Tala Mansour 30/1/26 Tala Mansour 30/1/26

I Finally Experienced Integration

Explore this elusive concept of integration with me.

Hello again, whomever this is reaching. I write this entry from a place of deep reflection. I am fascinated by this concept of integration. It has long eluded my comprehension, though I’ve come across it many times in theoretical readings, particularly Jungian psychotherapy. The goal is integration. If you could somehow integrate aspects of your shadow self into your consciousness, then the work is done.

But what on earth is integration? What does it even mean? Various definitions explore the process of unifying parts into a whole. Experientially, what does this look like? Over your many years of development, you will undoubtedly learn many things about yourself, yet that awareness is not enough to make whole the disparate parts. You can know what is wrong, yet awareness is not enough to overcome the seemingly endless personal challenges, patterns of self sabotage and confusion around thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Why was conscious awareness not enough?

Compassionate responses to those parts don’t seem to work either. Often times, you notice a wounded part activate, and you soothe, comfort and coddle those aspects of yourself - the wounded parts that seek respite through withdrawal, disconnection or avoidant behaviours. That too, seems to be a temporary solution. So what is missing, that conscious awareness and compassionate response was not enough? Emotional processing does not seem to work either. Pain can be grieved, cried and processed through, and still the wounds can linger. It is not yet integrated. The parts remain just that, disconnected parts. There was no ‘whole’ yet.

Hmmm. Confusing. As time progresses and life humbles you with deep, painful experiences, something remarkable can happen. Trauma can be such a perspective-expanding and life altering experience, where unhelpful, restrictive and even sometimes judgemental thoughts and entrenched beliefs about self, the world and others can be let go of and replaced.

Within my own experience of integration, I learned to turn towards my experiences with a genuine, humble honesty. I surrendered to the truth of myself, that I too, have darkness within me, as all people do. And I did not soothe it, I did not mask it or explain it away. I simply allowed it to be, receiving the information as it is, without changing it, beautifying or diluting it. It was just the truth. Just reality. And I received it with acceptance. For the first time, I simply accepted that those parts existed, as I accepted that the sky was blue and the clouds were white. It was neither relieving, nor shame inducing. It was simply reality.

And then it happened. Integration. I finally experienced this magical concept, that I had so often read about and so little understood. I believe that integration can only occur when you accept a part of yourself, often an unseemly, shameful or ‘bad’ part, with openness, honesty and acceptance. No changing, no minimisation, no explaining it away. It just is, and it is allowed to be, just as it is. It is now whole with everything else, and it fits, because it has always fit. You just never allowed yourself to acknowledge its existence. Somehow, through surrender, I found peace. through acceptance, I found love. Through confrontation of truth in reality, I experienced integration.

And man, is it something else. You are calm, at peace, and have complete clarity over your inner world. Your experiences cease to scare you, and you feel ready to explore these new aspects of yourself with confident strength and deep understanding. They are no longer your puppeteers from the shadows, leading you into old, unhelpful patterns. They are now exposed to the light and visible, and you see just how small and un-scary they are. You reclaim control and walk alongside those parts, now part of a whole, and now under your control. This, I believe, is integration.

Therapeutic Skill of the Week

This week, we are going to discuss deep, diaphragmatic breathing. I am sure you are all sick of the internet and therapists telling you to breathe deeply, but we won’t stop recommending it because it seriously works wonders!

Half the time, your nervous system is distressed because you are not getting enough oxygen, which places your body into a stressed-state. We breathe shallow or even hold our breath when we feel anxious or overwhelmed, so focusing on deep, mindful and diaphragmatic breaths can help short-circuit your stress system, returning slowly but surely to the blessed shores of ventral vagal. Let us begin:

1) Sitting comfortably in a chair or lying on your back, place one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach.

2) Turn your attention to your stomach, slowly deepening your breath and feeling your stomach rise with the inhale, falling with the exhale. Do your best, naturally we breathe through our chest, so give yourself some time to find your rhythm.

3) As you get comfortable with the rhythm of breath, start to lengthen the exhale, breathing out slow and long, longer than the inhale if possible. This will help the body settle deeper into a relaxed state.

4) Breathe in this way for a few minutes, checking in regularly on your body and noticing when your mind wanders away, gently bringing it back to the breath, back to the stomach and the rhythm of your breath.

