The Healing Barn

02/09/2026

What if you did something simply because you enjoy it?

Not the huge high of finally getting the thing we think is going to fix everything. Just the much quieter experience of doing something because we actually like doing it.

I recently bought a motorbike, giving myself permission to do something for no better reason than that I enjoy riding it.

It sounds pretty straightforward until you notice how often we feel the need to justify the things we enjoy.

If you paint, does the picture need to be good enough to hang somewhere? If you learn guitar, does it need to lead to performing? If you exercise, does there need to be a target? If you build something in the shed, does it need to become useful, profitable or another side business?

What if you simply bloody enjoy it?

Sometimes adding purpose to everything takes the pleasure straight out of it.

And strangely, choosing pleasure can feel uncomfortable when we’re used to making decisions because there is a problem to solve, somebody needs us, something needs fixing or there is something uncomfortable we’re trying to get away from.

Doing something because “I like this” can almost feel irresponsible.

Maybe that questioning is worth noticing too.

There’s also a difference between enjoying something and expecting it to fill something missing inside us. One feels desperate: Once I get this, then I’ll finally feel good. The other is quieter. The thing doesn’t need to save us or complete us.

We simply enjoy experiencing it.

What’s something you enjoy that doesn’t need to achieve anything, prove anything or become anything more than that?

This was another reflection that came out of our latest Speak Up Cambridge Men’s Group. The full reflection from the night is on the Healing Barn website.

Scott
The Healing Barn

01/09/2026

Sometimes the clue isn’t only in what triggered you. It’s also in what you were feeling moments before.

Perhaps you had begun to feel proud, excited, successful, close to someone, or open to receiving something good. Then a relatively small problem suddenly carried enough emotional weight to pull you away from it.

This can be one way the upper limit effect appears. The subconscious can use something real—the unanswered message, careless comment or untidy house—to draw us away from unfamiliar goodness and back towards an emotional state it knows more readily.

Recognising this gives us somewhere to begin, but awareness alone doesn’t always change the response. If you recognise one real-life situation where this happens regularly, we can make it the focus of my three-session Emotion & Belief package.

Across three personalised sessions, we’ll explore the emotional experiences and beliefs beneath the response, helping you feel less taken over by it and more able to remain connected to yourself and what you want.

**One real-life situation. Three personalised Emotion & Belief Sessions. Less reactivity. More choice.**

If you’re curious about taking the next step, you can view the package here:

https://app.acuityscheduling.com/catalog.php?owner=30195420&action=addCart&clear=1&id=1708642

Melissa Holdem 🥰

30/08/2026

Imagine driving home with news you’ve been hoping for. Perhaps you’ve received a promotion, closed a sale you worked hard for, or finally been given the yes you were waiting on. You feel proud and excited, and you’re looking forward to sharing it with the people you love.

Then you walk inside and see that the house still hasn’t been tidied, even though you asked for it to be done. It isn’t that your frustration isn’t valid—perhaps you’ve been asking all week. But on another day, you might have reminded them again, decided it wasn’t worth pursuing, or simply let it go for the evening.

Today, though, it suddenly feels incredibly important.

Your tone becomes sharper, one comment leads to another, and you keep pushing the point because you need them to understand why you’re upset. Before long, you’re in an argument, and the excitement you carried home has completely disappeared.

It’s easy to believe the argument ruined the evening. But there may also be something worth becoming curious about: why did this particular problem carry so much urgency and emotional weight today? Why did it need to be addressed at the exact moment you had arrived home feeling so good?

Sometimes this can be part of the upper limit effect.

We often imagine an upper limit stops us from reaching something good. But sometimes it appears after the good thing has happened, when the amount of success, joy, closeness or possibility we’re experiencing begins to move beyond what feels familiar.

The subconscious doesn’t necessarily need to create a new problem to bring us back down. It can take hold of something completely real—the untidy house, the unanswered message or the careless comment—and give it far more emotional weight than it might have carried yesterday.

