, into dissociation.
And that too, is okay.

The healing?
It begins with noticing.
Not fixing. Not fighting.
Just noticing.

Whisper gently:
“I see you. I am here now.”

A hand on your heart.
A rub to your chest.
A splash of cool water.

These feelings are echoes of survival.
And with time, those protectors can rest.
You are not alone anymore.

Healing is not a straight path.
It is the unfurling of a fern in morning light.
Slow. Quiet. But happening.

Let the parts rest in your care.
Let your Self rise to meet you.

#EmotionalFlashback #PartsWork #TraumaHealing #InnerChildHealing #CPTSDRecovery #SelfCompassion #TherapistThoughts #SomaticTherapy #WholenessInHealing #ProtectiveParts

This matters. Repost from @famimind_ • Most of

This matters.

Repost from @famimind_
•
Most of us were taught silence before truth.
Blame before repair.
Performance before accountability.

We grew up around people who said “I’m sorry”
but never said “I take full responsibility.”
We learned to accept peace offerings wrapped in denial,
to translate deflection as care,
to shrink ourselves in the name of “moving on.”

But real accountability?
It sounds different.
It feels different.
It doesn’t protect the ego it protects the wound.

It’s not about guilt it’s about ownership.
Not “I didn’t mean to,”
but “I know I did, and you didn’t deserve that.”

This post is for the ones who never got the apology they needed.
Who learned how to heal without hearing the words first.
Who became the kind of person they never received.

📥 Save this for the moments when a half-apology tries to shake your truth.
💬 Comment: “I know what real repair feels like now.”
🔁 Share this with someone unlearning emotional performance and choosing truth.

You weren’t too sensitive.
They were too uncomfortable to be accountable.
And that’s not yours to carry anymore.

Love,
Anaishe Rose 🌹

This… Repost from @kayatoastforthesoul.sg • I

This…

Repost from @kayatoastforthesoul.sg
•
It’s a funny thing, sometimes, not feeling like we want to let go of sadness.

Because for some of us, sadness has been our identity for the longest time too.

I even asked someone this week, a wonderful someone I’ve known for a while, saying:

“You seem happy. Are you not sad anymore?”

And tldr, they responded to me this:

“When you say that, the sadness inside of me feels invalidated, it wasn’t to come out even more.”

“Like it has something to prove”.

—

I resonated with that, I’m even proud of them for saying this too.

Because here’s the thing, I like my sadness :)

It’s the part of me that feels alot, is deeply sensitive, who sees beauty in music, art, songs and people I get to meet and love.

It wasn’t always like that, of course.

For once upon a time my sadness made me feel like I was constantly drowning in sorrow.

Feeling like there was absolutely no hope for a better tomorrow.

But this sadness is and always will be valid.

Because there is and will always be a part of me that has felt the pain of this.

The pain of wanting to be optimistic.

The pain of being let down, disappointed or even abandoned again.

But the truth is also this - I was letting this sadness get in the way of embracing happiness.

Because tbh, there’s a part of me that equally wishes I could just be happy too.

And my deeper question is this - is it possible to embrace both sadness and happiness at the same time?

Can I embrace these both as part of “me”?

—

Yes we can, and that’s what I did.

On happy days like yesterday experiencing happiness fully with our wonderful volunteer community @iash.sg

And then quiet nights like tonight, simply spending time with the part of me that likes to mellow down a bit.

And reconnect with this part of me that remembers the pain - but now found purpose in sharing this quietly with the world instead.

Yours always,
Hernping

P. S. I think the best people are those that feel alot.

And embrace this beautiful mess that it is to be human :)

#truma #hope #sadness #grief #chaos #mess #feel #human

Oooph - I’ve known the pain of this, and I still

Oooph - I’ve known the pain of this, and I still find sometimes in the strangest of moments, parts sneak up on me and “old habits reign true”

These are hard dynamics to overcome, the first step is awareness and compassion. Compassion as always the central ingredient 💕

•
How and why we might over-function in our relationships… Repost from @anxiously_coupled

Repost from @arielleschwartzboulder • Tension of

Repost from @arielleschwartzboulder
•
Tension of Opposites

Last night my heart opened in tender grief. Hot tears released as my belly trembled in the letting go. This grief was ancient and ancestral. I could sense how the surrender of releasing also opens my heart to love. I am reminded of how loss and love are intimate partners.

