Much of what I teach did not begin in a training room. It began in my own life, when I was trying to make sense of anxiety, fatigue and a kind of internal strain that I struggled to explain. I was reacting to pressures around me and pressures within me, long before I had language for any of it.

Sharing this journey is not about creating drama. It is about offering context. When we understand the story behind an approach, the approach becomes easier to trust. It becomes clearer why certain tools exist and why they work the way they do.

There are three reasons I am choosing to share my story now.

To show that the work comes from lived experience
I have lived through periods of anxiety, burnout and deep exhaustion. There were years shaped by alcohol, intensity and patterns that felt difficult to control. I had times where I pushed hard on the outside while feeling overwhelmed on the inside. Many people live with similar pressures quietly, and these experiences shaped the way I understand the mind today.

To explain how the Mind Works approach developed
Every concept in Mind Works grew from necessity. The Tower Block, Parts of Self, Mental Strength and the other tools on this site began forming when I needed clarity myself. Later, I saw the same patterns in hundreds of clients. Mind Works evolved from lived experience and practical reality, rather than abstract theory.

To reassure you that your system makes sense
Whatever you’re navigating, whether it is weight, tiredness, cravings, low motivation, stress drinking or feeling stuck, there is always a reason. You are responding to something in your world, your body or your past. When you understand the system behind your experience, life begins to feel less overwhelming and more manageable.

For me, sharing this is part of my Direction. It is a way of offering the clarity I needed during my most difficult years. My hope is that this page feels steady and grounding as you read. When you’re ready, you can move into Chapter Two.

This chapter represents the beginning of understanding the forces that shape us. I was carrying internal pressure that I didn’t recognise at the time. Early signs of anxiety, fatigue and emotional strain were present long before I had names for them.

Internally, there was already a split forming between the version of me the world saw and the quieter version beneath the surface. This was the earliest echo of the Parts of Self.

My Protective Self kept me moving.
My Ideal Self pushed me forward.
My Actual Self remained unheard.

I didn’t yet know it, but these early tensions would later become central to the work I now teach.

This chapter represents the foundation of Mind Works. It was the moment where I began to understand that people are shaped by both external demands and internal patterns, and that clarity only appears when we understand both sides.

The Tower Block grew from recognising how my own levels of stress and energy shifted.
Parts of Self grew from sensing the different versions of me competing inside.
Mental Strength grew from the need to see internal signals clearly.

The entire approach began here, long before I realised what it would become.

I spent my childhood moving between two very different homes. Each had its own rhythm, its own emotional climate and its own expectations. I learned to adjust myself depending on where I was. In one place I needed to be quiet. In the other I needed to be switched on. These shifts became second nature.

Like many children, I learned to read moods before words were spoken. I became careful with my emotions, stayed alert to changes around me and did what I could to keep the peace when things felt uncertain. At the time, none of this felt unusual. It was simply how life worked.

My story does not include the terrible stories of severe neglect or abuse that are often spoken about. It was however unpredictable, emotionally charged and full of moments that required more from me than I could understand at that age.

When I was ten, something happened that shaped my understanding of loss long before I had the language for it. My uncle died suddenly, and the silence surrounding his death left a deep imprint. It was the first time I recognised how heavy emotions can sit beneath the surface, unspoken yet powerful.

By my early teens I had already developed the habit of keeping a lot inside. I felt things strongly but rarely expressed them. I became thoughtful, observant and overly responsible for things that were never mine to carry. I did not have words for this then. I only knew that I felt older inside than the age I was.

Eventually I reached a point of emotional overwhelm that I did not know how to express. I carried more internally than I could understand, and I reached a moment of distress that reflected confusion and pain rather than any wish to stop living. I survived it, yet the experience shaped how I understood myself for many years.

Looking back, these adaptations helped me navigate my world, but they also created distance between how I felt internally and how I presented externally. That gap widened as life became more demanding and would later contribute to the burnout, anxiety and internal conflict that shaped the next chapters of my life.

These foundations were not weaknesses. Many became strengths. Yet at their core they were survival strategies. They quietly influenced almost every part of the person I grew into.

On the inside, a long term pattern was forming.

I was learning that it was safer to manage my emotions privately.
I was learning to give other people what they needed at the expense of my own needs.
I was learning to stay adaptable rather than authentic.

These early lessons became subconscious programmes. They shaped:

• how I understood myself

• how I coped with pressure

• how I interpreted other people’s reactions

• what I believed I was allowed to feel or express

• and how much of myself I thought I was allowed to take up space with

These ingrained patterns followed me into adulthood. They influenced my relationships, my decisions, my work ethic and the pressure I placed on myself long before I understood where they came from.

Much of Mind Works is built on the understanding that early experiences form the subconscious patterns that guide our adult lives.

This chapter became the foundation for several core models.

Parts of Self
The early versions of me that coped, adapted and stayed observant became the basis of the Parts of Self model.
The part that performed.
The part that protected.
The part that felt everything quietly underneath.

Subconscious Beliefs
These early experiences shaped my beliefs about worth, safety and belonging. They influenced how I related to others and how I took care of my own needs. This later became a core element of the Subconscious work in Mind Works.

Relating and Connection
The roles I learned as a child became the roles I carried into adult relationships. They shaped people pleasing, over-functioning and the feeling of having to be “the strong one”.

The Lifelong Ripple
These patterns influence us until we understand them.
They shape anxiety, self-criticism, emotional habits and the pressure we place on ourselves.
Recognising these foundations is often the beginning of real change.

This chapter sets the stage for everything that follows, because understanding where a pattern begins is the first step toward transforming it.

As I moved into my late teens and early twenties, I was trying to become the person I thought I needed to be. I worked hard, studied, joined a band and threw myself into gigs, rehearsals and nights out. On the surface, it looked like momentum and confidence. Underneath, it was also a way to escape the unsettled parts of me that I didn’t yet know how to meet.

Being in a band gave me energy, belonging and identity. The noise, the excitement and the late nights created a sense of freedom that felt addictive. The socialising and partying filled space in a way that stopped me from thinking too deeply about everything I was holding internally.

At the same time, I was building the early stages of my career in financial services. I worked relentlessly. I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to be seen as capable, reliable and ambitious. Those efforts quickly turned into a fast-growing business. I was taking on clients, responsibilities and expectations at a speed that felt exhilarating. Each achievement felt like another high-value card added to my hand. It looked like success, and in many ways it was, but it also added pressure I didn’t know how to regulate.

Alongside all of this, I was heavily involved in charity events and community work. I organised fundraisers, volunteered and took on roles that placed me in a positive light. There was genuine intention behind it, yet it also played into a deeper pattern. Helping others made me feel useful. It softened the internal strain. It gave me a script for who I thought I needed to be.

Looking back, I can see how many versions of me were developing at once.
The version that looked confident.
The version that performed well.
The version that helped others.
The version that built a career quickly.
Each of these identities became a character, a mask or a suit of armour. These parts are deeply human. They help us navigate pressure. The challenge comes when we lean on them so heavily that the person behind them begins to disappear.

This was one of the early roots of what I now describe as the Psychological Processes of Distress. I didn’t have that language then. I only knew that the person I showed the world did not always match the way I felt inside. And when I tried to look inward, it was hard to find a clear or grounded version of myself.

These experiences became the beginning of what I now call the Parts of Self.
The Ideal Self that kept me pushing.
The Protective Self that kept me distracted.
And the Actual Self, the younger, quieter part of me that didn’t yet have the space or voice it needed.

I was holding a mixed hand of cards. Some were aces; work ethic, creativity, ambition.

Some were low value; self-doubt, emotional avoidance, pressure.

And there were jokers too; unpredictable bursts of intensity, impulsivity and exhaustion.

Like many people at that age, I played the hand using everything I had.

For a while, the pace held everything together.
But the demands increased.
The masks grew heavier.
And the gap between my outer identity and inner world widened.

That widening gap carried me into the next chapter of my life, where pace, pressure and expectation all intensified at the same time.

Internally, I was building an identity by stitching together the parts of me that earned approval, admiration or belonging. Each version of myself played a role. Each one carried weight. Each one helped me navigate uncertainty by giving me something to stand behind.

But inside, I felt increasingly blurred. I had energy, ambition and momentum, but I didn’t have clarity. I was using external achievements to hold together an internal world that felt unsettled. The more I performed, the less space there was for the parts of me that felt unsure, sensitive or overwhelmed.

The Ideal Self took the lead.
The Protective Self kept me busy.
The Actual Self had no room to breathe.

These dynamics were forming a psychological gap that would later play a significant role in burnout, anxiety and the emotional crashes that followed.

This chapter became a foundation for multiple Mind Works concepts.

Parts of Self
This period showed me how several identities can develop at once and how easily the Inner Self becomes overshadowed when life becomes performance based.

Psychological Processes of Distress
I learned how strengths become overused.
How pressure builds silently.
How identity becomes fragmented when we rely on external roles to feel stable.

Early signs of burnout and collapse
These years showed me how internal strain accumulates quietly long before it becomes visible.
This later shaped the Tower Block model, particularly the early understanding of how people drift toward lower levels without realising it.

Understanding the role of escape
Music, partying, working and helping others all offered relief.
Not because they were unhealthy in themselves, but because they covered signals I did not yet know how to listen to.
This insight became essential in teaching clients about coping mechanisms, emotional regulation and avoidance patterns.

This chapter marks the beginning of accelerated pace, increasing internal conflict and the widening gap between the person I portrayed and the person I felt like inside.

It sets the stage for the next chapter, where pace, pressure and expectation reached their peak.

For years the intensity of my life made sense to me. Working hard, the band, the late nights, the rehearsals, the social life, the drinking, the rush of performing, and the constant feeling of being surrounded by people; it all created noise. Noise that I didn’t realise I needed. Noise that kept me away from myself.

Then the band ended. The noise stopped. The social life quietened. The late-night rhythm that once felt exciting simply vanished.

But my habits didn’t.

The drinking continued, except now it wasn’t attached to music or laughter or a sense of belonging. It wasn’t social anymore. It was coping. It was a way to fill the silence. Someone once explained drinking to me in three stages: first it is fun, then it is fun with consequences, and eventually it becomes just consequences. I didn’t know it then, but I had entered that final stage quietly, privately and almost invisibly.

My romantic relationships reflected the same story. I fell into people-pleasing, over-functioning and performing as the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be. I didn’t know how to express needs or boundaries because I didn’t know what my needs were. I had spent so long being the “strong one,” the “reliable one,” the “capable one,” that I couldn’t recognise when I needed support. So I kept performing. I kept smiling. I kept going.

Looking back, this chapter of my life taught me something important: you can only avoid yourself for so long. The party was over. The noise had stopped. And when everything went quiet, the truth became impossible to ignore.

Something wasn’t right.
Something needed to change.

I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know where to begin.

But this was the first moment when I realised that I could not keep going the way I was.  However, I kept going. 

Internally, the silence felt confronting. Without noise, distraction or a fast-paced social life to lean on, everything I had been avoiding came into sharper focus. Drinking no longer masked anything. It simply numbed the discomfort that had been building for years. The emptiness after the band ended revealed how much I relied on stimulation to regulate my emotions.

