When your relationship with yourself is fractured, every relationship you enter will reflect that fracture.
This woman faced years of hidden pain that surfaced when her marriage began to collapse. What follows is her story a raw, courageous journey from survival to peace, and from trauma to self-leadership in her own words.
She was keen to share her story and discoveries with you.
Summary:
At the start of this, the pain was beyond anything I could imagine, unfortunately I had a few suicidal thoughts, I felt consistent panic and shock, it was indescribable and I was completely out of my body. My whole world had been ripped apart and every second was survival. I couldn’t eat, and I could not hold a single thought about anything else other than the crisis I was in. My nervous system was in complete fight or flight, as if a lion was constantly in front of me. I was clinging to any tiny bit of control, desperately and continuously searching for information because the unknown to me, at that point, kept feeling like a death, over and over again.
5 months into not being able to function and the desperation of searching to save my marriage, I was so lucky to begin to work with Stephen. I started to accept it as true that the thing I must do, was stop searching for an answer and turn the focus to me and heal and grow. I would say I’m only starting to truly let go and embody this but Stephen made this possible and he helped the realisation finally land.
This is the only way to save a relationship, by realising ‘it’s all you’, ‘it’s taken me all this time of reading, learning and absorbing everything about healing and growth for that to click for me. Focusing on healing me was truly the only way to get out of survival, if my relationship had been fixed in that survival period, I would not have cleanly healed, become whole and learnt everything is all me. And I have no question that the same problems would have happened further down the line, be it with my husband or someone else. So, it became a non-negotiable to do this work if I didn’t want to go through this again and ensure I grew through this journey and learnt the lessons. I completely get that when you’re going through trauma, to stop trying to control and focus on yourself is one of the hardest most impossible things to do, and without Stephen I categorically would not have got to this point. I would have desperately clung on for a few years putting my life on hold and carried the wounds and additional limiting beliefs through the rest of my life with them coming to bite me in different ways. And yes, I am very courageous and tenacious and do not give up (I was always determined to have something amazing come out of this trauma, I deserved it after the pain I went through) but letting go of the outcome and twisting the focus from my relationship to me was like moving mountains.
I realised I had to properly heal, A) what the crisis caused, and B) all the other things prior; the lifetime of limiting beliefs that meant I hadn’t been connected to my core for a long time (maybe not truly ever, I actually believe most people go through life not truly connecting to their core identity and living in alignment of their values), and that fact I didn’t feel deeply safe in me no matter what. I had to calm my body first, even when my brain was screaming at me to sit in logic and carry on trying to control, I learnt to regulate, breathe and stabilise, and then I could move my focus to re-rebuilding my identity, it felt like such a long road ahead but Stephen’s work just kept me moving and I miraculously began to stop spiralling and begun healing.
I started to slowly trust myself, and like I never had before! The grief lessened its grip and I started experiencing small pockets of calm and peace which felt like the heavens opening. I trusted Stephen and forced myself to ‘act first and feeling will follow’ and it did! Even in times that still felt like I was only at base camp, I kept leading myself through the pain, doing the exercises and routines. This is about becoming the woman I get to design and want to be. Strong, courageous, free, loving, playful and so blessed with my life, knowing I’ve always got myself no matter what. Something most of us don’t learn unless we have to. It would really trigger me people saying, focus on you and let go of the outcome, but the way Stephen cleverly got me to do it without triggering me is why he gets such good results. He is so open and understanding and non-judgemental, he gives advice in a way that lands so delicately but firmly, he has a strong yet soft way of steering you without you realising at the time. He’s someone you can naturally trust that he has your best interests and will support whatever outcome you want, while still managing to get you to heal and grow in the healthiest way possible.
The key stages are: Survival > Emotional Stability > Integration > Identity > Leadership
Survival:
Prior to the crisis, the last couple of years had been extremely stressful and I lost touch with my identity and values, I did not realise this at the time, I only know now how important in life those things are. I didn’t really know what my values were before this process. The stress and loss of self, contributed to disconnection, we thought we were in a good place just unaware and distracted with the stress of life. When we hit crisis, particularly due to my make-up, life path, deeply wired dependency and our longevity, this risk of losing my husband sent me into immediate shock, it can only be described as pure survival, fight flight, a constant state of panic, the pain was profound, so indescribable, life was about managing to get from moment to moment, making each next 30 seconds was a win. It was such a horrendous time.
