You Are Waking Up

Jody Brooks 0:00

You're not falling apart, you're waking up. If you're somewhere between 35 and 65, life feels like it's cracking open. Perhaps the life you were competent at is suddenly asking a question you cannot answer with competence. Perhaps you can see the road ahead and still cannot make your feet move. Perhaps you've made a decision, explained it beautifully to three friends, made a little list, bought the notebook, and then found yourself on the sofa negotiating with a biscuit as if it has a legal standing. This is about trust. Not trust in the people who have disappointed you, not trust that life will always behave itself, although I wish it would. This is trust in you. Trust in the person whose voice has sometimes been drowned out by old evidence, old alarms, old opinions, and a very committed internal committee. With a map from 1987.

The Self Trust Question

Jody Brooks 0:55

Today we come to the question that sits at the heart of this final week. What would I do if I believed me? Not what would I do if I were fearless? Fearless is not the aim. I would be deeply suspicious of anybody who claimed to be fearless, particularly if they said it loudly on stage with a headset microphone. The question is smaller, kinder, and much more disruptive. What would you do if you believed your own testimony? If you believed what you know in the choir, if you treated your experience as evidence rather than a thing that must be dismissed before anyone else gets the chance. I'm your host Jodie Brooks. Welcome to season three, Trust.

Season Three Recap

Jody Brooks 1:46

We spent this month discovering that the Court of Self-Trust was already in session. In week one, we saw that self-doubt had been speaking as the barrister for the prosecution for a very long time. In week two we named the witnesses, Sid the imposter in his old school headmaster outfit, Ian the inner critic with an inconveniently excellent memory for every file that might prove you wrong. And the self-doubt that walks out of the autumn ground mist before you can see your feet clearly. Last week we learned that an argument with a protector goes nowhere. Nobody likes being told they're wrong, and your protectors are no different. They need mediation, not a fight. Remember this requires TLC, tender loving care, thank, learn, confirm. Thank them for their care, learn what they're trying to prevent and confirm the decision you're going to make anyway. The trial is automatic. The mediation is chosen. This week we hear the oldest file I've found. We do it gently, this is not a race, it's a journey, and we let the court begin to rise, not because somebody has lost, but because the evidence can finally be heard by all the parts of us that were

Recognizing Self Doubt

Jody Brooks 3:06

there. Before I tell you where this took me, I want you to find you in your version of it. If you found yourself this week doing the thing you swore you'd stop doing, this one is for you. You send the email then read it five times looking for proof that you've made a fool of yourself. You say yes when the inside of you is saying no very loudly, and you hold a thought back in a meeting then spend the drive home delivering a flawless speech to your windscreen. You know something is not right, but you call it difficult. You want something but you describe it as unrealistic before anyone else can. Notice that it does not always arrive as a dramatic collapse. Often it arrives as a tiny tightening, your jaw presses down, your throat goes dry, there is a little drop in your stomach as though a lift has missed a floor, your shoulders rise towards your ears, ready to do the old job of keeping everybody safe. The body receives the summons before the mind has read the papers, and then the story comes in. Often with the confidence of somebody who's practised it for years. Do not say that, do not ask, do not leave, do not trust that feeling, do not get your hopes up, it'll go wrong. You'll get it wrong. You'll be too much, not enough, foolish, selfish, impossible to please. If any of that is familiar, I do not want you to make it evidence against yourself. I want you simply to recognise the weather. The mist is low on the road, self doubt may be about to enter from the side door with its large bundle of papers. That is all. You're not back at the beginning, you're noticing the court is in session. What would I do if I believed

