I’m doing my first Ask Me Anything on MONDAY 10th April and will be answering them live from 10am-11am. You can ask as many questions as you like
Subscribers, post your questions below!
Subscribers also rate other people’s questions!
The most popular ones will get answered as well as any wild cards that take my fancy!
This is usually a paid feature, but as it’s my first one, I have decided to leave it open to everyone! If you would like to have this monthly from next month onwards, upgrade to unlock this feature
That’s the hour up! I LOVED THAT soooo much! Thank you for all the questions and especially loved the fact you could all like the ones that you wanted answered so I could pick the most popular ones! This is going to become a paid feature so only paid subscribers will be able to ask questions and read it live but free subscribers will be able to read the answers the next day. Hope you all have an incredible week! And let me know whether you enjoyed this in the comments below ❤️
Friendships: How to find “your people” and nurture good, meaningful friendships. Have you happened upon your friends? Have you ever had to go looking for them?
Finding your people is SO difficult and what I found is that the key is to actually try to stop fitting in. Brene Brown says the greatest obstacle to belonging is trying to fit in and I’ve found that in my own life. In secondary school, I spent 7 years trying to fit in and then in uni, I was able to naturally be myself and found a group I actually belonged and didn’t have to work hard at. Unfortunately, when you learn boundaries, you tend to lose a lot of friends because when you are a people pleaser you attract people who love you for what you can do for them, rather than who you are and so therefore most my friends in my life now are actually people I once reached out to and asked to go for a coffee. One best friend I met at an event and asked to go for coffee the following week (because I was lonely losing all these friends!) and the other we did a podcast together. I absolutely went looking for them for about 3 years and I always remembered “people don’t say hi but they always say hi back”... or more precisely, people won’t ask you to hang out but if you ask them, they usually say yes. If you are going through a phase of losing friends, remember you are making space for new people to enter and I promise those people will be a better fit! Xx
What’s your best advice on how to learn to manage hyper-vigilance when it shows up? I often find myself noticing and fixating on tiny mood shifts in people around me and then panicking about it. I’m aware of it and getting better at soothing and reassuring myself... but sometimes it’s so difficult to let go of the stories I create in my head out of the smallest things!
This kind of problem is solved best with the “do both” approach! Let me explain. You can work on your hyper vigilance, and you can also ask for help. So how you do your own work, is I have some go to techniques, like putting my hand on my heart, sometimes tapping my heart, sometimes a firm hand placing pressure and comforting myself with statements like “you are safe” “you are ok” “I’m here”. When you tell yourself stories, you need to focus back on your breathing to bring you back to the moment. 8 seconds in and 8 seconds out. And then if your mind still is focusing on something, that’s when you ask for help! You can tell that person “hey! I know this is probably in my head but are we ok?” Xx
Yes this! I think this is really tied to how I manage my reactions to the bad moods of my boyfriend? I think I often assume they’re my fault or let his mood bring mine down and I’m trying to figure out how to better manage that?
With this one, what I would say to your boyfriend is “hey! If you are ever annoyed with me, can you let me know so I never have to guess? When you are in bad mood, I can sometimes get confused and I know it’s important to let you be sad or angry when you need to be so it would just help me understand better”. Otherwise you can also ask “hey! Are you ok? Is there anything I can do to help?”
I’m always rubbish at answering questions like this because I never remember the MOST profound but one of the biggest pieces of advice that shifted the way I date was my life coach saying “If he was good enough, you wouldn’t have to romanticise him”. I also think that becoming a stickler for “you can’t do the same thing and expect a different result” has greatly impacted my life!
I'm really enjoying substack (I'd not heard of it until you told us about it), and discovering other content creators has been great. I was wondering how you were finding it and how it has improved your wellbeing? I especially enjoy that there are no adverts
I am LOVING it! A long time ago (like two years ago), I noticed every time I took a digital detox for weeks especially at Christmas I never wanted to turn my phone back on and so I started making a plan to have less of my income revolve around social media to allow me freedom to not be on it as much. It’s done exactly that. The paid feature not only allows no ads but it makes me feel valued. I love that everything I consume on this app is of substance and it’s brought my creativity back! I was drawn to Instagram for the long captions and it’s been an incredible space to be able to write freely and on random topics (unlike my books!). I also found that Instagram started making me feel more lonely and this feels the opposite of that - I adore the sense of community! And what’s been interesting as well is it really feels like it’s not about the numbers or the quantity on here, but the quality of interactions!
