My story

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For much of my life, I carried a quiet sense that something wasn’t quite right.

One of my earliest memories is being nine years old, standing within earshot as my mother said to my aunt,
“There’s something wrong with that boy.”

It wasn’t said with cruelty. But it landed.

And in many ways, I spent the next forty years trying to work out what that “something” was.

On the surface, I built a life that looked like it was moving forward. I ran a business, stayed busy, kept things going. But underneath, there was always a sense of strain. A feeling of pushing, reacting, and trying to hold everything together.

I didn’t understand why things felt harder than they seemed to for other people.

Alongside that, I found ways to cope.

I struggled with drugs and alcohol for years, before eventually finding recovery. I’ve now been sober for over 20 years. That journey has shaped me deeply. Not just in terms of stopping, but in learning to live, to feel, and to face things more honestly.

But even in recovery, something still didn’t quite make sense.

It wasn’t until later in life that I was diagnosed with ADHD.

That diagnosis brought relief, but also grief.

I Thought i was defective, my brain moving quickly from the best of times to the worst of times, in the space of a minute! The overwhelm. The impulsivity. The constant feeling of being slightly out of step with the world. It wasn’t a personal failing. It was something I had been living with, without understanding.

Around the same time, the business I had built began to collapse due to impulsivity and poor decisions.

That period forced me to stop in a way I never had before. To face not just practical loss, but deeper questions about who I was, and how I had been living.

It’s a slow process to stop, finally, lurching from one self imposed crisis to another. There was no sudden breakthrough just small 1% changes through doing the next right thing.

But gradually, something shifted.

I began to see that there wasn’t something “wrong” with me.

There had been pain,isn’t there always ? There had been patterns shaped by experience. There had been a nervous system trying to cope in the only ways it knew how.

And when I started to understand that, really understand it, things began to change.

Not through force. But through awareness.

I started learning how to work with my mind, rather than against it. To recognise patterns without immediately judging them. To create space where there had only been pressure.

I’m a qualified mindfulness teacher, and as busy or chaotic as my head can be, I’ve learned that being present is often the key to everything. Not as an abstract idea, but as something practical that brings things back into balance.

This is the foundation of the work I now do.

Coaching, for me, isn’t about fixing people or pushing them towards some ideal version of themselves.

It’s about understanding what’s underneath, gently and honestly.

Because when we understand ourselves more clearly, change tends to follow in a way that actually lasts.

My work is shaped by lived experience. ADHD, addiction, recovery, and the long process of unpicking what was never really mine to carry.

Today, i would love to tell you life is easier,but it still depends on the choices I make on a daily basis.

What I do now have is the choice to make good choices and a mind I’m learning to control, rather than the other way around.

I focus on work that feels grounded. Coaching, being outdoors, working with plants, and building something that aligns with who I am, rather than who I thought I needed to be.

If any part of this resonates, you’re not alone.

And there is a way forward that doesn’t rely on more pressure, but on deeper understanding,joy and finding some peace.