Believing Your Evidence

Jody Brooks 4:57

me? There is a reason this question can feel uncomfortable. It brings the conversation back to the witness box. For much of our adult life, some of us have treated our own evidence as provisional. We will believe our instinct after it has been proved by a partner, a colleague, a parent, a friend, a stranger on the internet, and possibly the barista who made the coffee. We'll call that being sensible. Sometimes it is sensible. Sometimes it is simply the old prosecution having a good run. Believing yourself does not mean assuming every thought is a fact. It does not mean storming around making declarations because you've had a feeling. It means listening to the whole of your evidence. The feeling in the body, the pattern you have noticed more than once, and the value you keep returning to. The small, steady North Star that is still there even when the weather is bad and there is fog on the road. In season two we did the archaeology. We opened filing cabinets. We did not need to destroy the files because they were facts. We found the leak rather than endlessly mopping the floor. This season has brought the files into the court. Not to make the past the enemy, not to make anybody a villain, to let the case be heard properly for the first time. And perhaps you've felt a strange thing as you've begun. You've had a little hope, a moment where you imagined a different way of speaking, choosing, resting, loving, working. Then your protectors got loud. That can feel like failure. It's not. Hope is the spark that says a better future can be imagined. Faith is the growing sense that it might truly happen for you. Self belief is the anchor that lets you move when neither hope nor faith is shouting particularly loud. As hope and self-belief grow, the protectors often get louder. Change, even good change can read as a risk to that part of you that has been on watch for years. The alarm does not ring because you are wrong, it rings because you have started to move. That is why the question is not how do I get rid of the alarm? The question is what do I do when the alarm is ringing and I can still see

Hotel Room Flashback

Jody Brooks 7:30

the door? I found one answer in a hotel room at the end of an ordinary working day. There was nothing cinematic about it, no thunder, no dramatic music. I was tired in that particular hotel way after a long day, where the room is clean but not yours, the air is slightly too dry, and your bag sits open on a chair because you cannot be bothered to make any decision more complicated than taking your shoes off. I lay on the bed, still in my shirt, thinking back over the day with my eyes closed, and then suddenly I was outside a court, not a symbolic court with shafts of light and a helpful narrator, a real court, the court in Oxford where we lived, and where a large part of my childhood happened. I recognised the steps. I recognised the sense of the place before I had worked out why it was there. I was four years old. I was holding my mother's hand, my stepfather was on the other side of me, my maternal grandmother was there too, and on the court steps were my father and my father's parents.

Grandmother As Anchor

Jody Brooks 8:41

Before I tell you what that small boy made of it, I need to tell you about my grandmother, because she's not a footnote in this story. She is the warmth in it. She was the greatest constant source of love and support of my whole childhood. She never once made me feel I was not enough. Not once. She was not performing some theory of childhood. She was simply there, in a way that told you you mattered before you had done anything impressive, before you had behaved perfectly, before you had earned the right to be held in somebody's affection. She had a way of making ordinary feel safe, a chair, a cup of tea, the familiar clatter of a kitchen, a conversation that did not require you to be clever. There were no hidden marks to get, no sudden moving of the goalposts, no sense that love might be withdrawn because you'd taken up too much room or got something wrong. In a childhood where some things shifted and vanished, she was a constant she was the person who taught me, without ever sitting me down to teach me that tenderness can be sturdy, that kindness is not weakness, that being loved is not a prize for being convenient. I miss her as much now thirty four years on as I did on the day she died. Grief does not always get smaller, it sometimes becomes a room in the house that you learn to live beside. You can pass it without falling into it, but you know exactly what is in there. You can still hear a voice, and you can still miss a hand. And I think it matters that she was on those court steps, because the child I was did not only have the evidence for a frightening verdict, he also had the evidence of love. He had one person whose presence said without qualifications you are enough. That is the counterway, that is the compassion that makes it possible to look at the hard thing without turning it into another weapon against yourself.

