The Bit I Don't Put in My Bio

There’s something I don’t talk about that much, mostly because for a long time I was embarrassed by it.

A few years ago I was waking up at 2am most nights, completely wide awake, chest tight and reaching for my phone on autopilot. My brain would immediately start going through everything going on, be it work, conversations, things I needed to sort out, things that might happen, things I’d said three days earlier that suddenly needed analysing.

And then I’d get up the next day and carry on as normal.

I’d spent twenty years as a Legal PA and had become a team leader. I was good at my job. I was capable, dependable and usually the person other people came to when something needed sorting out.

Nobody was looking at me thinking, she’s really struggling. If anything, I looked like I had everything completely under control. But underneath that I was f*cking exhausted.

I’d wanted to retrain as a therapist for years but every time I got anywhere near doing something about it, the same thoughts would start.

Who do you think you are?

What if you spend all that money and realise you can’t do it?

What if everyone thinks you’ve completely lost the plot?

I’d think about it, research it, talk myself around in circles and then stay exactly where I was. Until eventually I got fed up with waiting to feel ready.

I walked into a room full of complete strangers on my own to start my RTT training, absolutely terrified. I remember that because I would never have done something like that before. I was so shy and struggling with never feeling good enough.

I didn’t suddenly become a completely different person, and I definitely didn’t walk out with zero self-doubt and a brand-new personality. I just started doing things I’d spent years telling myself I couldn’t do. Then I did the next thing. And the next one.

Somewhere along the way I started understanding myself differently too. The overthinking, the need to get things right, the pressure I put on myself, always being the capable one, trying to stay on top of absolutely everything… All the things I’d spent years treating like they were separate problems and “just me”.

Now I’m much more interested in what sits underneath them.

Why does this keep happening?

What am I trying to protect myself from?

What does this pattern do for me?

Do I still need it?

That curiosity has changed far more for me than trying to force myself to think positively ever did. I still overthink sometimes and of course I still doubt myself. I still have moments where my brain offers me a hundred reasons not to do something.

The difference these days is that those thoughts don’t get to make all my decisions.🩷

Jess x