One thing I did always say was that I will not let myself come out of this without something amazing from the lesson, I deserved something monumental after doing this period. I still can’t believe what my mind and body went through, I could not speak to anyone about it, I could hardly function, I couldn’t take in anything that was happening or being said. It was so difficult but I didn’t want to give up, I knew I was still made up of courage and love at my core and even though I couldn’t see it or really believe it I knew I’d get out the other side and was determined to do it in the healthiest way to give me the best chance at success the other side.
At the beginning I was fighting so hard, but in the wrong way, keeping in this constant state of panic. I wasn’t just going through pain, I was adding suffering without realising because I didn’t have the knowledge and couldn’t give my nervous system a break of safety to start seeing I can stop the suffering. I was a shell of myself, it was as if my nervous system was in its cave man state and I was consistently being faced head on with a predator, I couldn’t click out of it I couldn’t relieve myself from the suffering. The only relief I had was when my husband had his guard down emotionally and I felt hope again but I was still stuck behind this veil and in this cloud of trauma.
I finally released from this horrendous indescribable state. Stephen was one of the few I felt understood and I could be totally vulnerable and honest with and tell every fear to and he never pushed me in any direction, overtly anyway. What most people, including therapists, didn’t understand was that pushing me even slightly in the direction I did not want to go, was so traumatic and triggering I couldn’t hear it, it would send me deeper into the panic and my nervous system would block off, I’d retreat and I couldn’t then be vulnerable. I couldn’t talk to, take an opinion or advice from hardly anyone else for such a long time.
I deeply trusted Stephen and the way he had a knack with his teachings, he is always so tactful, he is so well experienced. And this route is the only way of getting someone out of that state and then being able to coax them to do better things for themselves and their future. He has the perfect balance of keeping your system feeling safe yet stretching it to edge towards letting go of the outcome bit by bit at the same time so gently. You come out of a session almost feeling as if you’ve been hypnotised with the weight that lifts, and the neural pathways that shift from his clever ways moving things around in your brain.
I am a perfectionist and the part of me that never learnt to validate and trust myself always wants all the information, asking lots of questions and really feeling a need to understand exactly why I should do something and why it is the best option, it’s the fear of failure and trusting I’ll get it right and my lack of confidence in myself. And my nervous system still thinking I won’t be safe and worthy if I don’t save my relationship. Part of my journey was my need to integrate all the information and modalities I’d learnt and finding alignment in the direction of healing I chose to take. I desperately wanted to taste that life changing transformation that sticks and makes the inexplicable pain and trauma worthwhile.
I have spent a long time understanding this work alongside doing it. Reading about it, trying to understand why it isn’t in the mainstream therapy industry and why it’s not widespread, and it’s partly because it is quite newly discovered and more is coming out but also it is deep, complex work that takes more than just listening, it takes active participation, facing pain and courage to stay strong and keep going. This being said, working with Stephen he manages to make this complex process click, and gets over to you everything that needs to be done without years of studying. The AI tool Stephen has developed helped me in-between our meetings, I could ask and ask to understand a concept or action specifically applicable to my situation, but also be able to truly integrate and embody it.
Emotional Stability
When I first met Stephen I was still badly spiralling often, the pain was indescribable, any message my body received would feel like a new death to my nervous system, over and over again. But literally within days bit by bit they started lessening with the ‘body before mind’ exercises and understanding that I was getting from Stephen. My body slowly over time learnt that actually I am safe to feel pain when these tidal waves of rejection or fear came. The spirals would be less and less deep and traumatic as my nervous system learnt to hold more capacity.
Stephen made me understand and have the realisation that my mind was pulling me to suffering, which prolongs the pain and doesn’t = recovery, not true deep transformation anyway. It requires you to stop taking the drug, metaphorically, and understanding that his work stops the added suffering I was doing to myself, which in some moments meant facing the pain which was more difficult and so terrifying but means you stop the added suffering and come out of the difficult state much faster. I experience much less pain now as my body knows I am safe and it doesn’t need to fear things, and when I do face pain I am learning and managing to feel it without so much fear but courage, I can hold it, I show my body I am safe when I feel it.