The Childhood Verdict

Jody Brooks 10:46

So there I was, four years old on those steps, my mother holding one hand, my stepfather the other side, my grandmother there, my father and his parents in front of me. I did not understand what was happening. I did not know the grown up facts, I did not have the words for separation, arrangements, history, loyalties, pain, or any of the complicated things adults carry into rooms when children are watching. What I felt was powerless. And underneath that was this whatever happens next, someone will be angry and disappointed, and you will be the cause. That was the feeling. It was not a reason conclusion, it was a four year old's emergency explanation for a scene that did not make sense. To be for and look at the faces of adults you love and think I want everybody to be happy. Why are you not happy? What can I do? As a rational adult I see it completely differently, of course I do. A child is not the cause of adult decisions. A child is not responsible for adult anger, adult disappointment, adult conflict, adult absence, adult grief, all adult choices. It's obvious when you say it from a safe distance of a grown up chair. But that is exactly why these things can pass us by. We forget to look through the child's eyes. We look at the scene with all the information we have now and wonder why it had such power. Then we scold ourselves for having been affected, as though the four year old should have paused, requested a legal briefing, and produced a nuanced statement for the press. He could not. He was four. He wanted everyone to be happy. He thought perhaps the answer was him, and once that verdict has been passed, even quietly, life can become very good at supplying exhibits. Over the next couple of years, more evidence arrived, a classroom moment, a holiday moment, a look, a word, a rejection, a silence, you are not good enough. And when you're not good enough, people do not like you, and worse, they reject you. The classroom became a file, Rill became a file, the loss of a family later on became a file. The perfectionist and the people pleaser became sensible adult adaptations to a conclusion that had been reached long before I had any chance to question it. Self doubt did not only stop me, it convinced me I had to lead, I had to take over, I had to make every situation safe, and I had to earn the right not to be left standing on those steps once again. This was the last file.

The Spider Web Files

Jody Brooks 13:39

Everything else had been evidence supporting it, and this is where the spider's web comes back into view because that court in Oxford is not an isolated file, it's a thread, a single sticky, silvery thread that runs from those steps all the way to the centre of the web where the oldest verdict sits. And once you see the thread, you see the strands that cross it, the pub where a frightened twelve year old was made to feel exposed and ashamed, the classroom where a teacher's word landed on a child already listening for proof, Rill and the promised treat that did not arrive, the boxing day my father did not turn up to collect me, when I sat with my coat on, watched the window until it was dark, the decade after that when he was simply not there, and a boy learned to make a whole story out of an empty chair. Each one was a separate scene, each one in the web crossed the same thread, each one pulled a little tighter until the verdict at the centre felt like the plain truth about me. Because that single strand of the court on its own did not have the strength to hold a life. A four year old on some steps on its own does not become a verdict that lasts fifty years. It was real, it was the classroom, it was the pub, it was the boxing day, it was the decade of absence, it was a dozen other small moments I could name, and a hundred more I've probably forgotten. They gave that strand its strength, they gave it its permanence in the structure, each one on its own could be shrugged off. Woven together, they were the load bearing part of the web. That is what a spider's web does. It catches the unwitting one gently. You do not notice you've been caught because every strand alone is survivable. It is the crossing that holds you. It is the way one strand of a memory spins back to another and another, until a whole part of you is being lived from the middle of a web that was spun before you had any say in it. And in a strange way, the web becomes a web of lies, not lies in the way we usually mean them. Nobody's set out to deceive anybody. These are truths, many of them small. A thread by itself can seem harmless. A single moment taken alone can be reduced down. Don't be ridiculous. That could not possibly have had that much impact on you. Get over it, move on, and a single thread on its own might not have. But it is never a single strand, it is the whole web. And when you look at it all together, the crossings and the tightening, and the way the strands hold each other, it can feel like an enormous weight of evidence. A case so big and so old that there is no point in bringing it at all. What would be

Reopening The Case

Jody Brooks 16:39

the use? But think of the cold cases. Cases that were closed decades ago because the science of the day could not read the evidence properly, and then years later a fingerprint is lifted, a sample is retested, a witness comes forward with something they were too frightened to say at the time. The old file is reopened, not to reverse history, not to hunt for a villain, to hear the evidence with the tools. We now have that is what we're doing. We're not attacking the web, we're not pretending the strands were not there, we're reopening the case with better tools, the tools of adult understanding, of the gentle why, of the appointment in the diary, of the half step back, of TLC, tools the four year old on those steps did not have, tools the twelve year old in the pub did not have, tools the boy watching the window on Boxing Day did not have, but you have them now.

