Trueform Therapy

Tag: health

  • Here’s exactly how your brain filters the world, based on what you focus on

    You might think of your brain as a thinking organ. It is. But it’s also a pattern hoarder with zero chill. It quietly collects whatever you keep showing it — thoughts, emotions, behaviours — and decides, “Ah, this must be important.” Not because it makes sense, but because it keeps happening.

    This isn’t a metaphor. It’s structure. Neural pathways strengthen through repetition. The more often a particular network is activated (the one that predicts failure in advance just in case), the more efficient and automatic it becomes. Not because it’s helpful. Just because it’s been rehearsed.

    In other words, your brain is running a custom algorithm. And like any algorithm, it’s not judging the quality of your input. It’s just learning from what you click on the most.

    Pattern, Not Coincidence

    There’s a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, or RAS. It doesn’t get much attention, but it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes. Its main job is to filter the endless stream of sensory information you’re exposed to and highlight what seems relevant.

    How does it know what’s relevant? You tell it. Not with a formal request, but through repetition. If you’ve spent the last few weeks fixating on worst-case scenarios, the RAS assumes those are important and starts pointing them out everywhere. It’s not trying to ruin your day. It’s just following instructions.

    This is why a random comment might feel sharper than it should, or why certain themes seem to keep showing up in your relationships. The brain isn’t uncovering deep truths. It’s just tagging familiar patterns and pushing them to the front of your awareness.

    What feels like intuition can sometimes be training. And what looks like coincidence is often a mental filter doing its job a little too well.

    Focus Leaves a Trace

    Your brain doesn’t ask whether a thought is useful. It just asks how often it shows up. If it sees the same idea walking past its mental front door every day, it assumes you’re into it and starts rolling out the red carpet.

    This is how worry becomes efficient. Comparison too. Spend enough time thinking about what might go wrong, what everyone else is doing better, or how you’re probably the problem, and your brain goes, “Ah, excellent, I’ve seen this before. Let me speed things up for you.”

    The same process applies to patience, boundaries, or checking in with yourself before replying to that one text. These pathways also get stronger with repetition, though they might feel less natural at first. Not because they’re less you, but because your mental muscles have been at the gym for entirely different workouts.

    Neural efficiency is not a compliment. It just means your brain is saving energy by automating whatever you rehearse the most, like a slightly overeager intern who alphabetised your worst-case scenarios and now updates them daily.

    Paying Attention as Daily Practice

    You don’t need to stage a full mental intervention to shift your attention. It doesn’t have to be deep, dramatic, or perfectly timed. Subtle counts. So does quiet. Most of the work begins by simply noticing where your attention keeps landing when you’re not trying to steer it.

    If your mind drifts toward planning, pleasing, scanning for threats, or composing an imaginary argument with someone who hasn’t texted back, that’s not a personal failure. That’s data. Your brain is just showing you which patterns it’s gotten good at.

    The goal isn’t to control every thought. It’s to get curious about what’s showing up most often and whether those patterns feel helpful, familiar, exhausting, or all three.

    Some practical ways to begin:

    • Make time to sit with yourself before jumping into input. No podcasts, no notifications. Just a few minutes of your own mind being weird in peace.
    • Keep a simple log. You don’t need insights. Just track what kinds of thoughts or feelings keep circling back.
    • Open a Notion page or grab a notebook and list qualities you’d like to get more familiar with. Maybe it’s calm. Maybe it’s self-respect. Maybe it’s remembering to eat before 4pm. No need to force it. Just put them where you can see them.

    Attention is a practice, not a performance. You’re not trying to get it right. You’re just showing up often enough for your brain to notice.

    Focus as a Form of Care

    Identity isn’t a fixed thing. It’s built through repetition in the small, ordinary ways you return to what matters, even when it doesn’t feel urgent or dramatic.

    Focus, in this sense, becomes a kind of quiet loyalty. Each time you redirect your attention, you’re reinforcing a thread that ties you to yourself. Not to a polished version, but to one that feels more deliberate, more aligned with what steadies you.

    You might notice this in the way you come back to a boundary, even when it’s uncomfortable. Or in how you reread something that helps you feel more grounded. Or in the moments when you let a thought sit without rushing to label it or fix it.

    These small choices leave a trace. Over time, they create a shape that feels less like reaction and more like rhythm.

