The Feel Better Every Day podcast

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Amy Jones: Skin and Bones 37:39

vor 9 Tagen37:39

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"It was a really surreal experience because I didn't know what to expect from a tiger farm. I've been in a lot of industrial farms of other animals. I sort of thought to myself, 'surely it can't be, it can't be actually a farm like what we see, how we raise pigs and chickens and cows.' But it was it was literally a factory farm - a prison, essentially just row after row after row of tiger." - Amy Jones There are moments when a single photograph can change how we see the world. For photojournalist Amy Jones that moment came inside a dark, airless building on the border of Thailand at a tiger farm. That's where she met Salamas, a 20-year-old tiger who had spent her entire life in a concrete cell. Bred over and over again for the tourist and medicine trades. Amy's photograph of Salamas, a tiger who was skin and bones pressing her head against a cold wall, has gone on to win some of the most prestigious awards in photography, and brought international attention to an industry that almost no one knew existed, the factory farming of tigers. This conversation is about the rescue of that tiger, about the power of visual storytelling and what it means to bear witness even when it breaks your heart.…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

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Fáilte! Welcome! I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham, a trauma survivor, AuDHDer, columnist, author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, trauma therapist, senior accredited supervisor, and self-care coach at Feel Better Every Day (selfcarecoaching.net). Through solo and interview episodes, I share trauma-informed and neuro-affirming (especially for ADHD and AuDHD) self-care and Self care (for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself) ideas, practices and rituals. Reconnect with your Self. Learn self-care practices and rituals to help you regulate, create a life you don't need to retreat from, and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome, and loved. Ready to thrive? The Feel. Love. Heal. framework This framework evolved from decades of pain, exploration and recovery. I’m happy it’s helping making things easier for other trauma survivors, ADHDers and AuDHDers: • Feel: Take better care of yourself with active self-care to regulate your nervous system, work with your energy, and connect with your Self. • Love: Create a life you don’t need to retreat from with Self care to help you accept yourself completely with love, compassion, and kindness. Remember, you're already whole. Peace is within you. • Heal: Help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome, loved and able to thrive. Collective care to turn what hurts your heart into action, coregulate and heal with others. New episodes every Tuesday morning (Ireland time). Subscribe for notifications. Join the Sole to Soul Circle for deeper dives including bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices and meditations, journal prompts and more. Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please share and leave a ★★★★★ rating and review. Your support helps me reach more trauma survivors and people with ADHD or AuDHD. Learning to care for, love and accept yourself is a radical act. Your healing creates ripples and helps others remember peace and ease is everyone’s birthright too. Míle buíochas (a thousand thank yous).

86 Episoden

#Fitness #Religion #Self-Improvement #Mental Health #Eve Menezes Cunningham #Self Care #Podcasting Education

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

updated vor 3 Tagen

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86 Episoden

#Fitness #Religion #Self-Improvement #Mental Health #Eve Menezes Cunningham #Self Care #Podcasting Education

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The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

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Eating Out Shouldn't Be a Nightmare (World Vegan Month) 16:20

vor 3 Tagen16:20

16:20

Do you feel like your vegan diet or food allergies make you “difficult” at restaurants and social gatherings? You’re not alone. And you deserve better. In this World Vegan Month episode, I (author, trauma therapist, senior accredited supervisor etc, Eve Menezes Cunningham) share some of my journey from being an “awkward vegan” with a severe bell pepper allergy to (more) confidently advocating for my food needs. Learn how to: ✨ Ask for what you need without shame ✨ Use somatic techniques to feel empowered when ordering ✨ Navigate social situations where you’re the only vegan ✨ Recognise which people and places truly support your needs ✨ Turn advocating for yourself (stating dietary requirements) into self-healing Whether you’re vegan, have food allergies, sensory issues with food or any dietary requirements, this episode validates your experiences and provides practical tools for feeling safe, welcome and nourished. Perfect for anyone with trauma, ADHD, or AuDHD who struggles with the extra layers of complexity around food choices. 🎙️ Feel Better Every Day Podcast Episode 85 Host: Eve Menezes Cunningham Next week: Special guest Tracy Otsuka, author of “ADHD for Smart Ass Women” 📚 Free resources and full transcript: selfcarecoaching.net #VeganLife #FoodAllergies #ADHD #TraumaHealing #SelfCare #Neurodivergent #WorldVeganMonth CHAPTERS (0:00–1:25) Asking for what you need and embracing awkwardness (1:25–3:50) Power poses, confidence, and feeling worthy of good things (3:50–5:44) Compassion for yourself when being vegan feels awkward (5:44–7:15) Sensory needs, boundaries, and finding your people (7:15–9:01) Speaking up for yourself and healing old wounds (9:01–11:24) Food, co-regulation, and making socialising easier (11:24–13:24) EFT tapping, tenderness, and trauma-informed care (13:24–16:10) Rippling kindness outward and staying idealistic FULL TRANSCRIPT Do you ever feel like being a vegan makes it hard for you to enjoy food out with friends, loved ones or even at home? Do you ever feel like you’re being too awkward if you have any kind of food allergy? This episode for World Vegan Month is for you and I want to encourage you to acknowledge the accommodations that you need and deserve and to help you ask for what you need with less shame. I’m nearly 50 and I am much better at it than I used to be but I used to call myself an awkward vegan for many years because I’m also allergic to bell peppers and they’re in so many vegan dishes. The older I get, I mean I say the older I get, a couple decades ago I was writing for an allergy magazine about the pepper allergy and it was before I went vegan but about the difficulty. It’s not one of the big 14 [allergens]. Back then there was a big 10 and there’s more awareness around allergies but I guess the relevance for this episode is recognising the special needs needing to be accommodated like it could kill me. And it is very stressful a lot of the time and also I love food and I want to enjoy it, I don’t want to be off of the salads. Welcome to episode 85 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I’m your host Eve Menezes Cunningham and every Tuesday I share a new episode where it’s helping people with trauma, ADHD and AuDHD take better care of yourself, create a life you don’t need to retreat from and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved. This here is Mighty Meadbh and if you haven’t already subscribed you’re very welcome to and you can find out more information at the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and that will lead you to the book and all sorts of free resources as well as ways of working with me. For the Feel part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework today, I want to encourage you to get into your body to empower yourself. It might be that you feel a bit silly doing a power pose before making a phone call to a restaurant or even looking at a menu outside. But it’s hard being in a minority. And with food being so central. We co-regulate with other people and we connect with others so often through food so if you’re the only vegan in your circle it can be really challenging. You might want to take a power pose to remind yourself that just as you wouldn’t tell anyone else what they should or shouldn’t be eating no one else has a right to be telling you that. And you deserve delicious food. Notice the way you’re sitting. Notice if you can straighten up. Notice if you can send those signals of safety up via the vagus to the pons part of the brain (if it’s not too awkward depending on where you are when you are you might want to take a Power Pose). I’ve removed my arms from Meadbh I don’t know what she’ll do now. If you’re standing up, maybe place your hands on the hips but anything that helps you have that open-hearted posture. It’s not about being awkward. It’s not about being difficult. It’s about being polite but also knowing that you have a right to eat in a way that feels good for you. I’ve actually considered stopping being vegan because it feels so awkward sometimes and I just… it might be the justice sensitivity with the ADHD and it might be the trauma history and kind of taking the animal suffering, the bee suffering, so to heart, but I would really struggle to live with myself. I find it much easier to live with myself trying, I mean I’m not… like kind of that sounds dramatic. I don’t mean it like that. But it’s a friendlier way for me personally to walk through this life where humans do so much damage. To not be a part of that. But there’s nothing wrong with anyone making any choices that are right for them whether it’s through taste or through health reasons or anything else. But it’s about you giving yourself permission to know what you want and ask for what you want. Where there might be allergies it can be extra awkward. There’s generally more understanding around coeliac… it seems like kind of people seem to be doing well getting gluten-free food. There is a huge lack of awareness still around what vegan actually means. People are often like, “oh, it has eggs” or “it has honey”. It’s like that’s not vegan! Plant-based being offered a salad. Let yourself feel how you want to feel don’t be forcing yourself to contort your tastes. If you want chips that’s fine. If you want salad that’s fine but also know that you, like everyone else at the table, is worthy of a meal that you will genuinely enjoy and feel nourished by. You deserve that just as everyone else does. As we move to the Love part of the framework, remembering that you like everyone else are part of the Divine. Part of nature. And there’s no need to feel awkward. It might be that your dietary requirements have nothing to do with being vegan but it’s to do with sensory issues. And again, you have a right to eat in a way that feels good for you. That makes sense for you. You don’t need to change a thing. And it can sound harsh but I know for me with the being vegan and having the anaphylaxis pepper allergy… it filters out people who aren’t good for me. Because if someone is caring and considerate and patient… often people have… my loved ones… my partner has to be very patient sometimes where it’s so difficult for me to get something edible. It filters out people who are dismissive. Who consider one option that’s barely edible to make the venue a vegan restaurant. And food, again it can be so connecting, it can be so joyful, it can be so… and it can also make you feel like very disconnected. For the Love part of the framework this week, I really want you to just give yourself some love. Connect with that part of you that maybe doesn’t feel worthy of the… I was going to say concessions, the accommodations, the awkwardness. Know that someone would have no problem asking for whatever they wanted in a very specific way. You have every right to frequent establishments that make you feel welcome and that make you feel like you’re not putting them out and that they want to. And often, it’s really like kind of seemingly meaty places that will be the most welcoming, and where they specialise in that farm to table. Or it’s interesting. Don’t underestimate that there are some amazing places out there and where they will respect your vegan or other dietary requirements and treat you like someone who is deserving of food and you also like kind of really enjoying being there. Stop arguing with reality. If someone is making you feel worse about it then you might already be feeling that person isn’t good for you those people aren’t good for you. It might be that they’re family. It might be that you have to keep them in your life but you can really be extra tender with that part of yourself that feels rejected and potentially betrayed and uncared for having specific food requirements can be triggering in terms of inner child stuff coming up for healing. A lot of childhood stuff, a lot of like needs not having been met, all sorts of other needs additional needs so really be tender with yourself as it all comes up for healing. And recognise that every time you speak up for yourself, you are healing. You are shining a light on it. And you can bring other people on board. You can let them know how they can support you in it. One of the things that’s really helped me this year is taking on the booking for a group that I’m part of. It means I can do the research and I can make sure that there’s going to be something edible for me. Something delicious hopefully. I’ve been treated well so far but it makes me feel like I’m not then adding to the person booking workload. And also, that the person responsible for the food knows about the seriousness of the allergy. So find ways if it’s available to you, to take more ownership over the choices so that everyone can be happy and have delicious food. And that really is part of the Heal element. The co-regulation, the collective care. The recognising groups where you feel comfortable doing that, groups of friends or more formal groups. Noticing the restaurants that you feel most comfortable at. The environments you feel most comfortable eating in. The neighbours who might be the most carnivorous creatures on the planet but who welcome a vegan burger at a barbecue or whatever it is. It’s not about, again, changing anyone else’s taste or choice. It’s about honouring that you are as deserving as they are. And they are as deserving as you are. Everyone has a right to food to nourishment and to safety and to feeling welcome. We know that with Polyvagal Theory, we thrive when we feel safe, welcome and loved. It’s easy for so many people (or it appears to be easy for so many people) when invited to stay for dinner or a cup of tea or anything like that. And it just can feel like an extra barrier. Sometimes, where it’s like, you’d love the company but it means having to say oh, I’ll often just have a hot water rather than go through any kind of milk issue or anything like that. Think of ways in which you can make it easier for yourself. Think of ways you can make it more enjoyable for yourself. Let me know how you are getting on in terms of what you do now that you didn’t think to do when you were younger and things that have really made a difference in terms of you embracing that part of you that needs the extra care, the extra tenderness, the extra consideration. And knowing that again whether it’s through a vegan diet an allergy an intolerance or any kind of sensory issues, knowing that you are worthy. Let me know how you get on and I look forward to going deeper in the Circle. We’re going to do another EFT Tap Along to help get rid of some of that around decades of potentially feeling unwelcome and too much and impossible to handle and all the things that can be especially triggering with extra sensitive nervous systems, with trauma histories, with ADHD, with AuDHD. I hope you will join me for that. And you can join via the website at selfcarecoaching.net Thank you for listening. This episode like all of them has been produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. And you can find out more about the book 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and you can find full transcripts and links and show notes via the blog at selfcarecoaching.net and also loads of free resources around confidence, around anxiety, around menopause, all sorts of things trauma obviously and neurodivergence. Very trauma-informed neuro-affirming approach. Lots of things you can do for yourself so check that out. I would like to be able to help as many people as I can which is why I do the podcast. Not everyone can afford one-to-one work and not everyone can attend workshops or events. I love sharing the podcast and it would be really delightful if you feel that it’s helpful if you are happy to share a five-star review or share it with someone who you think might find it beneficial. This will help in terms of reaching other people with trauma with AuDHD, with ADHD, and with the ripple effect of taking better care of yourself. It really does change everything if you take the example of the food. When you’re well fed, when you’re taking care of yourself, you’re leaving that restaurant or wherever it is feeling like you’re in a better humour, you’re better able to notice if someone else is in need and to help. To stop to open a door. Tiny tiny tiny little things that add up to give someone the benefit of the doubt to be gracious in all sorts of situations. The more you’re taking care of your nervous system, the more you’re acknowledging your energy levels and what’s happening with your energy your chi, your prana, your life force, the more it ripples out. And I know it sounds grandiose, but it can if we all took care of our own nervous systems, if we all made sure we were as regulated as possible and if we all came together to topple the systems that thrive on inequality and suffering world peace will ensue. I might be too old to be an idealist but I still am an idealist. I very much appreciate you listening watching sharing commenting engaging in whatever way feels right for you. And I look forward, next week, to sharing an especially special episode with an author who really helped me when I first began looking into the possibility that I might have ADHD. Her approach - it’s Tracy Otsuka who wrote ADHD for Smart Ass Women and before that and still she has her podcast by the same name but she’s so dynamic so confident so delightful and so bold – is really exploring the 43% of ADHDers who experience excellent mental health and particularly looking at women with ADHD. I hope you will join me for that and that you have a delicious week ahead.…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

