Trauma and recovery – Julia Fry – Psychotherapist, Neurodivergence Coach, Writer, Poet, Artist.

The Inner Critic Hides a Wounded Child

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.

You’re welcome to book one here:

Book an initial chat through my form

Book an initial chat directly through my calendar

ADHD assessment system wasn’t built for people with ADHD

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…

How long should good enough coaching or therapy last?

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.

The Little Boy Who Wanted to Jump a Gap and Was Scared of Falling

Listen to Julia Fry reading this article

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.

Gratitude: what’s the point?

In a dark place once, I felt utterly depressed; could not think of one thing I was grateful for. Not one. I hated where I was living in my sixth floor council flat, where I’d taken up the tiles leaving a bare, concrete floor in the lounge. It felt cold, looked freezing, like the night sky. I had no spiritual practice. I had isolated myself. I wasn’t working. I was on government ‘benefits’. I felt unable to work and bad for not working. Wretched is the word for it.

Is it safer to fit in or stand out?

Listen to this article:

Do you want to be different or do you want to fit in?

When I was a teenager, with undiagnosed AuDHD and cPTSD, I desperately wanted to fit in, be accepted, be loved for who I was. I also wanted to express myself through what I wore and I had all kinds of ideas of the outfits I would put together to give space to this self-expression, but I didn’t let myself. I couldn’t. The need to fit in, not be ridiculed, and the desire to feel safe were stronger than the courage needed to stand out and be different.

photo shows a caterpillar with orange and yellow fur sticking on a green leaf

Othering Me, Othering You

Image shows strands of finger knitted wool of differing lengths arranged in a circle with the ends at the centre in a spiral. The wool is multi-coloured. — Othering Me, Othering You, 2023, Wool

I created this piece using wool. The wool came from a cardigan I made where I found the seams to be too irritating so I unpicked it. I am very sensitive to seams and labels in clothing. I was left with lots of small balls of wool in varying sizes and I followed an intuitive prod to finger knit each ball into a long strand. This took a few months and during this time I was working on my dissertation for my creative psychotherapy master’s, which was a heuristic inquiry into the experience of othering people different from me.

Othering Me, Othering You Is This The Best We Can Do?

I completed my MSc Counselling and Psychotherapy – Contemporary Creative Approaches in August 2023 with a research project called Othering Me, Othering You – My Living Experience of Internalised Patriarchy. I’m going to share the following sections from my dissertation in this post: definition of terms, introduction, and conclusion. If you’d like me to send you the dissertation or have a conversation about setting up creative workshops to uncover hidden biases with compassion, please email me.

image shows a wall with 2 canvas paintings and 8 pieces of paper with drawings on them: a heart with 2 people inside, a person with their head inside a cloud with the word "worry" in it and the word "othering" written on the paper, a large multi coloured heart, two spirals - red and blue, a series of black circles, a pink triangle, a red circle with black spikes surrounding it with yellow outside of the black and green in the corners of the image, a diagram with colour coded lines leading to bits of paper, a collage with the words "would I have known where to start without this?" written on.

Some of my creative outputs from my research that I analysed for themes

Category: Trauma and recovery