When I reflect upon the tension of opposites, I am reminded that this is a world filled with contradictions, divisions, and conflict.

Part of the journey of trauma recovery, and the process of maturity in general, is cultivating our capacity to stand in a grounded and open-hearted relationship to the complexity of our inner world and our outer life experiences.

We can grow our ability to hold dichotomies, polarities, and differences. This requires that we build self-compassion for the parts of us that are easy to love and the parts of ourselves that we want to push away. That inner capacity translates to the outer world allowing us to remain kind and respectful even if disagree with each other.

Wisdom helps us recognize that most relationships will have challenges and most do not require cutting off or canceling each other. A caveat here, is that some relationships are truly abusive…and recognizing how to step away from meanness or cruelty is also an important boundary.

Still, we get to practice growing in our capacity to open our hearts to this world even if that might risk feeling pain, rejection, or loss. And life, itself is sometimes very difficult and profoundly beautiful.

I went out today specifically to be with the beauty of the dragonflies that have flown in by the thousands to our little lake. This one stopped to visit…a temporary moment of stillness and grace. A moment of equanimity amidst all of the movement. And here, I too find quiet peace in the midst of all that.

Repost from @mindfulmft • You can inspire others

Repost from @mindfulmft
•
You can inspire others, but you can’t change them. What person in your life have you been trying to change, trying to inspire to change, holding out hope for, etc? Who is it? Is it a partner, a parent, a sibling, or a friend? Just tune in here and name who it’s been for you. Most of the time we want another to change because we do believe it will benefit them, but let’s tune into ourselves here for the purpose of this post and exploration.

“If they change, what I get is…” Be with that. What gets offered to you if that other person integrates change? What relief do you feel? What validation or affirmation might you receive? What about the dynamic do you believe shifts, and why is that so important to you?

Reflect in this space. Yes, we want people to change because it often benefits them, but we also want people to change because it tends to benefit us as well. Maybe it’s relief for us, maybe it’s a witnessing of us that we’ve craved for so long, or maybe it’s having our pain finally understood. Deep breath here. Notice what it is for you, and notice how if you’re being asked to release trying to get another to change, you might also be releasing and letting go of the hope that you’ll get the relief in the way you thought, get witnessed in the way you’ve craved, and be understood in the way you hope for.
Ahh…grief.

If I release needing to control you I must begin (or continue) to grieve. There is loss that shows up when we release. Might you make a bit of room to feel into that loss…

Sometimes we may find ourselves lost in questions

Sometimes we may find ourselves lost in questions of why and of how… especially when things within our relationships stir us.

Sometimes, I know I find myself - after an argument, after a situation didn’t go as I thought it would, or even when I notice some repeated interactions with others that leave my needing to know why?

Often I cannot rest until I know, I search, I ask, I research… continually trying to make sense. And sometimes, even when I can cognitively “make-sense” it still bring internal confusion and inner turmoil.

Why is that?

Perhaps it is this underlying felt sense , the felt meaning to who we are that matters most of all.

Perhaps even, our drive for understanding is a quest of expression. Of understanding our Self in relation to Others and the World - a manner of knowing who and what is safe, secure, and soothing to our soul.

Read more - https://cheleyntema.com/why-we-seek-meaning/

Repost from @vexking • Your nervous system alway

Repost from @vexking
•
Your nervous system always communicates through sensations, emotions, and energy levels. But most of us have been conditioned to ignore or override these signals in favour of external expectations.

We push through fatigue because society values productivity over rest. We stay in draining situations because selflessness is prized more than self-preservation. We dismiss our body’s stress responses, believing discomfort is just something to power through rather than understand.

But your nervous system isn’t trying to make you weak or difficult; it’s trying to protect you and guide you toward what nourishes you and away from what depletes you.

The body remembers every time you didn’t speak up when you needed to, every boundary that was crossed without consequence, every moment you prioritized someone else’s comfort over your own safety. These memories don’t just linger in your thoughts, but in your muscles, breath, sleep cycles, and digestion.

In response to chronic stress, your nervous system becomes hypervigilant: constantly scanning for danger, bracing for the next impact, unable to fully relax. This isn’t paranoia. It’s your body adapting to environments where your needs weren’t safe to express or where your truth wasn’t welcomed.