Do you believe IT is possible to fall in love quickly? If someone told you they are in love with you after 2 or 3 dates, how would you react? Would you think their feelings are genuine or they just have fallen for their idea of you or are mistaking infatuation for love?
I do believe it is possible to fall in love quickly but not 2-3 dates quickly. At two to three dates, the person is still largely a stranger, you can love the parts of them you know and be curious to know more but the majority of them still remains unknown. How I would react is by saying “hey! I am loving getting to know you too but I think we should slow this down”. I see it as someone liking what they are seeing and filling in the gaps of what you want to see.
I studied psychology and now I am looking into becoming either a therapist or a life coach. I would like you to share what do you think are the most important differences between the two and why have you decided for coaching?
I think the two definitions become blurred because so many people are now trained in both. For me, I differentiate life coaching and traditional talking therapy as a therapist would ask “how do you feel about the problem” and a life coach asks “what would you like to do to change it”. As a generalisation life coaching is more future focused whereas therapy is more focused on how the past shapes you. I was going down a very strict route of becoming a clinical psychologist and I found it limiting because it’s so monitored so things like psychologists aren’t meant to heavily suggest what decision you should make or that a psychologist shouldn’t even facially react to big disclosures and what confirmed my change of plans was going to therapy myself. Having someone sit with no reactions to me disclosing the most traumatic moments of my life felt impersonal and in hindsight I know I didn’t go to a therapist who was a good fit for me but at 21, I didn’t have the knowledge to know that. I just turned my back on therapy as a whole because it didn’t work for me and I ultimately believe for you to be the best, you need to practice what you preach so I would say try both and whatever works best for you personally will likely be what you are best at professionally
I’m about to quit my job of 7 years because I am looking after myself and my own boundaries, but it’s really scary as I’m not sure what I want to do next. Any advice on how to not let the anxiety about the uncertainty paralyse me or just take over?
Break it down into small concrete steps whether it’s fix your CV or set a goal of applying for one job a week. Once you’ve done the thing, make an active effort to be proud of yourself and take advantage of the time the extra time you have. If you knew you would be starting a new job in a month, how would you be spending your time? Then everytime you get lost in anxiety, instead imagine yourself getting your dream job and paint that picture as vividly as possible with as much detail. Then ask yourself if you knew your next job interview was the job you’d get, how would you feel right now? Calm? Relieved?
Thank you so much, that is really great advice 🥰 I’ll try to channel my inner Michelle, just like I’ve been doing when I told myself that what I’m doing is setting a boundary 😁
How to support a friend going through a hard time when they’re doing something you don’t agree with e.g having an affair or treating another friend badly without condoning it or getting involved??
I have a strong line with this and not everyone would agree but I actually ask them to not come to me for advice for that. I will ask them if they want my opinion, I will state my opinion once and then I will drop it. If they bring it up again, I say “I have already told you my opinion and I do believe this is the wrong decision so can you go to someone else to talk about this”. I also add that I will support them if they change their mind so for example, with the affair “if you choose to end it, please let me know and I will be here to support you throughout”
I’m going through a lot of change in my life lately and I’ve actually been quite apathetic and sad towards life since November and that’s been hard but this break away has really helped and it’s been four days of feeling positive when I wake so what is inspiring me at the moment is I’m trying to see the changes as freedom and opportunity as opposed to uncertainty and instability.
