Mastering Change | The trauma, mental health & wellbeing podcast

Trauma therapy often begins with the past – but what if that’s the problem? This week on Mastering Change, psychologist Carla Shohet challenges the way trauma is commonly approached – arguing that many therapeutic models move too quickly into processing, without first building the capacity to hold what emerges. Carla’s work centres on nervous system regulation as the foundation for healing. Because without that foundation, trauma work can become overwhelming, ineffective – and in ...

We’re living through a loneliness epidemic – and it’s not for lack of connection. On this episode of Mastering Change, Francesca Tighinean explores why, despite being more digitally connected than ever, so many people feel increasingly isolated and unsure how to build real relationships. She points to a deeper shift. With constant exposure to social media, global events and information, many people – particularly younger generations – no longer feel safe enough to take the r...

On this episode of Mastering Change, we explore one of the most rapidly evolving and widely discussed areas in mental health: psychedelic-assisted therapy. Neuropsychopharmacologist Rayyan Zafar joins us to explain how new treatments – particularly psychedelics – are changing how we understand trauma and addiction. Rayyan’s work focuses on neuroplasticity – and he challenges a common assumption: more plasticity isn’t always better. In addiction and trauma, the brain can become stu...

Trauma doesn’t only create fear – it often creates isolation. In this episode of Mastering Change, Lucas Casanova explores trauma as a fundamental rupture in safety and belonging. A Buddhist and transpersonal therapist, Lucas integrates secular Buddhist practices with neuroscience and embodied therapy to help people reconnect – not just cognitively, but physically and relationally. He explains that belonging and safety are biological needs. When trauma disrupts them, thinking alon...

Many of us weren’t optimally seen, held or supported as children – and the adaptations we made to survive can quietly shape how we relate, connect and protect ourselves as adults. This week on Mastering Change, Maya Vaughan, Director of the Trauma Training Institute (TTI), explains the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) – a non-pathologising, relational approach to healing developmental trauma. Rather than focusing on diagnosis or “what’s wrong,” Maya describes NARM as “profou...

For people living with trauma or chronic stress, the brain can feel like it’s working against them. In this episode of Mastering Change, Dr Kate Truitt introduces brain partnership – a trauma-informed approach that reframes the brain as a protector rather than a problem. She explains how fast threat pathways in the amygdala and hippocampus form to keep us safe, and why those same pathways can later drive hypervigilance, dissociation or shutdown. Kate explores how chronic stress reduces access...

How do you rebuild a life when your earliest memories are of profound and extreme loss? That’s what Richard McCann explores in this episode. When he was just five years old, his mother was murdered – an event that later became national news and that influenced every part of his childhood. Richard describes how this grief showed up in ways he didn’t have words for at the time – hypervigilance, fear, constantly scanning for threats – and how teachers were among the first adults to r...

What makes someone feel so bonded to a group that they’d sacrifice almost anything for it – and how does that same force help us heal? In this episode of Mastering Change, cognitive anthropologist Dr. Martha Newson unpacks ‘identity fusion’ – an extreme form of social bonding where self and group identities merge, creating family-like ties and powerful loyalty. Drawing on years of research with football fans, prisoners and festival communities, Martha explores how ritual, shared ...

For people who have spent years in survival mode, joy can feel uncomfortable. Here, Melita Stancil explains why (as well as how we can experience joy more readily). She is the creator of Anthelum, a framework designed to help people move out of survival mode by looking at families, schools, workplaces and communities as interconnected parts of healing. A central theme in her work is joy. She shares how hypervigilance and stress can make exposure to joy difficult, and why practici...

Sometimes, talking therapy isn’t enough. This week on Mastering Change, we speak with neurofeedback specialist Stuart Black, whose work focuses on trauma, PTSD and the patterns the nervous system can’t shift through traditional talking therapy alone. Stuart explains how neurofeedback helps a dysregulated nervous system re-regulate, especially when trauma has left people stuck in survival mode. He describes how it can support the processing of traumatic memories stored in the emoti...

Why are so many women only discovering their ADHD in adulthood? In this episode of Mastering Change, Dr. Samantha Hiew, founder of ADHD Girls, explores the gender bias in psychiatry and the ways in which hormones, stress and trauma intersect with neurodivergent experience. Through her own story and research, Samantha reveals how hormonal shifts and perimenopause can alter stress tolerance, why diagnosis can be a powerful act of self-recognition, and how understanding our neurobiol...

What happens when the part of us that wants to heal becomes the thing that gets in the way? In this episode, we speak with Laura Patryas, a nondual IFS practitioner who sees our inner parts as expressions of awareness rather than problems to fix. Laura explains how trauma disconnects us from presence and how, in both therapy and life, healing begins when we can rest in awareness rather than try to control it. She describes how nondual IFS expands traditional IFS by integrating spi...

What happens when the person in crisis isn’t the only one who needs help – but the entire family system? In this episode of Mastering Change, Louise Stanger – known as “the family whisperer” – shares her trauma-informed approach to working with families in addiction recovery and crisis intervention. Louise explains that healing often begins before any formal session takes place: by preparing families, helping them feel safe, and inviting them back into connection. “The most ...