But here’s the nuance. Not every signal from your nervous system is about the present. Some reactions are echoes of past pain. Trauma responses rooted in situations long gone but emotionally unresolved. Learning the difference between a legitimate red flag and an old alarm is part of healing.

Trauma says, “You’re not safe anywhere.” Intuition says, “This specific thing doesn’t feel right.” Trauma creates urgency and confusion. Intuition speaks calmly, even when it’s warning you.

The healing journey involves becoming a compassionate witness to your inner world rather than a harsh judge. You begin to ask: Is this fear coming from the present or the past? Is my body alerting me to a real imbalance or reacting to an old story?

With self-awareness and gentleness, you learn to honour exhaustion instead of overriding it.

Repost from @myintegrativetherapist • Looking ba

Repost from @myintegrativetherapist
•
Looking back, I can see that some relationships weren’t actually worth repairing.But the dynamic felt so familiar, I stayed.

It felt like home.

When I started connecting to my nervous system-and listening to what it needed-I could finally begin to shift how I related to other people’s emotions.

The more comfortable I got with my own discomfort, the less my nervous system viewed their discomfort as a threat.

In a time where everything feels polarized, this work matters more than ever.

Because nervous system healing isn’t just about inner peace, it’s how we change the way we engage with the world.

Repost from @thefeelingexpert • If you’ve ever

Repost from @thefeelingexpert
•
If you’ve ever wondered “Why do I get so anxious when someone pulls away?”—this is for you.

Abandonment trauma doesn’t disappear with age. It buries itself in your attachment system—and quietly influences how you love, what you fear, and who you choose.

But healing is possible.

It begins by listening to the parts of you that still feel left behind.

And giving them what they never got: safety, care, consistency.

#abandoned #rejected #attachment #trauma #feeling

This this this!!! Repost from @australianpsycholo

This this this!!!

Repost from @australianpsychologist
•
We sometimes unknowingly hold unrealistic expectations about how our children can and “should” behave.

Research finds that socio-cultural expectations around child behaviour are often at odds with developmental science.
For example, research finds that a majority of parents believe children start developing self-control early in life which is much earlier than brain science indicates is possible.

One study found that many parents had unrealistic expectations about when their child can learn to share. Specifically, 43% of parents believed children can master this skill before age 2, when in fact
this skill develops between 3.5 and 4 years (see zerotothree.com).

The disconnect between what many parents believe and the realistic ability of children to master self-control results in what has been termed “the expectation gap”. This disconnect can cause high levels of frustration and stress for both parents and children.

One of the most effective ways to address the expectation gap is through the delivery of parenting education that provides accurate information about child development and normalises children’s behaviour within a developmental context. Learning that a child’s behaviour is developmentally typical or normal can reduce parent stress and anxiety and strengthen the parent-child relationship through adjusted developmentally appropriate expectations, understanding, and reduced frustration.

The hardest thing … remember it’s not about no

The hardest thing … remember it’s not about not hoping nor about not trying.

It is about balance and about knowing when we are engaging in fruitless energy draining endeavours to save something that we yearn for, something that may indeed never have existed previously.

Repost from @mindfulmft
•
Hope can be beautiful. It saves us from so much.

But it can also be where we cling to our suffering. Bring awareness to the way you engage hope.

Repost from @sweatpantsandcoffee • The things th

Repost from @sweatpantsandcoffee
•
The things that made me strange as a child made me more interesting, empathetic, and creative as an adult. Thank goodness. ♥️ ~ Nanea

Repost from @avellinofarms • Some days, the worl

Repost from @avellinofarms
•
Some days, the world feels like a wildfire. Raging and reckless, burning through truth, compassion, and common sense. It leaves us scorched and raw, wondering if anything good can grow here again.

But nature has this quiet defiance. After the fire, the forest doesn’t give up, it regenerates. Tiny green shoots push through ash-covered soil. Birds return. Life begins again, even if it looks different than before.

And I still believe in that kind of healing.

In a world where equality isn’t debated but rooted deep like an old oak. Solid, immovable, and long overdue.
Where kindness runs like a river. Sometimes slow and winding, sometimes rushing, but always carving new paths. Where joy isn’t fenced off like private land, but blooms wildly, like flowers growing out of sidewalk cracks. Resilient and accessible to anyone who needs it.

Believing in this kind of world isn’t naïve. It’s necessary. It’s not a fantasy, it’s a seed. And maybe if more hearts were willing to plant it, to water it with empathy, and to tend it with action, we might finally grow into something better.