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World Kindness Day Special: Be Kinder to Your Extra Sensitive Nervous System 13:44

vor 10 Tagen13:44

13:44

Be Kinder to Your Extra Sensitive Nervous System: Episode 84 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast Struggling to show yourself the same kindness you’d give others? If you have ADHD, autism, or trauma, your nervous system needs extra care—not extra pressure. This episode explores why self-compassion is essential for neurodivergent and trauma survivors—and how to practice it daily. Topics covered: Recognizing when you’re pushing yourself too hard (like working until 3am) Understanding your extra sensitive nervous system The 20,000 negative messages statistic and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) Reparenting yourself with tenderness The Feel, Love, Heal framework for self-acceptance Befriending your body and mind as they are right now Connecting with neurodivergent community Resources mentioned: Workshop at The Yoga Root (Feb 15) - theyogaroot.org Sole to Soul Circle membership (from €8/month) EFT tap-along for RSD (bonus content) Free resources at selfcarecoaching.net Book: 365 Ways to Feel Better You deserve tenderness. You deserved more than you had. Let yourself grieve while you heal. 📧 eve@selfcarecoaching.net 🌐 selfcarecoaching.net #ADHD #Autism #AuDHD #SelfCompassion #TraumaHealing #Neurodivergent #RSD #SelfCare #WorldKindnessDay CHAPTERS (0:00–0:33) Why it’s still so hard to be kind to ourselves (0:38–1:26) Discovering autism and learning to slow down (1:26–3:00) Overworking, late nights, and holding yourself accountable for rest (3:08–4:16) Understanding ADHD, emotional pain, and rejection sensitivity (4:16–5:41) Reparenting yourself and honouring what you’ve survived (5:48–7:04) Working gently with childhood memories and self-compassion (7:10–8:14) Befriending your changing body and mind (8:21–9:17) Finding connection and support within neurodivergent communities (9:40–10:27) Accepting yourself and allowing healing (10:27–11:00) Expressing your needs without apology (11:07–12:09) You deserve tenderness and kindness (12:09–13:31) Grieving what you didn’t have and helping build a kinder world LINKS Love Yourself. Warts and All: I Swear inspired Episode 82 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/emoPrbHbc2M?si=HIP2MEp0QaD-E1Mt Shadow Work with Black Cats and Sharks: Episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/OudSMFHNDEo Be More Cat: Episode 70 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/ZJQTjy372GY Love your inner Smelly Cat this Bealtaine and beyond Episode 56 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/daQopL3K7BY Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! Episode 48 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://youtu.be/atAcj0HtD6U FULL TRANSCRIPT Are you still struggling to be even a fraction as kind to yourself as you would be to anyone else, especially if you knew their trauma history or how much they struggle with ADHD AuDHD autism symptoms? This episode is to, as all of the episodes, helping people with trauma, ADHD AuDHD take better care of yourself, create a life you don’t need to retreat from and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved. So this is episode 84 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and I’m still in the early stages of processing the fact that I have autism as well as ADHD and again it’s making so much more sense of my nearly 50 years on the planet and having to be extra gentle with myself. I was kind of crying every day for a couple of weeks there and other stuff going on but recognising it even though all my work is about amping up the self-care and protecting the trauma survivor and neurodivergent extra sensitive nervous system, realising I was still trying to do way too much and really recognising that’s not friendly, that’s not kind. Even a little thing, like I worked weekends for many, many years. I’ve been self-employed for 21 years but for more than half of that I was constantly doing additional trainings and getting different certifications and so many additional things. When I started giving myself weekends off (apart from if I’m facilitating a workshop or at a conference or something) it has translated into often working really late on a Friday night in order to have the Saturday and Sunday off. The last few weeks, with everything going on it’s been like kind of till 1am, 3am. And that’s not kind to myself. That’s not helping in terms of the ADHD medication. It’s not. If anyone were saying that their boss was making them do that, I love my work so there’s that but also it’s not sustainable. I’m saying it here to keep myself accountable but if I don’t finish by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock at the very, very, very latest I will get up early on a Saturday to do some because it’s better to have it on a Saturday or Sunday than to be becoming a routine late late late. You might have other things, I mean for me I think it is the over scheduling that is the biggest thing in terms of my nervous system and also really, really, really having to be gentle with myself. I’m gaining more understanding about ADHD medication having an impact on things like the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and how, apparently, our pain threshold which is pretty high with ADHD goes down. Neuroscience shows that emotional pain registers in a similar way, in the same way on brain scans, as physical pain. Rather than telling ourselves we shouldn’t care or that we’re too sensitive or anything like that, just recognising we do care, it does hurt. 2025 is an advanced practice living through everything that’s going on, I’m not going to even name the horrors, natural disasters, human inflicted horrors. But it’s a lot for any nervous system. Just recognising having to be extra tender with yourself so that’s the Feel part, let yourself feel, give yourself permission to self-regulate, give yourself permission to recognise the pain and the grief involved in learning these skills that seem to come so effortlessly to other people (although they probably don’t). Giving yourself permission to reparent yourself, imagining having grown up without all the trauma you’ve survived, imagine growing up in a world in which your autism, your ADHD was supported. And your gifts were nourished and nurtured. And you were not made to feel wrong. There’s that statistic that is still kind of playing on my mind from that 2024 study that was cited in Additude magazine around ADHD children receiving 20,000 more negative messages than neurotypical children by the age of 10. It really helps me recognise of course so many of us have RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. Of course so many of us struggle with lots of things and letting ourselves laugh at ourselves as well, I regularly laugh at myself, have humour around it but honour the struggles, give yourself time to reparent yourself, let something emerge in terms of any memory that feels okay to work with. Recognising again this is a podcast. You’re not a one-to-one client of mine. You need to take responsibility for what you’re choosing to work with. But something that springs to mind, something, any memory that might be painful from childhood from any earlier time in your life and imagining how you could have been held better, how you could have been protected, how you could have, if not protected, then helped to understand the grief, the loss, the trauma, the symptom. And how the wider world isn’t set up and that’s not your fault and you’re not responsible for the emotional labour involved. Although I hope you enjoyed the I Swear episode, Episode 82 a couple weeks ago. Recognise that. Feel free to email eve@selfcarecoaching.net if you want to share how you’re being extra gentle with that younger part of yourself. Even acknowledging what you, with 2025 hindsight and all the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years, would do differently to help younger you. Beginning the healing process there. And there are other tools and techniques obviously. For the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, accept yourself exactly as you are right now. Befriend that changing body and mind as you learn more and more about yourself. I’m facilitating a workshop at The Yoga Root which you can find out more about at theyogaroot.org on the 15th so there’s still time for you to book for that and it’s going to incorporate yoga, image work, special yoga nidra, EFT tapping, all sorts just helping people, myself included, stop arguing with reality. You often find it with injury or with illness rather than recognising, “OK this is where my body is right now, this is what I need in this moment, this is where my nervous system is right now, this is where my energy, this is where my chi, my prana is right now, this is what I need.” It’s like, “Aghhh, I should be able to ____” and that’s just adding the suffering instead of just recognising pain as part of life, suffering doesn’t have to be as torturous as we often make it. Ask yourself what it would take for you to befriend your body and mind exactly as you are right now. Your soul? Your heart? What do you need from yourself? How can you accept yourself more fully? And as we move to the Heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, how can you connect with others? I cannot tell you how beneficial it has been for me recognising first of all how many of my loved ones are already neurodivergent and more and more of us discovering that about each other but becoming part of professional and personal groups where we learn from each other. Where we learn about things that work and haven’t worked for us. Just being able to laugh with each other about some of the horrors as well as support each other through some of the things that other people might not even attempt to pull off because we’re all used to that spiky profile by now. That kind of being really good at some things and terrible at others. You are also very welcome to apply to join the Sole to Soul Circle and that’s from as little as €8 a month and tomorrow’s special bonus deeper dive content will be an EFT tap along that will help with the RSD, that will help you when you’re rejecting yourself because that’s the most unkind thing. And it’s World Kindness Day this week so accept yourself. Let yourself heal. Grieve what you didn’t have and be gentle with yourself. Recognise it has been tough, it is tough and it can get easier. The more you design your life to accommodate yourself, the more you ask for what you need the better. And next week it’s World Vegan Month and next week we’ll be talking a bit more about expressing your needs and wants. For me, I find eating out still quite challenging but I have found many, many workarounds in terms of both being vegan and anaphylactic allergy to bell peppers which is in so many vegan dishes. But just noticing in terms again of that acceptance and that sometimes it’s easy to ask for what you need and want, easy to acknowledge you have additional needs, special needs in whatever area and other times it’s that kind of, “Oh I’m being awkward” and I hope that next week’s episode will help you with that. Thank you for listening, watching, you can find the full transcript and links in the show note wherever you’re listening or at selfcarecoaching.net looking at the blog, the latest blog episode and you can also find out more about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and ways in which you can work with me including joining the Sole to Soul Circle and there are also loads and loads of free resources, libraries around self-care for anxiety, trauma, menopause, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding more purpose, meaning and joy, all sorts so I hope you find that helpful, I hope you find this episode helpful but most of all I really hope you’ll continue even if it doesn’t come easily, even if you’ve had a lifetime of being told that you’re being difficult or too much or not enough or too sensitive that you will get in the habit of giving yourself a hug, even literally a physical hug and like rubbing yourself like you would a toddler or like you would a kitten, you can listen to all the rescue cat related episodes as well, there’ll be links in the show notes but you deserve tenderness, you deserve kindness, you deserve and you deserved more than you had. Let yourself grieve how life might have been different as you also help heal yourself and turn that into helping to build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved wherever they happen to be born, whoever they happen to be born to, whatever conditions they happen to be born with, whatever they survive, what we’re doing for ourselves, it’s not just self-indulgent, it helps ripple out. Please share if you think this will be helpful for someone you know or your wider community and if you feel like it and feel free to leave a five-star review or email me with any comments, any feedback and any questions at eve at selfcarecoaching.net and again you can find all those resources at selfcarecoaching.net so being extra gentle with yourself, I look forward to sharing more next week.…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