There is a really good section in The Selfish Romantic on this! You don’t have to accept the conversation you are given, you can guide it! How I do this is by not answering “how are you” literally so instead of saying “good, how are you”. You can say “I’m reading this incredible book about quitting. What’s the best thing you’ve ever quit” or “I’m stuck on what to make for dinner, what’s your go-to”. Asking more interesting questions often gets more interesting answers and if it doesn’t, you know sooner than later that conversation is dry
I would recommend to do it in person if you can and to find a course where you get to experience each exercise you learn as both the client and a coach. I believe that’s key so that you can truly practice what you preach. I trained with the performance partnership and the reason why I chose them was because you pass based on the in person assessment of doing the exercises as opposed to written tests and I liked it was more practical like that and also that it was intensive so I was able to be fully immersed in it. It was extremely intense but I probably have never changed so quickly in such a short space of time
I’m so sorry for your loss! ❤️ let it hurt is the best advice I can give you. It doesn’t need to make sense when you grieve, how much you grieve or how long you grieve. Many people judge themselves for their grief and that compounds the emotion as if you say things like “I should be over this by now” or “I knew this was coming, why was I not more prepared”, you don’t let the emotion surface and present itself as an opportunity to heal. Grief also has a way of bringing up apathy about everything else in your life so if you don’t care about anything else, then that’s OK. I’ve always found it helpful to believe that grief is a result of all the love that has nowhere to go and how I find solace is continuing to talk to the person, I’ve even texted the person’s phone knowing it won’t deliver. Give yourself all the compassion in the world and also let any complicated feelings arise too. The grief will change you and that’s ok if you don’t know how yet
Life coaching is not a protected term so many people who call themselves life coaches are not trained. I would not feel safe or confident to not be trained so I am. I started doing a psychology degree intending to become a clinical psychologist and then I trained after in hypnotherapy, neurolinguistic programming, neurolinguistic programming coaching, time line therapy and provocative therapy. These are the techniques I use within life coaching
No, I don’t at the moment. I really miss it but there just wasn’t enough time in the day, especially writing two books last year. At the moment this is really fulfilling me but especially if I move out of UK, I do see myself getting clients again
I had been really fearmongered around getting it done and even the day before tiktok was showing me videos of all of it going wrong. I got mine done at Accuvision in Parsons Green and it took about half an hour. I did it because I got so many eye infections last year and apparently once you start getting them, they won’t stop it you are still putting pieces of plastic in your eye. I had had a number of scratches in my eye and each time they said it was lucky I hadn’t damaged a permanent part. I was very close to doing it 5 years ago but because my family don’t live in the country, I had no one to look after me because you really do need someone for two days at least. Thankfully I have my boyfriend now so it took 30 mins from walking into the place, sitting in waiting room and walking out. Actually in the machine was less than 5 minutes and the process is 1 minute per eye. You stare at a green dot and there are points where it goes blurry and black. But I just kept counting in my head to 60. The worst part is the smell but it’s 60 seconds so I just told myself I can do anything for a minute. The moment you sit up you can see clearly, like I could read the eye chart opposite but you need to stay in a dark room and avoid screens for two days. I got a little bored but I stayed in bed and just listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I slept most of the first day and the second day was a bit boring but no pain. You just need to put eye drops in every hour and then two hours. I had a checkup 24 hours later and then a week later and then a month later and am due one in April. Please bear in mind this is my experience and some people do experience itching, pain and dry eyes. I would say my eyes are drier than before but not to the point of needing eye drops just I wake up with more sleep in my eye!
Another question - I'm interested in becoming a paid subscriber, could you give more details as to what additional content is available with a paid subscription?
My paid subscribers support the ability to create all of this! The money allows me to have time to create both the paid and free content so I’m hugely grateful to everyone who upgrades. For the paid subscribers, they get a Monday newsletter which includes my monthly advice column “Dear Michelle”, my monthly favourites and these Q&As will become paid subscribers only. So only paid subscribers will be allowed to ask questions. They also get to know all about my unannounced projects so they knew about my fourth book over a month before and they get to know things that I can’t put publically like all the drafts of my cover. Some of the Friday Forum threads will also just be for paid subscribers and also they get to read articles that I don’t want to be public like my past article about the mean girl side of being an influencer. Thank you for considering it!
How to build a relationship with a parent who thinks you are their friend. Ive been creating a boundary for about 2 years and I'm being told that I'm distant and don't share as much since I'm with my partner (we are together 3.5 years and see ourselves together for the long haul). Any time I share important info it is thrown back at me some in the future.
Several therapists and I think my father is narcissistic. I experienced mental violence, child and emotional neglect from him. Do you think it is possible to change a dynamic like that in general and just by setting boundaries now without talking about the past with him? And what boundaries can you recommend to start this change? Any tips on setting boundaries when you’ve been triggered?
