Every Relationship is a School in Action
That's where the real relationship begins… with YOU!
There's a specific kind of anxiety that comes with new relationships. This kind keeps you distracted, refreshing your phone, creating stories about what someone else might be doing, occupying a huge chunk of your attention. I know because I lived there for longer than I'd like to admit.
Every relationship has this uncanny ability to bring our deepest fears right to the surface. It's like they hand us a mirror and say, "Here, look at this." And for the longest time, I looked away. I made up stories, projected my insecurities onto other people, and called it "intuition." (It wasn’t)
But something shifted when I made one conscious decision: to look inward instead of outward.
Getting brutally honest with oneself
The first step was the hardest - allowing all those fearful thoughts to actually come through. Not pushing them away, not distracting myself, but sitting with them. Really sitting with them.
"What if they’re also seeing other people?"
"What if I'm not enough?"
"What if this ends like everything else?"
I let them all come. And then I did something different. Instead of making these fears about the other person, I started reframing them toward what I actually wanted.
"I wonder if he's seeing other people" became "I allow myself to have a healthy distance until it feels authentically right."
"What if I'm not good enough?" became "I give myself full permission to focus on what I want from a relationship."
I did this for months. That’s right! Consistency is key. Every time a fearful thought arose, I caught it and rewrote it. Not to gaslight myself or pretend everything was fine, but to reclaim my power from hypothetical scenarios I had zero control over.
And slowly, something remarkable happened. I stopped being reactive. I stopped feeling like I wasn't good enough. I stopped judging myself and the person I was dating.
Every night, I'd meditate on one outcome I wanted. Not about a specific person, but about how I wanted to feel. Secure. Respected. At peace. Desired for who I actually was.
I taught my mind to focus on Me.
A Powerful Lesson
Relationships really are schools in action—if we let them be. They'll bring up everything we've been avoiding about ourselves. And we have a choice: to spiral, or look closer.
One wise night, I chose to look closer. And in doing so, I graduated from some deeply rooted beliefs that were never really mine to begin with.
Maybe your fears are different from mine. But the invitation is the same: To stop focusing your mind on other people, start asking what You actually want and how You can give it to yourself.
That's where the real relationship begins… with YOU!
With Love & Solidarity,
Jelena
When Your Career Thrives, but You Don’t
For Women Who’re Winning at Work and Struggling Inside
Recently, I attended a Women’s Circle event organised by Women In Tech. It was brilliant! We talked business, love, health yet one theme kept coming up:
High-functioning anxiety in high-functioning women.
It’s when you lead, deliver, manage, support everyone…
while internally battling chronic stress, overthinking, emotional exhaustion, imposter syndrome and a constant need to prove yourself.
You look “fine,” but you don't feel fine.
And I know this world far too well.
I trained & coached wonderful teams, worked with excellent managers, met big CEOs, was hired by Irish musicians, designers, published in newspapers & magazines, while in my personal life, I was insecure and crippling.
My emotions ran the show.
My body was breaking down long before I admitted anything was wrong.
When your inner world is ruled by fear, your brain minimises you and your achievements. So despite success on the outside, you remain feeling small.
That’s what high-functioning anxiety does to you, it keeps you performing and shrinking at the same time. I learned to cry in the morning, perform all day, fall apart at night and repeat.
And somehow, despite insomnia, anxiety, and emotional burnout… I still kept delivering and even being promoted. Because honestly? I loved what I do.
But inside, all the unaddressed and unchanged patterns were dissociating me from my own life.
Talking therapies helped me understand my pain. But they didn’t shift me into safety in the present.
That came later, through deeper identity work, nervous system science, and the kind of support I now offer.
So today, I want to give you a simple but powerful exercise to reconnect with yourself and get real:
1. Write down 5 achievements you’re genuinely proud of.
2. For each, remember how you actually felt at the time.
Rate it from 1–10 (1 = numb, 10 = deeply fulfilled).
3. If any score is below 10 or 9, ask:
“What made it hard to fully receive this?”
Write down the first sentence that comes up, without censoring it.
This reveals your internal limits: the beliefs that block joy, self-worth beliefs, dissociating anxiety etc.
4. Now write 5 things you want to achieve next, in work and in life.
5. Circle the ONE that would make the biggest difference right now.
And finally:
6. Ask - what identity would I need to embody to make this possible?
7. What are you responsible for here?
Because real success is never just strategy.
It’s identity.
It’s safety.
It’s a regulated nervous system.
It’s an inner world that CAN HANDLE the life you’re building.
If this resonates with you, sign up for my blog and newsletter below. I’d love to have you💛
With love & solidarity,
Jelena