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On Writing
I have been writing every day for November over on substack, in an online research diary. The daily substacks give little insights into my thought processes around the writing part of my life, ranging from notes on a research idea to my frustration at a disrupted evening when I had planned to write (this blog…
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On saying ‘no’
At a recent somatic class with Rebekah Ballagh (Journey to Wellness), Becks invited us to practice saying ‘no’. This invitation came as the culmination of a series of gentle practices aimed at opening up our throats and releasing stuck tension from neck, chest, and jaw. Somatic practices, like those developed by Pay Ogden and Peter…
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Starting a PhD with Wellness in Mind
If you are a regular reader and would like to support me to produce more free content, do consider buying me a coffee via my supporters page. Thank you for reading. It’s that time of year when research postgraduates tend to start their programmes, or to be transitioning from their first year reviews. So in…
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Burnout prevention is an act of resistance
Recently I had the pleasure of working with a small group of academics, all at different stages in their career journey, through the Summer Coaching Programme. Over three months we explored how burnout happens, what recovery and repair look like, and in our final session last week, how we can resource ourselves against burning out…
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Workplace trauma and the ‘second violence’
In this post I am going to explore workplace trauma, and the effect that not having our stories heard can have. Trauma is a common word these days, in part due to the efforts of online psychoeducators to destigmatise normal mental health challenges from public and private shame. But the overuse of trauma as a…
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Understanding Imposter Syndrome
We all know it, we’ve all felt it. Academics talk flippantly of imposter syndrome, and it seems to be a generally accepted aspect of working in the sector. This phenomenon is also true of the cultural and creative sectors, with whom academics have more in common than they might generally accept. Any time we put…
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The Wounds that Women Carry
This is a post on generational trauma. It isn’t the article I had planned to write next, and that one is still coming. But as I put together this series on common topics that come up in my coaching practice I realised that there is one that underlies almost all of the conversations I have…
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The Stress Effect & Creative Burnout
In this post I am going to address one of the commonest issues that present in my coaching of academics, creative burnout. I have explored physiological burnout and how it differentiates from stress in this post, so if you are not familiar with burnout it might be worth revisiting that content. However, creative burnout is…
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FREE Resource for Grief
I recently write a series on grief and its role in recovering from loss and processing disappointment. If that series resonated with you and you would like to go further, I am now offering a free resource. This journaling workbook takes you through the five stages on the Kübler-Ross & Kessler Change Curve with explanations…
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The Problem with Perfectionism
Kicking off a new series, I am going to explore some of the key challenges that clients often bring to coaching: topics like procrastination, imposter syndrome, dealing with rejection, and experiencing anger at work. I’m starting with perfectionism, and in particular its impacts on our ability to produce creative work, because this is something I…