1
Community as Self Care (with Elizabeth Potts) 28:59

vor 17 Tagen28:59

28:59

Menopause? Perimenopause? Post menopause? A new diagnosis, illness or injury? Any kind of transition? Join me at the Yoga Root on Saturday 15th November at 1pm for a special workshop: Befriending your Changing Body and Mind Watch here Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham, and welcome to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. This week we’re talking about why it’s often easier to hold space for others than to let ourselves be held. I’m joined by Elizabeth Potts, one of my favourite yoga teachers from The Yoga Root in Westport. We explore what it means to create authentic, nourishing spaces—and how to give ourselves grace when we’re struggling to receive care, even when we desperately need it. If you’ve ever found yourself crying with gratitude in a yoga class, or wondering why self-care feels so hard when caring for others comes naturally, this conversation is for you. New episodes every Tuesday morning (Ireland time). Subscribe for notifications. Join the Sole to Soul Circle for deeper dives including bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices and meditations, journal prompts and more. Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please share and leave a ★★★★★ rating and review. Your support helps me reach more trauma survivors and people with ADHD or AuDHD. Learning to care for, love and accept yourself is a radical act. Your healing creates ripples and helps others remember peace and ease is everyone’s birthright too. Míle buíochas (a thousand thank yous). CHAPTERS (2:40–3:45) Why it’s easier to hold space for others than to be held ourselves (6:56–8:37) Teaching with authenticity and not performing on the mat (9:00–10:53) Creativity as self-care through art, pottery, and connection with her daughter (11:14–13:29) Finding calm and grounding through breath when there’s no bandwidth (13:38–15:52) The mindful morning coffee ritual as an anchor through transition (17:35–19:24) The practice of returning to yourself and allowing imperfection (21:06–24:57) The need for community support and rebuilding the metaphorical village LINKS Peace Begins at Home (with Gina Miltiadou): Episode 81 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast FULL TRANSCRIPT And I was delighted when you did. I remember you made amazing, was it vegan lemon poppy seed cake when I did a workshop there for you? Oh yeah, yeah. And it’s just that I didn’t know you but it just made me feel so again held and welcome, but I think that’s partly why I felt a bit tearful, now I can drive, now I can be there, like enjoy and just the vision, like how integral it is to Westport, how like it’s just so lovely that it’s taken root and it’s really gorgeous. Yeah, it really is special, it really is special and I think you can really feel, you know, the intention and the love and the work that’s gone into us, you know, and to make you a really authentic space is what it is, you know, if you come to my class or Derrick’s or, you know, our other teachers, all very unique classes, very different styles of teaching, but yeah, all very authentic, very much us, you know, so you would never catch me floating off the mat. Hi, you’re listening to episode 83 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I’m your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and I’m here to help people with trauma, ADHD, AuDHD, take better care of yourselves, create a life you don’t need to retreat from, and help build a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome, and loved, able to thrive. You can access full show notes, the transcript, links, and loads of other resources through thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and selfcarecoaching.net, and I really hope you enjoy my interview with the delightful Elizabeth Potts. She’s one of my favourite yoga teachers, and I really look forward to hearing your comments and questions, and what you’re going to do to give yourself as much grace as possible as you build community that is nourishing and supportive for yourself, as well as for others. Enjoy. Welcome Elizabeth Potts, thank you so much for joining me. As a little bit of background, today’s episode is kind of like why it’s sometimes so much easier to hold space for others than it is to allow ourselves to be held and cared for, and I know, like, I adore the work I do, and I struggle to relax into other people’s space-holding, trauma, ADHD, all the rest of it, and when I joined The Yoga Root a couple months ago now, I think, because I only learned to drive, so I knew you a little bit, I knew Derrick, but your first class I attended, I nearly wept with gratitude. Seriously, I cannot tell you just how amazing that space felt, and how I hadn’t realised how much I needed it, I hadn’t, like, and I’ve been just going to as many classes as I can, just absolutely loving it, but I wanted to thank you for being here, and to also ask you to introduce yourself, say what you do, I’ve kind of launched in. Thank you. Where can people find you? Yeah, so I’m teaching out of The Yoga Root almost every day, and yoga teacher slash mother slash all around everything, so I’m busy, but I really love the work that I do, you said you’re really passionate about your work, and what you said is why I really love the work that I do, because it’s a very connected type of work, you know, I’m not just sitting and pushing buttons, or something like that, but I’m actually, you know, feeling like the push and pull between my students, my inner, my inner self, as I’m teaching, as I’m practising, and teaching has become very much a part of my personal yoga practice as well. The Yoga Root, we’ve been open five years now, and it has been just an amazing space to come into with Derrick and Conor, the owners, and to kind of create this community here that me and Derrick really wanted as teachers previously, who were kind of teaching around at all different places, we really wanted a space that was warm, and ours, and developed, you know, into something that could really nurture people, and so yeah, I feel like we’ve really been able to create that over the years. Yeah, I remember, so I met Derrick, I covered one of his classes when I first moved to Ireland in 2019, and I was in a studio rental, it was this teeny tiny, like a friend called it a glorified shed, and I had a cupboard, and like not a proper bed, and Rainbow, my cat, was basically, she was so traumatised by the journeys, and all the moves, and the first time I ever met Derrick, he went straight over to my bed to talk to Rainbow, and he was like, I’d mentioned Rainbow to everyone who’d been there, but he was like the first person who made a beeline for her, and it was just like, I remember him saying about wanting to create this space, and being delighted when you did, I remember you made amazing, was it vegan lemon poppy seed cake? When I did a workshop there a few years ago, and it’s just like, I didn’t know you, but it just made me feel so, again, held, and welcomed, but I think that’s partly why I felt a bit tearful, now I can drive, now I can be there, like enjoy classes, and just the vision, like how integral it is to Westport, how like, it’s just so lovely that it’s taken root, and it, yeah, I’m feeling a bit tearful today, it’s really gorgeous. Yeah, it really is special, it really is special, and I think you can really feel, you know, the intention, and the love, and the work that’s gone into us, you know, into making a really authentic space, is what it is, you know, if you come to my class, or Derrick’s, or you know, our other teachers, all very unique classes, very different styles of teaching, but yeah, all very authentic, very much us, you know, so you would never catch me floating off the mat, I’m definitely, yeah, a real kind of connection person, yeah, so if I’m having a bad day, you know, I like to kind of let people know that, hey, you know, I’m tired too, I’m there with you, you know, and let’s, let’s move, and because I honestly believe that stepping onto your mat, just stepping onto it, is enough action, yeah, to help you through. Yeah, whatever’s going on, so, and also by not arguing with reality, by acknowledging that you’re tired, rather than trying to perform, right, I mean, you’ve just explained why your classes are, you’re one of my all-time favourite teachers, and it is that kind of, rather than, “I’m going to plough through, I’m going to…” it’s like, yeah, no, everyone is struggling, everyone is suffering, and everyone is joyful, everyone, like, it’s all of it. It’s well, yeah, we have all the things, yeah, and yeah, being on your mat, doing your practice, you know, like, it’s, it’s meant to be a very personal thing, and so if you’re, you know, feeling like you have to perform, it’s hard to be in your personal space, so, yeah. In terms of my Feel. Love. Heal. framework, so the Feel bit is the active self-care, when you’ve got the energy, the bandwidth to do something that might help you feel better, regulate your nervous system, whatever that might be, what would be your ideal, and what is realistic with life, hectic life? I’d be a very creative type of person, you know, so ideally, I would be every day doing some bit of art, yeah, I take watercolour classes from one of my students, I take pottery classes with one of my friends. It’s a really good way of kind of exploring my mind, and my feelings, and stuff like that, through creating something tangible in front of me, so ideally, I’d be doing that all the time. But of course, child care really comes into play a lot, so creatively, you know, if I can’t go to a class, if I can’t do something like this, journaling, and creating something in front of me that way is very