    Attention has momentum. The more often you land somewhere, the easier it becomes to return. Over time, that path gets smoother, more familiar, and more automatic. This happens not because the destination is always useful, but because it’s been practised.

    Of course, this isn’t a fix. It’s a framework. A way to notice what’s shaping your inner landscape without needing to force it into something else.

    If you do nothing else, just pay attention to where your focus tends to drift when you’re not directing it. That alone can interrupt a loop. You don’t need to change the pattern in that moment. You just need to see it clearly enough that repetition stops being invisible.

    That’s where something different can begin.

  • Why Am I Feeling This? Learning to Decode Your Emotions

    You’re not crazy for crying at a yoghurt commercial.

    Or snapping at your partner over a dishwasher situation that was really about… everything else.

    Maybe you’ve felt totally overwhelmed lately. But when someone asks how you are, all you can say is “I’m just tired.” Except it’s not just tired. It’s something messier. Sadness? Anger? Guilt with a splash of existential dread?

    Most of us were never taught what emotions really are, let alone how to understand emotions when they show up. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or stuck in a loop of “What is wrong with me?”, you’re not alone.

    This post is for you if:

    • You’ve ever said, “I don’t even know what I’m feeling.”
    • You grew up in a “We don’t do feelings” kind of home.
    • You’re trying to function, but something inside feels… off.

    The truth is: emotions aren’t random. And they’re definitely not a sign you’re broken.
    They’re messages. From you, to you.

    In this post, we’ll explore:

    • What emotions are actually for
    • Why you might struggle to name or express them
    • How to gently start decoding your emotional world
    • Why therapy can help. Even if you don’t feel “bad enough” for it

    Let’s begin with the basics: what are emotions, really?

    What Are Emotions, Really? (And Why Should You Care?)

    Let’s clear something up: emotions are not the enemy.

    They’re not weaknesses to conquer or distractions to suppress. They’re not even “good” or “bad.”
    They’re data.

    Your emotions are your nervous system’s way of saying, “Hey, something’s happening. Pay attention.”

    Think of them as the body’s internal notification system:

    • Anxiety might mean “something feels unsafe or unpredictable.”
    • Sadness could be saying, “I’ve lost something that mattered.”
    • Anger? Often, it’s “a boundary’s been crossed.”

    But here’s the problem: if you were never taught how to decode your emotional notifications, they start piling up. Like 47 unopened emails from your inner self.

    And when those feelings don’t get heard, they don’t just disappear. They often turn into:

    • Chronic stress or burnout
    • Disconnection from yourself and others
    • Physical symptoms (hello, headaches and tight shoulders)
    • Patterns of behaviour that don’t make sense — until you look underneath

    This is why learning emotional awareness isn’t fluff. It’s survival. It helps you:

    • Make decisions that are actually right for you
    • Build relationships that feel safe
    • Stop living on autopilot or constantly second-guessing yourself

    Knowing what you feel is the first step to knowing what you need.
    And when you start listening, everything else starts to shift.

    Why Is It So Hard to Know What I’m Feeling?

    If you’ve ever sat in a therapy session and thought, “I don’t know what I feel. I just feel… off,” you’re not alone.

    Many people struggle to name their emotions. In fact, there’s a word for that: alexithymia. It literally means “no words for emotions.” And while it’s sometimes linked to neurodivergence or trauma, it can also show up in anyone who didn’t grow up in a home where feelings were named, welcomed, or made sense of.

    If your childhood version of “talking about feelings” looked more like:

    • “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”
    • “You’re too sensitive”
    • Or silence so loud you could hear it ringing in your chest

    …then emotional awareness isn’t something you’re bad at.
    It’s something you were never taught.

    Sometimes people with alexithymia or emotional disconnect aren’t cold or unfeeling. They’re overwhelmed, shut down, or have had to over-rely on logic to feel safe. That’s a nervous system strategy, not a personality flaw.

    The good news? Emotional awareness can be learnt.
    And no, it doesn’t involve staring in a mirror and repeating affirmations (unless that’s your thing; you do you).

    It starts with small things, like:

    • Expanding your emotional vocabulary beyond “fine” and “stressed”
    • Noticing how different emotions feel in your body
    • Asking yourself, “What happened right before I started feeling like this?”

    So if you’re someone who often says “I don’t know” when asked how you feel, that’s not a dead end.
    It’s just a starting point.

    What Happens When You Suppress Emotions for Too Long?

