In this heartfelt post, I explore the common and often silent question many of us ask: "What's wrong with me?" Through personal experiences and insights from my counseling practice, I reveal how this question stems from deep-seated beliefs formed in our early years. I discuss the importance of witnessing and nurturing our true selves, recognising the unique gifts we hold, and understanding that there is nothing inherently wrong with us. This post offers a compassionate perspective on self-acceptance and the journey to reclaiming our authentic selves.

This is what happens after life cuts you down to the ground, when change has been forced upon you, a relationship or job ends, health leaves you, a loved one dies, your dream is crushed or a combination of many stressors and pressures makes your life seem untenable and you can’t go on.

Read more for a road map to finding your way through change, loss and the most challenging times of your life.

Dear lost, searching, trying, sensitive soul,

If change has been forced upon you. If the rug has been pulled out from under your feet.

If what you had is lost or taken from you and you’ve been thrown into a sudden abyss of darkness and uncertainty. If your way is lost, you’ve lost your vision, become directionless, disoriented, confused and you don’t know what to do, who or where to turn to.

Your body may be panicking. You might be fearful and anxious, desperate and scrambling to find a way out of your situation. Your nervous system will be automatically making you react into fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

But don’t rush to take the first step that comes to mind to get you out of your experience and away from where you don’t want to be unless the house is on fire or you are in some other kind of immediate danger. Don’t scramble to retrace your steps to find out where you went wrong to end up in this place for nothing is wrong despite what you may think. This may be confusing but stay with me and you’ll understand.

There will be times in your life, when change is forced upon you, the rug is pulled out from under your feet, where what you had is lost or taken from you and you are thrown into a sudden abyss of darkness and uncertainty. The way is lost.

You may feel immense fear, panic, dread, and confusion, worry or even numbness or shame.

When things stop working in your life or where you are trying to reach a goal but can’t find your way to get there, you can easily jump to the conclusion that something is wrong, that you’ve made a mistake and that you need to fix things to make it work again.

There is a biological reason for this. …