✌️ & ❤️

Repost from @the.trauma.educator • Trauma is the

Repost from @the.trauma.educator
•
Trauma is the body’s memory of what had to be pushed away in order to survive; the sensations, emotions, and impulses that were too much to feel when they first came up.

Which is why healing often begins in the smallest, most unremarkable ways.

Not with grand catharsis.
Not with doing more.

But with teaching your body, moment by moment, that it is safe enough now to stay with what it once had to abandon.

This doesn’t mean diving headfirst into pain and discomfort.

It means creating small pockets of space and time where you sense what you learnt to avoid for good self-protective reasons.

Every time you stay with it, even very briefly, you send your nervous system a quiet, life-changing message:

“We can be here now. Nothing bad is happening.”

And this is the gift of self-attunement. Offering to yourself now what you didn’t receive in childhood. A steady, patient presence that says, “I’m here with you. I won’t ever leave.”

Every small moment of staying reverses the old story of aloness your body learned in childhood. This is a big part of how we reverse-engineer trauma, little by little, one felt moment at a time.

In those barely visible moments where your body learns that your internal experience can be felt again, now safely.

So, instead of asking , “What else should I do to heal?”

You might want to ask yourself: “What can I feel just a little more than yesterday, with a bit more presence, curiosity and compassion?”

Effie 🦋

Repost from @awakenwithally • What does the nerv

Repost from @awakenwithally
•
What does the nervous system need from us:

1. To be seen, heard and understood in both its intelligence and adaptation. Our nervous system has not been designed to spend so much time in a state of constant survival mode. This is unnatural. That’s why so much suffering and difficulty in coming out of survival states.

Make your nervous system feel truly seen in both its intelligence and pain. Do this every day. It takes you max.10 seconds.

2. To be empowered to return to its “job”.

Regulation isn’t a job for your mind; it’s the natural rhythm of your body. When the body feels safe, it knows how to regulate. It knows how to come back to balance, how to complete stress cycles or integrate.

But if we try to over-control our way into regulation, we disconnect from this organic wisdom. Your nervous system doesn’t need to be managed. It needs to be met.

Yes, at first we might need to put in effort to learn new practices, shift habits, and build inner safety. But ultimately, regulation belongs to the body. It is what the body wants to do.

So, empower your body. Give it the right conditions and it will do what it knows to do.

3. To know that repair comes after misattunement and rupture in the present moment.

No one is perfectly attuned to their nervous system all the time. Life is unpredictable. Sometimes what’s happening is more than our system can hold. That’s not failure; that’s reality.

What matters is that we don’t leave our system alone in the rupture. Rupture is inevitable. But rupture without repair becomes survival. Rupture with repair rebuilds trust.

4. That we don’t put another burden or pressure on it, like healing trauma.

The nervous system supports the process of trauma healing, but it doesn’t “do it”.

It’s ok to be tired. Meet yourself where you are. Rest. Repair.

Love,
Ally.

If we have rarely experienced peaceful connection,

If we have rarely experienced peaceful connection, if our lives have been filled with chaos, control, and dysfunction, then our capacity to expereince peace - and to feel safe enough to stay with that experience can be tremendously challenging. Feeling alien to the body, the body responds as if it is the peace that is the threat. The key? Slow and steady. Moving only with what your body has capacity for moment-to-moment…

Repost from @mindfulmft
•
Tolerating internal peace when it’s never been something you were allowed to do or have, can take a lot of work. You have to show yourself that it’s actually safe to set a boundary, not absorb the chaos, not people please at the expense of yourself, and so forth.

Your ability and capacity for tolerance in the past certainly protected you in big ways. Our protective parts are brilliant and always looking out for us.

Tolerating the chaos, control, and dysfunction protected you from something (tolerating control may have protected you from rage, tolerating chaos may have protected you from verbal abuse, tolerating the dysfunction may have protected you from having to face an ending).

But growth will ask you to switch out the tolerance. It will ask you to put down tolerating chaos, control, abuse, discomfort, and beyond, and instead, tolerate your own internal peace (which will show up as internal discomfort), yes, even if (especially) the other person gets upset, the relationship ends, or someone is disappointed in you. When your own peace and protection is so unfamiliar or unsafe (meaning: if you do prioritize it you’ve been punished in the past) then it can feel terribly challenging to move in that direction. And yet, that is the work. Meant to be done in the safest way possible.