good, watercolour is very good for that as well, because it’s just a small kit, you can just pop open anywhere, you know. But also, with Ophelia, my daughter, you know, creating things with her, right, so we would bake together, or we really, really like going on little walks, and she makes these little collections, she calls her lections, and we bring back the lections to make art projects, so we would make a little nature scene, or something like that, and it kind of helps me to be in my body and creative while also doing the mommy thing, you know, so yeah, it’s a doable little bit of self-care, you know. So you have the being held with the yoga student, who’s also your art teacher, or the pottery teacher, and then you’re also sharing that and connecting with your gorgeous daughter, and yeah, that’s, oh, that’s so lovely. What about when you don’t have the bandwidth? When you, like, I call it Love, and like thinking of the love archetype, so ideal world, when you know you don’t need to do a thing, you’re already whole, you’re already perfect, there’s no need to improve anything, but giving yourself grace when that’s too hard, and you need to do something, like distract, but yeah, that connection with that uppercase Self, that like highest, truest, wisest, most miraculous part of yourself. Would you say anything there? On like a very small level, when I have no bandwidth, and that could happen a lot, I find like just breath work does a lot for me. Even if, you know, I have a lot going on, I’m stressing out, and I find myself in that moment going, you know, holding my breath, and holding that tension, and everything like that, the simple act of, I like to think it’s just this little reset, going from everything’s falling apart, everything’s falling apart, to being like, OK, stop. Actually, this is what’s going on, you know, it’s kind of a way for me to reset my mind, because I would have struggled a lot in my past with anxiety, and depression. And it’s easy, especially when that’s kind of in your history, to slip back into those things, you know, it can kind of creep up on you. In my yoga practice, you know, that’s been immensely helpful in that way, because it’s brought me into the space of really noticing small things like my shoulders tensing up my neck getting tight, things like that, where you’re just like, you know, but realise you’re like, Oh, no, this is me taking on this big held breath. Yeah, you know, and in the very small short span of time, that breath out, can actually do a lot to say, I’m OK. In this moment, I’m OK, it’s OK, you know, and I can take this next step forward. I like to start my mornings, I started doing this, I’m only a single mom this year. So it’s been a huge transition. And that transition was also kind of in one of the worst ways that could happen. So dealing with, like the emotional fallout of this shocking event in my life, something I just did not expect to happen, but also didn’t expect to, you know, have a daughter in this position either, you know, and so I started just first thing in the morning, setting up Ophelia with her breakfast and whatever else, and, you know, kind of getting her into a little tucked spot. And then making my coffee and I come sit in my bed. I open the window and I stare at this plant. And at this window. And I just give myself to the end of that cup of coffee. And I mean, that’s a big goal when you have a five year old. A whole cup of coffee. Yeah. But I give myself, I’m going to drink my cup of coffee, even if I wake up late. Yeah. Even if I haven’t slept all night, and really, I could sleep 10 more minutes or whatever, it’s become such an important, important part of my routine to sit and mindfully drink my cup of coffee. And I say mindfully, as in I’m not scrolling my phone. I’m not planning my day. I’m noticing the things that are popping up in my head, and then practising not judging myself for that. Yeah, because it will pop up, you only have 20 minutes to do you only and you need to get it ready and you need to get out the door and you need to plan your class and you’d sit, you know, and noticing all that bubbling up. And then I’m just drinking my coffee. I’m just looking at the leaves. I’m just looking out the window. You know, it’s been an incredibly powerful, small practice in my life, to the point where I cannot start my day without it. It’s so important to me. It’s fantastic. That is so lovely. And I also really appreciate you sharing the struggle with it. Like I imagine it’s again, like when you’re teaching yoga, and everyone looks so serene, but you also know from your own practice, that serene people can be feeling really struggly underneath. Yes. Yes. I noticed like with the classes, because I hadn’t been to classes for so long. And also now knowing I have autism and ADHD and the sensory issues that I just didn’t understand, as well as the trauma. When I started going to classes in London, and I did my training in London, and there’d be like someone’s foot in your nose, and I’d just be like, and I just thought like, why am I so sensitive? What’s wrong with me? And like, it would be an empty class, and someone would come right next to me. Whereas training in trauma-informed yoga, doing all the things, all the work I’ve done over the decades, but then in these classes recently, putting on my eye mask and lying down before the class begins. And I never have dreamed of doing that. And I’ll always be on one of the edges. But it’s like, sometimes it’s like, I’m just telling myself, “It’s OK, Evie Cat, you’re safe. It’s OK.” It’s like, it’s such a gorgeous, safe, nourishing, phenomenal space. And I’m still at nearly 50, having to talk so gently to myself, because it’s like you have those moments of complete ease and connection and peace, and then the fear or the rush or the whatever it is. And I think people don’t understand that about meditation or about anything like that. It’s the practice, the constantly bringing yourself back. Absolutely, it is exactly that. That’s why you call it a practice. Yeah, it’s always a practice. It’s never a mastery of, you know, because, I mean, this is something that I’ve worked for years and years and years and years to be able to come into a chaotic situation and read myself, simply read myself, has taken so many years. And it’s very normal for students to step into the room. And we come in with expectations, you know, on ourselves, expecting what other people are going to think as I move expecting what the teacher is going to think when she watches me, you know, and the same with the teacher, you know, looking out, and you come in with these expectations of what people are going to want out of this class. And that took years to say, this is what I offer. This is what it is. And that’s OK. And that’s enough. And that’s worthwhile. Yeah, you know, and the same as the student coming in putting on your eye mask, that is enough. And that is worthwhile. That is an offering as much to yourself as it is to the teacher and the other people around you because you are taking your practice personally. And that is the very core of what we’re trying to practice is taking care of ourselves so that our stability, wellness, realness can reverberate out. Yeah, you know, to the bigger Self. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m also thinking you’re talking about that coffee being so important. And little Ophelia is well trained in terms of letting mommy drink her coffee in peace? Definitely not. She comes in 150 times. And I and I’m like, “Ophelia, thank you so much for telling me that you know what, I’m just gonna finish my coffee. And then I’m gonna come out to you or whatever...” And a lot of times that’s her rolling in my lap. And I felt like if she comes and she wants to play and be on me, I will set my coffee aside. And I will focus on this in the moment right here. And then say, OK, why don’t you go brush your teeth? I’m gonna finish my coffee, you know, and really, really just making that effort to try just to try and I mean, most mornings, I don’t get my entire cup of coffee, but I do get, you know, the mental entire cup of coffee. Because even if I get two minutes, yeah, I’m gonna look, I’m gonna look out that window, I’m gonna sit this and feel the hot coffee on my tongue. Yeah, and know that I’m starting to stay. OK, I’m OK in this moment. And it would be like, I mean, what you’re doing there, they’re not arguing with reality. They’re like, Hello, I’m gonna rather than I’m going to stay completely focused on my coffee. And you’re like, it makes it all punitive. Exactly. You’re missing the whole point. You’ve mentioned like the pottery classes, the art classes, obviously, the community at The Yoga Root, in terms of the Heal element of my framework, that kind of post traumatic growth, the co-regulation, the collective care, what helps you and what would you like others to know or consider? It helps me a lot, talking to other people, I’m not a very private person, you know, I think, you know, I’ve always really liked working through problems with others, you know, I’m very community driven. I have, you know, friends, or, you know, I might call home, you know, I talk a lot to my mom, who is retired now, and she has like, the time for me, you know, to go through my little thoughts, but I do like to kind of pick apart. But what I crave, what I feel is missing a lot here is like that village feel, mm hmm. You know, and it’s, and it’s not like Ireland and Westport, it’s our society in 2025. You know, we’re very focused on our own lives, our own stuff, our own things. And it’s like, we kind of...…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

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Love Yourself. Warts and All. I Swear Inspired Episode 24:32

