From Ultra Running to the Therapy Room: Why I Help People Navigate Life’s Extremes

I’ve always been drawn to the edges. Not the neat, socially acceptable kind, but the real ones. The long distances. The big questions. The deep conversations. The physical and emotional limits. There’s something about being at the edge of your capacity that feels honest to me.

Ultra running taught me what it means to keep moving when everything in you wants to stop. Counselling taught me what it means to stay when emotions feel overwhelming. On the surface, endurance sport and therapy look like very different worlds. One happens on mountains and coast paths; the other in quiet rooms or through a screen. But for me, they are deeply connected. Both ask the same questions: How do we stay with discomfort? How do we navigate uncertainty? How do we move through intensity without losing ourselves? My work, whether through coaching or counselling, is about helping people navigate their own edges with strength and compassion.

Becoming an Ultra Runner and Coach

I didn’t choose short distances. There was something about endurance that felt honest. The rhythm of long runs, the mental shifts that happen hours in, the point where you can’t distract yourself anymore. Ultra running isn’t about speed for me; it’s about resilience, energy management, pacing, and trust. It’s about learning when to push and when to back off. Becoming a coach felt like a natural extension of that. I now work with runners at different levels, from first marathons to stepping into ultra distances, but coaching has never just been about splits and sessions. It’s about the psychological side of endurance and the stories people tell themselves when things get hard. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned, often the hard way, is that resilience isn’t pushing endlessly; it’s knowing when pushing stops being productive.

Strength, Movement and Coaching Online

Alongside running, I coach strength and movement, not because lifting weights is trendy, but because strength changes how people feel in their bodies. When someone realises they are stronger than they believed, something shifts internally. Strength training isn’t about punishment, shrinking, or earning rest. It’s about building capacity, confidence, and stability. As an online coach, I support clients across the UK and beyond, creating programmes that prioritise performance and long-term health. Recovery matters. Fuel matters. Nervous system regulation matters. Movement can become a gateway back to self-trust, and for many people that trust has been eroded over time.

Why I Chose the Therapy Room

While coaching, I became increasingly interested in what sat beneath performance: the anxiety before races, the perfectionism, the complicated relationship with food, the fear of rest, the identity questions that surface after injury or transition. It became clear that physical training alone wasn’t enough. I wanted to create space where people could be seen beyond what they achieve. Training as a counsellor allowed me to do that. Alongside coaching, I now offer counselling both online and in person, supporting people through anxiety, identity challenges, burnout, neurodiversity, and emotional overwhelm. Running might take you to the edge; therapy helps you understand what brought you there.

In both sport and life, our past shapes how we respond to pressure. Trauma isn’t always one big event; it can be years of subtle stress, feeling misunderstood, or having to cope alone. Those experiences live in the body. They influence how we relate to ourselves and how our nervous system responds under pressure. In my work, I take a trauma-informed approach, which means pacing matters, safety matters, and collaboration matters. There is no forcing and no digging before you feel ready. Healing, like endurance training, requires patience and compassion, and often learning how to stay without overwhelming yourself.

Neurodiversity and Seeing Difference as Strength

Living as an AuDHD woman shapes how I see the world and how I work. For many neurodivergent adults, there has been a long history of masking, burnout, and feeling different. In therapy, I support clients in exploring their identity in a way that feels affirming rather than pathologising. We look at strengths, challenges, energy capacity, and how neurodivergence interacts with work, relationships, and performance. In both coaching and counselling, creating inclusive spaces where people feel understood, not judged, matters deeply to me.

Athletes in particular carry a unique kind of pressure. Performance expectations, injury, comparison, and identity are often tightly intertwined. It can become difficult to separate who you are from how you perform. Through counselling, I support athletes navigating anxiety, burnout, disordered eating, perfectionism, and transitions. These struggles are often hidden behind strong performances, yet they shape everything. Because I live in both worlds, I understand the culture and the internal pressure. You don’t have to justify why it matters so much. We can hold performance and wellbeing in the same conversation.

Speaking and Opening Conversations

Alongside one-to-one work, I speak about mental health, neurodiversity, resilience, eating disorders in sport, and identity. These conversations matter. When we talk honestly about what sits behind performance, we reduce stigma and create space for change. I share both professional knowledge and lived experience because both are important.

Why I Blend Coaching and Counselling

For me, body and mind have never been separate. Coaching builds strength, structure, and confidence. Counselling builds awareness, understanding, and self-compassion. Together, they create sustainable change. Someone may come for a race goal and uncover deeper patterns that need attention. Someone else may come to therapy and rediscover strength through movement. It doesn’t have to be performance or wellbeing; it can be both.

I’m often drawn to working with people who are used to pushing themselves. High achievers, athletes, deep thinkers, and those navigating transition. People who appear capable on the outside but carry a lot internally. Often they are standing at an edge, questioning what comes next and wanting to build something more sustainable. If that feels familiar, you’re not alone.

Navigating Life’s Extremes Together

Life will always involve intensity. There will be growth, uncertainty, strength, setbacks, expansion, and contraction. My work is about walking alongside people as they navigate those phases, helping them build strength, find clarity, and develop a more compassionate relationship with themselves. If you’re standing at your own edge, you’re welcome to reach out, and we can explore it together.