Is there a safe person in your life with whom you can practice this? Begin to show your system that it’s safe to say no. Begin to show your system that it’s safe to set a simple a boundary with someone who will respect it. In what ways might you show your nervous system that it’s safe in a way that feels tolerable for you?

Repost from @lexyflorentina • We all need to be

Repost from @lexyflorentina
•
We all need to be turned towards…

And yet, for so many of us the absence of this is held in our deepest wound.

It’s at the core of our addictions, our harmful behaviors, our habits and vices.

It’s often at the center of children acting out, of becoming glued to screens, or self isolating.

Not because something is wrong with them but because their intelligent systems are sourcing a way to complete what’s missing.

This is such a brilliant way our body helps us cope with lack of connection, and, it can become a deeply painful way we become stuck.

We learn to not only turn towards vices and act through harmful behaviors - but we often also learn to turn fully away from ourselves. To reject the parts of us that feel vulnerable, to criticize the parts of us in pain, to ignore the longing in our system by hardening, numbing, avoiding.

But what if a big part of the path towards healing this pain is by fits and foremost turning towards our own self? Being willing to recognize and notice and listen to our own body? Even if we don’t know what it needs, or what we feel, to just turn inward and say “I want to know you more”

Hurt comes from never being turned towards

Healing comes from turning towards ourselves even in the pain

How do you turn towards you? 💙

Repost from @amythelifecoach • If someone’s mo

Repost from @amythelifecoach
•
If someone’s mood shifts and your body instantly assumes you’ve done something wrong…

There’s a reason for that.

When you’ve spent years tracking someone else’s emotions just to avoid rupture, your nervous system learns to stay one step ahead by scanning for danger, replaying the last thing you said, trying to prevent disconnection, backlash or abandonment before it happens.

This kind of hyper-attunement doesn’t come out of nowhere!

It often starts in relationships where tension wasn’t named, but you felt it anyway.

Where silence felt like punishment.
Where someone’s stress became yours to manage.
Where connection felt conditional and keeping the peace meant abandoning yourself.

Over time, your body begins to internalize those dynamics and self blame becomes automatic. Even when you haven’t done anything wrong.

And even now, like with most of my clients in safe relationships, that pattern can still show up

Because this isn’t about being overly sensitive. It’s about a nervous system that remembers what it wants to feel safe and secure.

✍️Healing this pattern doesn’t mean you’ve stopped caring about how others feel. It does mean you’ve stopped sacrificing your emotional safety every time someone else seems a little off.

That’s the foundation of setting emotional boundaries.

Repost from @aileyjolie • Your body isn’t resi

Repost from @aileyjolie
•
Your body isn’t resisting.
It’s remembering what safety feels like.

That ache, that fatigue, that flicker of hesitation—it’s not sabotage. It’s your nervous system asking:
“Can you go slow enough that I can come with you?”

This carousel is a love letter to the part of you that wants to heal without abandoning yourself in the process.

To the pace of trust.

To the kind of growth that includes your body.

Swipe to read more.

Repost from @theeqschool • Humans feel. And hum

Repost from @theeqschool
•
Humans feel.
And humans flail, fumble, and f*** up.

And it’s the sad stories, the stories of triumph, the stories about overcoming adversity that captivate us because we can connect to them.
They make us feel something because we, too, have lost people we loved, felt deep, hot embarrassment, and wandered aimlessly in the darkness.
We’ve felt alone and felt the relief of the sun after the storm.

I balled at Encanto because I can relate to Mirabel feeling like the outcast in her family.
I’ve felt like the outcast working hard to belong, too.

Stories that are all happy and easy where everyone gets what they want and need are nice,
but they don’t touch us as deeply — they’re missing large parts of what makes us who we are.
No one can really connect to the person who seems like they’ve never struggled a day in their life.

I encourage you to stop making yourself wrong for having big feelings or making mistakes.
Soften that expectation.
Your feelings and missteps are what make you human.

They give you depth, texture, and make you uniquely beautiful.
It’s what allows you to learn and grow and connect to other people. Your humanness is the foundation for wisdom, growth, connection, contribution, and belonging.