Emotionally, I felt untethered. The identity I had built through performance, social energy and being “on the go” was no longer enough to stabilise me. My coping habits were now operating without the structure that once made them feel harmless. The exhaustion, the loneliness and the pressure I carried internally became harder to ignore.

My relationships reflected the same internal disconnection. People-pleasing kept me safe from conflict, but it also kept me disconnected from my own needs. I had not yet learned to listen to the signals of fatigue, overwhelm or misalignment. I had developed the habit of shaping myself around others, rather than shaping a life around what I needed.

These internal dynamics were early signs of emotional shutdown, the beginnings of burnout and the slow collapse of coping systems that had held me together externally but strained me internally.

This chapter became one of the clearest foundations for understanding coping mechanisms, avoidance patterns and the Protective Self within the Mind Works approach.

Coping strategies as signals rather than flaws
Drinking, people-pleasing and overworking were not moral failings. They were attempts to regulate discomfort. They helped me cope when I didn’t yet have the clarity or capacity to face what was happening internally. This insight later became central to how I help people view their habits with compassion rather than shame.

The Recurring Cycle in real time
Looking back, I can now see that I was living inside the Recurring Cycle without realising it.
The exhaustion, the overwhelm, the emotional strain and the constant attempt to “push through” were all signs of the cycle repeating itself.
At the time, none of this looked like a pattern. It simply felt like life. I didn’t know I was stuck because feeling stuck had become normal.

This chapter taught me how easily people adapt to distress without noticing.
It showed me why so many clients arrive believing they are the problem, when in reality they are caught in a cycle they have never been taught to recognise.

Burnout forming quietly beneath the surface
The cracks were already forming long before the collapse.
My energy was unstable.
My sleep was poor.
My internal pressure was increasing.
Yet from the outside, I looked functional, even successful. This contrast became a key component of the Tower Block model and the understanding of how people move down levels long before they consciously notice.

Relational patterns and the Protective Self
The people-pleasing and over-functioning I fell into during this period later shaped the relationship work within Mind Works. These behaviours came from a protective place — an attempt to maintain harmony, avoid conflict and stay connected. They masked my internal needs so effectively that I could no longer recognise them.

The quiet truth beneath the noise
This chapter captures the moment before change has language.
Before clarity.
Before any sense of direction.

It was the point where distraction stopped working and honesty began to surface, even though I didn’t yet understand what it meant.
It wasn’t the start of recovery, but it was the moment the old way of coping became unsustainable.

This period helped shape Mind Works by showing me what it feels like to be lost in a cycle you do not know you are in and how that moment, although painful, becomes the doorway to every change that follows.

From the outside, my life had looked full, fast and functional, but the warning signals were already there.
There is a point in burnout where nothing feels quite right, but nothing feels dramatically wrong either. You keep going because you can. You function because you have always functioned. You tell yourself you are just tired, just stressed, just a bit off. But underneath the surface, something is unravelling.

This was that chapter of my life.

The tired-and-wired feeling had become my baseline. I would sleep some nights, lie awake others, and drift through long stretches where the lines between exhaustion and adrenaline blurred. Bouts of insomnia would hit with no warning, followed by days where I felt like I was wading through fog. I wasn’t rested. I wasn’t recovering. I was simply alternating between “on” and “crashed.”

I didn’t recognise this as burnout.
I thought I was just busy.
I thought I needed more discipline.
I thought I could train my way out of it.

So I did what many people do when they start to lose their internal footing.
I tried to outrun the discomfort.

Intense training gave me temporary relief. It gave me a hit of clarity, a sense of control and a feeling that I was doing something productive. It felt like a solution. In reality, it was another coping strategy layered on top of everything else.

I was burning the candle not only at both ends, but from every conceivable angle.

Working long hours.
Forcing myself to train.
Maintaining the image of a dependable professional.
Navigating unhealthy romantic relationships.
Leaning on alcohol to slow down.
Bouncing from one coping strategy to the next.

And all of it was happening behind a persona that looked composed, capable and committed. From the outside, I looked like I was thriving. On the inside, I was dazed, confused and losing my ability to connect the dots.

This is the part of burnout that most people don’t talk about.
The phase where you’re functioning… just less and less like yourself.
The phase where you think more effort is the answer.
The phase where your physiology is falling apart faster than your mind can keep up.

Looking back, this chapter shaped one of the core ideas behind Mind Works: that motivation, clarity and emotional balance are not mindset problems; they are physiological states. You cannot think your way out of a dysregulated body.

I wasn’t collapsing yet.
I wasn’t at crisis.
But the cracks were widening.
The warning signs were stacking up.
And I was too dazed and confused to see where the road was leading.

It was from this place of being overstretched, under-rested and chasing stability in all the wrong ways that I took on the biggest physical challenge of my life:

Climbing Kilimanjaro.

Not because I was strong. But because I didn’t know what else to do.

And that brings us to the next chapter.

Internally, I was operating in the Recurring Cycle without being able to see it.

My physiology was overloaded.
My sleep was erratic.
My stress system was becoming dysregulated.
And yet, because I could still “function,” I believed everything was fine.

This is the deceptive middle layer of burnout.
You are tired but wired.
Productive but deteriorating.
Capable but cracking.

I was using training, alcohol, pace and performance to regulate my internal discomfort.
Each of these coping strategies gave temporary relief, but at the cost of pushing me further down the Tower Block without any awareness of what was happening.

My relational patterns mirrored the same internal confusion.
I was over-functioning, people-pleasing and absorbing pressure in ways that made me look stable while I was slowly losing my inner footing.

Nothing in this stage felt dramatic enough to be “a problem.”

But that’s exactly why it’s dangerous; you don’t know you’re burning out until you’re much further down.

This chapter became central to several Mind Works concepts.

Early burnout detection
This period taught me that burnout begins long before collapse.
The tired-wired cycle, the fluctuating sleep, the emotional fog and the need to compensate with effort are some of the earliest and most overlooked signals.

Physiology as the foundation of behaviour
My experiences here led to the realisation that motivation, clarity, cravings, emotional balance and self-control are regulated by physiology, not mindset.
This insight shaped the Tower Block and the understanding that stress load changes our level of functioning.

The unseen drift down the Tower Block
From the outside, I looked high-functioning.
Internally, I was sliding down levels without recognising the signs.
This stage helped me map the part of the model where functioning deteriorates quietly.

Coping strategies as survival, not failure
Training, drinking, performance and pace weren’t mistakes; they were attempts to regulate overload.
This shaped the compassionate approach behind Mind Works: we don’t shame coping strategies; we understand them.

The illusion of “more effort”
This chapter illustrated why people double down on discipline when their system is actually crying out for rest. This created one of the 9 psychological processes of distress - external, existential, and future-paced happiness.

It informed the Mental Strength tool; the ability to recognise internal signals rather than push through them.

This chapter marks the moment where burnout becomes impossible to outrun.
The point where physiology takes over.
And the point where, without knowing it, the path toward collapse and ultimately recovery  begins.

This part of my life was shaped by a strong belief that progress came from setting goals and pushing myself towards them. I worked hard, trained intensely and built my identity around achieving the next thing. At the time, it felt healthy. It felt like growth. It gave me something to aim at when I did not always feel grounded within myself.

By this point, I was already tired and overstretched. I didn’t realise how much. The insomnia, the wired-but-tired cycles and the emotional strain had become so normal that I stopped noticing them. I told myself that discipline would fix it. Training became the answer to every problem I couldn’t solve.

The biggest goal I set was to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Preparing for it gave me structure. It gave me rhythm. It gave me a sense of purpose that felt reassuring when everything else felt unsteady. I told myself that reaching the summit would give me direction and clarity. In many ways, it did; but not in the way I expected.

The climb itself was extraordinary. Reaching the top was one of the proudest moments of my life. When I returned home, people congratulated me. I was praised for my discipline, resilience and the physical achievement. There were celebrations, handshakes, photos and stories. Then someone asked a simple question:

“So, Craig… what’s next?”

That question stayed with me far longer than the achievement ever did. Because I didn’t know.

The goal had given me identity, structure and something to work towards. Once it was gone, I felt the same uncertainty that had been there all along. The achievement hadn’t fixed the tiredness, or the insomnia, or the pressure I was under. It had only paused them.

This was the moment I began to understand what I now call the Gears of Motivation. I was using long-term goals as fuel, but not recognising that I depended on them to feel stable. When a goal ended, the momentum vanished and the discomfort returned. I thought I was building confidence. In reality, I was building temporary identity through achievement.

There is nothing wrong with having goals. Many people do the same. We are taught that goals give life structure, meaning and purpose. And they can when they are used appropriately and proportionately.

The difficulty comes when we rely on them to hold us together - or when they become all-consuming.

When the applause fades and “What’s next?” echoes in the background, it reveals how we really feel inside. That moment was the start of me questioning why I pushed myself so hard and what I was hoping each achievement would fix.

This chapter of my life was not yet the breakdown. But it was the confirmation of a pattern that had already begun.

A widening gap between the version of myself the world saw, and the version of me that was quietly struggling underneath.

That gap would continue to grow in the years that followed, carrying me into the next significant stage of my journey.

Internally, I was using goals to outrun uncertainty.
Achievement gave me a temporary sense of identity and direction, but it couldn’t regulate the exhaustion or the emotional strain that had been building for years.

Training felt productive.
Goal-setting felt purposeful.
Momentum felt stabilising.

But underneath, my physiology was declining, my mind was overloaded and my inner world was becoming harder to ignore.

The summit delivered a moment of pride, but it also revealed something unsettling; the moment the goal ended, all the emotional noise returned. I did not yet understand it, but I was living in the Recurring Cycle, unable to recognise the early signs of burnout, depletion and emotional collapse.

This chapter became one of the clearest foundations for several core Mind Works tools.

Gears of Motivation
This experience showed me how people use long-term goals to feel stable, safe or purposeful when their internal world feels unsteady.
It revealed how motivation shifts with physiology, energy and emotional load not mindset.

The Tower Block
Kilimanjaro highlighted how people can operate at high levels externally while slowly sliding down internally.
Success, performance and discipline can mask the descent until the crash becomes unavoidable.

Temporary identity through achievement
This period taught me how goals can become identity, and identity can become a coping strategy.
This later informed the Parts of Self model, particularly the Ideal Self and the Protective Self.

Early signs of emotional collapse
The exhaustion, insomnia and wired-fatigued cycles were early warnings that I had normalised.
These later shaped the physiological understanding behind burnout and the need for honest internal signals.

This chapter marks the moment where achievement stopped working as a stabiliser.
It was the beginning of a deeper realisation:
You can climb a mountain and still feel lost when you come back down.

And that realisation became the doorway to the next chapter - the collapse.

Ten weeks after returning from Kilimanjaro, everything began to unravel.
My mind and body reached a point they could no longer manage.

What followed was the most difficult period of my life.

Breaking points are rarely sudden. They arrive after long periods of doing everything you can to cope. Collapse doesn’t begin on the day everything falls apart. It begins quietly, months or even years beforehand. You push through the tiredness. You ignore the warning signs. You tell yourself you just need to get through the next week, the next challenge, the next responsibility.

I had been doing that for a very long time.

After Kilimanjaro, life returned to its usual pace. The routine, the pressure, the expectations and the strain came back exactly as they were before. But internally, something had shifted. The achievement hadn’t fixed anything. It hadn’t quietened the tired-and-wired feeling. It hadn’t restored my clarity or strengthened my resilience. If anything, the contrast made things clearer.