    You don’t stop feeling just because you stop noticing your feelings. Emotions are sneaky like that. When we suppress them, either consciously or because we were never taught how to process them, they don’t just disappear. They go underground. And eventually, they come out sideways.

    Sometimes that looks like:

    • Snapping at someone for breathing too loudly
    • Crying over a burnt piece of toast
    • Getting physically ill with stress-related symptoms
    • Feeling constantly “on edge” but having no clue why

    Suppressing emotions over time doesn’t make you stronger. It just makes you tired. And often? Burnt out, shut down, or stuck in a loop of overthinking.

    It’s also worth knowing: long-term emotional suppression can have a real impact on your mental health. Research links it to higher rates of anxiety, depression, and even physical health issues. Your nervous system wasn’t designed to carry all your feelings in a locked box forever, especially without a key.

    This doesn’t mean you need to start “feeling your feelings” 24/7 or become an emotional detective overnight. But recognising that your emotions have a job and that job is to signal what matters can shift how you respond to them.

    Think of emotions like internal emails. You might not want to open them, but ignoring them usually leads to a messy inbox and a few “URGENT” subject lines showing up eventually.

    What Does It Actually Mean to “Feel Your Feelings”?

    We hear this advice all the time. “You need to feel your feelings.” Okay… but what does that actually mean? Do we sit in a dark room and cry for hours? Do we punch pillows? Journal furiously until the pen runs out?

    Not necessarily.

    Feeling your feelings means making space to notice what’s going on inside you, instead of pushing it away, distracting yourself, or pretending everything’s fine.

    It means:

    • Noticing the tightness in your chest and wondering if it’s sadness or stress
    • Naming the hot flush in your cheeks as anger, not just “being dramatic”
    • Letting yourself admit “I’m hurt” without trying to justify why you shouldn’t be

    It’s the opposite of bottling things up or gaslighting yourself. And it’s not just for “emotional people.” In fact, people who’ve gone numb or shut down often need this the most, especially if you relate to alexithymia, which is when identifying or describing your emotions feels like trying to read a book in a language you never learnt.

    Feeling your feelings isn’t indulgent. It’s intelligence. Your emotions carry information about what you care about, what you need, and what might need to change. If you can learn to decode them, they become less overwhelming and more like internal signposts.

    Next, we’ll get into the how. Gently. No complicated journaling prompts or dramatic soul-searching required.

    How Do You Start Feeling Your Feelings?

    So, how do you actually get better at identifying your emotions, especially if they feel like a murky soup instead of anything nameable?

    The first step is: don’t aim for perfection. Aim for curiosity. You don’t need to become a walking feelings encyclopaedia overnight. But you can learn to tune in and get closer to what’s going on inside.

    1. Start by tracking energy and pleasantness

    If naming emotions feels impossible, try this:
    Ask yourself two things: Do I feel high or low energy? And is this sensation pleasant or unpleasant?

    This helps to narrow things down without needing an exact label. From there, you might get closer to something like tired but content, agitated, or flat. These aren’t just labels; they’re doorways.

    This simple approach is used in the free How We Feel app (https://howwefeel.org/), which was created by therapists, scientists, and people who’ve struggled with emotional awareness themselves. It helps you check in using a visual grid and, based on your answers, offers emotion words you might not have considered.

    2. Use a feelings wheel

    You’ve probably seen one floating around online: a colourful chart with basic emotions in the centre (sad, happy, angry) and more specific ones branching out. The feelings wheel helps you move from vague to precise.

    Try starting with something general: “I feel bad.”
    Then use the wheel to go deeper: is it frustrated? Lonely? Overwhelmed?

    You’re not aiming for the “right” answer. You’re aiming to get closer.

    3. Talk out loud (or write it down)

    If your inner world is a mystery, sometimes saying it out loud, even to yourself, helps. Try this:
    “I don’t know what I’m feeling, but I know I’m…” And then fill in the blank with whatever comes. Stuck? Add context. “I just got home, and my chest feels heavy. I think I wanted today to go differently.”

    You can also voice memo yourself or jot notes in your phone. Think of it as gathering clues.

    4. Therapy (yes, obviously)

    Sometimes, the most powerful way to learn how to feel is by being asked gentle questions in a safe space. Not everyone had that growing up. Therapy can offer it now, especially if your go-to response has always been to numb, shut down, or perform instead of feeling.

