If one more person tells you to 'just set boundaries,' you might scream. Trust me, I get it. If it was that simple, don't you think you would have done it already? The truth is, when you've experienced trauma, saying no doesn't feel like self-care - it feels like signing your own death warrant. Your nervous system has learned that keeping others happy keeps you safe. And that's not weakness - that's survival.

For a long time you have kept those around you happy as a way to keep yourself feeling safe. But whilst you are keeping everyone else self it is a failing juggling out that you are continually trying to keep up with.

You are looking at others for validation that you have done enough for them and they are happy but what about you?

I became a primary school teacher fulfilling a dream from when I was 5 years old but I didn’t realise the run up to every September training to be a teacher and then as a teacher would be filled with anxiety, awful dreams and worry.

Add in becoming a mum to four incredible boys and not wanting them to start school (by this point I was no longer a teacher), let alone go back every September filled me with feeling sick, unable to think start and wanting to run away somewhere hot avoiding reality.  

My body clung on to this feeling of dread so that every summer I have felt shaky, uneasy, anxious.  Often unable to look at a calendar and having to walk fast past any back to school adverts.