I was becoming less able to cope.

The insomnia returned in waves.
The fog got heavier.
My emotions sat closer to the surface.
My tolerance for stress shrank.
The gap between who I appeared to be and how I felt inside widened further.

I didn’t recognise it as burnout.
I recognised it as failing.

So I pushed harder.
More discipline.
More routines.
More coping.
More pressure.
More pretending that everything was fine.

On the outside, I still functioned. I worked. I went through the motions of everyday life. To most people, nothing had changed.

On the inside, I was slipping down the Tower Block without noticing my own descent. My physiology was collapsing long before my mind allowed me to acknowledge it.

Burnout is not a dramatic explosion.
It is a slow, silent shutdown of the system.
By the time you realise how far you’ve fallen, it is already happening.

For me, the point of collapse came suddenly and unexpectedly.
Not in a crisis moment.
Not with a clear trigger.
But in a moment where the weight of everything I had been carrying became too much.

My body and mind simply stopped cooperating.
I couldn’t function.
I couldn’t focus.
I couldn’t push through anymore.
It was as if the part of me that had been holding everything together finally let go.

What followed was a period of profound distress.
A shutdown that reached into every part of my life.
Moments of hopelessness and suicidal ideation that frightened me deeply.
Emotional exhaustion stronger than anything I had ever experienced.
A sense that the person I had been was slipping away.

Looking back, this was not a failure.
It was a breaking point.
A forced pause.
The moment my system refused to continue under the conditions I had been placing on it.

This is the lowest level of what I now call the Tower Block, the Void, where functioning is compromised, the nervous system is overwhelmed and you cannot think your way out of the situation. It is a place where you need support, not solutions. Compassion, not discipline. Understanding, not pressure.

Collapse was the most frightening part of my journey.
But it was also the beginning of the way forward.
Because once everything fell apart, I could no longer pretend that “pushing through” was working.

This chapter marked the point where the old strategies ended and where the real work - the work that would become Mind Works - quietly began.

Internally, I had reached the lowest levels of the Tower Block.
My system was overwhelmed, my physiology was failing and my internal signals were becoming unbearable.
But because I could still complete basic tasks, I mistook survival for stability.

The tired-wired cycles, the emotional volatility and the cognitive fog were all signs of collapse.
I couldn’t recognise any of them not because I lacked awareness, but because burnout distorts our ability to see ourselves clearly.

Suicidal ideation did not come from a wish to die.
It came from the belief that I could not keep living the way I had been.
It was a signal of overload, not character.

The Protective Self was still trying to hold everything together.
The Ideal Self still whispered that I needed to be stronger and achieve. 
The Actual Self was drowning.
And the True Self had almost no room to speak.

This was the deepest part of the Recurring Cycle. The point at which the system collapses after long periods of carrying more pressure than it can bear.

This chapter shaped some of the most important therapeutic foundations within Mind Works.

The Tower Block: Basement, Dungeon, and Void
Collapse taught me that functioning is not a mindset issue; it is a physiological state.
This experience became the foundation for the lowest levels of the Tower Block; the stages where clarity disappears, emotional overwhelm peaks and the system moves into shutdown.

Understanding suicidal ideation as a state, not an identity
This period taught me that these thoughts often reflect exhaustion, fear and the need for relief; not a wish to die.
This understanding is now integrated carefully and compassionately into my work.

Compassion over discipline
Collapse revealed that pushing harder is not resilience.
It is avoidance.
This shaped the entire ethos of Mind Works: clarity, compassion and connection first - action later.

The necessity of support
This chapter highlighted why people cannot think their way out of the Void.
They need grounding, stabilisation, safety and understanding.
This formed the foundations for the Reset Session and the early stages of the Process of Change.

The beginning of real change
Everything that came after; therapy, recovery, the Process of Change, the Tower Block, the Gears of Motivation, the Pillars of Health - began because collapse forced me to stop pretending I was coping.

This chapter is the turning point.
It is where the façade ends, and the rebuilding begins.

Recovery began in the darkest and quietest moments.

I reached a place where life felt heavy and frightening. It was the beginning of a long journey back to myself, and it did not follow a straight path.

When everything falls apart, the first steps toward healing often begin long before we recognise them. The period that followed the breakdown was one of the hardest times of my life.

My thoughts were scattered. My energy was gone. I felt detached from myself and unable to find any sense of direction. There were moments where life felt unbearably heavy.

Suicidal thoughts first appeared during this time, which can happen when someone reaches a place of deep exhaustion and overwhelm. These thoughts reflected fear and strain rather than any wish to stop living.

As I began to sit with the internal weight I had been carrying, themes surfaced that I had pushed aside for years.

This phase led me to see my life in terms of Acts and Chapters. Act 1 is where everything continues in familiar patterns. We keep going on well-worn tracks, supported by coping strategies that no longer serve us, yet feel easier than confronting what lies beneath them.

My breaking point marked the beginning of Act 2. Act 2 begins when life can no longer continue in its old form. It is the point where reality becomes too heavy to avoid. The experience is confusing and painful, yet it signals that something deeper needs attention.

It often does not feel like the start of anything positive, although it becomes the first opening toward change.

During this time I learned something that would later shape the Mind Works approach. Recovery begins with understanding. My nervous system had been overloaded for years.

My thoughts and emotions had been shaped by strain and survival. I needed space, clarity and support to make sense of what was happening inside me.

Looking back, I can see that the earliest stages of recovery had already begun in very small ways, long before I recognised them. The Recurring Cycle was still present. I felt stuck and uncertain, yet acknowledging the need for change marked the first quiet movement toward stability.

Observing came through small moments of honesty. I became aware of how tired I felt, how harshly I spoke to myself and how certain situations triggered old emotional patterns.

Understanding developed slowly as I learned about stress, attachment, nervous system responses and the beliefs that had been shaping my identity.

These experiences were lived before they were named.

They eventually became the Process of Change, but at the time they were simply steps I took because I had no other option. I was trying to understand myself well enough to get through each day.

This period also introduced me to the idea that the brain is capable of adapting through repetition and small changes. The earliest shifts did not feel dramatic.

They appeared as moments of clarity that came and went, yet they gave me enough to keep moving.

This chapter was slow, uncertain and often painful. It was the beginning of seeing myself honestly and understanding the system that had carried me for so long.

Internally, I was still fragile.
My nervous system had been pushed far beyond its capacity.
I no longer had the energy to pretend I was coping, yet I also did not have the clarity to know what to do next.

The emotional noise was overwhelming at times and silent at others.
Some days felt foggy.
Some felt frightening.
Some were simply exhausted.

The Protective Self was still trying to hold everything together.
The Ideal Self had lost its influence.
The Actual Self was finally beginning to speak, although quietly.

Estrangement resurfaced during this time. Hidden pain often rises when life becomes quiet enough to reveal it, and this created another layer of emotional work that I had avoided for years.

What felt like confusion was the early movement out of shutdown.
It was the point where honesty and awareness began to return, even though the road ahead was unclear.

This chapter became one of the most important foundations of Mind Works.

The Process of Change
The steps I later named were first lived here.
Acknowledging reality, observing without judgement and slowly understanding my internal world became the beginning of stability.

Recognition of silent suffering
This period taught me how many people experience burnout, overwhelm and suicidal ideation quietly.
It shaped the compassionate and steady tone that Mind Works is built on.

This chapter marks the point where collapse began to move toward rebuilding.  Although the path was far-from-straight, and there still were many challenges to face. 

It was the quiet beginning of a new direction, shaped by honesty rather than pressure.

When I first reached out for help, I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder and low mood. I struggled to accept the diagnosis. It felt too broad and too general, as if it did not fully capture what was happening inside me. I sensed there was more beneath the surface, but I did not yet know how to explain it. My GP prescribed antidepressants and I took them, although I felt uneasy. After the adjustment period, the medication softened the sharpest edges yet created a different kind of fog. I felt blunted and disconnected in a way that was unfamiliar.

Alongside medication, life outside the appointments continued as it always had. My coping strategies were still fully active. I was drinking often and using it to quieten the internal noise. I buried myself in work, taking on more than I could manage because it felt easier to stay busy than to sit with myself. I stayed in unhealthy relationship patterns that reflected how I felt internally, yet none of these areas were explored in any depth. The focus stayed on symptoms rather than the life that was producing them.

CBT became part of the plan. I tried to engage with it. I completed the exercises, the thought records and the worksheets, but I did not yet have a vocabulary for my emotional world. I could describe what was happening, yet I could not explain why it felt so heavy. Much of the work felt disconnected from the roots of my distress.

At the same time, I reached out to family and friends. I asked for advice, reassurance and support. People offered what they could. They cared deeply. I was encouraged to speak about my feelings, to think positively and to focus on the future. These conversations helped in moments, yet they often reinforced the idea that the solution was found through mindset or discipline.

I also took my first steps into counselling. It offered a space to speak openly, but the work felt like retelling a story I was not fully connected to. I was asked how I felt about events that I did not yet have language or clarity for. I could describe what had happened, but not why it affected me. I did not understand the internal system behind the pain.

Looking back, I can see that nothing I tried was wrong. These steps are valid and often life changing. They helped reduce immediate suffering and kept me going at a time when I was vulnerable. They simply did not reach the underlying pressures that had shaped my entire inner world. I was trying to repair the symptoms while the root causes remained unrecognised.

This was the moment where I began to realise that talking alone was not enough. I needed to understand why my system had reached breakdown, and what had been happening inside me long before the collapse.

Internally, the system that had carried me for years was still overwhelmed.

I was beginning to stabilise the crisis, but I had not yet understood the layers underneath it.
I noticed fragments of change, yet I did not have the tools to make sense of them.

I was experiencing:

• thoughts that were calmer but still disconnected
• emotional signals I could feel but not yet interpret
• fatigue that did not improve with rest
• a sense of emptiness even when symptoms reduced
• a growing awareness that something deeper was shaping my reactions

This was the stage where recovery had technically begun, but only on the surface.
The inner world was still dominated by old patterns: pressure, self-survival, emotional avoidance and a lifetime of adapting to environments rather than listening to myself.

I still believed that improvement would come from effort, discipline or a better mindset.
I did not yet recognise that my internal system was trying to signal that something fundamental needed attention.

This was the transition where the Recurring Cycle began to weaken.
I was no longer reacting blindly, but I was not yet able to understand what the signals meant.
It was the earliest stage of inner conflict: the part of me that wanted to keep surviving in old ways, and the part of me that was beginning to sense that something within me needed to change.

These early attempts at recovery became a crucial lesson in how complex distress really is.

Talking helps, but it cannot replace understanding.
Medication stabilises physiology, but it does not rewrite patterns.
CBT provides tools, but only if someone has the emotional vocabulary to use them.
Support from others offers comfort, but it cannot replace clarity.

This chapter became the moment where I realised that change requires a full picture of the mind and body. This understanding shaped several core elements of the Mind Works approach.

It reinforced the need for the Tower Block, because talking alone does not shift someone up a level. Physiology must be supported.

It highlighted the importance of the Pillars of Health, because nutrition, sleep, stress load, environment and relationships influence clarity far more than positive thinking alone.

It deepened the idea of Parts of Self, because talking to one part of someone cannot resolve the conflicts held by the others.

