We Don’t Always Need to Reinvent Ourselves: An August Reflection

As we move out of August and into the “ber” months, I’ve found myself reflecting on a month that, on the surface, has contained lots of lovely things.

There has been travel, walking, time with my daughter, Paris, beautiful food, art, architecture and those wonderful moments that happen when we temporarily step outside our everyday routines.

But underneath all of that, August has left me thinking about something deeper.

Perhaps we don’t always need to reinvent ourselves. Sometimes we need to come home to ourselves.

The therapeutic value of pause

During my few days in Paris, we walked. A lot.

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We explored Montmartre, wandered through streets and cafés, visited the beautiful Sacré-Cœur and I was completely captivated by Dior La Galerie.

But one of the moments that has stayed with me most involved doing almost nothing.

We sat beside the Seine and waited for daylight to slowly become evening and for the Eiffel Tower to sparkle.

Boats passed. People came and went. We talked. We watched. We even witnessed a marriage proposal.

 And we waited.

There was nowhere else we needed to be.

It reminded me how unfamiliar that can sometimes feel.

Our lives can become filled with doing. Work, family, responsibilities, appointments, messages, plans and the endless small things requiring our attention.

Even the things we do for our wellbeing can become another task on the list.

Walk. Exercise. Meditate. Journal. Drink enough water. Get enough sleep.

Sometimes even self-care becomes something else we feel we need to get right.

But there is therapeutic value in simply pausing.

Not necessarily meditating or deliberately practising mindfulness. Sometimes it is simply allowing ourselves to be somewhere without immediately needing to move onto whatever comes next.

When we create those small spaces, we can begin to notice ourselves again.

What happens when we slow down enough to notice?

In therapy, we often talk about awareness.

• How does something feel?

• What happens in your body when you talk about it? 

• What do you notice? 

• What might you need?

These sound like simple questions, but they can be surprisingly difficult to answer.

Many of us become very skilled at knowing what everybody else needs from us while becoming increasingly disconnected from our own needs.

We keep going.

Until something asks us to stop.

Sometimes that might be anxiety, overwhelm, exhaustion or simply the uncomfortable sense that something in our lives no longer quite fits.

Therapy can offer a space where we don’t have to immediately find the answer.

We can become curious instead.

And I think August has given me some of that space too.

When different parts of ourselves begin to come together

Something else I’ve been reflecting on this month is movement and dance.

Dance has never really left my life.

It has been part of who I am for as long as I can remember, through performing, teaching, choreographing and education, and it continues to be part of my professional life today through the coaching and choreography I still love doing.

But my relationship with movement has continued to evolve.

Alongside my years of experience in dance, my work as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist has deepened my curiosity about the relationship between our emotional and physical selves.

How much do we actually notice our bodies?

How often do we move simply because it feels good rather than because we are exercising, training, performing or trying to achieve something?

What happens when we combine movement with music, relaxation, connection and a little bit of fun?

These are questions I’ve become increasingly interested in.

And gradually, an idea has been taking shape.

That idea has become at EASE.

A space that brings together gentle movement, body awareness, relaxation, music, connection and a little uncomplicated dancing.

It isn’t about replacing one part of my work with another.

And it certainly isn’t about returning to something I left behind.

Perhaps it is simply about allowing different parts of my experience to sit together in a way they haven’t before.

My experience of movement.

My therapeutic work.

My understanding of the importance of connection.

My interest in how we experience ourselves through our bodies.

And, importantly, the simple pleasure of putting on some music and moving.

There is something very natural about that coming together.

We don’t have to put ourselves into separate boxes

Perhaps we do this more than we realise.

We separate ourselves into different versions.

• The professional version. 

• The parent. 

• The friend. 

• The person we used to be. 

• The person we think we should be now.

The things we do for work and the things we do because we love them.

But we are rarely that neatly divided.

We are the accumulation of our experiences, relationships, choices, challenges, passions and all the different versions of ourselves that have existed along the way.

And perhaps growth isn’t always about leaving one version behind so that another can take its place.

Sometimes it is about integration.

Allowing more of ourselves to belong.

We are allowed to evolve without discarding who we are

We hear so much about reinvention.

New chapters. New beginnings. Becoming a new version of ourselves.

Sometimes that can feel exciting and empowering.

But I wonder whether we always need to become someone new.

Perhaps growth can be quieter than that.

We can continue doing something we have loved for years while allowing our relationship with it to change.

We can bring experience from one part of our lives into another.

We can become curious about what still fits, what has evolved and what we might like to make more space for.

We don’t have to discard previous versions of ourselves in order to grow.

They are already part of who we are.

Coming home to ourselves

Perhaps that is what August has been about for me.

Not reinvention.

Integration.

Movement alongside stillness.

Work alongside pleasure.

My therapeutic experience sitting alongside my lifelong relationship with dance and movement.

And allowing myself to recognise that all of those things can belong together.

As a psychotherapist, I often have the privilege of witnessing people reconnect with parts of themselves that have become quieter, overlooked or simply crowded out by everything else life has required of them.

Sometimes therapy isn’t about creating a different person.

It is about making enough space to hear ourselves again.

To become curious about what we need now.

To notice what brings us joy.

To recognise what still feels like us.

And perhaps to allow the different parts of ourselves to exist alongside one another rather than believing we have to choose between them.

So as August ends, that’s the thought I’m taking with me:

Growth doesn’t always mean becoming someone new. Sometimes it is simply allowing more of who we already are to come together.