This doesn’t mean every disagreement is an upper limit or that we should overlook the things that genuinely matter to us. The clue may be in the timing, the intensity, and how quickly something relatively small takes over the whole emotional moment.

Perhaps the questions to gently wonder are:

What was I feeling just before this changed?

What goodness had I begun to let in?

Why did this particular thing suddenly matter so much today?

Recognising the pattern gives us somewhere to begin, but awareness alone doesn’t always stop the response from taking over. Beneath it may be emotional experiences and beliefs that have shaped how safe it feels to experience success, happiness, closeness, visibility or receiving more.

If you recognise one real-life situation where this regularly happens, this is something we can focus on through my three-session Emotion & Belief package. Together, we can work with the emotions and beliefs beneath the response, helping you feel less pulled back into familiar tension or conflict and more able to remain connected to yourself and the goodness you had begun to receive.

**One real-life situation. Three personalised Emotion & Belief Sessions. Less reactivity. More choice.**

View the three-session Emotion & Belief package here:
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/catalog.php?owner=30195420&action=addCart&clear=1&id=1708642

Melissa Holdem 🥰

29/08/2026

Maybe your mind needs less to solve

You can get to the end of the day absolutely exhausted, finally sit down, and somehow your mind still has enough energy to start another shift.

It goes over what happened earlier, what needs doing tomorrow, what somebody meant by what they said, whether you made the right decision, what might go wrong next week, and how you are going to keep everything moving if it does.

Sometimes we assume the problem is that we need to get better at switching the mind off. But I wonder whether there is another question worth asking first.

How much are we asking the mind to carry?

We can become very good at taking responsibility, anticipating problems, keeping everyone happy, fixing what isn’t working and trying to stay one step ahead. From the outside, that can look capable and dependable. From the inside, it can feel like there is never a point where anything is truly finished.

That reflection fits closely with Gene Key 40, which moves from Exhaustion, through Resolve, to Divine Will.

Exhaustion can make us think we need to become stronger, more organised or better at coping. But perhaps sometimes it is worth becoming curious about what the exhaustion is showing us.

What are we carrying because it is genuinely ours, and what have we simply become used to carrying?

Maybe the mind doesn’t always need another technique for solving things more efficiently.

Maybe it needs fewer things that it believes are its responsibility to solve.

If this is a pattern you recognise, this is exactly the sort of thing you can bring into a one-to-one session with me. You don’t need to know why you do it, where it started, or what kind of work you need.

Start with what is happening now. That is enough.

We can slow it down, notice what keeps pulling you back into the same reaction, and explore what may actually be driving it underneath.

60-minute one-to-one session — $150.
Or if you’re not sure where to start, you can begin with a free 30-minute Clarity Call.

Scott Holdem
The Healing Barn

28/08/2026

Sometimes “I’m fine” is less about there being nothing wrong and more about not feeling ready to look at what is really happening—or let someone else come any closer to it.

But even when we don’t speak about it, our body may continue to communicate through tension, defensiveness, irritation, silence or the urge to pull away. We can know we don’t want to keep reacting this way and still find ourselves returning to the same response whenever that situation arises.

The work doesn’t have to begin with trying to change everything.

Choose one real-life situation that regularly leaves you feeling anxious, defensive, guilty, overwhelmed, unable to say what you need, or noticing tension or discomfort in your body.

Across three personalised Emotion & Belief sessions, we’ll explore the emotional experiences and beliefs behind that response—helping you feel less taken over by it and more able to respond as yourself, even when the situation around you hasn’t changed.

One real-life situation.
Three personalised Emotion & Belief Sessions.
Less reactivity. More choice.

Find out more or begin here:
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/catalog.php?owner=30195420&category=Three+session+Emotion+%26+Belief+Package

27/08/2026

Sometimes the hardest part is not knowing that something needs to change. It is knowing that, but still feeling stuck on where to begin. This is the kind of thing I help people slow down and work through in coaching sessions, so the next step feels clearer and more manageable.