It showed the necessity of the Process of Change, because recovery is not linear and does not happen through conversations alone. It happens through awareness, understanding and repeated internal shifts.

This chapter represents the moment where the seeds of the entire approach were planted.
It showed me why talking about life is not enough. We need to understand the system behind it.

During this stage of my recovery, I was desperate to find something that could help me feel settled. My mind was constantly active. The intrusive thoughts were uncomfortable and the internal pressure felt relentless. I began researching anything that might offer relief. Meditation appeared repeatedly as a recommended solution, so I committed myself fully to learning it.

I was instructed in Transcendental Meditation. I learned that it was used by celebrities, and even in prisons, where it had been shown to help reduce reoffending. At the time, this gave me a sense of hope. It felt like I had found something meaningful at a point where very little felt steady.

My first instruction session was profound. I experienced a depth of quiet I had never felt before. The noise that had lived in my mind for years softened. For a moment, I felt connected to myself. I felt calm in a way I had longed for. It gave me a glimpse of what my mind might be capable of with the right support.

I practiced diligently. I meditated as often as I could. Occasionally I would reach that same quietness, but most of the time it felt difficult to recreate. The thoughts were still loud. My system was still overloaded. The technique helped, but it did not transform my life in the way I hoped it would.

Meditation became one of the first tools in my toolkit. It opened the door to an interest in the brain, neuroplasticity and the regions responsible for attention, emotion and internal awareness. I began learning that our brain can change, and that these changes can be experienced in real time.

There was only one problem. Meditation helped me feel calmer, yet outside the practice nothing in my life was changing. I could not meditate my way out of the exhaustion, the pressure, the coping habits or the internal patterns that had been shaping my life for years. Meditation offered moments of relief, but the circumstances that caused the distress were still firmly in place.

Even though meditation offered short windows of calm, the rest of my internal world remained unsettled.

I noticed:

• temporary relief followed by the same intrusive thoughts
• a mind that could quieten briefly but returned to the same patterns
• nervous system overload that meditation could not reach alone
• frustration that I could not recreate the initial profound experience
• a growing awareness that peaceful moments did not equal a peaceful life

Meditation helped me observe myself with more clarity. It gave me stillness, yet it did not change the deeper causes of my distress. It highlighted the gap between moments of calm and the life I returned to afterward. It showed me that internal shifts require external support, and that tools work best when the system around them is stable.

This was another early step out of the Recurring Cycle. I could see my internal state more clearly, but I did not yet know how to support it consistently.

Meditation played an important role in the foundations of Mind Works, even though it was not the complete solution.

It taught me that:

• the brain is capable of changing through repetition
• stillness can reveal internal patterns more clearly
• tools are helpful, yet they must sit within a wider framework
• calming the mind does not replace addressing stressors, habits and unmet needs
• physiology and environment must support psychological work

Meditation helped me understand the difference between temporary relief and long-term change. It highlighted the importance of regulating the system rather than relying on isolated practices. This insight became a key part of the Pillars of Health, the Tower Block and the Process of Change. Meditation remained in my toolkit, but it became one element within a much fuller approach that could support people in a sustainable way.

During this period I was often told to believe in myself more. It was said with kindness and with good intentions, yet I could not connect to the idea at all. When I looked inside, there was nothing firm to stand on. I did not feel a sense of “me” that could be strengthened. What I found was a collection of roles, masks and identities I had used for years.

Some of those roles had already fallen away. I was no longer the bass guitarist. My financial advice career was stalling. I was no longer the person who relied on intensity, achievement or performance to feel valuable. With these identities gone or diminishing, I did not know who or what was underneath. It felt like standing at the edge of something vast and unfamiliar.

I remember describing it to a counsellor at the time. I said that it felt like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and looking into empty space. That sense of nothingness was frightening. It made “self-esteem” feel impossible, because there was no clear self to esteem. There was no foundation. No inner structure. No steady place to stand.

My esteem had always come from external sources. From work. From music. From helping others. From being the reliable one. From pushing myself. From meeting expectations. Without those things, I felt hollow. The quiet felt too big. The uncertainty felt unbearable at times.

This experience would later become central to understanding what I now call the void in the Tower Block. It is the level where identity falls apart before a new one has formed, where old structures collapse faster than new ones can appear. It feels empty, but that emptiness contains the very first space needed for rebuilding.

Years later, I found a book that helped me make sense of what I had lived through. “The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem” by Nathaniel Branden gave language to experiences I had carried for years. It helped me understand that self-esteem is not confidence, achievement or performance. It is the relationship we have with ourselves. At the time of this chapter, that relationship did not yet exist.

Internally, everything felt unstable.
I could sense that old identities no longer fitted, yet I had no clarity about what would replace them. This created an emotional gap that felt wide and disorientating.

Inside, I noticed:

• the absence of an inner foundation
• a deep uncertainty about who I was without achievement
• a sense of hollowness where identity should have been
• difficulty connecting with any idea of self-worth
• fear that without roles, nothing meaningful remained
• moments where the quiet felt too large to face

This was a stage of rebuilding that no one prepares you for. The external world sees progress because symptoms may lessen, yet internally there is a collapse of identity. The protective masks that once held everything together are gone, and the self beneath them is still forming. It is a transition that feels more like falling than recovering.

This period revealed a truth I would only understand later.
Self-esteem cannot be built until there is a self to build it around.
At this stage, that self was still taking shape.

This chapter became one of the foundations of the Tower Block.
It helped me understand that the lower levels are not simply about stress. They include profound shifts in identity, meaning and self-worth. The void is not a place of failure. It is a place where the old structures fall apart, creating space for something real to emerge.

This experience also shaped the Mental Strength tool. Mental Strength is not about willpower or forced confidence. It begins with honest awareness. It helps people notice who they are beneath performance. It builds clarity before expectation. It recognises that self-esteem grows from understanding, not pressure.

This chapter also influenced the Subconscious work.
It highlighted how childhood adaptations, unspoken emotional burdens and long-standing patterns shape the self we carry into adulthood. When these structures collapse, the path forward requires compassion, understanding and guided rebuilding.

Years later, Branden’s work helped integrate these ideas into the Mind Works framework. The six pillars became a vocabulary for something I had lived long before I understood it. They now play a role in helping clients rebuild self-worth in a grounded and practical way.

This chapter represents one of the quiet pivots in my journey.
It was the moment I realised that identity cannot be performed.
It must be understood, nurtured and built with care.

For a long time, I tried to rebuild myself using the tools I had access to at the time. I tried meditation. I tried positive thinking. I tried the idea of believing in myself more. These practices helped in brief moments, yet they never reached the deeper layers of what I was carrying. The underlying issues had surfaced, yet I did not have the tools to work with them. The distance between what I understood on the surface and what I felt internally continued to widen.

During these years, I was still working in financial advice. The role required certainty, structure and the confident version of myself I had relied on for so long. I cared deeply about the people I worked with, and I worked hard to present the steady, capable identity that clients expected of me. Yet inside, something was shifting. I was more reflective, more sensitive to my internal world and more aware of what drained me. Holding these two versions of myself created an ongoing tension that I did not yet know how to resolve.

This conflict grew slowly. Each meeting highlighted how misaligned I had become. The internal strain was increasing even though nothing looked wrong from the outside. I kept functioning. I kept delivering. I kept appearing as the person people knew me to be. Yet I felt myself slipping. The gap between who I was and who I had to be was becoming too wide to ignore.

The breaking point arrived quietly, during a time when everything around me continued as normal. On Christmas night, the internal weight became too much. I reached a place of exhaustion and despair that I could no longer carry. In that moment, I gave myself three months to decide whether I could continue living in the way I had been. This was not about wanting life to end. It was about no longer knowing how to keep going under the pressure I was placing on myself. The experience reflected overwhelm, fear and a system pushed far beyond its capacity.

I share this with care because many people reach this point silently. When someone becomes overwhelmed to this extent, the mind searches for escape from pressure that feels unmanageable. It becomes difficult to imagine a future beyond the moment you are standing in. This moment was not a failure. It was the clearest signal I had ever received that something needed to change.

In the weeks that followed, the fog began to lift. I could see the patterns that had brought me to that place. Therapy gave me space to understand what had happened. Years of pushing, performing and carrying emotional responsibilities had shaped the way I thought, behaved and related to myself. Meeting this honestly was uncomfortable, yet it created small moments of clarity that slowly helped me rebuild.

During this time, my values began to shift. The achievements and identities that had once felt important no longer held the same weight. I paid more attention to how I felt and less attention to how I appeared. I noticed what calmed me and what overwhelmed me. For the first time, I allowed myself to listen to these signals rather than ignore them.

This was another early foundation of what I later called Mental Strength. At the time, I did not have that language. I only knew that clarity appeared when I paid attention to my internal state. I began to recognise overwhelm rather than push through it. I sensed when something was misaligned rather than dismissing it. These were the first steps toward understanding myself instead of fighting myself.

Eventually, the truth became unavoidable. I could not continue in financial advice. Staying would have meant returning to the same patterns that had contributed to my collapse. Leaving was not driven by confidence or a clear plan. It was simply the honest next step. A step that created space. Space to breathe, to recover and to understand myself with more depth.

That space became the ground on which my new life would grow. It was the beginning of rebuilding myself with clarity rather than pressure, and it opened the path that would eventually become Mind Works.

During this period I was trying everything I had been told would help. I followed the doctor’s advice and took antidepressants. I attended CBT sessions. I opened up to friends and family. I learned meditation. I tried to believe in myself and repeated the messages I had been taught about being a good person. Each of these tools offered value. They brought moments of relief and helped me understand parts of my experience. Yet they did not reach the roots of what was happening inside me.

The deeper causes were still untouched.
The external pressures were still building.
And the internal strain had never been fully acknowledged.

Pushing towards goals had become my default solution. It was how I tried to manage uncertainty, fear and the sense of not being enough. This drove the business to grow faster than I could sustain, and the identity I created around being that capable person became a kind of prison. I did not see it at the time. I only knew that the life I was living demanded more than I had the capacity to give.

Later, this experience formed the idea of the Dungeon in the Tower Block. A place where you are functioning, yet trapped by expectations you can no longer meet.

The Christmas night decision became the moment where this internal and external strain collided. I reached a point of total shutdown. The weight of my life felt impossible to carry, and for a few hours I saw no path forward. What happened that night was frightening, yet it also revealed a truth I had been unable to face. My system had reached its limit. I could not continue in the life I had built, and the roles I was holding were no longer sustainable.

In the quiet that followed, something became clearer. It was the first time I had seen the reality of my situation without distortion. My finances were collapsing. The business was unmanageable. The identity I had been performing was falling apart. I could no longer convince myself that more effort or discipline would fix anything. This clarity did not feel hopeful. It felt raw and exposing. Yet it marked the beginnings of honesty.

Internally, something else was happening too.
A part of me was waking up.
The part that could no longer push blindly through pressure.
The part that wanted alignment instead of performance.
The part that had been buried under responsibility and expectations.

This was the earliest movement out of the Recurring Cycle.
Not a breakthrough.
Not a recovery.
Just the first flicker of awareness that something had to change.

It was the beginning of seeing my life as it truly was.
And that honesty created the space I needed to take the next step.

This chapter is one of the origins of the Mind Works framework.