That’s the hour up! I LOVED THAT soooo much! Thank you for all the questions and especially loved the fact you could all like the ones that you wanted answered so I could pick the most popular ones! This is going to become a paid feature so only paid subscribers will be able to ask questions and read it live but free subscribers will be able to read the answers the next day. Hope you all have an incredible week! And let me know whether you enjoyed this in the comments below ❤️
Friendships: How to find “your people” and nurture good, meaningful friendships. Have you happened upon your friends? Have you ever had to go looking for them?
Finding your people is SO difficult and what I found is that the key is to actually try to stop fitting in. Brene Brown says the greatest obstacle to belonging is trying to fit in and I’ve found that in my own life. In secondary school, I spent 7 years trying to fit in and then in uni, I was able to naturally be myself and found a group I actually belonged and didn’t have to work hard at. Unfortunately, when you learn boundaries, you tend to lose a lot of friends because when you are a people pleaser you attract people who love you for what you can do for them, rather than who you are and so therefore most my friends in my life now are actually people I once reached out to and asked to go for a coffee. One best friend I met at an event and asked to go for coffee the following week (because I was lonely losing all these friends!) and the other we did a podcast together. I absolutely went looking for them for about 3 years and I always remembered “people don’t say hi but they always say hi back”... or more precisely, people won’t ask you to hang out but if you ask them, they usually say yes. If you are going through a phase of losing friends, remember you are making space for new people to enter and I promise those people will be a better fit! Xx
What’s your best advice on how to learn to manage hyper-vigilance when it shows up? I often find myself noticing and fixating on tiny mood shifts in people around me and then panicking about it. I’m aware of it and getting better at soothing and reassuring myself... but sometimes it’s so difficult to let go of the stories I create in my head out of the smallest things!
This kind of problem is solved best with the “do both” approach! Let me explain. You can work on your hyper vigilance, and you can also ask for help. So how you do your own work, is I have some go to techniques, like putting my hand on my heart, sometimes tapping my heart, sometimes a firm hand placing pressure and comforting myself with statements like “you are safe” “you are ok” “I’m here”. When you tell yourself stories, you need to focus back on your breathing to bring you back to the moment. 8 seconds in and 8 seconds out. And then if your mind still is focusing on something, that’s when you ask for help! You can tell that person “hey! I know this is probably in my head but are we ok?” Xx
Yes this! I think this is really tied to how I manage my reactions to the bad moods of my boyfriend? I think I often assume they’re my fault or let his mood bring mine down and I’m trying to figure out how to better manage that?
With this one, what I would say to your boyfriend is “hey! If you are ever annoyed with me, can you let me know so I never have to guess? When you are in bad mood, I can sometimes get confused and I know it’s important to let you be sad or angry when you need to be so it would just help me understand better”. Otherwise you can also ask “hey! Are you ok? Is there anything I can do to help?”
What is the most profound advice or insight you have ever received or gained and how has it influenced your life?
I’m always rubbish at answering questions like this because I never remember the MOST profound but one of the biggest pieces of advice that shifted the way I date was my life coach saying “If he was good enough, you wouldn’t have to romanticise him”. I also think that becoming a stickler for “you can’t do the same thing and expect a different result” has greatly impacted my life!
I'm really enjoying substack (I'd not heard of it until you told us about it), and discovering other content creators has been great. I was wondering how you were finding it and how it has improved your wellbeing? I especially enjoy that there are no adverts
I am LOVING it! A long time ago (like two years ago), I noticed every time I took a digital detox for weeks especially at Christmas I never wanted to turn my phone back on and so I started making a plan to have less of my income revolve around social media to allow me freedom to not be on it as much. It’s done exactly that. The paid feature not only allows no ads but it makes me feel valued. I love that everything I consume on this app is of substance and it’s brought my creativity back! I was drawn to Instagram for the long captions and it’s been an incredible space to be able to write freely and on random topics (unlike my books!). I also found that Instagram started making me feel more lonely and this feels the opposite of that - I adore the sense of community! And what’s been interesting as well is it really feels like it’s not about the numbers or the quantity on here, but the quality of interactions!
I am really happy that I've joined your community on here. I've been craving this sort of community for so long now!
Do you believe IT is possible to fall in love quickly? If someone told you they are in love with you after 2 or 3 dates, how would you react? Would you think their feelings are genuine or they just have fallen for their idea of you or are mistaking infatuation for love?