    Why This Matters (And Isn’t Just Navel-Gazing)

    It’s easy to think emotional awareness is a luxury. Something for people with too much time or too many feelings. But here’s the truth: when you can name what you feel, you’re better able to meet your needs.

    This isn’t about turning yourself into a walking mood board. It’s about understanding why you’re snapping at your partner, why you’re exhausted by 10am, or why you keep saying yes to things that drain you.

    For many of us emotional fluency wasn’t taught. In fact, emotional expression may have been shamed, ignored, or simply… lost in translation. Add to that a culture that rewards pushing through over slowing down, and no wonder so many of us live from the neck up.

    Learning to name your emotions doesn’t fix everything. But it does give you a map and maybe even a way home to yourself.

    And if you’ve tried every journal prompt and mood tracker out there and still feel stuck? That’s okay too. That’s where therapy can help.

    Not because you’re broken but because you were never taught the language of your inner world. And we can learn it together.

    Want support figuring out your emotional landscape?
    I work with people who feel like they’re “too much” or “not enough,” sometimes at the same time. Whether you’re emotionally fluent or still stuck at “I feel meh,” I’d love to help.
    Visit www.trueformtherapy.co.uk to find out more or book a consultation.

  • Why Trying to Calm Down Can Keep You Anxious

    Anxiety is not a personal failing, a mindset problem, or a sign that you “can’t relax”. It’s your body’s threat system doing its job. Sometimes the visit is brief and useful. Sometimes anxiety arrives, puts its feet up on the coffee table, and refuses to leave.

    Most advice about anxiety is about getting rid of it: breathe, relax, think positive, calm down. Some of that advice genuinely helps. But there’s something about anxiety that much of this advice misses, and I think it explains why so many people try everything and still feel stuck.

    Sometimes, the harder we try to make anxiety go away, the longer it stays.

    What Anxiety Is Trying to Do

    Anxiety prepares you for danger. It makes you more alert, tenses your muscles, speeds up your heart and your thinking. That’s very helpful if you’re stepping out in front of an oncoming car. It’s much less helpful when you’re lying awake at 2am replaying a conversation from 2017.

    It shows up in the body as much as the mind: restlessness, tight shoulders or jaw, a churning stomach, a racing heart, shallow breathing. It shows up as irritability, as trouble concentrating, and as a kind of tiredness that surprises people. Anxiety is exhausting.

    For some people, it settles into more persistent patterns, such as generalised anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety or phobias. These have different names and look different from the outside, but they share a common thread: a threat system that has become very good at spotting danger, and much less good at standing down.

    The Trouble With Getting Rid of It

    Here’s the part that often surprises people.

    When anxiety rises, it’s natural to do something to make it stop. We leave the situation. We avoid the next one. We check, reassure ourselves, distract, or reach for a technique to calm down. In the moment, it works. The anxiety drops, and we feel relief.

    But that relief teaches the threat system something. It learns: that was dangerous, and we only got through it because we escaped. Next time, the alarm goes off a little sooner.

    Psychologists call these strategies “safety behaviours”, and there’s good evidence that they play a part in keeping anxiety going. Even helpful tools, like breathing exercises, can work this way if we use them as an emergency exit: something we must do to get rid of the feeling, rather than a way of steadying ourselves while we stay.

    I want to be careful here, because the picture isn’t simple. A 2016 review by Shannon Blakey and Jonathan Abramowitz found that the evidence on safety behaviours during therapy is mixed. Used thoughtfully, some may help people approach things they would otherwise avoid altogether. So it isn’t that coping tools are bad. It’s that how and why we use them matters.

    The question to ask isn’t just “does this calm me down?” It’s “does this help me stay with my life, or help me escape from it?”

    Tools That Help, and How to Use Them

    With that in mind, there are things that genuinely help. Think of them less as ways to make anxiety vanish, and more as ways to bring your nervous system back within reach, so you can carry on.

    Start with the body. An anxious body struggles to listen to logic, so this is often the place to begin.

    Movement is one of the best-supported things you can do. You don’t need a fitness overhaul. Walking counts. Stretching counts. A large body of research has found that physical activity reduces anxiety, often noticeably.

    Sleep matters more than most people realise. A 2019 study by Matthew Walker’s team at the University of California, Berkeley found that a single sleepless night raised anxiety levels by up to 30 percent in healthy adults. It was a small study, but it fits with what many people notice. So aim for consistency rather than perfection, and be kind to yourself after a bad night. A poor night’s sleep is data, not a judgement. It tells you something about your capacity the next day.