It contributed to several ideas that later became central to the approach:

Mental Strength took shape here
Not as discipline or toughness, but as the ability to see internal truth clearly and respond with honesty.

The importance of alignment became obvious
Pushing through misalignment had contributed to collapse. Listening to it became a foundation for recovery.

Parts of Self emerged more clearly
The Ideal Self that performed.
The Current Self that felt overwhelmed.
The quieter part that wanted honesty and stability.
This internal conflict became the early structure of the model.

The Tower Block gained new layer
I began recognising the difference between functioning well on the outside and falling through the levels internally.

The Process of Change was being lived before it was named
Observing → Understanding → Managing
All of these steps appeared naturally during this period, long before the framework existed.

This chapter represents the early reorganisation of the inner world — the moment where lived experience started turning into therapeutic insight. It created the space where what would later  become Mind Works could form with clarity, honesty and genuine alignment.

When rebuilding continues, clarity often arrives in the form of curiosity, learning and genuine connection with others. Leaving financial advice created a kind of space I had not felt in years. It felt uncertain, but the uncertainty had its own relief. I no longer had to hold myself in a role that demanded a version of me I could no longer sustain. I did not have a plan for what came next. I only knew that the direction of my old life had reached its natural end. The quiet that followed felt unfamiliar, yet necessary.

During this time, I became increasingly curious about the mind. This interest did not grow from theory or ambition. It grew from lived experience. I wanted to understand why people think, feel and behave as they do. I wanted to know why certain patterns repeat and why change can feel so difficult even when someone wants it. My own history had created questions that needed proper attention.

This curiosity led me to train in hypnotherapy, coaching and psychological approaches. Training gave me structure at a time when I needed grounding. It helped me understand the breakdown with more clarity. I began learning how stress, pressure, trauma, exhaustion and belief systems shape our internal world. Much of what I studied felt familiar. I recognised my own patterns in the models and theories I was being taught. For the first time, the pieces of my life began to join together.

Working with early clients changed everything. People came to me feeling anxious, overwhelmed, fatigued or stuck. They talked about pushing through pressure, struggling with self-worth, carrying old expectations and losing themselves inside identities that no longer fitted. Their experiences were different, yet the themes were the same. I understood them because I had lived through similar patterns myself.

As these sessions unfolded, the early shapes of the Mind Works approach began to appear. I saw the gap between who someone felt they needed to be and who they were inside. I noticed how stress altered their decisions, energy and behaviour. I could see the way people moved between states of clarity and overwhelm. Childhood patterns and old beliefs appeared quietly in the background, influencing how someone reacted to life as an adult.

Parts of Self grew from observing how people shifted between different internal states depending on pressure, fear or expectation.
The Tower Block developed from recognising the levels of psychological and physiological functioning that people cycle through during stress.
Mental Strength began forming from the realisation that clarity comes from understanding our internal world rather than fighting it.
The Subconscious work emerged from seeing how old stories, experiences and belief systems influence the present without us realising.

These tools were not formal models at this stage. They were reflections and observations, shaped by both my own journey and the experiences of the people I worked with. The work felt meaningful in a way financial advice never had. I no longer felt like I was performing an identity. I was supporting people in ways that felt authentic and grounded.

As I continued learning and working with clients, the direction of my life became clearer. I did not enter therapy work through confidence or certainty. I arrived through recovery, curiosity and the quiet recognition that this was where my life had been pointing for a long time.

Becoming a therapist was not a sudden decision. It was the natural continuation of a journey that had already begun the moment I chose honesty over expectation.

Internally, I was beginning to stabilise after a long period of overload.
The constant pressure that had shaped my life for years had eased.
There was space for reflection.
There was room to breathe.

My nervous system was still sensitive and easily overwhelmed, yet it was no longer collapsing.
I had more capacity to notice my thoughts and feelings without shutting down.
Curiosity replaced fear.
Learning replaced avoidance.

This was the first time I had allowed myself to explore who I was without the weight of performance or expectation.
The Actual Self, which had been quiet for so long, finally had room to grow.

The clarity that emerged did not arrive as certainty.
It arrived as interest and connection.
It arrived as meaningful conversations with clients and moments of recognition in therapy training.
It arrived slowly, but consistently enough to guide me forward.

This chapter laid the foundations for the therapeutic depth of Mind Works.

The importance of psychological safety
This period showed me how essential it is to create emotional space before deeper work can happen.
Safety, not pressure, is what allows change to begin.

The roots of the core models
Early observations formed the basis of the Tower Block, Parts of Self, the Subconscious work and Mental Strength.
These were shaped through lived experience first, then refined through client work.

The value of authentic alignment
Leaving financial advice revealed the cost of performing an identity that no longer fits.
This insight later shaped the Understanding stage of the Process of Change.

Curiosity as a vehicle for recovery
This period showed me that people often rebuild not through certainty, but through asking the right questions.
Curiosity became one of the quiet engines of the Mind Works approach.

Therapy as a natural progression
This chapter marks the point where my personal and professional lives aligned.
Therapy was not a new beginning, but the next honest step in a journey that was already unfolding.

After leaving financial advice, I entered a period of learning that felt grounding and meaningful. During my hypnotherapy training, I was introduced to The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. I did not know at the time that this book would become one of the most important turning points in my understanding of myself.

I had always believed trauma meant severe neglect or dramatic events. My childhood did not fit that picture. Yet as I read, I realised there was an entire field of research dedicated to something far more subtle. Adverse Childhood Experiences. Emotional strain. Environments where children adapt in ways that are invisible from the outside but powerful on the inside.

For the first time, I had language for the emotional patterns I had carried for decades. The book explained why certain triggers created strong reactions. It explained why I had learned to stay alert, to suppress emotion, to scan the environment and to carry responsibility that was never mine to hold. It helped me understand why burnout, anxiety and internal conflict had appeared in the ways they did.

The neuroscience was equally revealing. The book explored how the nervous system internalises stress, how the brain changes in response to early experiences and how the body stores emotional imprints. Reading this felt like reading a map of my own internal world. It was both a relief and a quiet shock. I finally understood that what I had lived through had a name, a structure and decades of research behind it.

This book also introduced me to Internal Family Systems and the work of Richard Schwartz. His explanation of parts resonated deeply. I recognised the Internal Protectors, the Managers, the Exiles and the younger emotional parts that shaped adult behaviour. This became one of the foundations of what I would eventually call Parts of Self.

From here, my learning expanded into attachment theory, polyvagal theory, EMDR and the physiological nature of trauma. The more I studied, the more I recognised these patterns in myself and the people I was beginning to work with.

The Body Keeps the Score became a source of comfort because it explained me to me. It also became one of the most important technical references in my entire journey. I still recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the deeper layers of their emotional and physiological life.

Internally, this period brought a new kind of clarity.
It was the first time I understood the deeper origins of my emotional patterns and why certain feelings had followed me through life.

Inside, I noticed:

• relief in finally having language for experiences I had carried alone
• a growing understanding of why my nervous system reacted the way it did
• recognition that my emotional patterns had roots, not faults
• a sense of compassion for younger versions of myself
• clearer insight into why burnout, anxiety and shutdown had appeared

This stage marked one of the most healing parts of my journey. Understanding trauma science allowed me to see myself through a kinder and more accurate lens. It reshaped my internal narrative from “what is wrong with me” to “what happened to me, and how did my system adapt”.

It also helped me recognise the importance of integrating the past into the present in a structured and supportive way. The internal noise that once felt confusing began to form a more coherent picture. This created space for deeper healing and more meaningful growth.

This chapter became one of the deepest foundations of Mind Works.

The research on trauma, attachment and the nervous system helped shape multiple models in the approach, especially the Parts of Self. The idea that we have younger emotional parts, protective parts and managerial parts aligned with everything I had experienced and everything I saw later in client work.

The Tower Block model was strengthened by understanding how trauma influences the nervous system. The lower levels of shutdown, confusion and overwhelm mirrored the physiological responses described in trauma literature. It helped me recognise that people move through these levels for reasons that make sense.

The Subconscious work grew directly from these insights.
It became clear that beliefs, identity, emotional reactions and protective patterns often begin in childhood. They stay active until they are understood and integrated. Trauma theory provided the structure for this.

Polyvagal theory shaped the way I understood safety, connection, shutdown and recovery.
EMDR and similar methods helped me recognise how the body holds emotional memory.
Attachment theory clarified why relationships feel safe or unsafe and how this influences adult behaviour.

This chapter shaped the therapeutic depth of Mind Works.
It ensured the approach was grounded in compassion, neuroscience and the lived experience of real people.
It strengthened the belief that understanding the past is not about blame. It is about clarity, integration and the ability to move forward with steadiness.

The Body Keeps the Score remains one of the most important books in my own story.
It became the bridge between personal healing and the therapeutic models that now support others.

As I continued my training and began working with more clients, a pattern kept appearing in the therapy room.
People were describing experiences that were different in content yet identical in structure.
The language varied, but the message was always the same.

“It’s like I have a devil on my shoulder.”
“Part of me thinks this, and part of me thinks that.”
“I know what I should be doing, but I cannot get myself to do it.”
“It might sound strange, but sometimes I feel physically small, almost like I am a child again.”

Session after session, I heard different people describe the same internal conflicts.
I recognised the pattern instantly, because I had lived it myself.

Around this time, I read No Bad Parts and explored Internal Family Systems more deeply. The model resonated in a way few things ever had. It confirmed something I had felt intuitively for years. The human mind is formed in parts. These parts develop to protect us, to manage life, to make sense of our history and to help us function.

IFS was not inventing something new.
It was naming something ancient and universal.

The idea of being in “two minds” appears everywhere.
Yin and yang.
The angel and the devil.
Batman and Bruce Wayne.
Even children’s films show conflicting inner voices guiding behaviour.

And long before psychology existed, Eastern philosophy described this same internal struggle.
In Indian mysticism, the concepts of preya and shreya describe the tension between immediate gratification and long-term fulfilment.
Buddhist teachings describe the clashing currents of craving and wisdom.
Philosophy has explored these questions for thousands of years.

IFS simply gave these ideas structure.

For the first time, my life made sense through this lens.
It wasn’t that I lacked self-esteem.
It was that my self-esteem had been exiled.
Buried beneath years of protection, pressure and old emotional patterns.

This understanding opened a path that felt both personal and universal.
A path that would eventually become the Parts of Self model within Mind Works.

Internally, this was a moment of integration.

I was beginning to realise that my behaviours, reactions and emotional states were not random.
They came from different parts of me, each with its own history and purpose.

Inside, I noticed:

• protective parts that kept me functional through pressure
• younger emotional parts that carried old pain
• managerial parts that kept me performing and achieving
• internal voices that conflicted because they had different priorities
• a deeper Self that had been quiet for years, waiting for space to re-emerge

For the first time, these internal shifts made sense.
I understood why I could feel confident one moment and doubtful the next.
Why I could push myself relentlessly and then collapse.
Why I could care deeply for others yet avoid caring for myself.
Why certain moments triggered a younger emotional state inside me.

This period revealed that inner conflict is not evidence of brokenness.
It is evidence of an internal system doing its best to protect itself with the tools it developed long ago.

Understanding this removed layers of shame I had carried for years.
It helped me see myself with more compassion.
It created space for healing in a way that felt safe and grounded.