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24:32

Inspired by the stunning film “I Swear” about living with Tourette’s, this episode explores why self-compassion is so difficult, especially with trauma, ADHD and AuDHD (autism and ADHD). Discover how acceptance and love can transform shame into advocacy, and learn practical ways to be gentler with yourself. Using my Feel. Love. Heal framework, I (trauma therapist, ADHDer, only recently recognised AuDHDer - brand new emotional rollercoaster - senior accredited supervisor, Self care coach, author and columnist, Eve Menezes Cunningham) share some self-care ideas the film inspired. You deserve the same compassion you give others. Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please leave a ***** rating and review for this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed. Your sharing, subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and ADHD or AuDHD (autism and ADHD). You learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you – it creates a ripple effect and helps others. My ultimate dream, in a world in which SO much is coming up for healing and so many people are unsafe, is to do my part to help as many people as possible heal from trauma. To help create a world in which everyone everywhere feels safe, welcome and loved - able to thrive. CHAPTERS 0:00 Why it’s so hard to have compassion for ourselves 1:10 Understanding ourselves through trauma and neurodivergence 5:11 Using the Feel. Love. Heal. framework 10:25 Learning to help ourselves heal 14:18 Creating a world where everyone feels safe and loved 18:22 Healing through connection and community 21:11 The ripple effect of healing and hope RESOURCES Cattitude: Purr! Hiss! Freeze! Episode 48 of The Feel Better Every Day Podcast Be More Cat: Episode 70 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast Shadow Work with Black Cats and Sharks: Episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast https://selfcarecoaching.net/2023/08/07/cattitude-familiars-and-polyvagal-theory/ https://selfcarecoaching.net/2022/10/19/cattitude-life-lessons-from-my-first-9-years-on-earth/ https://selfcarecoaching.net/feline/ https://selfcarecoaching.net/2021/02/17/bring-more-cattitude-to-the-way-you-move/ https://selfcarecoaching.net/2019/09/30/cat-coaching-for-self-care-3-cattitude/ FULL TRANSCRIPT Why is it so hard to have the kind of compassion and empathy and understanding we so often find so easy to direct towards anyone else, towards ourselves, especially with trauma histories, with ADHD, with ADHD, with autism? Why? This episode, 82 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast is inspired by the phenomenal film I Swear, based on John Davidson’s memoir about living with Tourette’s and becoming an advocate. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m a trauma therapist, trauma survivor, ADHDer. Now I’ve heard about the AuDHD, learning more about the autism, that the ADHD medication, it’s a learning curve. It’s a lot. And it’s also helpful, the more we understand ourselves, the better. I’m a self-care coach, senior accredited supervisor, author, columnist, you can access more information about the Sole to Soul Circle, the book, full show notes and transcripts and links at selfcarecoaching.net and also thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I release new episodes every Tuesday, helping people with trauma, ADHD and AuDHD, take better care of yourself, create a life you don’t need to retreat from and help create a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved, able to thrive. And again, back to this amazing film, it’s just so phenomenal. I recognised an enormous, so sorry, I’ve just skipped ahead an enormous amount. I Swear, I’m recording it, it’s out in cinemas at the moment in Ireland. It might be out on one of the streaming services or still in the cinema by the time you see this in a few weeks. His memoir is available, John Davidson. I sobbed, I howled with laughter, I was shouting at the TV, not the TV, the big screen. It was amazing. I had to leave the cinema at one point and I wanted to leave at other points with the brutality of what he was having to deal with. And the film shows this young, confident football enthusiast lad starting high school and then developing Tourette’s. So you see him go from confident and like asking a girl out on his first day of school and being like told that a scout is going to watch the football game and then he begins to develop the tics and the outbursts. I recognised a lot of the impulsivity and self-loathing and also the enormous potential for healing through compassion. But seeing it on the big screen, so visible, so desperate to just give him an enormous hug and move him away from all that pain, that kind of wishing that everyone could see this film and have more compassion for themselves and the differences they struggle with, whether to do with Tourette’s or any kind of physical or mental condition or emotional or any kind of difference. Like you think about the way people are othering immigrants, refugees, people from other backgrounds, all sorts of gender. It’s incredible how this young man was able to turn so much pain into advocacy for so many people who needed that support and that understanding. And through doing that, he found more for himself. It’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I wasn’t the only one sobbing in the cinema. And I think it’s, I can’t remember the last time a film ended and everyone just sat there. And one of the people I’ve been telling, watch this film, said, now when you do the podcast, don’t give the ending away, don’t give too much away. So I’m going to try and avoid spoilers. But it’s based on his true story. We know he survives. We know he wrote a memoir. We know he told the Queen to fuck off when he got to meet the Queen. They’re not spoilers. They’re all from the very beginning. Using the Feel. Love. Heal. framework to move through some of the lessons from, I Swear, this gorgeous, gorgeous film. The Feel element of the framework I developed, it’s very much about the active self-care when you have the bandwidth to do things, to help yourself regulate, to help yourself feel better. And he got to the stage where he was able to research Tourette’s as someone with the lived condition. But it took a long time for him to get there because unfortunately, when the symptoms appeared, his parents were not in a place where they could support him. Instead, they contributed to the shame and the pain and the horror of his young life, which he tried to end at a very early age. And luckily, he survived. And also, very luckily, when he was a bit older, he meets the friend’s mother, an old school friend’s mother, who they all think is dying and she has six months to live. He kind of has an outburst saying something like, “Ha ha, you’re going to die!” something deeply inappropriate. It was laugh out loud. It was so funny in parts, and so horrendous, and so relatable in so many ways, because all of us have shame, have fear, have embarrassment, have things we worry about being too much, saying too much, moving weirdly, all sorts of things. He had no control over it. And he learned to live with it. He learned to advocate for others. But that was through his friend’s mother being the first person really to see him and to accept him and to help him begin to understand himself and come off the horrendous medication and work with life, stop arguing with reality, like kind of they all made mistakes, like everyone’s human. But her attitude, so accepting, so loving, it kind of takes me then to the love element of the framework. But she was active. It was very active, her inviting this stranger into her home, telling her husband and her son, who was his friend, that she had invited him to stay. She recognised that things were tough for him at his home. And her argument for doing so much to help him was she only had six months to live. He begins to find acceptance through, for the first time in his life, being accepted, being told to not apologise for anything he can’t help. And he’s had a lifetime of brutal, brutal punishments for things he can’t help, which, of course, we know would trigger a stress response, which would make it much more likely that these outbursts, that these tics would become more amplified, because he’s then terrified. He’s in a sympathetic survival response, “Hiss!” in terms of the Cattitude [Polyvagal Purrs] way of explaining polyvagal theory. You can find links to the episodes around that in the show notes. It’s so obvious that, had the grown-ups, even not understanding about Tourette’s, just having a bit more care and compassion for a young boy in pain, how different his life could have been, and how he’s able to recognise that he might not have done any differently if he’d been in one of the different positions. I’m a little bit all over the place. I’ve been so excited about sharing this film recommendation, because it is so beautiful. But my encouragement for you, whatever you’re facing, whatever you’re struggling to accept in yourself, research. When I was first diagnosed with endometriosis when I was in my 20s, I had daily pain, and I’d had endless hospital appointments and intrusive tests, and they triggered flashbacks from childhood and trauma, blah, blah, blah. It was horrific. But I remember seeing a picture of what happened with endometriosis, like the cells. I remember actually throwing up. I was utterly repulsed by what was going on in my body. Having surgery, but that not working, like being told I’d have to have surgery every couple of years, having that chronic pain for so long, but being determined that I was going to, like I started yoga because certain poses helped. I trained as a crystal therapist because they helped, and where hospital prescribed painkillers didn’t. I’m a huge fan of modern medicine, but I had to learn to help myself. So I really identified with that part of John’s journey, where he gets a job and his boss tells him that he needs to educate the police, he needs to educate the teachers, he needs to educate the public to help them understand. I wanted to scream, why does HE have to do the emotional labour? Why can’t people be kinder? Why can’t people just be more understanding and nicer? While also accepting I would probably have moved away from him on a crowded train, given a chance, because I’d have probably been scared! I understand more about it now. I hope now I may be putting my loopy earplugs, but smile, or it’s just there are so many opportunities all of us have every day, where we can show that little bit more compassion to someone and to ourselves. Moving to that Love part of the framework, the acceptance that you are part of the divine, you’re part of nature, there’s no need to improve anything, there’s no need to change anything. But sometimes love and acceptance can be the hardest thing in the world, when you’ve not been raised with love and acceptance, when you’ve been criticised, when you’ve, he was forced to face the fireplace, because he couldn’t help spitting when he ate, and the outbursts at dinner. And like, oh, so many, so many, so many things. And self-love, self-acceptance is hard. I’m a little bit embarrassed sharing this. But the last time I had a verruca, I was repulsed, just like with the picture of the endometriosis. With that, I put crystals around a big crystal to just help me send some love, some compassion to the ovaries, to the areas impacted by the endometriosis. I couldn’t look at something like the pictures, the microscopic amplified but I knew that that wasn’t going to help with the pain. I knew it was just going to make everything worse. I had to learn to accept it and love it in order to transform it, in order to help heal myself. The last time I had a verruca, I did my best every day when applying the treatment to send it love, to say to myself, and this was like not 100 years ago, I’ve been doing this work for a long, long time. But I was saying to myself, “I love myself, warts and all.” And “Ewwww.” It’s holding the part of me that goes, oh, that’s gross. And also, yeah, I am way more loving, way less self loathing towards myself than I used to be. It’s a practice. Ask yourself, what would you do in any given situation if you loved yourself more? Like what would a person who did love themselves do in a situation you might be in? Love is transformative. It is so powerful. This woman, Dottie, his friend’s mum, she changed his life and she changed the world by changing his life, by having compassion for a complete stranger. And that brings us to the Heal part of the framework. Dottie got him a job. He got the job, but Dottie helped open the doors. Tommy, his boss, was really understanding with the elements he couldn’t control. And he was a hard worker. He was reliable. He did amazing things, but so many people wouldn’t give him a chance before. So many people just judged and punished and hurt. And it was just horrendous. And just thinking, I would love to live in a world in which everyone was safe, welcome, loved and able to thrive. Like all of us are mammals. All of us have a nervous system that is wired to thrive when we’re safe, welcome and loved. And yet we keep hurting each other. We keep perpetuating trauma. We keep hurting ourselves when we’ve been traumatised. We’ve learned at some level that it’s safer to hurt ourselves to hopefully avoid pain from outside. But we can all do our part to heal that, to move towards post-traumatic growth with ADHD, with ADHD, with autism, with any kind of neurodivergence, with any kind of difference, to embrace it as much as you can, to love it as much as you can. Speak up when other people are hurting other people. One of the hardest scenes for me, I don’t think I’m giving anything away. I don’t think it’s too big a spoiler, but it was when he was at school and there was a fight in the playground and most of the school was out yelling, “Fight, fight, fight.” I remembered one of the many schools I went to and every time that would happen there, I would kind of go in the opposite direction, trying to find somewhere quiet and like just feeling despair for the state of humanity that two people or more were having some sort of physical altercation. And rather than being helped to resolve it, most people were encouraging the violence. And I still find that really hard now. And now I understand more about my brain, more about myself. I can be gentler with myself around it. But where you are able to speak out against any kind of bullying, any kind of othering and including the bullying parts of yourself, the things that you’ve grown up criticising, being really harsh to yourself around, catch yourself and find that bully part of yourself as well as that bullied part of yourself and just send them as much love as you can. Think of what you could potentially do. Mentally scan your life, the people you know. I’m not suggesting you take someone you barely know in off the street and pretty much adopt them as a young man and help them transform their lives. But think of how we do heal, we co-regulate in order to heal. We’re mammals, we need each other and we need to feel safe with each other. How can you make yourself feel safer? How can you help yourself feel safer? And how can you help someone else or a group of other people feel safer? I again don’t want to be giving spoilers, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, who am I kidding, it probably is a spoiler. He brings together a group of people with Tourette’s at a certain point in the film and most of them have never met anyone else with Tourette’s. They’re very isolated. We’re now in 2025. Through the internet, I know I’ve learnt so much about ADHD online, I’ve learnt so much about ADHD, autism, trauma recovery, like I began that part of my healing journey before the internet was so kind of big, so kind of used. A lot of that was through books and trainings and things like that. But we have the internet now, which is a wonderful, wonderful tool when used in a way that you choose and curated carefully and moving towards what is nourishing and supportive. Find people who you can help and who can help you build your communities, join your communities. In the Sole to Soul Circle this week, members tomorrow will be getting a special compassionate body scan, which I hope will be nourishing and delicious for you. You can join via selfcarecoaching.net. Next week, it’s a gorgeous interview I’ve done with one of my favourite yoga teachers, Elizabeth Potts, at the Yoga Root here in Westport. I’m really looking forward to sharing that with you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. You can find full transcripts and show notes and links and more at the blog selfcarecoaching.net and also at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. If this was helpful, please leave a five-star review. In a world in which so much is endlessly coming up for healing, I really want to reach as many people as possible with these episodes, with my work, to help as many people who are feeling unsafe to feel safer, to feel able to heal from trauma, to befriend their ADHD AuDHD brains, to help build a world where everyone feels safe, welcome and loved and able to thrive and to create lives that they don’t need to retreat from, to feel better every day. With trauma histories, with ADHD, with AuDHD, it can be challenging where there has been so much punishment, getting things wrong. Growing up, they say 20,000 times more criticised than a neurotypical child. The trauma of living in a world that isn’t built to support you, it takes a lot to connect with the parts that aren’t what they call superpowers, the more special needs elements, the sensory issues, the inability to function in certain situations, to overreact, to have meltdowns, all these things that are so painful. And those parts of you deserve love, they deserve care, they deserve acceptance, and you creating, designing a life you don’t need to retreat from, that is then going to have a ripple effect as you feel better, as you learn to take better care of yourself, it’s going to have a ripple effect on the world around you, contributing to a world in which others feel safer, more welcome, loved, able to thrive, and potentially I’m nearly 50 and I haven’t given up on the idea of world peace. Míle buíochas, a thousand thank yous, this episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. Be really, really gentle with yourself, if you haven’t seen the film, and if you’re anything like me, if you tend to cry in films, if you do get very engrossed and forget that it’s on a screen and not actually happening, although it was his...…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

