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Teach your brain to listen to your body

While your body is already signalling that something isn’t right, you keep trying to solve it with your mind. When you notice that this no longer works, my programme “Out of Your Head” offers a smarter and more effective alternative.

Of course you make sure no one is bothered by it

You hold yourself together. You push through. You remain the reliable shoulder you’ve always been. But underneath it all, your body is sending distress signals.

Your body never really switches off. And that can show up in symptoms such as: a mind that never seems to slow down. Pain, tension or stiffness in your body. Poor sleep or waking up too early. Panic without a clear reason. Not being able to relax. Feeling restless in your body, even when you’re sitting on the couch at home. Becoming easily overstimulated, sometimes by things you used to handle just fine. Emotions that overwhelm you, or not even knowing what you’re feeling anymore. Having little grip on your energy. Not knowing what you’re doing it all for anymore. Life starts to feel more like surviving the day than actually living.

You may also notice it in your thoughts and behaviour: repeatedly crashing after periods of pushing yourself too hard. Being loyal in relationships but losing yourself faster than you want to. Not daring to set boundaries, or not even feeling where they are. Shutting down during conflict, or reacting more fiercely than you would like. Feeling stuck. Not knowing what really suits you, what you enjoy, or sometimes even feeling like you no longer know who you are.

Maybe you hear yourself thinking:

“I understand what’s happening… so why can’t I change it?”
“Why does my body react so intensely when rationally nothing is wrong?”
“I’ve already had therapy. Why am I not getting any further?”
“How can I be so successful in my work and yet feel so stuck in myself?”
“Why do I keep going over my limits when I know better?”
“Surely someone like me should be able to solve this myself?”

Where does this come from? And how can you solve it?

If the answer had been in your head, you would have found it by now. Otherwise, the self-help books, podcasts, coaching and therapies you have followed so far would already have led to your recovery. What can help is learning to feel how your body communicates with you, discovering how your stress system works, and learning how to start adjusting the levers of your own resilience.

Quickly and sustainably in touch with your body

Teach your brain to listen to your body

I think I can help you. In ‘Get Out of Your Head’, we will work together on what you have understood for a long time, but have not yet been able to change in your body. You will receive a clear plan and a solid process: we map out your stress patterns and triggers, help your nervous system learn to switch again (instead of staying ‘always on’), and build step by step towards a sense of calm that actually feels safe. Not vague, not endless talking — but craftsmanship, precision and practical tools you can use right away. So that you don’t just keep functioning, but can truly live sustainably again

Get out of your head

Many people think they come for trauma treatment. In practice, the greatest gains tend to lie in something more fundamental: learning what calm actually feels like and how to reach it, learning to feel how your body ‘speaks’ to you and what helps you move from stress to rest. There may be (unconscious) patterns, assumptions and blocks that get in the way. Where needed, we work through that resistance using cognitive coaching methods.

The basis of my method is an intake, followed by 6 live sessions of 1.5 hours. There are about 2 weeks between the sessions. During that time, you continue to work on the exercises I give you yourself so that in 3 months you achieve insight, experience and lasting behavioral change.

The intake

Let’s begin with an introductory session to see what you need. We take time to get a feel for whether the connection feels right, I ask some background questions, and together we consider what a good next step might be for you.

In the intake, we look at what is going on, how your system responds to stress, and what you have already tried — and what has or hasn’t worked. We also clarify where you would like to move towards, and you get a sense of whether my body-based approach suits you. I explain clearly how I understand symptoms, often using polyvagal theory (the “language” of your nervous system), so you can quickly recognise what is happening in you.

After the intake, you receive a clear proposal: what I have heard, what we would focus on, and what a logical trajectory might look like. From there, the choice is yours. The intake is without obligation and is invoiced separately. You are welcome to take your time to feel whether I am the right fit for what you need at this moment.

Phase 1 — restoring calm and capacity

When you come to me, you’re usually already carrying a lot of tension. Your body doesn’t feel right, your resilience is low, and that’s exactly why the first step is almost always to build your capacity back up.

We start with:

  • creating a sense of safety
  • recognising what calm feels like and how to return to it
  • finding what helps your energy recharge, even if only a little
  • learning how to settle within tension in a way that feels safe in your body
  • simple, practical exercises you can use to regulate yourself in daily life

This is often the turning point: not just understanding what’s going on, but actually experiencing that you can influence your own system.

Phase 2 — learning to read your system and integrate regulation into daily life

Once some initial calm has returned, we begin to fine-tune things:

  • learning to recognise when your system becomes activated
  • understanding how your body communicates and what it tells you about your stressors and boundaries
  • seeing what keeps your tension from settling (beliefs, patterns, lifestyle, your relationship to work, relationships, and the roles you take on)
  • identifying what causes stress to build up in your system and what you can do in everyday life to keep that tension within a manageable range

This is also where an important shift takes place: your body starts to feel like an ally, rather than something working against you.

Phase 3 — untangling triggers, beliefs, and old patterns
Once you have a solid base of regulation, we can move into the layer you have often already reflected on, but where your system still reacts.