Repost from @hannahfrasermoore • A daughter brin

Repost from @hannahfrasermoore
•
A daughter brings a genuine problem to her mother - something she is concerned about, maybe a rupture or a need. Unconsciously she may be asking to be witnessed, or listened to or seen. She might want a shoulder to cry on, or help mulling over a problem. Or simply a point of connection.

But what follows is something else.

The mother takes the daughter’s problem and makes it her own.

She becomes dysregulated. She spirals into worry, agitation, and hyper anxiety. Her distress exceeds the daughter’s.

On the surface, it looks like care. ‘I’m so worried about you it’s making me ill.’ But something subtle has happened: the mother has almost seamlessly repositioned herself as the one in need.

The daughter’s original experience is no longer primary. She finds herself managing the mother’s anxiety instead of metabolising her own.

This is not intentional harm, but it is a collapse of boundaries and over time, it leads to a reorganisation of the relational self:

The daughter begins to associate vulnerability with risk. Her own need becomes dangerous. Speaking risks escalation and the severing of connection, and in moments of crisis sharing her pain becomes costly.

So she retreats. She learns not to bring her real self into the relationship because - what’s the point - somewhere in her psyche, she knows: she will be psychologically run over.

In psychoanalytic terms, this is not empathy.
It is projective reversal. The mother’s unregulated affect is transferred into the child and the child becomes the container.

It can look like closeness, but it leaves the daughter structurally alone inside a relationship that appears emotionally full.

Breaking the pattern begins by asking:
Whose feelings am I holding and what happened to mine? ✨

Please let me know any untagged artwork so I can credit 🙏✨🩷

Image wording inspired by Stephen Reid’s words o

Image wording inspired by Stephen Reid’s words of wisdom:

An Old World is Falling Away

There’s a lot shifting right now. You might feel it. It’s like an entire layer of who we’ve been is coming undone—our identities, relationships, beliefs, ways of living… all of it. And honestly, it’s uncomfortable as hell.

We’re being asked to let go of things we thought defined us. Things we fought to hold onto. Things we thought were solid. But they’re not. They were never meant to last forever.

That includes roles we’ve played.
Wounds we’ve carried. Careers we stayed in out of fear. Relationships we’ve outgrown. Beliefs we inherited that don’t actually align with who we are.

It’s all rising to the surface now—not to break us, but to show us what we still need to heal, release, or be honest about. This is soul work. And it’s not easy. It’s messy, emotional, sometimes lonely.

But it’s also necessary.

Because what’s on the other side of this is more real. More aligned. More grounded in who we actually are—not who we’ve been pretending to be to make others comfortable.

If you feel like everything’s falling apart, maybe it is.

But maybe it needs to.

This is a time for healing.
For truth.

For choosing yourself without guilt.
For giving yourself the kind of love no one else knows how to give you yet.

So let’s talk self-love for a second.

Because it’s not about spa days or mantras in the mirror—though hey, those things can help.

Real self-love is choosing you even when it’s inconvenient. Even when others don’t understand.

It’s saying no when everything in you is screaming people-please.

It’s pausing to breathe instead of rushing to fix.

It’s letting yourself feel the mess without judging it.

It’s saying, I’ve got you, to your own heart, when no one else shows up.

Self-love is deeply honest.
It’s not always soft—it’s fierce sometimes.

Right now, we’re being asked to meet ourselves where we are. To strip back the noise. To stop performing.

To remember who we were before the world told us who we had to be.

So if you’re in the thick of it—confused, uncertain, tired—know this: You’re not broken. You’re becoming.

Breath by breath, you are becoming.

Oooph… when we find ourselves on a road we didn’t choose… and, how hard it is to find our ways back home when we do find ourselves on the road not chosen.

Repost from @stefanossifandos
•
It’s easy to pour anger into the little annoyances.

The cold coffee. The WiFi glitch. The driver who cuts you off.

They’re safe targets.

They don’t require you to look at what’s really hurting underneath.

Because if you paused long enough to listen to your anger…

You might hear the truth it’s been holding back.

That you feel stuck in a life that doesn’t feel like yours.

That your days are filled with things that drain you more than they nourish you.

That you keep ignoring dreams because you’re scared to want them fully.

That you’ve been settling for relationships where you feel invisible.

That the person you’re showing the world isn’t the one you know you really are.

When will you stop fighting the small battles…

And finally fight for your own life?

