Summer 2025: The Cost of Bravery

If you’ve ever stayed too long in a place that didn’t deserve you - read this. A letter about breaking points and rebuilding your life with integrity. This story isn’t about burnout. It’s about what comes next.

As a kid growing up in the sleepy town of Worthing, West Sussex, rainy car rides were frequent. Too young to stay home alone, I’d patiently accompany my parents on weekend errands. Bored in the back seat, I’d watch rivulets of rain trace lazy, intricate paths down the window. The raindrops, like tiny crystal beads, would collide and absorb each other, carving unique little roadways - cross-roads, collisions, forks, and sudden turns. I’d make imaginary bets on which swollen droplet would win the race to the bottom, slipping into pre-forged grooves like a bobsleigh, gathering speed before vanishing at the edge of the window - into the unknown.

Recently, staring out of my own rainy window, that memory came flooding back, and it made me think:

How often do we fall into life’s accidental slip-roads?

Pathways shaped by others. Structures built before we arrived. Stories we inherit, not choose - and what “others” do we collect along the way?

 How often do we pick our paths - and how often are we swept into ones carved by pressure, habit, circumstance, or fear?

This year, I made a choice - to define my own.

I walked away from something I had outgrown. Something that once felt aligned, but had slowly become corrosive.

I left a job I loved. Not because the work was too heavy - I adored the client work and thrived in it. It was the reason I was there. What broke me was the betrayal of values. The silence. The erosion of integrity behind closed doors.

At one point, a senior colleague told me I was experiencing “vicarious trauma”. And they were right - just not in the way they meant. As I said, I adored the client work – and I was good at it.

It was the organisational culture that left me injured.

Eventually, I hit a wall.
No - a reckoning.

I encountered the final rupture: I was subjected to aggressive and intimidating behaviour by a senior male colleague. In front of others, I was shouted at and sworn at. He attempted to hoof me out of my chair and instructed me to leave the office I’d worked in with dedication and care for many years. My physical, personal space - and boundaries - were invaded, and my professional position undermined.

It was shocking, sudden, unexpected and dehumanising - but also not surprising. It wasn’t the first act of disrespect and abuse that had happened in that environment, but it was the last.

And in that moment, I finally recognised - cleanly and finally - that this was the moment to truly jump, and do the things I’ve been aching to do for so long.

So, I walked. Not just away from a job, but back toward myself. But not before pulling the individual to account, and reporting the incident. Accountability is key, after all.

You see, when you stay silent, you make yourself complicit. To abuse - or to wider institutional failings. Or even societal, if we think about our current geo-political climate. As Jordan B. Peterson is famously quoted: “when you don’t speak the truth, you kill your unborn self” (or words to that effect).

And it's true.

My wider training as an Integrative Psychotherapeutic Counsellor didn’t just teach me how to support others. It taught me how to listen to my own inner knowing too. To recognise when I was being asked to abandon my core values. Integrity - not the tidy, textbook kind, but the kind that lives in your bones - must stay intact. And sometimes, that means doing the hard thing. Speaking truth. Risking misunderstanding. Walking away. Not just to survive, but to live in alignment.

Because staying would have meant betrayal. Ethically. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. To myself, and the integrity of my wider work.

There’s no honour in talking the talk if you’re not willing to walk it.

So that’s exactly what I did. I left with my dignity. I refused to be knocked about by dysfunction any longer. I held the line.

I share this not for sympathy - but for visibility. To cast a beacon for anyone who may be standing at their own edge, wondering how much more they can take. Toxic leadership is too often excused under the banner of “stress” or “pressure.” But no pressure justifies ill treatment. No title justifies intimidation - and no organisation committed to human welfare should allow it to go unchallenged, or for deeper systemic issues to go on for so long.

So where did I go and how did I heal?

I came back to source.

To health. To creative freedom. To relationships that restore me. To the work that grounds me.

And I found my way back to The Room – Psy.

A passion I feared had been trampled, lost under years of exhaustion and striving.

Some of you might remember when this platform first began in 2014. Back then, it was just me - a Twitter page, a clunky amniotic placeholder of a blog, and a vague, unshaped dream. It started as a space where I shared psychological essays, revision posts, and debate points - mostly to show prospective universities that I was serious, engaged, and ready; driven by fear that my exam results might not have spoken loudly enough on their own. Becoming then, way to show my passion for psychology, to express the complexity of human experience, and to find others who craved similar depth and nerdy feats.

And it grew.

And people came.

Writers. Readers. Thinkers. Seekers.

It became a home for the curious. A kind of third space - for those who felt academia was too rigid and competitive, and clinical psychology too detached for every day chats. For people who craved depth, meaning, and connection in the messiness of real life.

I invited others to bring their fire. Their voices. Their stories.
And within months of its formal launch in 2019, traffic to theroompsy.com rocketed. It grew into a small but powerful community of psychological thinkers and creatives.

But then - life happened. As it so often, does.

Grief. COVID. Anxiety. A relentless commute. Counselling certificates and diplomas. Buying my first home. Surviving toxic workplaces. All of it collided. And The Room – Psy slipped into the background.

The emails slowed. The passion dulled. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to sustain it, and I felt like I was letting everyone down all the time.

Eventually, I had to commit to pressing pause. Strip things back. Focus on what was necessary to survive and pass my course. It hurt, letting go of contributors, but it was necessary.

Yet beneath the stillness, something powerful was happening. Pausing allowed me to grow and heal; to become the person I needed to be to take this platform to the next level. And the terrible event, earlier described, afforded me the opportunity for recalibration. For an awakening.

And now, I’m ready.

I’m a fully qualified Integrative Psychotherapeutic Counsellor. I’m the Founder of this beautiful platform - and I’m reclaiming the voice I nearly lost in the noise of other people’s expectations.

Because the truth is, I never stopped caring. The fire never went out. It just got buried under obligation, stress, and a lack of opportunity to flourish.

But here's what I’ve learned:
Your purpose doesn’t die. It waits.

Waits for you to be ready. Waits for you to say “enough.” It waits for you to remember who you are -outside of systems, titles, and fear.

So, here’s what’s next:

The Room – Psy is coming back - louder, wiser, more focused. A new Team will be announced soon. New features are on the way - and behind the scenes, a few big, exciting projects are already underway (I wish I could tell you more… but NDA, baby).

We are returning to our roots: creativity, connection, curiosity. And we’re growing something even bigger from there.

This letter isn’t a pity party or a comeback story.
It’s an invitation.

To anyone who feels stuck in a story that doesn’t belong to them – as I did.
To anyone who has silenced themselves to stay safe.
To anyone who’s burnt out, bent out of shape, or buried beneath “shoulds”.

Come back to you.

Don’t be like the raindrops I used to watch racing down car windows - being pushed out of alignment, shoved into paths or “familiar” roles that were never yours to begin with.

Don’t just let your life, your dreams and sense of self, slide out of focus; carried by habit or fear.

Choose.

Choose the hard thing if it’s also the right thing. Speak when your voice shakes. Turn the page when you know in your gut, it’s time for a new chapter.

Because this is it. This is your life, and it deserves your full investment.

I’ll leave you with the words of @faye_plunkett. A wonderfully fun and inspiring soul who I recently discovered on ‘Instagram’:

“The longer you stay on the wrong train, the more expensive it is to get home.”

So, get off. Start walking.

You’ve got somewhere to be.

And I’ll meet you there.

With fire,

P.S., to those of you who’ve been here from the start - thank you for your patience. For staying when I had to step away. You helped keep this flame alive