Gentle Body Inquiry

Jody Brooks 17:39

I want to stop here and put the question gently to you from your side of the bench. Not what is the worst thing that happened to you. You do not have to open every door, you do not have to excavate because a podcast host wandered into your headphones with a metaphor and a cup of tea. Instead, begin with your body. Where do you feel the oldest rule when it appears now? Is it the throat that closes before you say what you mean? Is it the hot face when somebody looks disappointed? Is it the chest that goes tight when your phone lights up? Is it the hollow stomach when you've done something well and cannot quite receive the praise? Stay with the physical signal for a breath or two. You do not need to make it dramatic, you're simply noticing where the court clerk rings the bell in you. Then only if it feels possible, ask what is the earliest moment I can find where I decided something about myself. Not necessarily the earliest event, the earliest rule. Perhaps it was I must not make a fuss, perhaps it was I have to be useful to be loved, perhaps it was I cannot get it wrong, perhaps it was people leave, perhaps it was I am too much, perhaps it was I must be the easy one. You may see a scene, you may only feel a colour, a smell, a corridor, the edge of a bed, a school jumper, a car park, a phrase, and you may see nothing at all, and that is entirely alright. This is not a test. Your truth is your truth. It does not require anybody else's stamp to be worthy of your care. And if this feels like too much today, do not go there. Stay with your feet in the present, look around the room you are in, feel the chair or the floor beneath you, put a hand on your arm if that feels comforting. You're allowed not to open the file yet. As always, go at your pace. The court has waited this long, it can wait while you become

Adult Self Reframes

Jody Brooks 19:42

ready. When I saw those court steps, what changed was not the photograph, it was not an attempt to make the past prettier, it was that I could finally bring the adult me into the room. The defense, the jury and the judge were no longer all taking their instructions from a frightened child. The adult could look at him. He could see the confusion, he could see the helpless desire to make everybody happy. He could see the impossible responsibility that child had picked up because children do pick things up. They pick up tone, they pick up silence, they pick up the pressure in the room, then make up a story to explain why it is there. The adult me could say something that the four year old could not have known. You were not the cause. A child cannot be the cause of anyone's anger. That does not erase the feeling, it does not turn the memory into a nice story, it does not make us pretend that nothing hurt. It rehears the verdict. It says the evidence has been heard properly in front of someone finally awake. The verdict was wrong about the present moment. That sentence has a particular effect for me. Not a grand fanfare, more like the first time you notice that the smoke alarm has stopped screaming. Your ears are still

Confirming New Choices

Jody Brooks 21:04

ringing a bit, you still smell the toast, but the room is available for you again. This is where mediation becomes more than a nice idea. I can thank the protector for the care. I can say I understand why you thought you had to keep him safe, and I can understand why you became so alert to disappointment, rejection, and the possibility of being too much or not enough. You saw a small boy trying to manage an adult world, you did the only job you knew, and then I can confirm the decision to go another way. I'm not that boy on those steps anymore. I can notice when somebody is displeased without making it proof that I caused it. I can let a relationship be complicated without believing I must solve every feeling in it. I can make a choice that someone else does not like and remain a decent man. I can be imperfect and remain loved. I can disappoint somebody without becoming a disappointment. That is not provado, it's not saying the miss will never come back. It's an amended understanding of where the road actually