Repost from @theeqschool • Trusting yourself is

Repost from @theeqschool
•
Trusting yourself is about developing a relationship with your intuition;
that inner voice that’s connected to your bodily sensations and is motivated by what feels deeply right for you.

Because you *do* know what’s most important to you, and you know what it feels like to stray from the path (even if you don’t always know how to get back to it right away).

When you trust yourself, it’s because you’re able to read the signals your body and intuition are sending to you, and you take the information from those signals seriously.
Self-trust is learned and earned over time, if we allow ourselves to make mistakes and learn from them, and give ourselves the space to be present with our feelings, needs, and desires.

As you become more attuned to yourself, you become more practiced at saying, “no, this doesn’t feel right” and walking away from something that truly doesn’t work for you.

Self-trust is the feeling of deep calm and the inner quiet you feel when you make a decision that feels right — even if it feels messy, scary, or uncomfortable in the moment.
It’s knowing that not everyone else needs to agree or even fully understand for it to be the right thing for *you.*

It can be easy to get lost in doubt, self-protection, and resistance - that’s a normal part of being a human; we all struggle with this in different ways in difficult periods, but you can always find your way back, no matter how long you’ve felt lost or disconnected.

The work is in checking in and maintaining a relationship with you — which will help increase your ability to discern what is and isn’t right for you as you continue to grow, learn, age, and develop.

To those who’s body needs hearing… and honouri

To those who’s body needs hearing… and honouring…

Repost from @awakenwithally
•

1. Validate any reaction.

Validation gives that reaction permission to exist. It says to your body, “This matters. You’re not wrong for reacting this way.”

It doesn’t erase discomfort, but it begins to melt the internal fight against it. That’s what slowly helps the body feel safe enough to soften.

A few validation phrases you can offer:

“Of course you’d respond this way.”
“There’s nothing bad or shameful about this.”
“You’re allowed to feel this, even if I don’t like it.”

1. Observe how your mind reacts to the body.

Your mind has been conditioned to relate to the body with pressure, criticism, or control, inherited from trauma, culture, or early relationships.

It might judge, fear, fix, or override what’s happening in your body.

You don’t have to change those patterns. But creating a tiny space from them sends a new message of safety to your system. That space is where your relationship with your body begins to shift.

3. Engage with your body not only when it is reactive.

Would you only tend to a child when they’re crying? Of course not. You’d build trust through other moments. This is also how the body grows its somatic capacity to regulate reactions. Bit by bit.

4. See from the perspective of your body.

Try asking this now to your body, “What must it have been like for you all these years of dismissal and suppression?

Really feel into it. How many moments did your body carry you through without being heard or honored? Can you meet it right there?

Ally.

I don’t think it can be stated enough just how e

I don’t think it can be stated enough just how easy it can be to quickly question oneself when one is surrounded by an insensitive world that demands more than we have time and time again…

Remember that no matter how well others are seemingly doing, you are enough. Just as you are.

Repost from rebelthriver
•
Word!
As someone who is a highly sensitive person (HSP), and an empath, I can’t agree with this more.

Too often we go through life believing the narrative others feed us about being “too sensitive,” how we need to “toughen up” or “grow thicker skin” etc… I ask you to please reflect on the Fact that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you or in need of “fixing!”

Forget these cliche instructions given by people who simply do not understand you. Instead, what you need to be doing is creating boundaries that honor your softness and sensitivity. Setting healthy boundaries is KEY. I can’t stress this enough. And remember, you can both set boundaries AND be true to your empathetic/compassionate nature. One does not negate the other!

Too often, softness and sensitivity have become synonymous with weakness and frailty by society, and in turn many of us have come to believe it ourselves. Though it can make us more vulnerable to pain, it most certainly does not make us less capable of enduring and rising through it; if anything it has forged us into fiercely strong and resilient beings as a result. These same people would be dumbfounded to learn of the strength it requires to navigate all that we do, each and every day.

“Maybe the problem isn’t that you are too sensitive.
Maybe the problem is that they lack the emotional intelligence required to process empathy.
The problem is that they aren’t sensitive enough.”
- Nikita Gill @nikita_gill

Just a thought.

♥️xo Leila

@sensitivesocialworker

With all my heart and soul - THIS! Repost from @o

With all my heart and soul - THIS!

Repost from @occuplaytional
•
People say “In the REAL world, they won’t be able to…” and then end that sentence with something that you actually, totally, can in fact do in the “real world”, a surprising amount of times in my line of work.