I learnt that fear and safety, panic and calm can be held together. And week by week the spirals began feeling less excruciating, and they became anxiety and hope, sadness and positivity. The clever hack of showing your body safety by not rushing or running away from the pain and not collapsing physically and metaphorically into spiralling. Learning to hold the pain, have faith, tell myself I am safe, and lead myself out.
I am now emotionally stable, I don’t spiral anymore and I am moving towards the future with excitement! Ideas are starting to flow, a zest is coming back. I am firmly moving into the values/identity Core section of Stephens work. Without the daily prompts and reminders to keep at the work I wouldn’t be sticking to it, obviously I am not perfect but I know I am healing in the best way laying extremely solid foundations for the best future possible.
It’s like I have got to base camp, the same level I was at before the crisis started, and I still have to do the transformation bit but I am wired different to the base camp level I was at before the crisis. Even though I still have work to do, I know I have new neural pathways formed and a strength I never had before and when I am calm and positive I have fresh excitement for life that has a grit I never had and I also have a new level of wisdom and clarity.
Integration:
This stage is where I am at, it’s embodying the new awareness, beliefs and emotional regulation into my daily life. I’m learning to practice and stabilise the new internal wiring.
I have learnt what my operating system is and how our lives reflect out based on its state. Your operating system is your set of rules, beliefs, reflexes and emotional patterns that makes up your default identity and nervous system programming. It’s what our brains use without thinking, so how I interpret danger, love, control and safety. So I can attempt to curb my triggers (i.e. the panic from loss or rejection) and try to change my habits, (i.e. snap, get angry, spiral) but if my underlying operating system is still running from the old place (fear, doubt, people pleasing) then the triggers and habits will still surface. I have known for a long time that nothing external can affect me however the work I have done with Stephen has taken that to a new level, all the peace and safety is within me, I know this to be true but is a hard thing to fully and truly be and embody.
The work I’ve been doing in this seems so small and unassuming and can be frustrating when I was in such a difficult place but transformation isn’t big fireworks, its lots and lots of little incremental intentional actions accumulating to rewire the neurons in our brain, to update our operating system.
I realised I need to die to my old self, (which many people took as I was blaming myself, however that was far from the case, it was just causation, I was part of the cause for where I have ended up today in my marriage) and understand that the only power is in me, to make changes in me and I must become my new identity. Becoming my new identity is part of what dissolves your limiting beliefs that hold you back.
Stephen explained I must make it my mission on this earth to be aligned with and become my values, he says that if we’re not in alignment and connected to our true selves then everything else in life is affected, and this is where a lot of relationships come to issues and eventually crisis. If we cannot validate ourselves by living by our values, no one else can give us that. If a partner gives us that validation and fills the whole, then over time it creates a deficit and pressure in connection. Other people won’t always validate us in life and so if others and ourselves are not validating us, then that leaves us very off centre and you start to lose yourself, and if there is an empty space of us validating our own values, then fulfilment and happiness cannot be reached. Once you become aligned and give yourself what others can’t or shouldn’t, that’s when you can reach wholeness, certainty and magnetism, and where things will start to flow into your life.
Identity / Leadership:
This is the final stage I am working towards and can feel myself on the precipice of. Where I fully re-build my new identity and rehearse new beliefs in real time. I can lead in triggers conversations and hold my emotional posture daily. I am building my future and creating the vision. This journey is the gift that keeps on giving and this IS strangely a gift that I keep getting more from!
Key things in the process
These are all things I’ve learnt about and then they click as epiphanies. The crazy thing about this journey and process is that everything links in a full circle and you learn about one thing and it opens a door to the next thing and you see how they all work in tandem.
Self-talk
I’ve learnt that the tone of my self-talk is the tone of my internal safety, let that sink in! So I’m not just changing my thoughts I’m changing my relationship with myself, and then that’s what makes the nervous system follow and feel safe. I keep trying to reinforce a new way of talking to myself, especially when my old identity tries to take hold. When we talk negatively, we are managing ourselves like a liability which is control, it is not trust and not leading. I’m trying this thing where I talk to myself like I’ve got the best person on my team. Again seems such a small thing but is so massive.