Scott
The Healing Barn

26/08/2026

Maybe it isn’t the thing that’s draining you

It’s easy to say, work is draining me, the kids are draining me, my relationship is draining me, people are draining me.

And sometimes they probably are.

But I’ve been thinking about how often the thing itself isn’t actually where all the energy is disappearing.

Sometimes it’s what we’re doing underneath it.

It’s chasing someone who isn’t meeting us back. Trying to prove ourselves to someone who may never see us the way we want them to. Taking responsibility for problems that were never entirely ours to solve. Keeping everyone happy. Fighting against something that has already happened. Trying to control an outcome because we’re afraid of what might happen if we don’t.

None of those things necessarily looks massive on its own, but do enough of them every day and it’s probably not surprising that we end up exhausted.

We might think we need a different job, a different relationship, fewer responsibilities or simply a holiday. Maybe we do. But it can also be worth asking:

What am I actually doing with my energy in the situation I’m already in?

Where am I chasing, proving, rescuing, pleasing, controlling or automatically picking up something that perhaps isn’t mine to carry?

Because sometimes what fuels us isn’t another thing we need to add to our lives.

Sometimes it starts by noticing where we’re already giving our energy away.

This is the sort of stuff we get curious about at Speak Up, our Thursday night Men’s Group at The Healing Barn. There’s no expectation that you need to have anything figured out or even know exactly what’s bothering you. We start with a conversation and see where it goes.

If you’ve been feeling flat, frustrated, overloaded or simply wondering where the hell all your energy has gone, you’re welcome to come along.

Thursday, 7pm at The Healing Barn in Cambridge.

Send me a message if you’d like to know more.

Scott

25/08/2026

24/08/2026

There’s an old sort of joke about a guy called Gary sitting in the pub, complaining about what people remember him for.

“I built half the shops in town. Does anybody call me Gary the Shop Builder? No. I helped build the school. Does anybody call me Gary the School Builder? Nope. I’ve fixed more houses around here than I can remember, and nobody calls me Gary the Builder either.”

“But you walk home from the pub one bloody night with a traffic cone on your head…”

And suddenly, that’s the Gary everybody remembers.

It’s ridiculous, but there’s something pretty real underneath it. We can do hundreds of things throughout our lives and still allow one mistake, embarrassing moment, failed relationship or decision we regret to become the part of our story that seems to carry far more weight than everything else.

Sometimes other people keep bringing it up, but often they’ve moved on long before we have. We are the ones still defending ourselves against it, trying to explain it away, hoping nobody notices, or working hard to prove that we are no longer the person who did that thing.

The strange part is that the more energy we put into trying to hide something from our past, the more power we can give it. We can end up building a whole version of ourselves around making sure nobody sees the thing we are afraid might define us.

That made me think about Gene Key 59, which moves from Dishonesty, through Intimacy, to Transparency.

Dishonesty doesn’t necessarily have to mean lying to other people. Sometimes it can be much quieter than that. It can be the places where we aren’t completely willing to acknowledge our own story, the things we still struggle to look at without flinching, or the version of ourselves we keep trying to prove because we are afraid of what might happen if people saw the rest.

Transparency doesn’t mean telling everybody everything or pretending that we are proud of every decision we have ever made. Maybe it is simply reaching a place where we can look at our own story and say, “Yep, that happened. I can own it. It still isn’t all of who I am.”

There is something freeing about no longer needing to defend ourselves from our own past. And perhaps that is also where intimacy becomes possible, because it is difficult to let somebody genuinely know us while we are still working so hard to make sure certain parts of us are never seen.

Maybe freedom isn’t convincing everybody that Gary is not the bloke who once wandered home wearing a traffic cone.

Maybe it is Gary finally realising that one stupid night doesn’t get to define the rest of his life.

What part of your story might lose some of its power if you no longer needed to hide from it?

Scott Holdem