Actual things that people have actually, literally said to me:

In the REAL world, he won’t be using a pencil gripper. (What? Literally why not? I could use any pencil gripper I wanted to to write anything I felt like.)

In the REAL world, she can’t rock in her chair, so… (Yet I, a grown adult, sit perched like a bird and rocking wildly back and forth in my office chair while writing evaluations when I need a lot of sensory input.)

In the REAL world, the kids won’t have clipboards available to write on. (Isn’t a clipboard like, two dollars? Why couldn’t someone write with a clipboard?)

In the REAL world, she can’t cry every time something happens that she doesn’t like. (Anyone can cry whenever they want to cry. I’ve cried at all kinds of works in my life. When someone is crying, other human beings who are decent usually try to help them.)

On the flip side, you know what else doesn’t happen in the real world? People typically don’t have to sit silently at desks for 6+ hours a day. People typically are able to talk to their friend or coworker or text somebody in between tasks or when they feel like it. People typically can eat a snack if they’d like to or make arrangements to. People typically aren’t stuck in a room with 30 other people who are exactly their age, and nobody else. People typically don’t have to navigate buildings and structures and objects that are too large and proportionally clearly not made for them. People typically can take a break when they need to. People typically aren’t punished, and especially not physically, by their loved ones and close friends.

Every day, we’re *making* the real world.

I want to put all of our effort into making the real world a good place to be before I focus any of my efforts on chipping pieces off of its future inhabitants to try to make them fit some harmful imaginary mold from the past.

Repost from @mindfulmft • One of the great lesso

Repost from @mindfulmft
•
One of the great lessons of my life: the source of your pain does not need to be involved in your healing of it. I’m a big believer that in our healing process we need to be witnessed….

Witnessing is powerful, profound, important work. When it can be done by someone who contributed to the origins of your pain it can be an incredibly healing process. What a gift.

But that is not always the scenario. And it doesn’t need to be.

In fact, when we keep returning to the source who continues to defend, deny, rationalize, explain, and prioritize protecting themselves over hearing you, it can be hurtful and sometimes harmful.

That’s why going where you can be seen, heard, and witnessed is an important thing to prioritize and honor for yourself. This can be hard when we want so desperately for the other person to just acknowledge, own, and apologize. It’s easy to keep going back for more and to get stuck in the loop of negotiating with the self about ways you might be able to make that happen. But at some point there comes a moment where you have to accept that it is not there where your healing will happen. You release it needing to come from there. You stop trying to control that. You grieve. But in that, you make space to be seen, heard, and understood by someone who can, someone who will, someone honored to do so.

Repost from rebelthriver • If you are struggling

Repost from rebelthriver
•
If you are struggling tonight, please remember this: even the fiercest storms eventually find their calm.

Your journey may feel heavy now, but you are stronger than this moment.

Your heart knows the way—it’s okay to rest, to breathe, to trust that peace is waiting for you on the other side.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You’re never alone here.

We’re holding the space until you find your way home again.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Sweet dreams, beautiful ones.
꩜🕊️♥︎ Ella
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Repost from @drstephanielopez • You’re reading

Repost from @drstephanielopez
•
You’re reading this right now, but where is your mind?

Already jumping to the next post?

Making a mental note about something you forgot?

Planning what you’ll do after you finish scrolling?

If you can’t remember the last time you were fully here....and not thinking about the next thing, not solving future problems, not mentally rehearsing conversations, you’re not broken.

Your nervous system just learned that survival meant staying three steps ahead of disaster.

So now you live in permanent “what’s next” mode.

Even in beautiful moments, your brain is scanning for threats, making lists, preparing for problems that haven’t happened yet.

But here’s what you’re missing while you’re busy managing the future: your actual life is happening right now.

Follow on Instagram

Read more about me
Professionally & Personally

Connect with me for a
Complimentary Consultation

Ask any
Question

Chele Yntema is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Trauma Specialist.

In the spirit of reconciliation I acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. I pay my respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. I am committed to inclusion across race, culture, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, religion, and ability. I recognise that people from diverse communities face systemic barriers and seek to challenge the current system and strive for change that makes mental health and wellbeing accessible to and inclusive for all.

About
Services
Complementary Consultation
How I work
Articles
Contact
Privacy Policy
Informed Consent