Blog's By Jo

Hello and welcome to Self and Shadow.

I'm Joanne — I've spent 18 years working in the NHS and 10 years as a therapist. I've sat with people in some of the darkest moments of their lives, and I've learned that no one is immune to those moments. Not even therapists.

I've been through significant trauma in my own life. I've been in that dark hole — the kind that feels like it has no bottom. And as a therapist, I beat myself up about it. It shouldn't happen to me. I know better. I have the tools.

But it did. And that changed everything about how I work.

Every article on this page is written from that place — from real clinical experience and from my own healing. Not from a textbook. Not from a safe distance. From the inside of what it actually feels like to struggle, and to find your way through.

I truly believe we cannot avoid some of the harsh realities of life. Loss, grief, fear, shame — these are not signs that something has gone wrong with you. They are part of being human. But we can absolutely gain a new perspective, and we can grow into the person we are becoming. That growth is not linear, and it is rarely tidy. But it is possible.

This is not toxic positivity. There are no silver linings forced onto hard things here. What you will find is honesty — a fully transparent look at what gets in the way, what helps, and what it actually takes to move forward.

There is a light to be found. But only when we can hold the past — when we can look at it clearly, without flinching away. That doesn't mean the pain disappears. It means we develop real skills to carry it differently. And that lessens the pressure, the overwhelm, and the weight of it all.

If any of that resonates — you're in the right place.

My approach to therapy

I work as a Trauma-Informed Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, which means the work is always collaborative, never something done to you. Three things guide everything I do: full transparency, working with the truth rather than around it, and the belief that we become a team the moment we start working together. I can't promise to tell you what you want to hear. I can promise honesty, and a genuine partnership in figuring out what actually helps.

A lot of what I write about — repeating patterns, the shadow self, grief, dreams, the inner critic — draws on depth psychology and Jungian thinking as much as it does clinical technique. I use myth and metaphor deliberately in my work, not as decoration, but because the unconscious mind often understands a story more readily than it understands an instruction. This is also why I write original myths and metaphors as therapeutic tools, both for the clients I work with directly and for other practitioners through my resource bundles.

What you'll find across this site

Every article here is written to be read by the person actually living through what it describes — not just studied by other professionals. Whether you're here because something specific brought you (a repeating pattern you've noticed, a grief you're carrying, a version of yourself you don't recognise anymore), or because you're simply curious, I hope what you find is useful, honest, and free of judgement.