Doing it my way

Earthstar mushroom, a patron saint of doing it your own freaky way

It’s the new year.

I’m not a massive believer in resolutions. ‘Tis the season, I know, and the siren call of some ‘self-improvement’ project can be loud, but these days I try to cross the Gregorian threshold with a bit more kindness and generosity for the truth of myself.

What I’ve found is that my life is easier, more pleasurable and more sustainable when I shape it around who I actually am. Rather than some imaginary version, constructed from aspirations and cultural expectations, who doesn’t really exist.

Like any human I’m chock-a-block with limits, idiosyncracities, and preferences. I have gifts and talents, nervous system capacities and energetic patterns. There are ways of doing things that align with my natural flow, that feel like mine, and there are ways that feel like I’m dog paddling upstream in a wet jumper.

These days, I’m trying to trust my ways. Even when they move in contrast to who I thought I would be or how I thought things would go.

So yeah, no resolutions to become a different or better me.

What I do find at this time of year though, is that all the liminal dreaming between solstice and new year uncovers the places that I’m attempting to flail upstream. The points of friction and strain. What emerged this year was around how I run my business.

And so I’m listening. I’m reshaping. I’m experimenting and trusting that I can feel my way forward, bit by bit. Let me share how following my ways is unfolding in my private practice this year:

Way Number One - Accessibility

I think capitalism is bullshit. It’s at the root of the disconnect from body and Earth that my work strives to heal. My business is a continually evolving practice of anti-capitalism and I deeply believe that healing work should be accessible to folks no matter their financial situation.

When I started working online though, I wandered into the coaching world. The way that I saw coaches structuring their offerings — with set packages, a certain about of sessions, over a set amount of time, prices in the 4- and 5-figure range — made some kind of sense. That seemed logical, to get it all squared away and planned out from the get go.

And so I shaped my one-to-one offerings similarly.

Problem was that structuring things that way created a strange pressure on me and my clients. A invisible shroud would settle over the container. With the big investment, and a set period of time to do the work, there came this sneaky sense of needing to make it ‘worth it’. To strive for some resolution and get it done.

That’s the exact opposite of the spaciousness needed for somatic healing.

The big financial investment didn’t work either. You’d think that getting big payments in your bank account would be a good thing, but it put my system in a cycle of hypervigilance and freeze. I was overwhelmed with the all or nothing of it.

Most of my clients are folks living with c-ptsd or other patterns of long-term dysregulation. They burn through life in fight/flight, or feel stuck in chronic freeze. The spike of activation around these big payments often brought out threat responses for them too.

Folks like that, folks like me, need long-term, unpressured, steady support. We need a relational space that’s as free from threat, pressure or high stakes as possible. We need to have agency in the way we do the work. To trust our way as it unfolds. That’s what allows us to feel safe enough to heal.

So, I’ve scrapped the packages and shifted to per-session payments. And instead of a fixed rate, I’m offering a well-considered and boundaried sliding scale. This makes it easier for folks to work with me, aligns with my values, and feels like a big exhale to my nervous system.

Way Number Two - Trust

I love intimate, long-term relationships. Like, I literally fell in love with my best friend and many of my friendships are decades deep at this point. At a party you’re more likely to find me sequestered in the kitchen, deep in conversation, than flitting through surface-level exchanges.

Yes, I have a little flutter of social butterfly in me (hello, Libra sun!) but I feel most steady and able to show up honestly when I’m one-to-one, especially if it’s a relationship that’s had some time to put down roots. I thrive in intimacy*

And yet, I’ve been kinda ignoring this in the context of my private practice.

I’ve been seeing clients here and there, for just a few sessions, or a few months at a time. I know that those pockets of support have been powerful, and I’ve loved working with them, but often it feels like we’re only just getting comfortable with one another when our time comes to an end. In the long run, this set-up hasn’t felt like folks get optimal support from me.

Because so much of the work I do requires trust. And trust requires time.

For me, with my particular nervous system and attachment patterns, I need to centre long-term client relationships. That’s what enables me to do this work effectively. That’s what enables me to hold space for folks with the presence and stability that they need to unfurl.

So I’m focusing on the clients I know needed the kinds of relational support that I personally function best within. Steady, consistent, intimate. Folks who are looking for long-term healing rather than a bandaid.

If any of that sounds like you, and you want support to connect to your way — your body, your spirit, your self beneath all the learned coping mechanisms — you can find out more about working with me one-to-one here x