I do believe it is possible to fall in love quickly but not 2-3 dates quickly. At two to three dates, the person is still largely a stranger, you can love the parts of them you know and be curious to know more but the majority of them still remains unknown. How I would react is by saying “hey! I am loving getting to know you too but I think we should slow this down”. I see it as someone liking what they are seeing and filling in the gaps of what you want to see.
I couldn't agree more x
I studied psychology and now I am looking into becoming either a therapist or a life coach. I would like you to share what do you think are the most important differences between the two and why have you decided for coaching?
I think the two definitions become blurred because so many people are now trained in both. For me, I differentiate life coaching and traditional talking therapy as a therapist would ask “how do you feel about the problem” and a life coach asks “what would you like to do to change it”. As a generalisation life coaching is more future focused whereas therapy is more focused on how the past shapes you. I was going down a very strict route of becoming a clinical psychologist and I found it limiting because it’s so monitored so things like psychologists aren’t meant to heavily suggest what decision you should make or that a psychologist shouldn’t even facially react to big disclosures and what confirmed my change of plans was going to therapy myself. Having someone sit with no reactions to me disclosing the most traumatic moments of my life felt impersonal and in hindsight I know I didn’t go to a therapist who was a good fit for me but at 21, I didn’t have the knowledge to know that. I just turned my back on therapy as a whole because it didn’t work for me and I ultimately believe for you to be the best, you need to practice what you preach so I would say try both and whatever works best for you personally will likely be what you are best at professionally
I’m about to quit my job of 7 years because I am looking after myself and my own boundaries, but it’s really scary as I’m not sure what I want to do next. Any advice on how to not let the anxiety about the uncertainty paralyse me or just take over?
Break it down into small concrete steps whether it’s fix your CV or set a goal of applying for one job a week. Once you’ve done the thing, make an active effort to be proud of yourself and take advantage of the time the extra time you have. If you knew you would be starting a new job in a month, how would you be spending your time? Then everytime you get lost in anxiety, instead imagine yourself getting your dream job and paint that picture as vividly as possible with as much detail. Then ask yourself if you knew your next job interview was the job you’d get, how would you feel right now? Calm? Relieved?
Thank you so much, that is really great advice 🥰 I’ll try to channel my inner Michelle, just like I’ve been doing when I told myself that what I’m doing is setting a boundary 😁
How to support a friend going through a hard time when they’re doing something you don’t agree with e.g having an affair or treating another friend badly without condoning it or getting involved??
I have a strong line with this and not everyone would agree but I actually ask them to not come to me for advice for that. I will ask them if they want my opinion, I will state my opinion once and then I will drop it. If they bring it up again, I say “I have already told you my opinion and I do believe this is the wrong decision so can you go to someone else to talk about this”. I also add that I will support them if they change their mind so for example, with the affair “if you choose to end it, please let me know and I will be here to support you throughout”
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 great answer! My current life is very drana free but have been thinking about how I would handle a past scenario I was in. Thank you!
What gives you inspiration today? And why?
I’m going through a lot of change in my life lately and I’ve actually been quite apathetic and sad towards life since November and that’s been hard but this break away has really helped and it’s been four days of feeling positive when I wake so what is inspiring me at the moment is I’m trying to see the changes as freedom and opportunity as opposed to uncertainty and instability.
How can I help to create better conversations on dating apps?
There is a really good section in The Selfish Romantic on this! You don’t have to accept the conversation you are given, you can guide it! How I do this is by not answering “how are you” literally so instead of saying “good, how are you”. You can say “I’m reading this incredible book about quitting. What’s the best thing you’ve ever quit” or “I’m stuck on what to make for dinner, what’s your go-to”. Asking more interesting questions often gets more interesting answers and if it doesn’t, you know sooner than later that conversation is dry
If someone would like to become a life coach, what UK based or online training would you recommend?