All my very best, with love and hope,

Tala

Change your breath, Change your Life. Click to Watch.

5 Minute exercise to improve Heart Rate Variability. Click to watch.

Poetic Reflections

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way.

Instead, let life live through you.

And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.

How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”

- Rumi

Tala Mansour 23/1/26 Tala Mansour 23/1/26

The Psychological Benefits of Food

Learn about the psychological benefits of food.

Food is more than just nourishment for the body

It is a way to find comfort after a long day of work
It offers emotional soothing when the world feels too cruel
It is a reliable friend, always there for you when other relationships let you down
It boosts dopamine, offering a brief moment of happiness in an otherwise heavy life
It takes you back to your childhood, calling back nostalgic memories of warm dishes made with love
It is a distraction, taking you away from stressful thoughts or feelings
It brings energy to a depleted body
It can inspire and excite, heal and rejuvenate, sicken and destroy
Join me in a curious exploration of the psychological role that food plays in our lives, and how we can use specific interventions to harness the power of food, rather than feel we are at the mercy of our appetites and compulsions

Happy Friday, dearest readers. I wonder what you have eaten for breakfast or lunch, and how that food is currently sitting with you. How does your body feel? What purpose did your meal fulfil for today? Nourishment, comfort, energy, joy, nostalgia, healing, or distraction? Take a moment with me to reflect.

I enjoyed a delicious charcoal chicken meal for lunch (very thankful for my Lebanese heritage here when it comes to food - so blessed) and I tried as best as I could to eat the meal mindfully. I focused on the purpose of nourishment, as I had an intense workout at the gym this morning. I avoided the hot chips, eating the protein and making sure to really chew the food, remembering that digestion begins in the mouth, with important enzymes in our saliva breaking down the food as we eat (Patricia & Dhamoon, 2019). This is a very important consideration to hold in mind, that mindful eating plays a significant role in nutrient absorption, as well as in regulating the nervous system. Our guts are deeply implicated within our central nervous system and this has a direct impact on our emotional stability and regulation. If our gut is agitated, inflamed, dysfunctional or fatigued, this can have a direct impact on our mood. This is outlined below, in the bi-directional relationship between our gut health and microbiome, and the experienced emotional wellbeing of an individual. Research has also well established the relationship between sugar and caffeine intake on anxiety, with further research exploring the role of nutrient deficiency (Vitamin D, B12, Iron) in depression (Anglin et al., 2013) and even psychosis (Payinda & Hansen, 2000).

Research shows that imbalances in gut bacteria are associated with conditions such as anxiety, depression, and stress, due to reduced metabolites, increased inflammation, and changes in stress-response systems.
Gut microbes can influence brain function by producing neurotransmitters, signalling through the vagus nerve, and affecting the body’s stress hormones. Eating probiotics, switching to a Mediterranean diet, and other microbiome-based approaches, show promise for improving mental health.

(Kanchanbala et al., 2025)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12007925/

Fascinating stuff, huh?

Think back to a time where you were on the verge of exploding in anger, and you had no clue what the trigger was. Then suddenly, someone suggests you eat something and one little snickers bar later, the demon possessing your body has left and you are now a happy, bubbly human again.

Or perhaps you were crying uncontrollably, finding every little thing overwhelming and distressing, and then you eat a sandwich and realise that your body was just trying to tell you that you were hungry. But why would our body use emotional cues like anger and sadness to prompt eating, rather than the tell-tale sign of hunger? What an interesting phenomenon! Without going into too much biological science and research, my intuition as a trauma-focused therapist says that somewhere early on in our lives, we learned to associate threat with situations where food was involved.

Either that, or we learned to dissociate from our inner bodily experiences entirely, whether due to intolerable traumatic pain, where escaping the physical experience was our only respite, or due to repeated experiences of neglect. The child adapts quickly. When we learn that the people in our environment do not care to attune to our physical experiences and help us to explore them safely, we quickly learn to suppress these useless cues of hunger, sadness, fear, tiredness, thirst and so much more. We do not discriminate between emotional cues or physiological cues. All internal experiences must be muted. And thus, we result in having a dissociated experience from our inner world. If you were raised in an environment where meal times were stressful, whether there was not enough food to eat and so you learned to swallow first, taste later, or perhaps meals at the dinner table were a guaranteed arena of conflict and tension, our nervous systems adapt to view mealtime and food as a stressful chore, rather than an enjoyable, nourishing practice of self care.

However, we are now (hopefully) fully grown, autonomous adults in safe environments. We can learn to re-attune to the inner sensations of our bodies, using mindful awareness, to establish a safe connection with our body cues. By practising mindful eating - chewing our food slowly, tasting all the flavours, smelling our food before we eat it, looking at our food intently, staying grounded in our body as we chew and swallow - we can learn to enjoy every part of the eating experience, while also differentiating between the sensations of hunger, digestion, satiation, enjoyment, disgust, excitement, anticipation and satisfaction. You can also learn to associate the seemingly unrelated somatic symptoms, such as a headache with a cue for thirst, or the feeling of uncontrollable sadness with a likely cue that it’s time for our next meal. Eat your food with every part of your body, your hands, eyes, nose, ears, while staying mindfully connected to your emotional experience, bodily experience and integrate all these sensations as one holistic practice.

“Dopaminergic activation is triggered by the auditory and visual as well as the tactile, olfactory, and gustatory stimuli of foods. While dopamine plays a central role in the feeding and food-seeking of normal animals, some food rewarded learning can be seen in genetically engineered dopamine-deficient mice.” (Wise, 2006)

Healing from food-related wounds takes time.

Be gentle with yourself in this process.

I say all of this with enthusiastic optimism, however I know the complexity that can exist with food. It is not just about threat, it can also induce deep and enduring feelings of shame. Or it can be an avenue to exert control over your otherwise unstable and out of control life, resulting in an eating disorder. These more complex presentations of food and eating disorders must be explored with a qualified psychologist and dietitian, taking a multi-disciplinary approach to healing these deep wounds around food and meal times. Reach out for support if this is something you struggle with. You are not alone and you do not have to figure it all out by yourself.

Thank you for joining me in this reflective exploration of the role that food plays in our psychological wellbeing. I sincerely hope you learned something new. Read below for an in-depth exploration of mindfulness skills we can use to reconnect safely to eating food and tuning in to our bodily sensations while we do so. You did great for reading this far!

Therapeutic Skill of the Week

This week, we are going to focus on mindful eating as a way to self soothe and regulate the nervous system, while healing your relationship with food and eating practices.

To eat mindfully, our full attention and conscious awareness must be focused on the food in front of us.

1) Look at the colours, shapes, textures of your meal. Enjoy the vibrant differences in shades, explore how the various colour palette of your meal makes you feel.

2) Stop and smell your food before you eat. Try to tune in to the various flavour profiles; can you smell citrus, chocolate, fruity tones, spicy tones, salty, oceanic smells.

3) Taste the food slowly and mindfully. Feel the different textures (crunchy, smooth) and temperatures (cool, hot). Taste the flavour profiles of your food; salty, sweet, umami, sour, bitter. Move the food to different parts of your tongue to explore different dimensions of flavour.

4) Listen to the sounds that the food makes as you chew and swallow, moving the food on your plate, using your utensils to pick up the food and put them in your mouth.

At every stage of eating, from before you taste the first bite, to when your plate is clean, stay grounded in the experience of your body. Regularly check in with your stomach, take deep breaths throughout and focus on how your body is feeling throughout. Label the emotions that come up for you as you eat, if it brings back any fond memories. How does the food make you feel?

Give it your best go and practice mindful eating every day to improve and enhance this skill over time.

All my very best, with love and hope,

Tala

Poetic Reflections

“A dry loaf eaten in peace
is better than a feast eaten in fear.”

- Saadi Shirazi, Golestan

References

Anglin, R. E., Samaan, Z., Walter, S. D., & McDonald, S. D. (2013). Vitamin D deficiency and depression in adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. The British journal of psychiatry, 202(2), 100-107.

Barma, M. D., Purohit, B. M., Priya, H., Malhotra, S., Bhadauria, U. S., & Duggal, R. (2026). Sweet Misery: Association of Sugar Consumption With Anxiety and Depression - A Systematic Review. Obesity Reviews, 27(1), 1-19.

Kanchanbala, R., Neha, S., Sunil, N., Kumar, S., Kiran, D., Dhrubajyoti, B., & Mohammad, I. H. Q. (2025). The bidirectional relationship between the gut microbiome and mental health: a comprehensive review. Cureus, 17(3).

Patricia, J. J., & Dhamoon, A. S. (2019). Physiology, digestion.

Payinda, G., & Hansen, T. (2000). Vitamin B12 deficiency manifested as psychosis without anemia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(4), 660-661.

Wise, R. A. (2006). Role of brain dopamine in food reward and reinforcement. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 361(1471), 1149-1158.

Tala Mansour 16/1/26 Tala Mansour 16/1/26

Learning To Trust

Good Morning. I hope you had a pleasant night’s rest filled with beautiful dreams about beautiful things.

I was inspired to write about trust, after receiving an email from a longstanding client of mine, expressing distress around her enduring inability to trust both herself and her partner in their relationship. Such a common experience, I think that fear and love go hand in hand. Do they feel about me the same way I feel about them? Can I trust what they say, that they will never leave me? How can I trust my own self, that I won’t ruin this beautiful thing with my carelessness or with my fears?

Love, true love, cannot be forced or compelled. It must be chosen freely, actively and with your full self. If you carry within you the seed of self doubt and worthlessness, it can feel impossible that someone would choose you, over all the other seemingly better options out there. Why you? What is so special about you, that they would choose to give all this love to you, and keep choosing you day after day? Therein lies the inner conflict.

“I want to trust that this is real, but a part of me whispers that it isn’t. That it is only a matter of time before they get bored, or lose interest, or figure out that I have been hiding just how horrible I am, and once they realise all of this, that they can do so much better, they will leave me.” This fear of abandonment may sit at the heart of every human being, it depends how well you choose to know yourself, to discover just how loud those voices can get. We were designed to seek connection and closeness, our nervous systems feel the most safe when we have a secure attachment to another individual. This unification with the other is the only antidote to the fear of the world, to the fear of death and the unbearable, ego-destroying fear of loneliness.

Within a spiritual framework, this aligns with the reality that we were once at one with all of creation, and in becoming human, we became separate and singular. Our psyche has a deep memory of what it feels like to be united and safe, and so we seek it throughout our lifespan, first through relationships, and then, if we have enough awareness and discipline, through a relationship with the divine. This is the safest and most secure attachment to form in your lifetime, for God is eternal and does not die, and He has promised that He is with you, wherever you are, so you can never be abandoned.

In the womb of our mother or in the womb of Mercy.

Safe in suspension, our nervous systems ever seek this feeling of complete and whole safety.

Within a psychological framework, this is mirrored through the unification with our mothers in the womb - the only time our nervous systems felt completely and utterly safe. All was well, all my needs were met, I knew no fear, nor pain, nor suffering. My only reality was the music of my mother’s heartbeat and the warmth of the water around me, suspended me in weightlessness. Equally, our nervous systems retain a memory of that experience and so seek to emulate that through our current relationships. However, humans, unlike the Divine, are flawed and equally needy. And so to feel absolutely satisfied and sustained in a relationship is, I think it’s safe to say, impossible.

However, I digress. Back to trust. Knowing that we are designed to seek the safety of unifying our bodies and souls with another individual, someone who sees us and loves us for who we are, how can we accept this love once it finally knocks on our door? How can we welcome it in with open arms and know that we won’t cast it away or reject it from fear of losing it? The answer is trust. To believe with full conviction that they won’t leave you, knowing that they might. It is the rejection of the awful reality and giving your full awareness, energy and focus to the reality where they don’t let you down. It is in believing that you are someone who is worth loving, that you are a worthy, loveable individual and maybe this person just happens to like what you have to offer. It is choosing to believe that love has finally found you, and you are safe to accept it and welcome it in.

The analogy that I provided my client was this:
To learn to trust someone is like realising that you are swimming in the ocean and have been caught in wild waves that both excite you and threaten to drown you. From fear, you begin to swim madly, fighting against each wave, trying to predict the patterns of what will come next and struggling against the current, becoming exhausted and frustrated with all the effort you exert, realising that you are getting nowhere. Then you try, just for a moment, to surrender to the water, lay back and let all your expectations, predictions and need to control the situation go, and just float atop the waves. You choose to trust that the water will not swallow you whole, though you still feel the terror that it will. That fear exists because there is a very real chance that a wave may come crashing down on you as you float and drown you, and there is also a chance it won't. That is the risk. That is the scary part of being in a relationship, for it is guaranteed that it will end, either through death or choice, for all things in life are temporary. And yes, it will devastate you when it happens, but how lovely to have floated on the waves and enjoyed the beauty of the sky, smelled the tangy saltiness of the ocean and listened to the melody of the waves, while you waited for the end. Trust affords you the joy of being present in the love while it is yours, enjoying every moment of it and accepting that the end will come, and you have made the most of the love while you had it. No regrets. Only love.

I fear that none of us will ever have that moment of "Ah, I am perfectly safe and content and happy here", because we will never be 100% certain that the ones who love us will not leave. And that is okay. Do not despair nor lose hope, and do not allow your mind to spiral and catastrophise that your feelings are indicative of never being able to find happiness. The more you practice trust, the easier it will become and the more you will find out just how beautiful the ocean can be.

Therapeutic Skill of the Week

This section will introduce one new skill each week that we have highlighted as a great practice to enrich your week with mental health benefits. This week, I would like to focus on singing and humming as a tool to regulate your nervous system.

Honestly, there is no end to how long I can talk about psychology, for it excites me so, but I promise to be brief and only give the necessary information about singing and humming (though there is SO much I want to say about it!).

It is incredibly regulating to sing or hum, as the vibrations stimulate the vagus nerve that sits adjacent to your vocal chords. That stimulation helps the nervous system shift from sympathetic arousal (fight/flight) to parasympathetic activation (rest/digest). We have culturally been using singing and melodies for healing for centuries. The first mental health hospital in recorded history was the Bimarestan of Baghdad (c. 705–715 CE) and it was recorded to use holistic approaches to healing psychological conditions, including music therapy. All cultures have collective songs, in church we sing hymns together, countries have a national anthem that you start the day with at school, in the pub everyone sings at the top of their lungs “COUNTRY ROOOAAADDDD, TAKE ME HOOOOOOMMEEE, TO THE PLAAAAACEEEE, I BELOOOOONNNGGGG.” It’s safe to say, whether we like it or not, singing works and that is why it has stuck around so long.

So I am challenging you to sing a new kind of song every day this week. Choose a happy song one day, a sad song the next, a fast song, a slow song, an emotional song, an uplifting song. Explore how the different melodies and words mingle with the feelings in your heart, and use it to process your emotions. For me, the song that always gets me is Mad World by Gary Jules. Oh my heart. And do I sing it? Heck yeah! That and Hallelujah, the Jeff Buckley version. I’d love for you to leave me a comment of your favourite songs to sing. I do hope the comment function is working, if not, then vibe the song over to me. I’ll do my best to receive it.

All my very best, with love and hope,

Tala

Tala Mansour 12/1/26 Tala Mansour 12/1/26

The Beginning - Between Sessions

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life”

- Omar Khayyam

Welcome to the start of “Between Sessions”, a weekly newsletter where I invite you to join me in these quiet moments of reflection, where we will take stock of our week, make meaningful associations and try to integrate all the wisdoms and teachings that we have gained throughout the week.

Here are my commitments to you.

1) I shall never use AI to write these posts. It will be straight from my soul to yours, and as such, you may expect to see just a Few grammatical, errors or speling mistakes. Please be patient with me if you do see these, as I am prioritising integrity and authenticity over perfection, as I hope and pray you are doing as well.

2) I will share all the inspirational and emotional enlightening things that I encounter each week with you, in order to uplift and enliven your souls. Soulful enrichment is a necessary part of our daily lives, and so I will endeavour to enrich your beautiful souls with poetry, reflections, art, music, creative pursuits and meaningful activities to engage with in your daily lives.

3) As much as the chaos of life permits me, I will try to upload these newsletters once weekly, on Friday mornings.

4) We are going to have fun with it! I’m going to be my goofy, playful self to make sure that this is not just another useless, drivelling newsletter devoid of feeling, soul or life. Nay, I shall be as a living companion to you, beckoning your feeling forth through the screen, inviting you into the joyful weirdness, vulnerability and curiosity that makes life so much fun. I cannot wait for this journey to begin, and for you all to join me on this path.

Let us begin.