Overthinking doesn't always start with a bad thought. Sometimes it starts with silence, and your mind filling that silence with stories so convincing you forget they are stories. If you have ever spiralled over an unanswered message, an unreturned call, or a silence you could not explain, you will want to be a part of this conversation.

We all do it. A text goes unanswered. A WhatsApp message sits unread. A call doesn't get returned. And instead of staying with what we actually know, we start to believe things we have no evidence for.

In this episode I share a tool I learned from Dr. Susan David's work on emotional agility, the practice of separating facts from feelings, and what happened when I finally used it in a moment I really needed it.

This episode is about the space between learning a tool and remembering to reach for it when your chest is tight and your mind won't stop spinning.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• Why overthinking escalates, how small stories become elaborate certainties over days and why your mind builds them so convincingly
• The real reason silence is so unbearable, your brain would rather have a painful answer than no answer at all
• Dr. Susan David's Facts vs Feelings practice and how to use it in the moment without a journal, an app, or perfect conditions
• What I found when I separated the facts from the feelings, and why the disproportion between the two columns changed everything
• Why forgetting your tools in the middle of the spiral is not failure, it is being human
• How the distance between the spiral starting and you remembering you have something to reach for gets shorter over time
• Why "no response is a response" might be true but attaching a story to what no response means is where the damage can happen
• What it looks like to not abandon yourself in real time, not through a big gesture, but through choosing what is actually true over what your mind has built

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Nervous system regulation, co-regulation, polyvagal theory, somatic practices, vagal tone, sympathetic activation, parasympathetic activation, window of tolerance, neuroception. The wellness world is drowning us in terminology. But is the language actually helping you, or is it giving you one more thing to feel like you are not doing correctly?

The science is real. The science is valid. That is not what this episode questions. What this episode asks is where we are putting our focus. Because the clinical vocabulary has become the thing instead of the experience being the thing. Whether you are reading articles, listening to podcasts, or watching videos about your nervous system, there is a point where the information stops helping and starts producing the very anxiety it claims to solve.

These practices have always existed long before we had the language for them. Your body has been communicating with you your entire life. The question has never been whether you know the right words. The question has always been whether you are listening.

In this episode you will discover:

• Why wellness terminology might be creating the anxiety it claims to solve
• The important distinction between the science being real and the terminology becoming the focus
• What your body has always known how to do long before the internet named it
• Why we outsource our own knowing when we get too deep into clinical language
• The difference between studying the map and walking the path
• Why you do not need a single clinical term to validate the inner work you are already doing
• A tiny practice for the moment the information starts making you more anxious than calm

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here. From my heart to yours. 💛

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

The Self-Love and Mental Fitness lie that you can't love anyone else until you love yourself is hurting people who are already loving beautifully. If you have ever doubted the love you give because you believe you have not yet learned to love yourself, you have been told something that is not true.

This line is one of the most repeated in the Self-Love and personal development space. It sounds wise. It gets quoted as truth. And I believe it is doing quiet, real damage to people who deserve to know that the love they are giving every single day is real.

In this episode I open with a recent client moment that lays bare the cost of this idea. Then I take the line apart. I look at what it gets wrong, why it can be cruel, and what is actually true underneath it. I also speak openly about my own decades of self-hatred and the love I held for my mother, my siblings, my nieces and my nephews during all of that time. Both were true. At the same time. For years.

Self-Love is a daily practice. It is not a qualification you earn before you are allowed to love or be loved.

This is the third in a recent thread on removing barriers on the path to Self-Love. Episode 73: You Don't Have to Like Yourself to Start Loving Yourself. Episode 74: Self-Abandonment: Why You Keep Doing It and What It's Costing You.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER:

• Why this line gets repeated so often we have stopped questioning it

• The recent client moment that lit the fuse for this episode

• The observable truth about how struggling humans love beautifully every single day

• What the line was reaching for and where it went wrong

• The difference between friction in loving and not being able to love

• My own story of decades of self-hatred and deep, profound love at the same time

• Why connection is often where the healing happens, not the waiting room before it

• The permission you do not need to wait for

This is an inside job. Thank you for being here. Please share this episode and follow my show. From my heart to yours.

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

Self-abandonment is why Self-Love does not stick. If you keep saying yes when you mean no, staying quiet when you have something to say, or pushing through when your body is begging you to stop, this episode names exactly what that pattern is, where it comes from, and what it is costing you.

Self-abandonment disguises itself as kindness, humility, and being low-maintenance. Most of us never question it because it looks so much like virtue from the outside. In this episode I break down what self-abandonment actually is, why it is a learned survival response and not a character weakness, what it does to your body and your relationship with yourself over time, and the 5-word practice that can interrupt the pattern starting today.

Self-Love is not a destination. It is built in the accumulation of small choices to stay with yourself. This episode is where that starts.

In this episode you will discover:

• What self-abandonment actually is and why it disguises itself as being a good person
• The quiet, ordinary moments where you abandon yourself without realising it
• Why this pattern started, why it once served you, and why it no longer belongs in your life
• What self-abandonment does to your body, your energy, and your relationship with yourself over time
• Why Self-Love cannot be built on a foundation of leaving yourself behind
• The 5-word practice that interrupts the pattern in the exact moment it is happening
• Why one small choice to stay with yourself is not just enough. It is the beginning.

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this with the ones you love. From my heart to yours.

How to love yourself when you don't like who you are - and why you don't have to like yourself to start. If self-love messaging has ever felt impossible from where you are standing, this episode is for you.

