The thing none of us wanted to say at brunch.

I went for brunch today with my pals in Bollington. There were eight of us on one of those long tables that takes about forty-five minutes to sit down at because everyone’s hugging everyone and someone always needs a wee before they’ve even taken their coat off.

We talked about EVERYTHING. The TV series Virgin Island on Channel 4 (don’t get me started, I think it’s a bit grim and unethical, some of the others thought it was actually quite powerful). A game called I Shouldn’t But I Would, which I will not describe to you here but which had us all howling. Nightmare neighbours. HRT and the NHS’s truly impressive ongoing commitment to failing women. One of us had just visited her parents and was in that particular post-parental-visit state that requires about a week to lift and a big lie-down.

And then.

Somewhere between the second coffee and someone going “shall we just get more food, actually,” one of them said, almost as a throwaway, that she’d been replaying a conversation in her head since Wednesday. Another immediately went, “OH MY GOD same, I sent a text last week and I have been LITERALLY losing my mind about it.” And the third went, “oh thank god, I thought it was just me.”

And we all just sort of sat there. Eight women, between us carrying the usual: mortgages, jobs, kids, ageing parents, dogs/cats, the lot. All perfectly capable of running large parts of the world, none of us, it turned out, capable of letting go of one slightly awkward sentence we said on Wednesday.

Mad, isn’t it.

And such a relief! You know that feeling when you finally say the thing you’d decided made you weird, or too much, or a bit unhinged, and someone goes “wait, you too?” and suddenly you’re not the only one in the bloody world doing it?

Which is sort of the whole point of my new group coaching course I want to tell you about today.

It’s called It’s Not Just Me. Six weeks, small group, on Zoom. We sit down together and look at all the stuff that runs the show behind the scenes for so many of us. The overthinking. The people-pleasing. The guilt that turns up the second you sit down. The text from Tuesday. The yes you said when you meant no, and then felt cross about for three days afterwards.

And after six weeks, you stop replaying that conversation for three days. You catch the yes before it leaves your mouth. The guilt stops running the show. You start to see the patterns that have been quietly bossing your life around, and you finally understand WHY they got there. You come out the other end knowing yourself a hell of a lot better, and a lot less knackered by the inside of your own head.

This round is for women and non-binary folks only. A men’s or mixed group will follow in the not-the-distant future.

Want to join us?

I run these small-group coaching rounds throughout the year. If you are ready to stop letting the inside of your head boss you around, come check out the details for the upcoming intake.

Find out more about ‘It’s Not Just Me’and book your spot here.