This chapter shaped one of the core pillars of Mind Works: the Parts of Self.

IFS provided the framework.
My own life provided the lived experience.
Client work provided the patterns and the clarity.

From this, the Mind Works model developed:

• The Actual Self
The present-day version of us trying to manage life as it is.

• The Ideal Self
The part shaped by expectations, pressures and the standards we try to live up to.

• The Protective Self
The part that uses coping strategies to keep us from feeling overwhelmed.

• The True Self
The grounded, compassionate presence underneath it all.

Understanding these parts helped clients see their internal world without judgement.
It explained why progress could feel inconsistent.
It clarified why people feel “stuck” even when they know what they want.
It allowed clients to understand their behaviour rather than shame themselves for it.

It also became a bridge to the deeper subconscious work.
IFS connected seamlessly with Jung’s ideas about the psyche, identity, symbols and the internal world beneath conscious awareness.
The blend of modern therapy, neuroscience and ancient philosophy became one of the most meaningful integrations within Mind Works.

This chapter marks the moment where the internal story became clear:
human beings are not one thing.
We are many parts, shaped by many moments, all trying to help us survive.
When we understand those parts, we learn how to live with coherence, compassion and clarity.

As I moved deeper into my recovery, I was learning more about psychology, trauma, identity and emotional health. Meditation had become a genuine tool. Therapy was helping me make sense of my patterns. My internal world was becoming clearer. Yet despite all this progress, my body still felt heavy.

The brain fog continued.
The fatigue returned in waves.
There were days when my energy collapsed without warning.
And although I understood the psychological aspects of my story, my physiology felt as though it was still years behind.

A friend gave me the Wim Hof book as a gift. At first I read it out of curiosity, thinking it might add something to what I already knew. I wanted to understand the body in more detail. I wanted to know why fatigue still held such power over me, even after I had addressed so many emotional and cognitive layers.

What I found was unexpected.

Cold exposure and breathwork were not framed as discipline or toughness. They were described as tools that could change biology at a fundamental level. This immediately caught my attention. I had tried everything I knew at the time. Meditation, supplements, caffeine, sugar. Each provided a small lift, but none of them touched the deeper exhaustion.

Around this time, I read a report from the ME Association that explained a concept which changed everything. People with chronic fatigue and ME have a low anaerobic threshold. This means the body enters a stressed metabolic state far sooner than expected. It struggles to use oxygen efficiently. The mitochondria do not fuel the system in the way they should.

In simple terms, there was most likely a reason why I felt the way that I did. 

This unlocked something I had been searching for. I finally had a way to understand why fatigue had followed me for so long, even when life had become calmer.

I began experimenting. A cold shower each morning. Short dips in a cold bath which I approached mindfully instead of forcefully. Simple breathwork to shift my physiology. The changes were small at first, but noticeable. Moments of clarity returned. Energy became more stable. The heavy internal fog loosened.

It was the first time I truly understood that the mind cannot function well when the body is struggling, and the body cannot stabilise when the mind is overloaded.

Cold exposure and breathwork became my way of bridging the gap.

Internally, this was a profound shift.

For years, I had been trying to solve a physiological problem with psychological tools alone. Meditation calmed my mind, yet the underlying exhaustion persisted. Therapy helped me understand myself, yet it did not give my cells more oxygen. Supplements lifted me momentarily, but never touched the deeper dysregulation.

Cold exposure and breathwork revealed the truth:

• my system was still living in a state of metabolic stress
• my anaerobic threshold was low, which created early fatigue
• my nervous system had adapted to survival for many years
• small triggers pushed me into a stressed state quickly
• my body was signalling that it needed a different kind of support

The cold forced my body into presence.
The breath reset my system.
The combination stabilised something that had been unstable for years.

These practices showed me that recovery is multi-layered.
It includes psychology, physiology and emotional safety.
It includes the mitochondria, the breath, the nervous system and the mind.

Internally, I felt a shift from frustration to clarity. There was nothing wrong with me. My body simply needed help catching up with my mind.

This chapter shaped the physiological branch of Mind Works.

It became one of the foundations of the Pillars of Health and changed the way I understood energy, fatigue, motivation and stress.

From this period emerged:

• a deeper appreciation of the mind–body connection
• the understanding that physiology shapes thoughts as much as thoughts shape behaviour
• the recognition that fatigue is often biochemical, not psychological
• the belief that recovery cannot happen without stable energy
• the idea that oxygen, breath and metabolic health are central to wellbeing

Cold exposure and breathwork became tools I still use today, not for shock value or toughness, but as reliable ways to regulate the system. They helped me understand why fatigue influences motivation, why stress affects clarity and why behavioural change is impossible when the body is overwhelmed.

These discoveries fed directly into the Gears of Motivation, the Tower Block and the Pillars of Health.
They formed a bridge between the emotional and the biological.
They demonstrated that real change requires both.

This chapter marks the beginning of the physiological side of Mind Works.
The moment where energy, oxygen, metabolism and nervous system regulation became as important as psychology and subconscious work.

As life reopened after the Covid lockdowns, many people returned to a familiar rhythm. They met friends, made plans and stepped back into social spaces that had been paused for months. My experience was very different.

By the time lockdown lifted, I had already been withdrawing from the world for years. The breakdown, the burnout, leaving financial services and the deep inner work that followed had created an unconscious retreat from many parts of my life. When everyone else stepped back out, I realised how far I had stepped in.

My phone was quiet.
My social world was distant.
People met up around me, and I watched from the outside.

A wave of loneliness hit me with a force I had not expected. I had spent years surrounded by noise, pressure and people. Now that everything was quiet, the absence of connection created a new kind of ache. It was not dramatic. It was a steady, sinking feeling that revealed how disconnected I had become.

Old coping habits returned.
Alcohol became a way to soften the edges of isolation.
It filled silence. It filled evenings. It filled emotional space that I had not yet learned how to sit with.

Eventually the cycle became clear. I needed a complete reset. I made the decision to stop drinking altogether for a prolonged period of abstinence. This created the clarity I needed to see my situation honestly. Only then did I begin reaching back out to the people who had mattered to me.

Rebuilding friendships was not instant. It happened slowly, conversation by conversation, message by message, meeting by meeting. Yet each reconnection gave me something I had been missing. Care. Humour. Shared history. A reminder that I had never been as alone as I felt.

This period also highlighted relationships that I had been maintaining simply out of habit. Some connections no longer felt aligned with the person I was becoming. Letting go of these was painful, yet necessary.

This included estrangement within my own family. Family breakdowns are rarely spoken about openly. They sit in the background as a quiet source of pain. They can carry shame, silence and a sense of failure, even when they are the healthiest choice for everyone involved. For years, I had carried the weight of unresolved relationships with close family members, believing it was easier to hold it alone than explain something so personal.

During this chapter, the emotional cost of that silence became clear. I had been grieving relationships that no longer existed, even though no one around me could see it.

Rebuilding my tribe meant more than reconnecting. It meant understanding what connection truly requires. Honesty. Safety. Reciprocity. And relationships that support growth rather than suppress it.

This period taught me that healing does not happen in isolation. People help us regulate. People help us remember who we are. People help us create meaning. Connection was not an optional extra. It was a necessary part of becoming whole again.

Internally, this chapter was a turning point.

• The loneliness exposed emotional wounds I had avoided.
• Estrangement resurfaced feelings I had pushed down for years.
• My nervous system was craving connection yet terrified of vulnerability.
• Alcohol became a short-term regulator when I had not yet built healthier strategies.
• My internal world felt fragile in a way that surprised me.

I realised that the internal rebuilding I had been working on needed something external to anchor it. Humans regulate through co-regulation. Safety comes from shared presence. Identity is shaped through connection.

Internally, I was learning:

• which relationships drained me
• which ones stabilised me
• which parts of me still feared closeness
• which parts longed for it
• and which connections were missing altogether

This was the first time I understood that isolation was not a neutral state.
It amplifies stress.
It intensifies self-doubt.
It feeds old coping behaviours.
And it makes recovery far harder than it needs to be.

The internal shift came from recognising that rebuilding myself required rebuilding my connections too.

This chapter became the foundation for the relational side of Mind Works.

It reinforced that:

• connection regulates the nervous system
• isolation magnifies distress
• belonging is essential for resilience
• supportive relationships help stabilise the Tower Block
• estrangement leaves emotional imprints that deserve recognition
• community is a key part of long-term wellbeing

It also shaped several elements of the Mind Works approach:

Parts of Self
Connection helps the Protective Self soften.
It helps the Actual Self feel seen.
It helps the Ideal Self release pressure.
It supports the True Self in emerging authentically.

The Pillars of Health
Relationships form a whole pillar because they influence physiology, stress load and emotional stability as much as sleep or nutrition.

The Tower Block
Connection supports upward movement.
Isolation contributes to descent.

The Reset Session
Many people arrive feeling alone, ashamed or disconnected. This chapter taught me how vital it is to give people a space where they feel understood and supported without judgement.

Direction, Rhythm and Fuel
Connection sits within Fuel. It is emotional nourishment. It creates stability and gives meaning to the journey.

This chapter showed me that recovery is not just about understanding yourself.
It is about surrounding yourself with people who help you become the person you are trying to grow into.

As my new career settled into place, my inner world became steadier. My days were calmer. My nervous system had room to breathe. Life felt more manageable and predictable. Working with clients gave me a sense of purpose that felt grounded and meaningful in a way I had never known before.

I noticed the shifts within myself. Clarity returned in small steps. My thoughts felt lighter. My emotions had more space. I built routines that supported me instead of draining me. I could see similar changes happening in the people I worked with, and this deepened my curiosity. I wanted to understand how change actually happens, and why it unfolds differently for different people.

I threw myself into learning. Neuroscience, psychology, trauma, motivation, stress physiology, identity and behavioural change. It was broad at first, but it gave me direction. I was building the kind of understanding I had needed during my own collapse. For the first time, the pieces of my story were beginning to make sense.

Even with this momentum, there were days when everything stalled. I found myself procrastinating on important tasks. Motivation would vanish without warning. Instantly, the old voice inside me appeared.

“You need to get on with it. Push yourself. Stop delaying. Get out of your comfort zone.”

That message had driven me for years. It was the voice of pressure, discipline and survival. The voice that had kept me going long after my system was exhausted.

But something new happened this time.

Another part of me spoke up, quieter but clearer.

“I don’t feel like I’m in a comfort zone.”

That sentence stopped me.
It did not come from stress.
It came from honesty.

It was the first time I heard the deeper part of the inner conflict I had been experiencing for years. I realised I was not avoiding tasks because they were easy. I was overwhelmed. I was fatigued. My system was overloaded again. The breathing space I had worked so hard to create finally allowed that truth to be heard.

This was the real eureka moment.

I saw that motivation and procrastination were not problems to fix. They were signals. They reflected what was happening inside my body. They rose and fell with stress, hormones, energy levels, emotional pressure and the demands placed on my system.

Once I understood this, everything began to make sense, in my own life and in my client work.

This was the moment the Tower Block took shape.
A way of understanding the levels of psychological, emotional and physiological functioning we all move between.

From here, the Gears of Motivation developed.
Then the Scales.
Then the Pressure Gauge.

