The key to your emotional prison

The transformation our programmes actually offer is emotional freedom. And I know that sounds a bit random and most people wouldn't even know what we mean by that. It gives me visions of Mel Gibson, saltire blazoned across his face, bellowing "Freedom." Ridiculous as that image is, my passion for giving women this freedom rivals his for saving Scotland. It is probably the most accurate description of what we give the mums we work with.

It was a concept I first came across when I trained in Emotional Freedom Techniques. The clue is in the name. The idea that we can actually live free from emotional discomfort that we can process emotions as they happen, and even re-imprint memories from our past that are keeping us stuck. What dawned on me then was if  emotional freedom is possible, it means most of us are walking around in an emotional prison. We just don't know it.

We all have emotional baggage. None of us lead an easy life. We can always think others have it easier more luck, more money, maybe better looks. But everyone has their cross to bear. None of us know what life is like in someone else's shoes.

I would say my life was relatively plain sailing. Until the last few years. And then it tested me,  tested us,  in a way life never had.

Laura and I lost our dad. But we lost our mum before that, not to death, but to something I think is actually worse. She couldn't remember losing him. After 70 years together, she couldn't shed a tear. The trauma of his decline was so overwhelming that her brain simply removed her from it. She dissociated. Checked out before he went.

A great protective strategy for her. A horrific realisation for Laura and I.

We thought we were losing dad. We lost them both overnight.

Layer onto that neurodivergent teenagers grinding through GCSEs and A-levels in a house that was quietly falling apart and you have a toxic blend that is not for the faint hearted.

If I hadn't been trained in emotional health, these years would have killed me. I don't think I could have kept going. Kept showing up. But I did. We did.

How? It sounds almost flippant when I say it out loud. But I had a choice. We always had a choice.

I could tell myself the kids wouldn't pass their exams because the home was chaos. I lost control of school schedules and exam timetables. I could wrap myself in guilt that I wasn't there enough, for our parents, for my children, for anyone. I could tell myself that dealing with dying parents, teenagers and a business wasn't possible. That it was too much, too hard, too scary, too overwhelming.

Or I could choose differently.

Why this is biology, not willpower

The stories we tell ourselves are not just thoughts, they are physical events in the body. How your brain reads a situation, threat or challenge,  directly shapes your stress response. Same situation, different story, different biology. And it doesn't stop with you. Your body is in constant conversation with your child's. The story you are running is shaping the whole family.

The stories we tell ourselves are a choice. They free us or floor us. I wake up every day and decide, consciously or not, what I believe about my situation. Whether I choose to be driven by love or by fear.

Every mother we work with is living inside a story that is keeping her stuck. And she has a choice, to free herself from it, or stay in the prison it has built.

What are you choosing?