TRANSFORM YOURSELF & YOUR LIFE THROUGH THE POWER OF CREATIVE EXPRESSION

Hey, I'm Gemma & this is my story..

​From the moment I was born, I was a day-dreamer, never listening at school, struggling to pay attention, always getting into trouble, extremely chaotic, and never able to organise myself. I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age (although while my parents knew, I was never directly told). It showed up in my work at school (or lack of), in my inability to stick to anything and figure out my direction in life, in my struggle to emotionally regulate myself, in destructive harmful behaviours, and in a large number of toxic relationships. By 17 I was always out drinking, taking drugs, partying recklessly, getting into a lot of trouble with my teachers, and being super impulsive. Due to always feeling "different," and struggling with basic life things that other people seemed to find so easy, I felt incapable in many ways, yet I also had a complete lack of understanding of myself and why I was struggling. This meant that I was using destructive methods of coping with my emotions.

I struggled deeply with my self worth, developing shame and hatred for myself and who I was. I never felt good enough or worthy. I battled with huge amounts of self-criticism and enormous perfectionism, and a lot of social anxiety too. I spent my life in and out of very toxic relationships. After years and years of struggling, I started to develop chronic stress. I lacked awareness, and I did not know at the time that a large part of this was from the complex trauma of being neuro-divergent in a world that is built for neuro-typical people. At 18 I developed anorexia nervosa, along with over-exercising, binge eating, and severe anxiety and depression. I dropped to a seriously low weight very quickly and I lost my menstrual cycle for 4 years. Even at this low and dangerous weight, I would take a lot of drugs, binge drink alcohol, and party a lot. I wanted to numb out everything I was feeling about myself and my life. Years went by, and even though I gained weight and "recovered" physically from anorexia, I still struggled internally with accepting who I was.

Overtime, all of these stressful thoughts and behaviours took their toll on my mind and body, and I developed quite severe physical illness. I was unable to function, due to being so ill. I was sick, and in a lot of pain, and in and out of hospital all the time. I begun with my doctor's help trying to get better. But it became extremely clear to me, that I was only improving so much. I decided to take a more holistic approach, and I begun to not just work on my body's physical health, but also on the health of my mind and my soul too. I soon realised that the more I worked on healing my entire life and letting go of the emotional pain I was carrying, the more I begun to genuinely heal. I started to ask myself, what did my pain want from me? What was my mind, body & soul asking for? What was I needing that I hadn't been aware of? Embracing my neuro-divergence was also a big puzzle piece in getting healthier, because my lack of awareness of how these micro trauma's had affected me throughout my life, had put chronic stress on my mind and body. I wish I had had more awareness, so I could have had had more compassion for myself, so a big part of my work is teaching people about this and increasing people's awareness of this.

I have adored music and creativity in all forms since I was very young, and singing and songwriting in particular. After spending many months really physically unwell, I decided to apply to study for a Masters in Music Performance and Songwriting at Leeds College of Music. To my surprise, I was accepted onto the course. I was surrounded by an amazing community of people, and I made incredible friends. I started to sing every single day, and I spent a lot of time expressing myself through songwriting. I noticed how healing being a part of this course was for me. My mental health improved dramatically, and so did my physical health. It made me realise how powerful the combination of creativity and community can have on our health.

After I left that course, I used lots of forms of creativity to express and release a lot of the emotions I had suppressed for many years. I saw a creative therapist, and I gradually begun to build myself and my life up and put myself back together, stronger than ever. Quite a few years later I decided to study for a Diploma to become a Holistic Integrated Creative Arts & Meditation Therapy Practitioner at The Holistic Academy, which is when I started my journey with wanting to help other people transform their lives too. I am still on my own healing journey, as we all are, but I believe I now have a huge number of incredible tools to help others create change within themselves and their lives. I believe that love has such a huge ability to heal us all: love from others and love from ourselves, and this is something I want to integrate into my practice as a therapist too.

I create free educational content to share on my Instagram & website blog, and I also send out free weekly emails to my mailing list, along with my free eBooks containing a lot of helpful information, tips & tricks for anyone interested in learning more about what I do and the transformations I can create. I also offer mini online workshops and a 7-day guided meditation program for anyone wanting lost cost support. Lastly, for people wanting to work with me on a deeper level, I offer a mixture of workshops, events, group & one-to-one therapy sessions, as well as weekend transformative retreats. Please reach out to me if you are interested in learning more.