Hi there,
I hope you’re having a good start to the week.
From where I’m writing, it feels like autumn has fully arrived. I noticed the leaves turning on my walk this weekend, and I’ve started to pull out new season clothes from under the bed.
The back-to-school energy feels like it’s calming down too and we’re all slowly settling into this new shift. I’ve even become more comfortable logging onto the multiple tech systems that come with new schools — last week I thought this bit would kind of break me!
As it’s Monday morning, I have a new podcast conversation for you and its one that I think arrives at the perfect time, when we’ve maybe been feeling a little turned around and are looking for something to anchor us in the season ahead.
This week’s thought kept — the idea to try on in your life this week — invites us to pay attention to a relationship that we might be overlooking right now.
Some relationships might be front and center in our lives at the moment, like the ones we have with our families, our partners, our friends. Because they come with clear expectations, responsibilities and rituals, they are maybe easier to both remember and nurture. But there’s one relationship many of us neglect even though we’re always living within it, all the time. Can you guess what that is?
This week on A Thought I Kept, I spoke with therapist Sarah Rees (here on Substack at Therapists Corner) about what it actually means to be in relationship with yourself — not as a vague concept that we’ve maybe heard a million times in the self-help world, but as something that makes actual sense in our very busy, daily lives.
Already you may be squirming because it’s not always comfortable to be in any kind of dialogue with ourselves. It can feel awkward, or even impossible as we rush through our days. But there’s something about slowing down and moving through that discomfort that Sarah suggests is vital for not only self-awareness but also for connecting with others.
Sarah and I spoke about how easy it is to search for answers externally as we scroll for solutions and distract ourselves with fixing or doing — when often what we really need is a way to ask ourselves, “What’s really going on here?”
Sarah also shares how her work evolved from fast-paced clinical environments into something slower, more relational, more rooted in compassion.
And she reminds us that self-connection isn’t a luxury or a wellness add-on — it’s foundational to how we show up in our lives. It’s how we learn what we need. It’s how we begin to make decisions that match our actual values, not just our fears.
This episode is for anyone who is already thinking that tuning in is indulgent, who is wondering what it even means to “check-in with yourself”, who likes to think rather than feel their feelings and is wondering how to “fix” the overwhelm with more outward solutions.
Listen to this episode to discover how making space for yourself can help make space for everything (and everyone) else we care about.
You can listen to the episode here.
(Or find “The Relationship We Keep Forgetting” wherever you get your podcasts.)
As you look at your calendar or to-do list for the week ahead, where could your relationship with yourself show up? What would that even look like? What kind of space could you make this week to nurture it?
Let me know in the comments what this might look like for you, and whether this is a thought that you will keep into the week or even into the autumnal weeks beyond.
Until next time,
Claire
Welcome to A Thought I Kept, the companion podcast to More Good Days — where we explore ideas about wellbeing with curiosity, intimacy, and honesty, and discover how to make them truly livable in everyday life. Episodes go out on Mondays. You can get the episodes each week by subscribing here or following the show on your favourite podcast app/ platform.
About Sarah Rees
Sarah Rees is a CBT therapist with over 30 years of experience working in mental health. She is trained in EMDR and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), and works with clients both online and from her private practice in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Sarah supervises on Professor Paul Gilbert’s CFT Diploma and is the author of The Therapist’s Guide to Private Practice: Building a Values-Based Business.
She specialises in helping therapists set up and grow sustainable private practices with self-funding clients and consistent income. Sarah also runs Therapists Corner, a Substack and online community offering practical, values-led support for therapists in business. You can find her on Instagram at @sarahdrees.co.uk and at sarahdrees.co.uk.
About Me (in case you’re new here)
I’m the host of A Thought I Kept, a wellbeing writer and the co-founder of If Lost Start Here, a company on a mission to get people to a better place, sometimes literally. As an ICF Associate Certified Coach and a certified Emotions Coach Practitioner, I help women navigate the everyday lost moments of their days and explore more of life.
Learn more about me and how to work with me here.
P.S. For Wellery Members, there’s a separate post just for you connected to this episode. I realised that adding the paywall to bonus content takes away access to the episode and comments section for everyone else. So I’m going to experiment with keeping these separate from now on. Let me know what you think.