These tools helped me see myself with clarity and compassion instead of judgement. They helped my clients understand their internal world in a way that felt empowering rather than critical.

This chapter marks the point where fatigue opened the door to insight.
Where understanding replaced pressure.
Where the foundations of Mind Works moved from lived experience into structured models that genuinely helped people.

Internally, something important had shifted.
My body was no longer collapsing, yet it was still sensitive to stress and overwork.
This created the space for honesty.
It allowed me to hear the quieter part of myself that I had ignored for years.

The old internal script tried to take over.
The script of pressure, discipline and pushing harder.
But for the first time, I could recognise that script as a signal of overwhelm rather than a call to action.

This allowed the Actual Self to have a voice.
It allowed me to recognise that procrastination was not avoidance.
It was information.
It was my physiology asking for stability.

This insight became one of the most important moments in my recovery.
It showed me that sustainable change begins with listening to the internal world rather than forcing it into submission.

This chapter shaped several of the core ideas that define Mind Works today.

The Tower Block
The moment I understood why clarity rises and falls, the levels of the Tower Block became clear. This model reflects the reality of how people function under different physiological and psychological loads.

The Gears of Motivation
This period showed me that motivation has layers. It shifts depending on whether the system is in survival, comfort seeking or long-term focus. This became the basis of the Gears.

The Scales and the Pressure Gauge
Seeing how quickly I tipped between overwhelm and clarity led to tools that help people track their internal load and understand when they need rest rather than pressure.

Physiology before behaviour
This chapter confirmed that behaviour cannot be separated from biology. Motivation, procrastination, clarity and emotional regulation all reflect the state of the system.

Compassionate change
This insight transformed the tone of my work. It removed the idea of discipline as the answer and replaced it with understanding, honesty and internal listening.

This chapter marks the point where Mind Works became a system rather than a set of reflections.
It was the beginning of a complete framework rooted in clarity, compassion and the reality of how the body and mind work together.

After developing the Tower Block, everything began to connect on a deeper level. I could see that the fluctuations in clarity, motivation and emotional stability were shaped by more than thoughts alone. They were influenced by my physical health, my environment, my routines and the quality of my relationships. This understanding became the foundation of the Pillars of Health, another tool that helps explain the many factors that affect our internal state.

Fatigue and burnout still played a role during this period. Even as my wellbeing improved, I experienced sudden drops in energy, mood and cognitive clarity. These shifts followed patterns that became impossible to ignore. I started paying closer attention to my body and how it responded to everyday choices. I noticed how certain foods lifted my energy and others caused sharp crashes. I noticed how stress changed my appetite and cravings. Blood sugar swings created brain fog that felt almost identical to emotional overwhelm.

This was the beginning of seeing fatigue through a physiological and nutritional lens rather than a psychological one. For the first time, I understood that many of my past struggles had been shaped by the way my system was fuelled.

I became increasingly curious about how the body maintains energy. I studied how different combinations of foods affect blood glucose, stress hormones and satiety. I learned how nutrition interacts with mood, attention and emotional regulation. These insights changed the way I understood both myself and the people I worked with. Many individuals were not struggling with discipline. They were struggling with biology.

During this time, I returned to exercise. Movement became a way to support my system instead of push it. It helped regulate my mood, increased oxygenation and improved the heaviness that often comes with fatigue. It brought me back into connection with my body in a way that felt steady and sustainable.

As I explored nutrition, physiology and energy in more depth, clear patterns emerged. These patterns shaped what later became the Simple, Steady, Ready, Glow meal composition guide. It developed naturally from lived experience, research and the practical reality of trying to maintain stable energy during recovery. It helped explain why certain meals created clarity and stability, while others contributed to cycles of fatigue and cravings.

Simple, Steady, Ready, Glow eventually became a central part of the weight loss course, although its roots were never in dieting. It came from the recognition that stable energy creates stable behaviour, and that a regulated body supports a regulated mind.

This chapter marked a turning point in the development of Mind Works. It showed me that meaningful change is never limited to thoughts or emotions. It includes physiology, environment, nutrition and the subtle patterns that shape how we feel each day. The ideas I had been exploring were no longer scattered. They were forming a connected, practical approach that recognised the whole person.

This was the stage where the Mind Works framework began taking shape as a complete model, grounded in lived experience, science and the realities of everyday life.

Internally, I was beginning to see myself through a more complete lens.
My emotional fluctuations were not personal failings. They were physiological responses that rose and fell with food, sleep, movement, stress and daily rhythms.

My body was asking for stability.
Energy crashes were messages.
Cravings were messages.
Fog, irritability and motivation shifts were messages.

These signals had been present throughout my entire journey, yet I had not understood what they meant.
This stage allowed me to see patterns that had always been there but were buried beneath pressure, pace and coping.

There was a sense of relief in recognising the truth behind my experiences.
The problem had never been discipline.
It had been physiology.

This created a foundation of compassion that helped me move forward with more clarity and steadiness.

This chapter shaped some of the most practical and widely used elements of Mind Works.

The Pillars of Health
Understanding how nutrition, sleep, movement, relationships and stress shape daily functioning became a core part of the framework. The Pillars showed people why their mind could not be separated from their body.

Nutrition as the foundation of clarity
This period highlighted how blood sugar, hormones and energy stability influence mood, attention and emotional balance. These insights became essential for weight loss clients and anyone struggling with fatigue or overwhelm.

Simple, Steady, Ready, Glow
The meal composition guide emerged from lived experience and research, and it gave people a simple way to keep their physiology stable. It formed a major part of the weight loss course because stable energy supports stable behaviour.

Movement as regulation rather than punishment
This stage reframed exercise as a stabilising tool. It emphasised mood regulation, oxygenation and emotional grounding rather than discipline.

A whole-person approach
This chapter showed me that meaningful change happens when someone understands all parts of their system. Mind, body, environment and physiology all work together. When one shifts, the others follow.

This chapter marks the point where Mind Works moved from psychological insight into a complete, integrated model of human wellbeing.

As my work deepened, I began to see a wider range of clients. Some came for anxiety. Others came for stress, fatigue, low mood or burnout. Many came because their relationship with alcohol had become harder to manage. A large number arrived for weight loss, emotional eating or food-related distress. Although the reasons were different, the patterns beneath them were remarkably similar.

People were carrying more pressure than they realised. Many lived with chronic fatigue, unstable energy and emotional strain that had become normal to them. They were trying to cope by pushing harder or by seeking comfort in food, alcohol, work or distraction. They often blamed themselves for behaviours that made complete sense when viewed through physiology, psychology and lived experience.

Over time, it became clear that anxiety, emotional eating, stress drinking, procrastination, low motivation and even relationship difficulties were all connected. They were different expressions of the same internal system struggling with load. This insight allowed the ideas I had been developing to come together in a more organised and meaningful way.

The Tower Block gave clients a way to understand why they felt clear on some days and overwhelmed on others. It showed how physiology, stress load and emotional strain shaped their ability to cope.

The Gears of Motivation explained why anxiety often led to avoidance, why stress created comfort-seeking and why focus only returned when the system felt safe enough to support higher thinking.

The Pillars of Health highlighted how psychological wellbeing, sleep, nutrition, physical health, environment and relationships all contributed to how someone felt and behaved.

Parts of Self helped people recognise the different versions of themselves they had relied on for years - the Protective Self trying to keep them safe, the Current Self trying to manage life, the Ideal Self carrying expectations and the True Self waiting underneath.

The Subconscious work gave clients a way to understand the deeper stories behind their patterns - childhood experiences, beliefs about worth, emotional wounds and attachment styles shaping adult behaviour.

Weight loss clients continued to play a major role in shaping these ideas. Their experiences reflected the combined influences of biology, trauma history, environment and emotional needs. Clients who struggled with anxiety, alcohol or motivation reinforced the same structure from different angles. Every story pointed to the same underlying system.

As these patterns became clearer, the work grew more purposeful. I realised that people needed a way to gain clarity quickly. They needed a dedicated appointment to step back, stabilise their system and understand their experiences without having to commit to months of exploration.

This became the earliest version of the Reset Session - a focused space where people could piece together the psychological, physiological and emotional elements of their life and see themselves clearly.

This chapter marked the moment where everything I had lived and learned began forming into a complete therapeutic model. Mind Works was no longer a set of ideas. It had become a structured, integrated system that helped people make sense of themselves and create genuine, sustainable change.

Inside, my understanding of people became more interconnected.
I saw shared patterns beneath very different life stories.
I could recognise the same emotional cycles, the same physiological imbalances and the same internal conflicts showing up in completely different ways.

Anxiety and emotional eating were linked through stress physiology.
Low motivation and procrastination were linked through energy instability.
Alcohol reliance and comfort eating shared the same emotional needs.
Relationship conflicts reflected internal conflicts.

This was the first time I could see how the mind, body and past experiences formed a single system rather than separate problems.

These insights helped me understand myself too.
I could see my own journey reflected in the people who sat opposite me.
The models I was building made sense of their patterns and my own.

This internal clarity was a turning point.
The more I understood the system beneath the struggles, the clearer the next steps became.

This chapter represents one of the most important transitions in the development of Mind Works.

A unified approach emerged
The repeated patterns across clients showed that anxiety, burnout, emotional eating, low motivation and stress drinking were all different expressions of one internal system responding to pressure.

The Tower Block became foundational
Clients could finally see why they felt completely different from one day to the next. It gave them a way to map their internal world and understand their capacity.

The Gears of Motivation offered clarity
It helped people see why their behaviour changed when they were anxious, overloaded or safe. It reframed motivation as a physiological process rather than a character trait.

The Pillars of Health added structure
Clients could understand how sleep, nutrition, relationships, movement and emotional load influenced their mental state.

Parts of Self gave language to internal conflict
People could see themselves with more compassion. They understood why they coped the way they did.

The Subconscious work deepened insight
It allowed people to explore the past, identity and emotional patterns that had shaped their adult behaviour.

The Reset Session was born
This stage revealed the need for a dedicated appointment that offered rapid clarity, emotional stability and practical direction. It became one of the most important parts of the Mind Works system.

This was the moment the approach became whole — a framework built from lived experience, client experience and the shared human patterns that sit beneath every struggle.

As my therapeutic work deepened, clients arrived with a wide range of concerns. Anxiety. Stress. Emotional eating. Relationship strain. Low motivation. Fatigue. Alcohol reliance. Yet weight loss kept returning as one of the most emotionally painful themes. People arrived tired, discouraged and convinced they were failing. Many carried years of shame from diets, programmes and advice that had never worked for them.

The more I listened, the more obvious it became that these were not personal failures. They were the predictable outcome of being given incomplete explanations.

The calorie deficit narrative was the clearest example. It reduced weight loss to eating less and moving more. It did not include physiology, hormones, blood sugar, cravings, stress load, sleep quality or the emotional patterns that drive behaviour. It explained physics without explaining biology. It did not match what I was seeing in real people.

Around this time, weight loss injections grew in popularity. They were presented as a simple answer yet were built on the same narrow assumptions. They suppressed appetite but did not address the deeper reasons behind weight struggles. Clients arrived hopeful and left confused when their emotional eating, cravings or stress patterns remained unchanged.

It became clear that people were being blamed for problems rooted in physiology, psychology and lived experience. They had been fighting a system that was never designed to help them understand themselves.