    Regular meals help too. Long gaps without eating can bring on shakiness, a racing heart and irritability, which feel a lot like anxiety and can make it worse.

    Slow your breathing, especially the out-breath. Try breathing in for a count of four and out for six. If counting annoys you, just make each breath out a little longer than the breath in. That’s enough. In a 2023 study at Stanford, people who spent five minutes a day on “cyclic sighing”, a breathing pattern that emphasises long, slow out-breaths, saw greater improvements in mood than people who practised mindfulness meditation. The study was small and mostly involved young, healthy students, so it’s an encouraging sign rather than the final word.

    Tense, then release. Clench a group of muscles for a few seconds, then let go. Work your way around the body. This is less about forcing yourself to relax, and more about reminding your body what not tense feels like.

    Be curious about your thoughts, not convinced by them. Anxiety is excellent at presenting opinions as facts. Instead of “this will go badly”, try “I’m having the thought that this will go badly”. That small step back creates a little distance. You can also ask yourself gently: what’s the evidence? What else might happen? You’re not arguing with your brain. You’re just widening the view.

    Shrink the task. Anxiety loves vague, enormous goals. Break things into small, even boring, steps. Progress beats motivation every time.

    Moving Towards, Not Away

    Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do with anxiety is the least comfortable: gradually moving towards the things it tells you to avoid.

    This is the idea behind exposure, one of the best-researched approaches to anxiety. You approach what frightens you in small, manageable steps, and allow the anxiety to be there without trying to escape it. Over time, the threat system learns something new: I felt anxious, I stayed, and I was OK. That learning is what helps anxiety soften, not the absence of the feeling.

    Other approaches arrive at a similar place from different directions. Acceptance-based therapies encourage making room for anxiety rather than fighting it. And the existential psychologist Rollo May argued that some anxiety is simply part of living a full life: a sign that we’re facing something that matters to us, or stepping into the unknown.

    None of this means forcing yourself into overwhelming situations. It means small steps, at a pace that feels challenging but bearable, ideally with support.

    You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

    Anxiety tends to isolate us, and connection interrupts that.

    Talking to someone you trust can help, even if they don’t offer solutions. Being heard often takes some of the intensity out of anxiety on its own. Peer support groups can help too: there’s something steadying about hearing “me too”.

    Therapy isn’t a last resort, either. Cognitive behavioural therapy has particularly strong evidence for anxiety, and other approaches can help as well, especially when anxiety is tangled up with older patterns, with loss, or with questions about how you want to live. At Trueform Therapy, I offer one-to-one sessions in person in Cardiff and online across the UK and EU, and we can draw on whichever approaches suit you best.

    When It’s Worth Seeing Your GP

    If your anxiety is new, has changed suddenly, or comes with strong physical symptoms such as chest pain, palpitations or breathlessness, it’s worth seeing your GP. Some physical conditions, such as thyroid problems, as well as some medications and lots of caffeine, can cause symptoms that feel like anxiety. It’s always worth ruling those out.

    One Slower Breath

    Anxiety doesn’t disappear because you tried hard enough to make it go. It tends to soften when your nervous system learns, again and again, that it’s safe enough, supported enough, and not alone. Progress is often uneven. That’s normal.

    If anxiety is running the show, getting help isn’t weakness or failure. It’s a sensible response to a system under strain.

    And if today all you managed was reading this and taking one slower breath, that still counts.

    If You Want to Explore These Ideas Further

    If you’re interested in anxiety as part of being human rather than only a problem to fix, Rollo May’s The Meaning of Anxiety (1950) is a classic. It’s philosophical, but deeply humane.

    For a practical introduction to making room for anxiety rather than fighting it, Russ Harris’s The Happiness Trap is a clear, accessible guide to acceptance and commitment therapy.

    If you’d like a structured self-help approach, Helen Kennerley’s Overcoming Anxiety is a well-regarded CBT-based guide from the UK’s Overcoming series.

    And if you’d like to look at the research directly:

    Blakey and Abramowitz’s review of safety behaviours in anxiety (2016): RTI International

    How one sleepless night affects anxiety: ZME Science summary

    The Stanford study on breathing practices and mood: Simply Psychology summary