I would recommend to do it in person if you can and to find a course where you get to experience each exercise you learn as both the client and a coach. I believe that’s key so that you can truly practice what you preach. I trained with the performance partnership and the reason why I chose them was because you pass based on the in person assessment of doing the exercises as opposed to written tests and I liked it was more practical like that and also that it was intensive so I was able to be fully immersed in it. It was extremely intense but I probably have never changed so quickly in such a short space of time
Any tips on dealing with grief? (My dad died recently)
I’m so sorry for your loss! ❤️ let it hurt is the best advice I can give you. It doesn’t need to make sense when you grieve, how much you grieve or how long you grieve. Many people judge themselves for their grief and that compounds the emotion as if you say things like “I should be over this by now” or “I knew this was coming, why was I not more prepared”, you don’t let the emotion surface and present itself as an opportunity to heal. Grief also has a way of bringing up apathy about everything else in your life so if you don’t care about anything else, then that’s OK. I’ve always found it helpful to believe that grief is a result of all the love that has nowhere to go and how I find solace is continuing to talk to the person, I’ve even texted the person’s phone knowing it won’t deliver. Give yourself all the compassion in the world and also let any complicated feelings arise too. The grief will change you and that’s ok if you don’t know how yet
I am also very interested in your journey as a life coach. I am from a healthcare background so would like some starting points to consider.
Life coaching is not a protected term so many people who call themselves life coaches are not trained. I would not feel safe or confident to not be trained so I am. I started doing a psychology degree intending to become a clinical psychologist and then I trained after in hypnotherapy, neurolinguistic programming, neurolinguistic programming coaching, time line therapy and provocative therapy. These are the techniques I use within life coaching
Do you still have life coaching clients?
No, I don’t at the moment. I really miss it but there just wasn’t enough time in the day, especially writing two books last year. At the moment this is really fulfilling me but especially if I move out of UK, I do see myself getting clients again
Could you tell us more about getting your eyes lasered? How was the process and where did you get it done?
I had been really fearmongered around getting it done and even the day before tiktok was showing me videos of all of it going wrong. I got mine done at Accuvision in Parsons Green and it took about half an hour. I did it because I got so many eye infections last year and apparently once you start getting them, they won’t stop it you are still putting pieces of plastic in your eye. I had had a number of scratches in my eye and each time they said it was lucky I hadn’t damaged a permanent part. I was very close to doing it 5 years ago but because my family don’t live in the country, I had no one to look after me because you really do need someone for two days at least. Thankfully I have my boyfriend now so it took 30 mins from walking into the place, sitting in waiting room and walking out. Actually in the machine was less than 5 minutes and the process is 1 minute per eye. You stare at a green dot and there are points where it goes blurry and black. But I just kept counting in my head to 60. The worst part is the smell but it’s 60 seconds so I just told myself I can do anything for a minute. The moment you sit up you can see clearly, like I could read the eye chart opposite but you need to stay in a dark room and avoid screens for two days. I got a little bored but I stayed in bed and just listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I slept most of the first day and the second day was a bit boring but no pain. You just need to put eye drops in every hour and then two hours. I had a checkup 24 hours later and then a week later and then a month later and am due one in April. Please bear in mind this is my experience and some people do experience itching, pain and dry eyes. I would say my eyes are drier than before but not to the point of needing eye drops just I wake up with more sleep in my eye!
Thank you SO much. That's really really helpful! I've always wanted to get it done but have been very scared. This really helped. X
Another question - I'm interested in becoming a paid subscriber, could you give more details as to what additional content is available with a paid subscription?
My paid subscribers support the ability to create all of this! The money allows me to have time to create both the paid and free content so I’m hugely grateful to everyone who upgrades. For the paid subscribers, they get a Monday newsletter which includes my monthly advice column “Dear Michelle”, my monthly favourites and these Q&As will become paid subscribers only. So only paid subscribers will be allowed to ask questions. They also get to know all about my unannounced projects so they knew about my fourth book over a month before and they get to know things that I can’t put publically like all the drafts of my cover. Some of the Friday Forum threads will also just be for paid subscribers and also they get to read articles that I don’t want to be public like my past article about the mean girl side of being an influencer. Thank you for considering it!
How to build a relationship with a parent who thinks you are their friend. Ive been creating a boundary for about 2 years and I'm being told that I'm distant and don't share as much since I'm with my partner (we are together 3.5 years and see ourselves together for the long haul). Any time I share important info it is thrown back at me some in the future.
Several therapists and I think my father is narcissistic. I experienced mental violence, child and emotional neglect from him. Do you think it is possible to change a dynamic like that in general and just by setting boundaries now without talking about the past with him? And what boundaries can you recommend to start this change? Any tips on setting boundaries when you’ve been triggered?