Anxiety is often spoken about as a problem to be fixed, medicated, or mindset-hacked away. Yet in the therapy room and in my own life, anxiety has shown up as something more complex: a protective part, a messenger from deeper hurt, and sometimes a sign that something stranger is moving through the nervous system. In this article, I share my journey with gremlins, inner critics, parts-work and “critters”, and how creativity and compassion help us move from fighting ourselves to befriending what lives inside.
This is written for anyone who feels hijacked by anxiety or critical voices and is curious about a gentler, more creative way of relating to them.
The other night I had a conversation with the Spirit of Astrology (SoA) and Uranus in my journal before going to sleep. I asked questions and wrote the answers that appeared in my head. Here is the conversation:
Discover how self-talk acts as magic spells on your nervous system. Reframe struggles, soothe inner critics, and embrace self-compassion this Christmas.
I draw on my breath and the overflowing love that constantly pumps through my heart – healing me, loving me unconditionally, giving me energy in surprising ways.
Words are magic spells.
Julia Fry (2022)
The Power of Self talk
What we say to ourselves matters.
When I keep talking about struggling (as I’ve caught myself doing lately), I inevitably struggle more. But when I reframe what feels like a ‘struggle’ as a challenge – and remember I have endless inner resources of love, imagination and intuition – it suddenly becomes easier to meet what life brings.
The question is, how do we remember this shift in perception when looking through eyes that judge constantly?
Sometimes I forget, and it takes a comment from a friend to wake me up. Often, that awakening unfolds slowly – over days rather than in minutes. Astrologically, my Moon in Scorpio makes me naturally moody. That moodiness carried extra shame because, as a child, it was often met with eye rolls and sharp remarks rather than understanding. It’s no wonder the moods darkened under judgement. Most parents, of course, can’t offer unconditional love all the time – it’s too much to ask of humans who also carry their own wounds.
When the inner critics dominate, we might feel small, frozen, or restless, or hyper critical of others (I describe these various inner saboteurs in my book, SHINE). When we speak from self-acceptance – the sage within – we feel expansive, curious, playful, creative, and light.
There was a time I suddenly realised that my inner critic wasn’t me. I was shocked – I had believed I was the torrent of nastiness it spewed. So I tried an idea I’d once rolled my eyes at: every time my inner critic started in, I added, “And that’s okay”.
That tiny phrase softened our relationship. It made space for compassion and began the long healing work of connecting with my Self – my inner Sage, Soul, or whatever name you prefer for that loving, intuitive, creative part of being.
Julia Fry (2025)
The Season of Activation
What we say to ourselves during stressful times matters most. Take Christmas, for instance. It’s portrayed as a time of family connection and joy – but for many, it reactivates old wounds. The same people who helped shape our inner saboteurs may be the ones we face across the table.
When those ancient patterns arise, we might withdraw, become snarky, or busy ourselves endlessly instead of asking for real connection, which can feel so vulnerable.
At such times, inner words can heal or harm. Harsh self-talk adds pain. Gentle, compassionate language can soothe us back into presence. This is just as true if you’re spending the holidays alone and feeling lonely.
Casting Healing Spells
Words are spells.
So here are a few blessings from my heart to yours:
I wish you love.
I wish you fun.
I wish you creativity.
I wish you laughter.
I wish you wonder-full initiations that help you grow into your authentic self.
Thank you for reading.
If you’d like to explore your relationship with your inner landscape with empathic support, I offer a free 20 to 30 min initial chat.
I am so very grateful to Julia Cameron, writer of The Artist’s Way. In that book she taught me to give space to the inner critic by writing down what it says and then turn each phrase around.
My Heart Sings (2020) Collage, colour pencils 20 x 14 cm Julia Fry
I have many inner critics and I’m grateful to all of them for protecting me in the ways they knew how, even though those ways are no longer useful. It’s amazing to me when I become aware of one of them. Their patterns are so automatic and it’s easy to believe the bullshit they spout.
Their job is to protect hurt parts of me and I see these parts as wounded inner children. They bubble up to the surface when they’re ready to be seen and loved, and to finally process what had to be frozen way back when. When this happens, they bring feelings that feel really fucking hard to hold. Then the critic piles on with shame and all the usual crap it heaps on top.
I had this happen for me recently. It can feel like losing grasp on reality – all the feelings of panic and ‘badness’ coming in waves, not related to any event in the current moment.
The next day, I gave space to the feelings in my journal. A torrent of beliefs I’d made up about myself as a child poured out. Thanks to the many times I’ve gone through The Artist’s Way process, I turned them around.
Here are some of them:
No one actually likes or loves us because that’s impossible
A lot of people love us very much.
We’re too ugly and big and noisy and imperfect
We’re beautiful and just the right size, always. It’s okay that sometimes we’re noisy, we’re also quiet too. We’re perfect just as we are. We’re not like your sister, thank goodness; she’s her wonderful self. We’re us. And that is perfect.
I’m not important any more
I’m as important as anyone is.
I’m under the radar
I’m seen with love by people who see me.
I’m excess baggage
I have the right amount of baggage and I am beautiful baggage. If I am excess then the plane isn’t right for me.
I’m ugly
I’m beautiful.
I’m unwanted
I’m so wanted by by so many people and Gaia and guides. So many reasons for wanting me, not least because of the unique expression of love that I am. You’d want me because of my flavour of loving and shining my light. All of us together make a beautiful sight.
I’m useless
I’m useful, without trying to be, through the ways of being that flow through me.