Half Step Back Practice

Jody Brooks 22:14

is. And that brings me to this week's practice. The shape of the whole season in one small physical image, the protector taking half a step back. Not a full step, not banishment, a half step. They're still in the room, their information is not automatically useless, but they are no longer in control. They are no longer standing at the wheel, they are no longer chairing the meeting while you sit in the corner trying to get a word in. And if that sounds familiar, it should. Back in season one when we were learning awareness, we practised creating a gap, the gap between stimulus and response. Somebody says the thing, does the thing, sends the thing, and instead of the old automatic reaction firing off before you've had a chance to be present, you make a little space. Just enough space to notice, just enough space to choose. The half step back is the same move one season on the protector is the stimulus. Your next decision is the response. And in between a half step, a gap, a place to stand as yourself before the old wiring gets the wheel. Awareness gave us the gap. Trust asks us to stand in it. That is the image at the heart of the evening trust meditation I shared last week, and it's the image we will bring onto the bench together in a few minutes. A tiny movement that can be enormous. A half step is enough to make room for your own voice, enough to put your hand on the steering wheel, enough to look beyond the mist to your true North

Self Trust In Real Life

Jody Brooks 23:56

Star. This may help make this less mystical and more Monday morning. Believing yourself is not waiting for a perfect feeling of confidence. It's noticing that you have enough evidence to take the small step without putting your whole life out to tender. It can look like believing that you are tired before your body has to make the point more loudly. It can look like believing that a friendship has changed without immediately making that proof that you are unlovable. And it can look like believing that a job no longer fits even while you have not yet mapped every route away from it. It can look like believing you are angry, sad, disappointed, hopeful, interested, bored, lonely or ready without appointing a panel to decide whether the feeling is reasonable. The half step back gives you a practical gap, enough space between the protector's warning and your next choice for you to hear yourself. Enough room for your true North Star to be heard as well as the old alarm. This is why self-trust is neither reckless nor passive. It's not doing whatever feels easiest, it's not refusing all discomfort. It is learning the difference between the ache of an old alarm and the useful signal of a present decision. It is a skill of listening that gets clearer as you practice. In the same way your ears learn to pick out one voice in a noisy room.

Recalculating After Mistakes

Jody Brooks 25:28

You make a choice and later decide you would choose differently. That does not prove you cannot trust yourself. It proves you're a human being living forward, not a machine running a prediction perfectly. Trust includes the ability to learn from a choice without putting yourself back in the dock for the rest of your life. Think of the sat nav, it does not need to shame you when you take a wrong turn, recalculates. The outdated map may still argue from the glove box, but the road is still there. You can take the next turning, you can hear the old instruction, and you can choose the current route. And if the question what would I do if I believe me produces nothing more than I would stop for five minutes and listen, that is a real answer. The person you're learning to trust may have been waiting a long time for you to stop interrupting

Guided Listening Setup

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them. Let's do this slowly now, with your material, not mine. You may be walking, washing up, sitting in a car park with the engine off, or hiding in the kitchen for three minutes while somebody asks where the clean towels are. Please do not do this while driving. This is not about closing your eyes or performing stillness. It's about being willing to listen. If you're somewhere you can safely let your eyes soften or close, you're welcome to. If not, keep them exactly where they need to be. You do not need the perfect setting, you only need one small moment where you're willing to be on your own side. First, find your body before you find the story. Feel your feet where they meet the floor, your shoes, the ground, the mattress, whatever is holding you. Notice the temperature on your hands, notice your jaw. You do not have to relax it, just notice whether it's working hard. Notice your shoulders, notice whether your breathing is high in your chest or lower down. Nothing to get right, nothing to prove. You are arriving as you are. Now

Recall A Specific Moment

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think of one recent moment where you did not believe yourself. Choose a small enough moment. This is not the time to bring the whole filing cabinet into the middle of the room. Perhaps you knew you needed rest and overrode it. Perhaps you knew an answer and asked five people first. Perhaps you wanted to say no and said yes because the pause felt unbearable. Perhaps you knew a conversation mattered and kept it in draft form for another week. Let the moment be specific. Where were you? What was in your hands? What did the room sound like? Were you standing by a kettle, looking at a screen, sitting in a meeting, lying awake beside someone, walking into a supermarket? Give yourself the ordinary details. The nervous system understands ordinary details better than grand speeches. Now notice the first place your body reacted. Is there a pull in the stomach, a buzz in the arms, pressure behind the eyes, a clamp across the chest? Just name it quietly. Tight throat, hot face, heavy shoulders, racing thoughts, you do not need a diagnosis. You're naming the weather. From that place,