Limiting beliefs
I have been able to pin point my exact limiting beliefs with the help of Stephen’s AI and digging and digging through my relationship and life, that I have formed and when they were formed. This is really paramount to helping see where things went wrong as it normally stems from those beliefs, which is what I am working on re-wiring, if I still hold onto them I will still have triggers and still talk negatively to myself and I’ll be held back from full transformation.
Triggers
The connection processing is essentially the ability to stay connected while triggered. I have always been the type of person that gets fired up quickly, if I didn’t feel safe, I would shout and blow up (as lovable as I am in some ways) I wasn’t good at being vulnerable in these situations. I am now reconnecting with myself and becoming conscious of my emotions, where I feel them in my body, being able to name them in detail.
Lots of this work is understanding concepts and mustering the energy to put them into aligned action, whilst in your darkest time of life. However, with the connection processing part, you’re having to embody the lessons immediately, you’re thrown in at the deep end straight away. And especially whilst still emotionally stabilising, it feels like running a marathon with zero training.
I began to learn to regulate and feel calm when I’m alone and not let triggers affect me so much, but that was half the work. The real growth happens when my old danger wiring gets lit up from criticism, fear of rejection, abandonment, not feeling chosen or good enough. The panic and your instincts (how your neurons are currently wired up) immediately wash over you with no warning at lightning speed and in the beginning resisting a trigger is like you have a curse over you and you have to resist it.
I am finally not immediately reacting and instead notice what’s activating me (it’s taken a lot of acknowledging when I’ve failed). I’m staying in my body and choosing to lead myself instead of protecting myself and becoming more aware and vulnerable. This is extremely hard and takes grit and conscious effort, I know once I get to this fully, I’m no longer just healing, I’ll be integrating my new operating system in real relationships, out in the big wide world. Stopping to regulate, name the state, leading myself and the interaction.
We will always have triggers but not letting them control us and being able to expand capacity in my body and hold the feeling of fear while also knowing I’m safe means the more I do that the less I am triggered and the more I come from a solid, self-validating, self-trusting, wise, calm and loving place. No matter how much what I’m hearing activates or hurts me or would have once hurt and make me react and spiral.
The main epiphany I have had around triggers in life is that if something is triggering you, then there is something in that trigger that makes you feel unsafe, something you don’t feel safe internally with unless you get external validation, and something you need to heal and learn to be OK with. ‘What we do to others, we do to a part of ourselves’. If I feel anger or fear about someone or something outside of me then there is something I am hurting in myself. Through becoming aware every time I am triggered, I began to see how healing isn’t about never being triggered, it’s about leading myself through each one and working out what there is to be addressed.
Holding Two Truths at Once
This brings me onto a paradox of life and this work, and the realisation in the truth that we can hold two opposing truths at once. Which is a concept most of us are not used to, it’s quite alien to us. We have been conditioned to want certainty, to believe we can only move forward, grow and heal if we have one clear route and decision. People see things in limbo as the enemy, as not an option, as something that must be addressed and decided on, but this is not the case. Basically, we can heal and grow even whilst the biggest storms are still going on around us. We see healing from trauma as something that must be fully sorted before we can return to ourselves and be happy and have a fresh start.
Mind–Body Connection / Nervous System / Subconscious
Stephen’s knowledge is very deep around all the different areas of healing and growth, and from my own reading and researching and wanting to understand the work I am doing, I can see the breadth of modalities he has studied and embedded into this method, but in such a streamlined approach that works unlike other processes. One of the major key things that is very radical and has been a major point in my healing is that pain and trauma is stored in the body and nervous system and not the mind. It’s all connected but we must feel safe in our body, talking alone doesn’t move trauma out of the body. And so I have done a lot of somatic work and breathwork.
Letting go of the outcome
This is one of the hardest things, but until I do this my body still doesn’t feel fully safe. In even the smallest ways it can mean I’m still in performance or chasing mode even subtly just in terms of energy. This has to happen no matter what stage of your journey you’re in. It means you stop attaching your worth, safety and identity to whether the relationship survives. It means you act from who you are, not from fear. Its not about giving up on the relationship its about releasing control and being able to show up as your most honest self.
I hope her story has helped you in some way, what she didn’t tell you was this was just 3 months work.
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
Find out more >>> The Marriage Breakthrough Program
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