Being put on pause

and having to walk my talk.

Illness, a season of slow & self-worth.

The last four months of 2025 were pretty hard going for me – I had numerous viruses, post-viral fatigue and infections going on and then (just after the third course of antibiotics finished and I started to feel a glimmer of recovery at the start of December) I picked up one cold and then another. A brief few days over Christmas were my only well days in December.

To say I have been fed up, is an understatement. In fact, the classic viral low mood got me good. I cried. I felt low. I felt sorry for myself. I bemoaned the loss of my fitness – 4 months with no exercise and now, very few clothes in my wardrobe that fit me. My inner-critic began to unfurl and stalk around in my head, pointing out how much there is to do, how far I am from the goals I have, how many parts of my body there are to despise, how will I EVER get my book out there???

And the closer it got to the end of the year, the further I felt from anything like energy, positivity, purpose and drive. I felt like a shell of a person and completely lost in myself. Truthfully, I felt in despair on some days. With no inner resources to go out and no desire to treat myself well, the waves of depression started lapping around. I began to get worried that things would ever change.

And then the cold shifted a little. Enough for me to do something small – a walk in the sunshine, throwing the ball for a friend’s dog and laughing at her mad zoomies. After days of crying and snotting into tissues and coughing and feeling like death, I felt a small but significant shift.

It was small because it went and I continued to feel like a zombie afterwards. But it came, and in that moment, I had a thought… …that these months of illness and low mood and feeling rubbish in every way have made me stop being in active, productive mode. They have put me in a pause that I would never give myself.

After a year of writing and working and grieving my friend, it never occurred to me to stop. I thought I would just keep going onto the next stage of growth.

In these last months, I have repeatedly tried to do more than my body is ready for and I have been firmly reminded that, “No, Emily you do still need to take care of yourself.” I have ignored the lessons of nature - the need for not just a break but a seasonal slowing. It’s easy to care for ourselves when we are the shiniest versions – well, busily achieving, sociable, likeable.

But self-worth is often about how we get through the bad times.

And these months have reminded me how hard it is to be kind when I am low. I know that is true for many others too.

This matters because, I don’t ever want to give you guidance and for you to think I am sorted and living in some Zen-like healed world of therapeutic wisdom. It really isn’t like that. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, it is a bit like that. But it is also true that, alongside the knowledge & experience I have gained, I hold a lot of shadow dark days in me and internal struggle. When I share something it is because I know it is true - I live it for myself and I see my clients do the same.

I have had to walk my talk

Let’s be real here, if I could have avoided learning that lesson and not been ill for months and months I would rather have skipped it. But having no choice on the matter, I can see that this is a valuable lesson for me to have embodied.

I needed to be reminded to go at the pace of my own inner needs. And that includes all my goals and dreams.

I needed to remember that self-worth isn’t just something I “do” in my work, it is a quality that I continue to work on in myself and learn about.

I needed to feel again how challenging it truly is to care for myself when I am low or ill.

I needed to integrate my own path of healing back into my work and what I want to say in the world and the work I want to do with individuals and groups.

I needed to embody my purpose as I move into this year and to make sure that, every step I take, every choice along the way feels like it is in line with my own needs and health and healing as much as it is about outcomes and career goals.

All of this made me realise that my hopes for this year are about both. Yes I wan to reach more people, gain more followers, run a programme, see my therapy clients and find a publisher for my book… …AND I want to do this in line with my energy, my health, my needs to rest. Not abandoning myself in the pursuit of it all.

So I made a resolution and set an intention:

I choose to give myself time.

I choose to grow in tune with myself.

I want to move forward. But success means stepping with my needs not moving ahead regardless. Even if that pace is so much slower than I hope for, would "normally" achieve or feel easily comfortable with. This is the lesson I have had to relearn.

When you look back to hard times in your life – perhaps in recent weeks or months, or perhaps further off years – can you remember how you felt then? And can you remember how you felt about yourself struggling and finding life tough?

Did you manage to move with ease and forgiveness of yourself?

Did you end up in self-criticism, feeling like a bit of a failure and that you should be able to cope better?

And can you see if that time was offering you an insight about how you might need to change things in your life or shift your approach or expectations in order to live in a more fulfilling and healthy way? What might you have advised to someone else living through those same circumstances? And did you offer that to yourself? Is this a lesson that you have avoided learning?

Do you allow yourself to go slow?

Do you ask for help?

Do you share your struggles?

Do you go gently with your pain?

I know that the lesson to go slower and detach my worth from my accomplishments is one I will need to keep relearning in my life – it is embedded from childhood for me and is my Velvet Prison. But bringing it into my awareness means I am less likely to fall into that pit. And that when I do, I can realise it more quickly and make a change.

I wonder what lesson 2025 held for you and how you might move forward with it through 2026?