1
Peace Begins at Home (with Gina Miltiadou) 29:19

vor 4 weeks29:19

29:19

Am so delighted to welcome the Peace Begins at Home Summit Director, Gina Miltiadou, for Episode 81 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Access full transcripts, links, show notes, and other resources at http://thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com The inaugural Peace Begins at Home Summit will take place on Wednesday, 29th October 2025 (and you can listen to the recordings for 30 days so don’t worry if you can’t make that day). At a time of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and lost hope, the Summit combines lived testimony, research, and practical solutions to reclaim a culture of partnership. Produced by the Center for Partnership Systems (CPS) and inspired by cultural historian Dr. Riane Eisler’s Partnership vs. Domination framework, the Summit reframes peace not as a distant ideal but as a systems challenge that begins where we live, love, and raise each other: In the home. Confirmed speakers include 26 leaders from 17 countries, among them: Dr. Riane Eisler – Holocaust survivor, cultural historian, systems scientist, and author of The Chalice and the Blade Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury – Former UN Under-Secretary-General and champion of the culture of peace Dr. Richard Davidson – World-renowned neuroscientist and TIME 100 honoree Ela Gandhi – Global peace activist, women’s rights advocate and granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi Gary Barker & Jackson Katz – International pioneers in reshaping masculinity Angela Sterritt – Award-winning investigative journalist and author, serving as MC Find out more and book at www.peacebeginsathomesummit.org CHAPTERS 0:00 Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the state of the world 2:08 Introducing Gina Miltiadou and the Peace Begins at Home Summit 2:53 The ripple effect of early trauma 4:10 Self-care when you’re near the finish line 5:41 Purpose as a form of self-care 7:07 Interconnectedness and hope 8:15 Dr. Riane Eisler’s domination to partnership framework 15:19 Peace begins at home 17:30 Turning pain into purpose 20:05 Stories of healing and collective care 25:16 Peace is personal Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get an exclusive deeper dive each week. Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please leave a ***** rating and review for this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed. Your subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD. You learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you – it creates a ripple effect and helps others. My ultimate dream, in a world in which SO much is coming up for healing and so many people are unsafe, is to do my part to help as many people as possible heal from trauma. To help create a world in which everyone everywhere feels safe, welcome and loved - able to thrive. CHAPTERS 0:00 Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the state of the world 2:08 Introducing Gina Miltiadou and the Peace Begins at Home Summit 2:53 The ripple effect of early trauma 4:10 Self-care when you’re near the finish line 5:41 Purpose as a form of self-care 7:07 Interconnectedness and hope 8:15 Dr. Riane Eisler’s domination to partnership framework 15:19 Peace begins at home 17:30 Turning pain into purpose 20:05 Stories of healing and collective care 25:16 Peace is personal DISCLAIMER The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. FULL TRANSCRIPT Do you ever feel overwhelmed and despairing at repeated patterns of horror endlessly perpetuated by humans, as if we never learn from the past? This episode’s for you. Feel Better Every Day. No, seriously. It’s easy to feel helpless and hopeless, to go into that dorsal vagal “Freeze!” response. To feel completely overwhelmed, disconnected. Today’s guest has some hope and inspiration for you. Episode 81, I’m delighted to welcome you to Gina Miltiadou. She is the director of the Peace Begins at Home Summit. I’ll be sharing our interview together. Welcome! You’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast (in spite of that gloomy intro). And I hope that you will find it helpful. Each Tuesday, I share new episodes, and they’re designed to help you work with the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed. Today’s episode is very much in that Heal part, the collective care element, the co-regulation, the systemic elements of we’re all connected. The better we take care of ourselves and each other, the better for everyone. You can find out more about the book, the podcast and older episodes and other free resources around trauma, ADHD, anxiety, sleep, menopause, being a solopreneur, all sorts of things, as well as ways in which we might work together, upcoming events, all of that at selfcarecoaching.net or the feelbettereverydaypodcast.com. For now, welcome, welcome, welcome to this special episode, which I hope will inspire you. So welcome, Gina. Thank you so much for joining me. And do you want to say a little bit about the summit and what you’re doing? Yes, of course. Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to have a chance to talk about this. But yes, I’m organising a global summit, which is happening on the 29th of October. And it is inspired by Dr. Riane Eisler’s work, which I’m sure we’ll talk more about later. But what it is doing, it’s gathering 26 speakers from 17 different countries around the world. And essentially, we’re examining how early trauma or care experienced in the home ripples out into society and all the systems that we live in. So that’s my current project. I love that so much. My membership is called the Sole to Soul Circle, like the soles of the feet to the soul. But it used to be called Personal Peace, because it was very much about the more where, OK, whether we’ve been raised in that caring environment, or whether we’ve healed that trauma, that then ripples out the intergenerational healing, all of it. That’s exactly it. Wonderful. I’m going to include a link in the show notes, but your summit takes place, this is going to go out on Tuesday. It’s going to be tomorrow, as far as people watching are concerned. It’s on the 29th of October. It’s the week after next. I got the dates wrong! I was like, quick, quick, I really want to include it. Oh, that’s okay. Yeah. Okay, so that’s fantastic. People have even more time to sort it out. Exactly, exactly. And the best place to register is just go to peacebeginsathomesummit.org and they can register online. So brilliant. And there’ll be a link in the show notes. Great. So you are very, very busy at the moment. Really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. How is your self care in terms of the feel part of my Feel. Love. Heal. framework? The kind of active self-care? What are your essential daily practices that you rely on or don’t have time for at the moment? Oh, goodness. Eve, I do not want to lie to you. I am 10 days away from the summit so my self-care is kind of non-existent at the moment. It is about just getting to the finish line at the moment. This has been a project that has been in the making for the whole year. And it’s wonderful that we’re kind of reaching the finish line. But you know, part of it is, just being gentle with myself and giving myself permission to almost not self-care, not guilting myself into, oh my God, I really should be minding myself better. I know that, but I actually just do not have the time. So I think it’s also just loving myself enough to kind of go, you know what, that’s okay. This is a season. It’s 10 days to go. You’re not getting as much sleep as you need. You’re not eating as well as you can, but that’s what needs to happen right now. So it’s the odd thing. I think getting outside and getting fresh air when I can has made a massive difference. Even just the little things like taking the dog for a walk or just watching a really stupid, mindless piece on Netflix has really helped as well. And I’m not going to lie, you know, chocolate and wine has also helped. Excellent. And I’m also thinking what you’re doing because it’s so meaningful. It’s different to if you were in a job you hated and the grind and like this just, we’ve only just met, but the purpose is a part of self care and like giving yourself grace. That’s gorgeous. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that’s the thing is because this has been so purpose led, it’s actually been easy to do. I mean, even though I really am exhausted, but I’m also so psyched about it and I’m so buzzed about it. And I think, you know, just meeting all of the different speakers and hearing their stories and just the, I suppose, the feeling that this is really going to make a difference at a time when people need it so, so badly. People want hope so badly is enough to keep me going because it’s just bigger than all of us. Yeah. That leads us beautifully into the Love part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed. Love. You don’t need to do a thing. You are already part of nature, part of the divine. You don’t need to be endlessly improving yourself and giving yourself grace, but also that sense of being part of something bigger, looking up at a mountain or being in the ocean or whatever it might be. And I wondered, would you like to say anything about some of the speakers? Yes, absolutely. And I think you’ve touched on something so beautiful and important there, the fact that we are all interconnected. And I think if people just realised that they would feel less lonely, they would feel that they could make a difference that every tiny little action does ripple out into the world. Because often we feel so helpless, you know, and we’re not, you know, even a tiny little thing can, can ripple out. I think, you know, one of the, one of the key foundations of the summit was, so with Dr. Riane Eisler, she’s an incredible woman. She is a Holocaust survivor. She’s 94, which is incredible and still doing keynotes, which just blows my mind. If I could be a fraction as spry as she is, but you know, even when I’m 80, I’d be doing well. But her whole thing, so she’s a systems scientist, she’s a cultural historian. She has consulted to the WHO, the UN, the World Economic Forum, etc. And she has spent her life developing this Domination to Partnership framework. And one of the things that she really wanted to do (I sit on her board as well), at the end of last year, she said, “Look, you know, it’s no surprise I’m running out of time here. I really want kind of like a last hurrah. And one of the things is, I want to connect the dots. I want to help people connect the dots between that early childhood kind of domination and what we’re seeing in the world today.” I suppose that speaks to that interconnectedness as well, and just helping people realise that they are part of something bigger. All of the speakers have been, you know, I’ve curated the program very, very carefully and very consciously in terms of what are all of the systems that that early kind of childhood experience ripples out into. It’s everything. It’s from, you know, economy, economics, to story and narrative, to gender relations, to how we treat our children, to all of that. So I’ve chosen experts in all of those fields from around the world to speak to that interconnectedness, to joining those dots in the areas of expertise. So I hope that answers your question. And I saw Richard Davidson is on. Oh, he’s amazing. I remember studying him as part of my trauma-informed yoga therapy training years ago. So I can’t wait to see that one. But all of them sound brilliant. And I’m also struck as you’re talking, I remember years and years ago reading Gloria Steinem’s Revolution from Within . Yes. She talked about a Holocaust survivor who was then guarding a Nazi prisoner. And he was filled with hate, because of what the Nazis had done. And after a few days of guarding, watching this man who had been part of such atrocities, this man asked if he could go to the toilet. And the Holocaust survivor realised that he had been so disconnected from his body, from childhood, from like toilet training techniques that were popular at that time. And that had helped enable the rise of fascism. It wasn’t just Hitler. It wasn’t just one person. And thinking about what’s happening in the world at the moment and how we know better, we’ve seen this before. And yet, children, babies still being dominated, like you say, like rather than nurtured, cared, respected. You have hit the nail on the head. And that is the entire thing that this is about. It is about that, you know, when a child. I’ll actually preface it by saying that two out of three children in the world experience violence in their life. Two out of three. Most of my practice is with survivors. But I only work with adult survivors. Only people who have survived childhoods I work with. But the point is, right, so when a child, so bearing that statistic in mind, so when a child learns domination or sees domination in their home, they learn very early and powerful lessons about how to control others around them. Yeah. And now this is, you know, that doesn’t happen to all survivors of trauma. Of course, you know, they don’t, it’s not automatic that everybody goes into dysfunction, but you know, a lot of people then struggle with, “OK, how do I control what is around me?” And what they’ve been taught in the early foundational years is that you need domination to control that. And that ripples out into everything. To the way that people vote. That’s why we see the rise of authoritarianism as we do to our nature being in peril, because it is man’s domination over nature that has put us in the situation we’re in. That early domination, you know, you cannot underestimate that that is the most foundational lesson that a child can learn. That is the ultimate answer to peace. Yeah. You know, because peace isn’t just the absence of war. No. It’s not the period in between wars. You know, it is our natural default position, but we’ve almost lost our birthright to peace. Absolutely. It’s like with the Polyvagal Informed approach, I work a lot with Polyvagal Theory. I use the cats, the rescue cats to illustrate it for people to make it more accessible [selfcarecoaching.net/feline]. But you’ve got the ventral vagal is the most recent, the highest part of the vagus, the, I call it “Purr!”, when you feel safe, it’s that science of safety and connection. So you’re able, there’s that kind of both and mindset. Yes. Both and, yeah, rather than either or. And you’re kind of co-regulating. It’s the collective care, the collaboration, the creativity, the play, the abundance, the all good things. And that is our natural state. That’s what we were wired for. But then so much of modern life puts us into, I call it “Hiss!”, but like sympathetic survival, that disconnection, that fear-based othering people, or dorsal vagal, the “Freeze”, the collapse, overwhelm. The, “What’s the point? Can’t do anything.” But I keep thinking like if every baby, if every child, if every adult on the planet was safe, welcome and loved, they would be able to thrive. All the problems of the world could be solved by nurturing and nourishing and ensuring safety and shelter and water and love. And it has to start in the home. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with you. And the thing is so much of it is about denial, you know, for babies and children to survive their childhoods that are traumatic. They have to deny that this is happening to them by people who are closest and dearest to them. And that leads to a scarcity mindset, a denial mindset. So then you get things like denial of reality, denial of election results, denial of all of that. Exactly. So, you know, you could just see how it’s just dominoes, you know, how it affects and it just has to start in the home. And that’s why, you know, when I came up with the name of the summit, Peace Begins at Home. I just think it so perfectly sums that up because it does connect it all, you know? Yeah. Well, that is wonderful. And I’d love to hear, like, you said that your self-care has gone out the window, but I’m imagining, like we touched on it earlier, but with the collective care element, the Heal part of my framework, because the Heal part, it’s, I work a lot with trauma survivors and ADHDers, and that sense of justice sensitivity and the desire to break trauma cycles and, like, help heal things to make things safer for future generations and current generations. The idea of turning what hurts people’s hearts into action. At different stages, you might be able to do the active self-care (Feel), you might be able to get yourself to walk or whatever it might be. Or it might be that you have no bandwidth for that, but you are able to give yourself some grace (Love). Or it might be that that’s impossible. But even the idea of a future version of yourself feeling OK enough to begin to help use your pain to guide others or to ease in some way, but sorry, that’s a really convoluted way of describing it. But I’m thinking, I’m imagining that you’re liaising with all of these amazing speakers that is helping you with your co-regulation, helping you feel more hopeful about 2025 and beyond. And I might be putting words in your mouth, I don’t mean to be doing that. But I wondered, is that the case? Or what does help you turn the pain into hope? Yeah, I mean, it’s a funny thing, this project started because I was kind of entering a year of yes. OK, so I had sold a part of my business, and I was like, what is next? Right. And when I met Dr. Eisler, it was funny, I met her at a webinar, and she kind of dropped into our breakout room by accident, when she was meant to be kind of like my speaker break. And we got chatting. And she said, Listen, will you help me? I, you know, I, you know, I just, she said what you do. And anyway, she said, Look, can you reach out? I’ve got this project that I want to do. And can you help me? And I was like, and I had decided that last year was my Year of Yes. So I was like, yes, absolutely. That’s fine. Anyway, and so it went on. And I have followed the yeses throughout this whole project. It has been I have done many, many projects in my time. And with this one, I think what has really helped is that I was very conscious of just following my instinct. You know, and when a speaker didn’t feel right, I didn’t pursue it. When something didn’t, you know, it was just like, I kind of really have tapped in to what is needed now. And have just kind of asked, I’ve kind of gone, “OK, Spirit, God, Mother Earth, Gaia, you know, just use me for the greater good, you know, and I have just followed wherever that has taken me.” And to be honest, I think that has saved me, because I am a team of one. Yeah, wow. I’ve had a few. Yes. Yes. I have had a wonderful volunteer who’s...…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