Meet And Name Protectors

Jody Brooks 28:48

ask which protector came forward. If it's self doubt, you might see the foggy figure saying you do not decide yet, you could make a mistake. If it's Sid, you might hear who do you think you are to want that, say that, apply for that, leave that, start that. And if it's Ian, you might hear his list of evidence, facts selected with ruthless accuracy of someone who has never heard context. And if it is the people pleaser, you might sense the small child who believes that another person's discomfort must be your responsibility. You do not need the perfect name, you can call it the voice, you can call it the old protection, you can call it the worried part. Naming it simply gives you a little space between you and it. It stops the sentence from beginning. I am hopeless and allows it to become a worried part of me is speaking. Picture that protector in front of you. Give it some shape if that helps. See its posture. Is it leaning forward? Is it tapping a pen? Is it holding a clipboard? Is it pacing? Is it wearing an old jacket, a school uniform, a suit that does not quite fit? Let it be imperfect. This is not a portrait. There will be no prizes for likeness.

Thank And Question The Protector

Jody Brooks 30:07

Now say silently or out loud if you have the privacy thank you for trying to keep me safe. Pause. Notice what happens in your body when you say thank you, rather than shut up. You may feel nothing, you may feel irritated, you may feel a loosening, you may feel the protector become louder. All of that is information. None of it means you failed. Then ask it, what are you afraid will happen if I believe myself here? Wait for the first simple answer. I will be rejected, I'll be embarrassed, I'll upset someone, I'll be found out, I'll make the wrong choice, I'll be alone, I will not be good enough. You do not have to debate the answer, you are listening, not

Adult Truth And Boundaries

Jody Brooks 30:54

agreeing. Now bring in the adult you, the person listening to this episode today, the person who survived more than the protector knows, the person with a life, a body, choices, history, and more than one route home. Tell the protector the truth now. You might say I understand you are worried, you learned that disappointment was dangerous, you learned that being visible could hurt, you learned that getting it wrong had consequences. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. And this moment is not that moment. This person is not that person, this room is not that room. I can take a small step and be here with myself while I do. If you do not know the exact words, use those. If they do not fit, make them yours. The point is not to win an argument. The point is to confirm your decision with respect, not explain. Confirm. Explaining hands the microphone back to the prosecution. Confirming puts the gavel down. Then imagine the protector taking a half step back. Watch the feet move. A half step. It may be reluctant, it may grumble. Sid may need to straighten his tie first, Ian may ask for it in writing. Self doubt may point out that half a step is technically still quite near. Fair enough. Let them have their personality. You're not trying to make them disappear, remember. A half a step back means you can breathe without asking permission. It means there's enough space between their warning and your next choice for you to hear yourself. It means the chair at the centre of the meeting is available again. From that space,

Choose One Small Step

Jody Brooks 32:39

ask the question What would I do if I believed me? Keep the answer very small. Not what must I do with my entire life by Tuesday? Small and real. I'd send the email without any further edit. I'd say I needed time to think, I'd book the appointment, I keep postponing. I'd take a walk instead of punishing myself for being tired. I would tell the truth gently. I would let somebody else be briefly disappointed. I would apply, I would rest, I would admit that I want more. I would admit I have had enough. Choose the smallest true answer. The half step back does not require a leap across the Grand Canyon insensible footwear. It requires one choice that belongs to you in the now. Now, before you move on with your day, look around your actual room. Feel your actual body, name three things you can see if that helps. You're not on the old court steps, you're here, the file is being heard by someone who can read it properly, and if you do not want to do any of that today, you're allowed not to. You can simply notice the moment you do not believe yourself and say there is the court again, that is enough. As always, go at your pace. The answer to the focus question is not always action. Sometimes what would I do if I believed in myself is I'd stop arguing with my tiredness. I'd stop calling my grief inconvenient, I'd stop treating a boundary as a crime, I would stop pretending I do not want what I want. I would acknowledge that something has ended. I would let the truth be true