We work more directly with:

  • shifting the assumptions and beliefs that continue to drive tension
  • working with the parts of you that lead to self-sabotage
  • understanding how your attachment patterns play out in your relationships, and how to work with them
  • releasing what your system still reads as “danger,” even when you know it is no longer the case. Important: we do this gradually and at a pace your system can tolerate. A trauma-sensitive approach underpins everything we do.
Phase 4 — releasing stored tension from your system

At this point, you can actively work with your resilience. You recognise tension, you know how to settle, and your system is more stable. And yet, some patterns may still keep pushing you beyond what you can comfortably handle. When that happens, there may still be residual tension held in your system. In this phase, we work more directly with Somatic Experiencing (SE) — a body-based approach that helps release built-up tension step by step. We work carefully and in a trauma-sensitive way: without overwhelm, without re-traumatisation, and while staying within your capacity to remain regulated. So that tension can truly begin to release.

Phase 5 — integration into everyday life

You’re not here just to be able to regulate yourself in a session. You’re here to function differently in your work, your relationships, your family, and in your own body. That takes self-regulation, but also a different way of looking at how your life is structured. In this phase, depending on your question, we look more closely at who you are: what truly fits you, where your energy goes, which people nourish you and which don’t, how you have made space for rest, and where you want to move next.

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What methods do we use?

We work with insights, methodologies and exercises from:

  • Polyvagal theory: how your nervous system assesses and responds to signals of safety
  • Somatic Experiencing (SE): a body-oriented method for discharging built-up tension
  • Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP): a listening program developed by Stephen Porges (founder of polyvagal theory) that supports regulation and building resilience in your nervous system
  • And including:
    • Insights on attachment theory, with expertise in KOPP (Child of Parents with Psychological Problems)
    • Transactional Analysis / Script Circle
    • Internal Family Systems (IFS) / Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST).
    • Voice Dialogue
    • Systemic work forms / constellations
    • Trauma-informed stabilization work
    • Mindfulness
    • Creatieve expressie-opdrachten obv creatieve therapie

Doing the work — what is expected of you?

In the sessions, we can make real progress. But the deeper change happens in how you work with this in your own life, between sessions — that’s where it has to take hold.

The time between sessions matters just as much as the sessions themselves. That’s why you receive:

  • a workbook with practical self-regulation tools and worksheets
  • psychoeducation and reflection questions
  • focused exercises
  • tailored assignments that fit your daily life (sometimes creative, if that helps)
  • access to the Safe & Sound Protocol

Can the process look different for me? Yes. We always adapt the work to your situation and the way your process unfolds. The aim is to help you move out of your head and back into your body, and we do what is needed for you to get there. You may already have done a lot of work, and we can move more quickly through certain parts. Or feeling may still be unfamiliar or even uncomfortable, and your mind may not immediately go along with it. Some systems — especially those that have relied on staying “on” for a long time — find it harder to allow rest. In that case, we take more time to work with the underlying patterns. Your body responds in its own way, and we stay closely aligned with your process.

Are six sessions enough to help me? Often, yes. If you want to continue afterwards, we can decide together to extend the process — for example if you have set a new goal, if we encounter more resistance in your system, or if you want to work at a deeper level.

What you gain

Life remains life, and difficult things will still happen. But you can learn to meet them differently. In this process, you come to know your body, learn how to influence it, and begin to trust it. You learn how to release tension and find your way back to calm. By relating to yourself in a different way, gaining insight into how your system works, and discovering what you can do in practical terms to take care of yourself, you develop the tools to:

  1. handle situations that used to throw you off balance
  2. be less easily unsettled when something affects you
  3. recover more quickly when it does

You start to respond differently to the challenges you encounter in life — with more steadiness, more ease in your body, less intense stress responses, and a clearer sense of what truly fits you.

You don’t become someone else. You become a more grounded, more authentic version of yourself.

Are we a match?

About you

Are you smart, able to explain your history clearly, name your patterns, make sense of yourself — but notice that little actually changes in your body? Do you quickly sense what others need, but find it hard to know what you need yourself? Do you prefer to stay in control through thinking? Are your emotions sometimes all over the place? Do you find it easier to talk about feelings than to actually feel them? Do you tend to speed up in your thinking, rather than slow down?

If you recognise yourself in this, there’s a good chance we’re a good fit.

To make it a bit more concrete:

  • Gifted, highly sensitive, neurodivergent? You’re welcome.
  • No prior experience with self-development? No problem.
  • A sensitive nervous system, earlier (traumatic) experiences, (C-)PTSD, a complex upbringing (KOPP), or previous or ongoing experience within mental health care? You’re welcome.

But: I can’t carry you. If your situation or mental state is very fragile right now, or if you need ongoing or specialised care, I would want you to be in a place that can truly support you.

Are we a match?

About me

I combine intellectual sharpness with a strong sensitivity to the body. I read what your system is doing, often before you’re aware of it yourself. I help you access what you can’t yet feel on your own, so you don’t stay at the level of understanding but can actually begin to change. I notice when your mind finds clever ways to avoid feeling — and I won’t let you disappear into that.

At the same time, I work in a trauma-sensitive way. I understand that for some systems, relaxation doesn’t feel safe, and I know how to help you return to calm gradually, without overwhelm or shutdown. I keep up with the pace of your thinking, while holding space for the slower pace of your body. So that understanding and experience can begin to work together again.

My work is grounded in my background as a chaplain and clinical ethicist (MA). This means I don’t only work at the level of symptoms or behaviour, but also at the level of meaning, values, and who you are in relation to the world around you.

You won’t be fixed here. You’ll learn to understand yourself, regulate yourself, and trust yourself — from within.

About me

Ready to take a first step? Or would you like to know more?

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