1
Own Your Privilege, Change the World 25:27

vor 5 weeks25:27

25:27

Stop feeling guilty. Start making a difference. In Own Your Privilege, Change the World: Episode 80 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, I (trauma therapist, senior accredited supervisor, Self care coach, author, ADHDer etc, Eve Menezes Cunningham) explore why owning your privilege (rather than apologising for it) can support sustainable activism. Learn how guilt disempowers you while self-care and honest acknowledgment of your advantages can fuel meaningful change. Discover why thriving isn’t selfish, it’s necessary for the resistance. Everyone deserves to feel safe, welcome and loved and able to thrive and the more you do to empower yourself, the more you can do to help others. So forgive yourself for injustices you have no part in and then speak up to do what you can to fix what’s happening now. THE FEEL BETTER EVERY DAY PODCAST Learn from the Self (for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself) and self-care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas through the lens of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework to help you: • Feel. Regulate your nervous system, work with your energy and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from • Love. Accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and • Heal. Collective care to turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large (and to coregulate and accept support from others) Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get an exclusive deeper dive (these include bonus interviews, EFT Tap Alongs, yoga poses, breath practices, journal prompts and more) each week. Is the Feel Better Every Day Podcast helping you? Please leave a ***** rating and review for this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed. Your subscribing, feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD. You learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you – it creates a ripple effect and helps others. My ultimate dream, in a world in which SO much is coming up for healing and so many people are unsafe, is to do my part to help as many people as possible heal from trauma. To help create a world in which everyone everywhere feels safe, welcome and loved - able to thrive. CHAPTERS (0:00) Prioritising your personal priorities (1:14) Your suffering helps no one (2:50) Acknowledging privilege (10:59) Forgive yourself and do better (15:30) Do more of what helps you feel good (18:11) Finding balance through compassion and action (20:56) Ho’oponopono and Metta meditation RESOURCES: https://ejeancarroll.substack.com/p/grab-him-by-the-wallet WANT TO WORK WITH ME? • There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos. • All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net • You can join the Sole to Soul Circle and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme. • If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc • Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision). WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA? You can find me almost everywhere – please say “Hi” and share your questions or comments: YouTube @evemenezescunningham Insta @evemenezescunningham @rescuecattitude @thefeelbettereverydaypodcast Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay TikTok @evemenezescunningham Substack @evemc Bluesky @eveimc DISCLAIMER The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.…