Obviously, there are reasons why this kicked off now: I’ve just started rebirthing breathwork with an incredibly loving practitioner, my partner is deeply loving, I hold my clients with loving, exquisite attention, which also affects my nervous system, I’m putting myself out there in the socials, writing and sharing my offerings. Then there’s the recent traumatic brush with the medical model with the advent of my ADHD assessment. Also, Christmas – but that’s for another post, perhaps.
For me, turning those inner‑critic phrases around feels like creative alchemy — and you might find your own version of that magic.
If you’d like somewhere to explore your inner landscape in your own way, I’d love to hold a space for that. What we do together unfolds from what you bring. I offer a free 20–30 minute initial chat if you’d like to see how it feels.
After waiting over five years for my ADHD assessment, I finally began the process — only to discover how deeply unfriendly, bureaucratic, and depersonalising the system can be for people like me. This wasn’t news to me intellectually, but now I have a felt sense of it in my body…
The therapy that I practice is not designed to try to fix you (I don’t see you as broken). I believe that you are doing the best you can with what you have and my job is to be with you with empathy, genuineness and unconditional positive regard. These attitudes form the basis of our therapy and I can add in coaching, mentoring, astrology, or creative methods, if you require them. In this way, I attune to you and your needs, and you receive genuine care that helps you to let go of what no longer serves you and move towards understanding what kinds of environment help you grow as a neurodivergent person.
I watched a video on Instagram of a little boy who wanted to jump a gap and was scared of falling. His dad was cheerily pressuring him into it, telling him he could do it. The child kept trying but kept stopping at the edge, and the dad egged him on, a note of exasperation creeping into his tone. As the child grew more agitated, his self-talk became more erratic with words and phrases being repeated excitedly, like “one step, one step, one step.” The dad said at one point that he had to stop himself laughing at the child’s self-talk. Finally, the child did the leap with a reassuring hand hold from the dad. Then he did it without the hand hold and was rewarded with cheers and high fives, and loads of praise. This is how conditions of worth are created.
La Luna (2011), paper, white emulsion, tippex, acrylic, plastic stars and wool
Last week I saw the crescent moon and it looked like art made by human hand, which made me recall my attempt at making a crescent moon many moons ago. On finding the blog post from 2011, I felt glee to see it! It was a playful experience and I want to share it with you!
I’m developing a special relationship with the moon and I really enjoy connecting with her. I say ‘her’ because I feel the presence to be feminine. Maybe that’s because I project my femininity onto her. Who knows? Who cares?
I’m looking forward to celebrating the next full moon, maybe with a fire ceremony, or maybe quietly, writing a piece of poetry. As we wax towards that, I hope you enjoy my crescent moon. Here’s the original text I wrote to accompany it in 2011:
The Three Muses set their weekly artistic challenge: “the moon”. It ties in with one of my current projects: telling the story of the different identities my imagination created during my childhood to protect me.
One is a she-wolf; she lives inside me on a beautiful snow covered mountainside. I discovered her existence during my first counselling session with Emma Welsh.
The moon has an important role in helping the wolf to release the pain she has held for me and the other identities; when the moon is full it stirs something in her to howl out. It’s not full yet…
I made the light side of the moon using a page from a magazine and several coats of white natural emulsion paint.
The dark side of the moon is black card flicked with tippex and painted over with black acrylic paint.
The fabric of the universe, or dark matter, is a large knitted square over which I sprinkled stars that were given to me by a wise woman at Survivors Network.
If there is a god or creator, I wonder if it created the universe as an art project?
In the middle of the night I woke with the memory of a module about home in my moving image degree (2013). I couldn’t remember what I had produced for the module. I felt an urge to look at the external hard drive that contained all my work from that time. It was the middle of the night! However compelling the urge was, it could wait. I went back to sleep. That was Thursday night.
On Friday evening I plugged my hard drive into the laptop and in the directory was a file called journal-FINAL. The file contained my process notes for a short film I made called ‘Adaptations’ that was very much influenced by the home module. I was exploring ideas about what makes a home (things we use everyday?), how we identify with home, being exiled from home, and the relationship dynamics within home.
My partner and I were about to go on a trip to Tyneham in Dorset, which is a village taken by the British Army in 1944 so they could use the land for war practice. They promised the inhabitants that they could return to their homes after the war but the Ministry of Defence kept the land. They still use it for tanks and shooting practice.
My father was in the army and he killed himself when I was 9. My mum, sister and I had to leave our house, and community, because we were no longer valuable (if we ever were) to the army. We were stationed in Bovington, the nearest army base to Tyneham. There were beautiful woods behind our house and I used to spend a lot of time with the trees. I knew the feeling of being pushed out from a place I loved, like the villagers of Tyneham.
My partner and I watched Adaptations 3 times, at his request. It has no words, just sounds I’d found on a free sounds website to use as foley, and a beautiful, haunting flute composed by a friend at the beginning and end. You can portray a lot without words. The film was a way for me to work through a relationship breakup at the time.
I don’t know why I didn’t share it on my website earlier. I kind of forgot about the film until the intuitive prod to look at the home module occurred. Reading the accompanying journal was interesting. Here’s an excerpt that relates to the film:
A few weeks before he died, my mother and father had an argument in which it seemed he wanted to leave the relationship. They reconciled and he made a big show of making an effort with her, whilst she seemed resigned and closed down. Their communication always seemed to be broken but they managed to keep the relationship going until he died. I wonder how much of their ability to keep going related to how we lived and the objects that we saw everyday that helped us to retain our identities: the kitchen objects, the lounge objects, the bedroom objects. The mundane things that we touched and used or played with daily were real; they had tangible substance, whereas the arguments and the acts of undermining and violence could be ‘forgotten’ with enough distraction.