This realisation marked a significant shift in my work. Weight loss was no longer just one topic among others. It became a window into the entire mind–body system, revealing the deeper forces that shaped behaviour.

As I worked with more clients, I noticed the same themes emerging again and again.

• people were navigating physiology, not a lack of discipline
• stress load shaped cravings, appetite, mood and energy
• emotional wounds influenced eating patterns
• unstable blood sugar created brain fog and loss of motivation
• sleep, fatigue and overwhelm affected decision making
• trauma history shaped coping behaviours
• environments made change harder than anyone realised

Internally, these patterns confirmed what I had already begun to see in my own journey. Weight was not a behavioural issue. It was a system issue. It reflected the combined effects of physiology, stress, emotions, environment, belief systems and identity.

Clients were experiencing:

• downward shifts in the Tower Block during stress
• motivation dropping as physiology struggled
• cravings intensifying during emotional strain
• comfort-seeking driven by protective parts of the self
• confusion and shame because the explanation they were given was incomplete

This internal perspective showed me that long term change was impossible without addressing all of these factors together. It connected weight loss directly to the heart of Mind Works.

This chapter was the turning point that linked all the Mind Works models together.

The Tower Block
Explained why energy, clarity and cravings changed daily and why weight loss required physiological stability, not pressure.

The Gears of Motivation
Showed how stress pushed people into survival mode and made long term goals feel unreachable.

The Pillars of Health
Highlighted how sleep, nutrition, physical health, physiology, environment and relationships all influenced eating behaviour.

Parts of Self
Offered insight into the Protective Self that reached for food or alcohol during emotional overwhelm, and the Ideal Self that carried pressure and shame.

The Subconscious Work
Revealed how childhood experiences, emotional needs and belief systems shaped eating patterns long before dieting ever began.

These insights became the foundation of the online weight loss course. It was built to reflect the reality of human physiology and psychology, rather than repeating outdated ideas. It brought together neuroscience, nutrition, behaviour, emotional regulation and internal understanding in a way that supported real, sustainable change.

This chapter marks the moment where weight loss became more than a symptom.
It became proof of how deeply the mind and body are connected.
And it reinforced the commitment at the core of Mind Works: to offer people clarity, compassion and tools that actually make a difference.

As the years of learning, reflection and client work came together, something became clear. The models I developed were more than therapeutic tools. They formed a complete way of understanding how people think, feel and respond to the pressures of life. They explained burnout, fatigue, anxiety, emotional eating, cravings, avoidance, motivation difficulties, stress drinking, identity conflict and the patterns that appear when someone is trying their best simply to cope.

Mind Works grew from the belief that meaningful change happens when people understand themselves. Change grows from clarity rather than force, and from awareness rather than pressure. It recognises the connection between mind and body and the signals our system gives us when something is out of balance. It helps people strengthen their inner world in ways that work with their physiology rather than against it.

Every part of my journey shaped the approach.

The Tower Block reflected the levels I moved through during burnout and recovery.
The Gears of Motivation grew from understanding why momentum disappears during fatigue.
The Pillars of Health came from noticing how stress, nutrition, sleep, physiology, environment and relationships influence wellbeing.
Parts of Self developed from seeing the different versions of ourselves that try to cope under pressure.
The Subconscious work grew from realising how old experiences still shape the present moment.

The weight loss work became one of the clearest demonstrations of how these systems interact. Clients were not struggling because of a lack of discipline. They were navigating physiology, stress physiology, emotional patterns and environments that made change difficult. Outdated calorie deficit ideas and the rise of weight loss injections did little to address these deeper forces. People were internalising blame for challenges that were multifaceted and often misunderstood. The online weight loss course grew from a desire to offer something grounded, compassionate and aligned with the realities of human physiology and psychology.

At the same time, many people needed help with anxiety, emotional overload, burnout, fatigue, identity and motivation. These areas became central to the approach and shaped the structure of the Reset Session. A single appointment designed to give people clarity, stability and direction. A space where they could understand their thoughts, physiology and emotional patterns in a way that felt coherent and manageable. The Reset Session reflects the heart of Mind Works, bringing all the models together in a way that makes sense of everyday life.

As the work evolved, I realised people needed a simple place to begin. A way to understand the foundations without feeling overwhelmed. This became the Free Core Tools Starter Course. It introduces the Tower Block, Mental Strength and Parts of Self and helps people understand their internal world, their stress responses and the early stages of change.

Mind Works is now a complete approach. It is the framework I needed during my own journey, shaped by lived experience, study and years of client work. It is built on clarity, compassion and a grounded understanding of the mind–body connection. It reflects the realities of modern life, the pressures people carry and the ways we adapt when we feel overwhelmed.

The approach continues to evolve, yet the purpose remains the same. To help people understand themselves. To offer tools that are practical and human. To guide people through change in a way that feels steady, honest and manageable.

Even as the models began forming clearly on paper, the internal journey shaping them was still unfolding. I was learning these ideas because I was living them. Through every stage of personal recovery, I had been trying to understand my own patterns long before I understood them professionally.

Internally, I was piecing together years of lived experience. The burnout, the collapse, the fatigue, the emotional strain, the identity shifts and the recurring cycles had not been random phases. They were connected. They were part of a system that had been reacting to pressure, physiology, past experiences and unrecognised needs.

Realising this changed everything. It helped me see that my struggle was not due to weakness or lack of discipline. It came from carrying more than my system could manage. It came from years of pushing, performing, suppressing, avoiding and coping in ways that looked functional from the outside but were draining on the inside.

As I began building the models, I could feel a sense of alignment I had not experienced before. Each piece helped me understand myself with more clarity. The Tower Block explained the shifts in my functioning. The Gears of Motivation revealed why momentum faded. The Pillars of Health reflected the impact of physiology. Parts of Self gave language to the identities I had relied upon for years. The Subconscious map connected old experiences to current reactions.

Inside, this created something I had been missing: meaning. The story of my life no longer felt fragmented. The experiences that once felt confusing became coherent. The internal chaos that had led to collapse began to organise itself into understanding. And that understanding became the foundation for helping others find their own clarity.

It was the recognition that the tools I was creating were not theories. They were reflections of what I had needed in the hardest chapters of my own life. They were the map I built from the inside out.

This chapter represents the moment where Mind Works came together as a unifying model rather than separate ideas. The Tower Block, Gears of Motivation, Pillars of Health, Parts of Self and Subconscious work were no longer standalone insights. They became an integrated way of understanding how the mind and body respond to pressure and how change becomes possible.

It also explains why people struggle across many areas at once. The same underlying system shapes anxiety, low mood, emotional eating, stress drinking, burnout, fatigue, identity conflict and recurring cycles of avoidance or overwhelm. Mind Works offers a way to bring these pieces together so people can see their patterns with clarity and move forward with steadiness and direction.

Understanding the forces that shape how we feel and function.

As the Mind Works approach developed, one insight became central. Life is shaped by what happens around us, what happens within us and how our body responds to both.

When people feel overwhelmed, it is rarely because of one thing. It is usually several pressures landing at once, both seen and unseen.

The card game metaphor became a simple way of explaining this. Each of us is holding a hand of cards, yet none of us chooses the deck. Some cards are aces. Some are high value. Some are low cards that make life feel harder. Sometimes we are handed a joker that disrupts everything, or a wildcard that changes the direction of our life in ways we never expected.

And every day, we are asked to play two games at the same time.

The first is the outer game. This is the world around us or things that we cannot easily change. Our job, money, responsibilities, physical health, environment, relationships and daily demands. These represent the external pressures. They shape how much weight we carry, how stretched we feel and how much capacity we have. Even a small change in this game can alter the whole hand.

The second is the inner game. This is quieter, more personal and often harder to recognise. It includes our thoughts, beliefs and emotional patterns. The echoes of past experiences. The parts of us that try to cope, perform or protect. It includes fatigue, hormones, overstimulation, cravings and blood sugar shifts. It includes the Tower Block and its constant movement through different levels of clarity and overwhelm. These form the internal pressures.

The hardest periods of life are when both games become heavy and the cards seem to work against us. The most meaningful changes happen when we learn how to understand both games and play them with intention.

This is where Direction, Rhythm and Fuel came from.

Direction is more than a future goal. It is the deeper sense of where life wants to go when our essentials are met. Safety, rest, connection, autonomy, purpose and expression create the conditions for direction to appear. When direction becomes clear, the hand we hold makes more sense. The decisions become easier. The path forward feels grounded.

Rhythm is more than consistency. It is the natural tempo of our system. Sometimes we have the energy of an ace. Sometimes we feel like we are holding a low card. Sometimes life hands us a joker that creates chaos, and sometimes a wildcard that brings unexpected opportunity. Rhythm is the ability to recognise these shifts without losing ourselves. It becomes visible in the body through breathing patterns, heart rate variability and the quiet signals our system gives us. Rhythm teaches us when to accelerate, when to pause and when to rest.

Fuel is more than food. It is everything that gives us energy and strengthens the system. Nutrition stabilises physiology, but emotional fuel matters just as much. Connection, joy, laughter, creativity and the moments that make us feel alive all nourish the nervous system. Without fuel, even the strongest cards feel heavy. With fuel, even a challenging hand becomes manageable. Life is both remarkable and demanding.

We receive aces and low cards. We face jokers and wildcards that interrupt our plans. No one escapes this. But we can learn how to understand the forces that shape us and build tools that make the game more manageable.

Direction brings meaning.
Rhythm brings stability.
Fuel gives us the capacity to move forward.

These principles helped me rebuild my own life.

They now sit at the heart of Mind Works. They reflect the full picture of what it means to be human - external pressures, internal patterns and the potential that remains, even when the deck feels stacked against us.

This chapter closes my own story, yet it opens the doorway for anyone ready to begin their own.

Throughout this phase, I was making sense of how the world around me and the world within me had shaped every part of my life. I was understanding the impact of pressure, fatigue, expectations, identity and the constant movement up and down the Tower Block. Internally, I was recognising how old beliefs influenced my reactions and how my physiology shaped my emotions, cravings and clarity.

The card game metaphor reflected what was actually happening beneath the surface. I was beginning to see which pressures had stretched me, which experiences had strengthened me and which internal habits I had relied on without realising. I was learning how direction appears when the essentials are supported, how rhythm stabilises the system and how fuel allows the mind and body to function.

This inner understanding allowed the pieces of Mind Works to settle into place. The approach was not theoretical. It was a lived map drawn from years of navigating both games at the same time. The insight that emerged internally became the structure that now guides the work.

This chapter represents the moment where the Mind Works philosophy becomes complete. It brings together the psychological, physiological and relational elements that shape the way we function. The Tower Block reflects the levels we move through in response to pressure. The Gears of Motivation show how physiology determines focus and momentum. The Pillars of Health highlight the impact of nutrition, sleep, movement, stress load, environment and relationships. Parts of Self and the Subconscious map explain why old stories influence current behaviours.

Direction, Rhythm and Fuel sit above all of these tools. They act as guiding principles that help people navigate the external and internal pressures of life. Direction gives purpose, rhythm provides stability and fuel supports the system that carries everything.

This final chapter brings the models together in a way that mirrors real life. Change is never one dimensional. People move through challenges shaped by their cards, their history, their physiology and their environment. Mind Works offers a clear and compassionate way to understand these forces and move forward with steadiness.