This is probably one of the most honest conversations about Self-Love. Because there is a place a lot of us know but rarely talk about and is where being told to love yourself doesn't feel like a lifeline. It feels like one more thing you are failing at.

In this episode I explore what Viktor Frankl's work reveals about the space where self-love actually begins, why affirmations can deepen the wound for some people rather than heal it, and how the journey between knowing yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself is never linear and why that is not regression. That is humanity.

The goal is not to love yourself by tomorrow morning. The goal is to take one tiny step toward yourself today.

In this episode you will discover:

• Why you do not have to like yourself to begin loving yourself - and what the difference between liking and loving actually is
• What Viktor Frankl's insight about the space between stimulus and response means for your self-love journey
• Why affirmations can make things worse when you are in a place of deep self-dislike and self-loathing - and what to do instead
• The three internal states on the journey to self-love - knowing yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself - and why moving between them is not failure, it is being human
• The neuroscience of self-criticism and why for your brain the leap to self-love is neurologically impossible without small steps first
• Why the overnight transformation fantasy is one of the most damaging ideas in personal development - and what to replace it with

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

This is an inside job. Please share this episode with people in your life who could benefit from hearing this message. From my heart to yours.

How to stop waiting for the perfect moment - and show up anyway. Mental fitness, self-love, and what imperfect action actually looks like in real life.

I just got back from Japan. I have the flu. My luggage - including my microphone and my concealer - is somewhere between Tokyo and my front door. This is not the episode I planned to make.

Last week's three-part ketamine series brought in new listeners and I had been so ready to show up and deliver something extraordinary for them. And then JFK happened. And Manila happened. And the flu happened. And I lay in bed catastrophizing - while being completely aware of the irony. The woman who teaches you to embrace imperfect action, lying in bed, devastated about not being able to be perfect.

Very funny. In hindsight.

This episode is about the gap between knowing something and actually doing it. That gap is where the real work lives. It's about what it looks like to practice imperfect action when you're the one who has to do it - not as a concept, but as a real choice, on a hard day, with no equipment, full of flu.

It's also about wabi-sabi - a Japanese philosophy I kept thinking about in Japan. The beauty of imperfect, impermanent, incomplete things in everyday life. Not beauty despite the imperfection. Beauty because of it.

In this episode you'll discover:

• Why showing up imperfectly is still showing up - and why it sometimes matters more

• What the E in the LOVE Framework actually looks like when you’re the one who has to do it

• The difference between panicking and failing

• Wabi-sabi - the Japanese philosophy of finding beauty in imperfect, impermanent, incomplete things

• The question I’d like you to sit with this week

This is an inside job. It always is.

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

IV ketamine treatment for bipolar disorder changed my brain - and this is the honest, unfiltered story of what happened after. If you have ever fought your own mind and wondered if it could ever feel different, this episode is for you.

Mental health, mental fitness, and self-love are all inside jobs. In this final part of my three-part ketamine series, I share the daily practices that anchored my neuroplasticity, the visualization technique I developed intuitively, a fear I had never named out loud, and where my hope genuinely lives now.

In this episode you'll discover:

• Why ketamine isn't a switch you flip - and what you do with the window it opens
• The daily practices my doctor prescribed to anchor neuroplasticity and why routine signals safety to the brain
• My personal visualization technique for building new neural pathways
• The quiet fear I carried for 30 years about long-term psychiatric medication
• The dimmer switch moment - what it actually feels like when your brain starts to change
• Why none of this transformation would have been possible without the inner work that came before it
• A heartfelt thank you to Ember Health and everyone who showed up for me

Ketamine didn't replace that work. It made my brain quiet enough, receptive enough to actually do it.

This is an inside job. It always was.

Catch up on the full series:Part 1 - Episode 69: My 30 Years of Bipolar. Is Ketamine The Answer?Part 2 - Episode 70: My First IV Ketamine Treatment for Bipolar: What It Actually Felt Like

Ember Health: https://emberhealth.co/

No affiliation. Named with deep gratitude only.

Have questions about the series? Reach out at lulu@luluessey.com. If there's enough to explore, a follow-up Q&A episode is coming.

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

If this series moved you, share it. With someone who lives with a mental illness. With someone who loves someone who struggles. With anyone who has ever wondered if there is something out there they haven't tried yet. That's how we break stigma - one honest conversation at a time.

What comes from the heart reaches the heart. Always.

IV ketamine for bipolar depression: what my first treatment actually felt like. After 30 years, 20+ psychiatric medications and ECT, I walked into my first ketamine infusion with no fear and no hesitation. This is what happened inside that room.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part series. This is my deeply personal account of what IV ketamine treatment actually feels like from inside the chair, not from a clinical perspective but from the perspective of someone who has lived with severe bipolar for three decades. If you or someone you love lives with bipolar, treatment-resistant depression, or is curious about ketamine therapy, this episode is for you. This is not medical advice.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why I walked into my first treatment without an ounce of fear
• Exactly what happens during an IV ketamine session, step by step
• Why I describe this as a powerful intersection of spiritual intention and traditional medicine

• The practice of setting an intention before each treatment
• What a fully immersive ketamine journey actually felt like
• The mood shift I felt very soon after, something I'd never experienced in 30 years
• How my speech, coordination, and sense of agency started returning
• Why self-advocacy and preparation shaped my entire experience

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.essey

If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. The simple act of sharing could be exactly what someone needs today to feel less alone. This is an inside job.