The Feel Better Every Day Podcast

vor 14 weeks16:39

16:39

For Black Cat Appreciation Day this week, we explore how we "other" creatures like sharks and black cats - and how this mirrors the parts of ourselves we reject. Join the Sole to Soul Circle for a live (online) deeper dive into your own shadow on Monday 18th August 🖤 Join Eve Menezes Cunningham as she dives into shadow work using the Feel...Love...Heal framework. Inspired by Netflix's "Shark Whisperer" and her own rescue cats (especially Rainbow MagnifiCat), Eve explores how embracing our whole selves (including the parts we've labelled as "monstrous") can transform our relationships and create a more compassionate world. ✨ You'll learn: * How projection keeps us from seeing our full humanity * Why we fear powerful parts of ourselves * Gentle approaches to shadow work and self-acceptance * How loving our rejected parts heals our connections with others 🔗 Join the Sole to Soul Circle for deeper shadow work exploration 🔗 Find more resources at selfcarecoaching.net Next week: High Functioning Co-dependence (Episode 72) #shadowwork #SelfCare #TraumaInformed #ADHDFriendly #Podcast #SelfAcceptance #feelbettereveryday This episode features special guest appearances from Mighty Meadbh, Eve's rescue cat 🐱 Feel Better Every Day! Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you: • Feel... regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from • Love... accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and • Heal... turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each week. WANT TO WORK WITH ME? • There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos. • All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net • You can join the Sole to Soul Circle on Substack (https://evemc.substack.com ) and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme. • If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc • Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision). WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA? You can find me almost everywhere – please say "Hi" and share your questions or comments: YouTube @evemenezescunningham Substack @evemc Bluesky @eveimc TikTok @evemenezescunningham Insta @evemenezescunningham (and @rescuecattitude and @thefeelbettereverydaypodcast) Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay And if you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD take better care of their whole selves and create lives they don’t need to retreat from. CHAPTERS / CATPURRS (0:00 – 0:58) Black cat cameo and podcast intro (0:59 – 11:02) Sharks, shadow work and misunderstood creatures (11:02 – 11:31) Healing through acceptance (11:33 – 13:20) Leaving the world better than you found it (13:20 – 15:18) Shadow work and embracing our power (15:19 – 16:34) Rescue cats, love, and letting it expand DISCLAIMER The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode. FULL TRANSCRIPT Like Marianne Williamson talked about… [pop Marianne Williamson into the Search on my site to read my interview with her]. I think I have a cat behind me. I do, I have a cat right next to me. It's not a black cat, it's Mighty Meadbh, little wondercat. She was the feral mammy who, oh bless her, she's gorgeous. And I othered her, when she appeared in the garden, she was terrorising Rainbow. I didn't know she had all the kittens at the time, but she kept turning up and I was like, oh my god, I can't have any more cats. And then there were 11 cats and I had to deal with them. Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to episode 71 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday, I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. Ideally, to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from. You can find out more at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com and for deeper dives into each week's theme, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle. As well as bonus interviews and practices, there are live circles online and instant access to the whole Love Your Whole Self chakra journey. You might also find the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing , helpful. And other resources available at selfcarecoaching.net. Today's episode, in honour of Black Cat Appreciation Day this week, I was hoping to have a little cameo from Rainbow, but we're going to be talking about sharks, those misunderstood monsters. I recently watched Shark Whisperer on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, I recommend at least giving it a go. I would not have thought it was my kind of programme / documentary at all and I absolutely adored it. Someone close to me really pushed recommending it and I'm so glad I did. It follows Ocean Ramsey as she uses her long history with sharks. From the time she was growing up in Hawaii she wasn't scared. She swims with them and does an enormous amount of work trying to save them from the real monsters on the planet, the humans. Sorry, I don't mean to be down on humans. There are many, many amazing humans, but the point of Black Cat Appreciation Day is that a lot of people malign paw, beautiful black cats as unlucky, as bad somehow, as not photogenic enough. They brought in this day to help rescues place more black cats. Rainbow Magnificat (obviously every day is Rainbow Appreciation Day here) changed my life. Sharks changed Ocean Ramsey's life. The power of connecting with her own energy as she works with theirs and also what she's had to do in life… I'm so happy she found her partner who's equally in love with sharks. For the purpose of this episode, we're not going to be diving with sharks. We're not even going to be swimming with sharks. I've also been watching, what is it? Shark: Celebrity Infested Waters, which again, is aiming to bring awareness. I wish they'd shown more around what they were doing to support contestants with their anxiety and fears. It could be quite educational in that regard as well, but the sharks are amazing. We call sharks monsters. I don't, but a lot of people hate sharks. They won't swim in the ocean. They're scared because we've been taught to fear them. They've been othered. Unfortunately, we live in a time where many, many, many groups of people and individuals are othered for things they have no control over. The more we own our whole shadows, the more we can bring about a more peaceful way of life for all who come into contact with us by not projecting our fears and our monstrous parts onto others. Start by asking yourself, have you ever really, really, really not liked someone? And it might be like absolutely loads of people you really don’t like, or it might be, “Oh, I'm not supposed to dislike people.” The more we can work with the parts of ourselves that don't like someone and own those parts we're projecting out onto them back in ourselves, we can create beautiful friendships. We can really transform things. But if we just let ourselves dismiss politicians, people, like entire groups of people as completely monstrous, we're dehumanising ourselves. We're all complex. We're all worthy of love and safety and shelter and all good things. I want you to think about how you feel about addressing your shadow. As we move into the feel, part of the Feel... Love... Heal... framework, do you consider black cats to be bad luck? Do you consider sharks to be monsters? Think of something you dislike or someone you dislike or even hate and just ask yourself how it feels to contemplate the possibility that what you hate within them or what you dislike or what you fear in them is within yourself. We're going to be doing a deeper dive into shadow work on Monday the 18th for Sole to Soul Circle members. You can join if you're not already a member at evemc.substack.com. It's just eight euros a month and you can leave anytime. And you have that instant access. But because of the nature of shadow work, it's an RSVP circle and I'm very much encouraging live attendance for Monday the 18th of August at 6.30pm to 7pm so that there's no recording. It's a sensitive issue and I want people to feel really safe. Think about how that feels for you. Are you scared of shadow work? Are you scared to look within yourself and think about what it might be within you? It's not all, like, scary stuff. It's not all, like, unlucky stuff. It's not. Sometimes, like, Marianne Williamson talked about… [pop Marianne Williamson into the Search on my site to read my interview with her] I think I have a cat behind me. I do. I have a cat right next to me. It's not a black cat. It's Mighty Meadbh, little wondercat. She was the feral mammy who, oh bless her, she's gorgeous. And I was othering her. When she appeared in the garden, she was terrorising Rainbow. I didn't know she had all the kittens at the time, but she kept turning up and I was like, oh my god, I can't have any more cats. And then there were 11 cats and I had to deal with them. But think about for the love part of the Feel... Love... Heal... framework. Sorry, she's acting like I'm a tree. She's kind of cutting into my leg there. So professional. Thinking about the Love part of the Feel... Love... Heal... framework and how you, how it might feel to even begin to imagine accepting the parts of yourself, the part of yourself that you struggle to accept, that you might be projecting into others or that you know you have done in the past. If you've seen Moana, I've got a couple blog posts about it. If you go to selfcarecoaching.net and just search Moana, Moana 2. I don't think I'm giving away spoilers to share that she's a delightful animation character with an enormous heart. There's a scene in it where there's this dangerous island and everyone fears and loathes this island. She recognises that the island was traumatised and needs love and healing. She has such a big heart, she is able to help that island heal and turn into this bountiful, beauteous, fertile, gorgeous land. I'm not suggesting anyone does this in any way, shape or form to endanger themselves. I'm not talking about diving with sharks, swimming with sharks, anything like that. If you're in a situation, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries are always essential. But being open to the humanity in the person, it's helping you also be open to your whole humanity. Notice if it's possible. If you think about what you're potentially rejecting in yourself, can you be with this part of yourself? I don't want to go into too much detail in this open podcast. As I said, I'll be going into more depth with shadow work in the Circle on Monday evening. But if it feels good for you, I'm trusting you to know yourself best. This can be quite deep work, this can be quite scary and powerful. It can also be really gentle and delightful. If it feels good for you, think about a part of yourself that you have rejected, that you have considered monstrous or unlucky or whatever it is, unphotogenic, whatever it is. Just notice how it feels to send that part of you some love, some compassion, some acceptance. And it might be, “Yep, I can imagine doing that. I might even go back to a few weeks ago and dig out that Metta meditation for the unloved parts or the parts that are harder to love, and for Sole to Soul Circle members.” But you don't need to do that. You can just send some love. It might be from a distance, or you might really connect with this part and embrace it. Notice what feels good for you. Let yourself be. You don't have to change anything, just see how it feels to love, see how it feels to accept. To move on to the Heal part of the Feel... Love... Heal... framework, ask yourself, what kind of world do you want to live in? We're all connected. We're all equal. We happen to be born in places where we're luckier than others or to families or parents. There are all sorts of different types of privilege. But can you imagine how much better things would be for everyone if all creatures, ourselves included, owned our shadows? It might be that you love sharks or black cats or whatever creatures. It might be that you work with groups of people who are typically misrepresented and demonised, all sorts of unkind ways of working. I want to leave you with a quote from Juan [Shark Whisperer], I'm afraid I didn't catch his last name, his mother Marlou West had told him. He was Ocean Ramsey's photographer. He came across her because he was photographing in the ocean surfers and what have you. And then they got together. He talked about his mother always saying to, “Try to leave the world a little better than you found it.” Thinking for yourself, what can you do? It might be advocating for something that scares you like sharks or anything else, black cats, whatever. What will you do to make things a little better for yourself, your family, your loved ones, your community, your organisations? What can you do? And what will you give yourself permission to do, even if perhaps like sharks or black cats, it scares you a little. If you were to imagine that you could, I love the Gloria Steinem quote about acting as if everything you do matters because it might. What kind of difference do you want to make? And how can you? That's another shadow part you might want to come back to. It's not all the scary stuff. It's not all the shameful stuff. It's not all the things that we think aren't nice. It's often the powerful parts. It's often the fear. I got distracted by the cat, didn't I? I was saying about the Marianne Williamson. And the our deepest fear is not that way. I've forgotten. I interviewed her ages ago, but it's gorgeous. But it is that powerful beyond measure, that fear of your own power. That's an important part of shadow work, too. Just like the shark and the cat and all creatures have their vulnerabilities, have their powers, we are the same. We want to welcome the whole emotional landscape. We want to welcome our whole selves, love our whole selves, have more compassion for ourselves and others, and create a bit more ease in this wonderful world we get to live in. So next week, we're going to be exploring high functioning codependence. I hope you'll join us for that (episode 72). In the meantime, thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already, and you would like to, feel free to rate, review, comment, subscribe, share with someone who might enjoy this episode. Thank you again for listening. This episode was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. And she's back! Rainbow, of course, Black Cat Week is nowhere to be seen. But look, little Meadbh! Little gorgeous, gorgeous Meadbh. She's, oh my god, they're so gorgeous. This morning, feeding Angel and Teri Crews Cat, they're still the ferals outside. They come inside occasionally. But Angel goes for all the other cats, unfortunately. He was a runt. And Meadbh here kept him alive by feeding him as one of her own little kittens. When I went from one to 11 overnight, as I got to know them, it was like, there were just so many cats. And it was like, why are there sometimes five kittens and sometimes six? It turns out Angel was from a different litter. But he has forgotten that his mammy, or his surrogate mammy, who helped keep him alive. And he'll terrorise her as well. But with me, like this morning, like normally he lets me pick him up after like nearly two years in the shed when I've put the food down. But this morning, he let me pick him up right outside the house. And he just kind of goes, all like purr and rubs noses with me. And you just think, they are rescue cats, all creatures, sharks. Just think about something you love that other people don't. Let that love expand for you. Let yourself know love is never wrong. And protect yourself, like have healthy boundaries, but enjoy the good, the healing, the connections, all of it, and have an amazing week.…

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