Self Belief As Anchor

Jody Brooks 34:25

for one quiet minute. Self belief is not a loud personality trait. It is the anchor that lets you stay with yourself when certainty is not available. Hope imagines a future. Faith begins to say perhaps that future includes me. Self belief says even while I'm afraid, I will not abandon myself on the road there. Your protectors may get noisier as you do this. That is not a sign to turn around. It is often a sign that the old map has been challenged. The personal Flat Earth Society will say absolutely not, the edge is just over there. We've had a meeting about this. You can thank them, you can remind them that the sat nav has been updated, you can hold the belief more loosely, not because it does not matter, but because you're becoming secure enough not to grip it until your knuckles hurt. I'm

Ongoing Practice And Compassion

Jody Brooks 35:20

still learning this. I do not get to record an episode about self trust and then float through the week like a man who's been issued a certificate. There are still moments when my old court fills up very quickly. There are moments accompanied with tears, with grief and with joy. There are moments when I go at my own pace and the script has to wait a few days. There are still moments when I want everybody to be happy and I feel that old urge to solve the atmosphere, to tear up the script, to record the episode again. But now I know where that urge comes from. I can see the four year old, I can see my grandmother's study love beside him, and I can say none of this was your fault. You do not have to carry the room anymore. Sometime in the next few days, book one ten minute appointment with the protector that's been loudest this week. Give it some TLC, thank it for its care, learn what it's trying to protect, confirm one small decision you're going to make anyway, watch it take half a step back, and then ask what would I do if I believed me? And if you do not do it, nothing bad happens. The court has been in session for years, it can wait until you have space. We've not reached a finish line today. We've reached a place where an old verdict can be heard with more truth and more compassion. The court is still there, the files are still real, the protectors are still trying to do their work they were given, but there is a new person in the room now. You are the defence, the jury and the judge. You can thank the witnesses, you can read the evidence from more than one angle, and you can let the person you are now speak to the person who first made sense of a world that was too large.

Season Wrap And Next Episodes

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On Wednesday I'll be joined by positive psychologist Max Weigand. We'll talk about psychosomatic intelligence, identity, purpose, and why a goalpost that keeps moving cannot be where you build your worth. It is a conversation that includes anxiety, depression and loneliness. So please take it at your pace, and on Friday we'll close this season together, not with a winner and a loser, but with the whole core able to breathe. You're not falling apart, you're waking up, and sometimes waking up begins with hearing a small child say, I thought it was my fault, and answering gently, and finally it was not. Now, on Wednesday Max Weigen joins me and you can watch that conversation as well as hear it. Then on Friday comes our season three finale where we'll gather this month as tortoise. Remember you don't just have to listen, you can watch too on Apple, YouTube and on Spotify, and of course over on the Messy Midlife homepage, where every episode has its own page with extra insights to take each practice deeper. And if you want a warm place to keep practicing this without judgment, come join the free messy midlife community. The naming sheet, the morning and evening trust meditations are waiting for you, alongside people learning that they do not have to do this alone. So, until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and keep coming home to who you really are. Thank you for spending this time with me on Messy Midlife. If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. You can find the show notes below and more resources at authenticcoaching.me. And just a little gentle reminder, Messy Midlife is here for information, reflection and personal growth. It isn't a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or any other professional healthcare support. If you have concerns about your physical or mental health, please reach out to a qualified professional. Until next time, take good care of yourself. And remember, midlife might be messy, but it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect.