About Katarina

I know how you feel - here is how I know:

As a late Gen X woman, I know first hand what it’s like to have been shaped in a culture that expects you to be everyone else’s stress absorber.

For a long time, I was unaware how I was subconsciously conditioned to make everything appear seamless and perfect, just so I could feel safe and accepted.

Like so many highly capable women I built a life around approval and perfection. It looked successful but deep inside it was a different story - beneath the perfect balance and appearance, I felt broken, lost and apathetic. Often feeling like there is something inherently wrong with me.

My body, while resilient on the surface, started to show signs and symptoms but I wasn’t listening because I didn’t know this was my body’s way of asking and later crying for my attention. Seemingly small health issues started to creep up. I developed chronic health problems that were a mystery to me because I improved everything I knew how to - a healthy diet, improved routines, yoga, home cooked food, supplements. But still, I was anxious inside, and I deal with stress by ignoring it, without realising it. I was living my life on an autopilot, and it didn’t feel like I belonged to it.

When I started to learn about my childhood trauma of growing up in a home with an alcoholic father, and later my conditioning as a woman to be perfect for everyone else around me, to spin all the plates while looking beautiful - I discovered that my nervous system has learnt to live in survival. And that my symptoms were the signal that I was living disconnected from myself, my body, my soul and functioning in silent burnout.

Chronic people-pleasing and performing patterns had kept my body living with inflammation. So many women experience chronic health issues as a result of these survival patterns such as autoimmune conditions, chronic pain and fatigue. As someone who has lived with chronic people pleasing and chronic health issues, I understand from deep personal experience the kind of cost that comes with holding the line of performing stability and success.

Do you relate?

After trying all the things I could to help myself, I stumbled upon an embodiment session where I worked with my nervous system, and for the first time something truly shifted inside of me. I was hooked. I felt like I was finally home in my body. I had my energy and vitality back and I felt excited by life, with true capacity in my nervous system for all that I was holding and needed healing.

After 20+ years in London and Belgium, I now live in the English countryside with my husband David, our kitten Taggie, and far too many spices and books, supporting women worldwide in finding their way back to themselves.

I also hold a master's in philosophy and international relations and am an integrative coach, cook, gardener, writer, and solopreneur.