A registered Counsellor, Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner, Mentor, Facilitator, and Integrative Psychedelic Therapist, Tiph was also trained by Eckhart Tolle and is a certified Mindfulness Practitioner. By integrating deep presence with Compassionate Inquiry® principles, she guides her global clientele through their trauma to authentic self-connection. Tiph embodies her belief that true therapeutic presence comes from personal healing and deep self-awareness.
This post is a short edited excerpt of Tiph’s personal journey from the pain of high sensitivity, to heroin induced numbness to divine connectedness. Hear her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
I’m one of the newest Compassionate Inquiry® facilitators. Who am I, you might wonder? Who’s this ‘new kid on the block?’ I’m someone with a big story who’s taken the long journey through healing my own trauma to a place where I can honestly say, most of the time, I feel deep peace. I’m quite settled in who I am and really comfortable in my body. Feeling free and deeply peaceful is not a small thing. It was a hard fought battle and one that’s been well worth fighting. I am very grateful for everything I encountered along the way that helped me get here.
For me, healing is to be at peace. I’m not at the end of that journey, as I’m not sure it ever ends. But I’m sufficiently far along that I am definitely reaping the rewards. My body’s relaxed, my mind’s calm, and a big part of that are feelings of safety and beauty.
Seeing beauty comes from a place of deep connectedness, with nature, with other people. It’s so easy to see the beauty in Nature, as it surrounds us. Seeing the beauty in other people is about seeing beyond the mask, beyond the personality and the facades and truly seeing the depths of the person, the potential, the possibilities, the beauty…
I’m also someone with their feet firmly planted on the ground and their head in consciousness; with the divine. For me, groundedness and spirituality go side by side. Even In the garden, as I’m noticing the beauty, I’m also picking up the dog shit. But this was not always the case. The trauma work I’ve done and the skills I’ve learned through my healing allowed me to forge the connection to the divine that I always wanted, but couldn’t access.
My story started in a very dysfunctional family with lots of suppressed emotions and generations of broken people. I felt like I was expressing and feeling for the whole family, with great sensitivity. A big part of my struggle was having these big feelings, which I felt I shouldn’t have, as I was teased and made wrong for them. Eventually, being unable to suppress or shut off my feelings led me to drugs.
When I was 18, I became addicted to heroin, which took away all those emotions. I fell into a group of users and went straight to heroin. It felt like the magic bullet that made everything feel wonderful. At that time I was living in squats in London. It was a really tough, violent, chaotic, grim and unpleasant life—a journey of survival in which heroin was the only thing that mattered.
What was I self medicating? As a kid, I had a deep sense of, a belief that, ‘there’s something wrong with me’. The pain of that question. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Lived in my head. It was something I dealt with every single day. I never felt enough, good enough, or lovable.
Compared to that pain, the chaos, violence and difficulties of my life as an addict felt like nothing. Of course, there were days where I wished I wasn’t addicted. But most days were about not feeling, and the relief that brought. Heroin was like a huge hammer. I didn’t think about trying anything else.
I used heroin for about two years. In some ways it’s the easier part of my story because I wasn’t feeling much. But things escalated. I got into trouble with the police…. My life was really complicated. I knew that to get out of it, to sort out my drug habit, I had to change my environment. So a very close friend who wasn’t involved with drugs, bought me a train ticket. If they’d given me money, I’d have spent it on drugs. Yes, I chose to get on the train. I left the country and went to live in Ibiza, where I stayed with an ex-boyfriend. And I travelled alone.
I spent about a year in Spain, coming off heroin. When I returned to the UK I had no physical addiction, but as I didn’t know anything else was wrong, nothing was resolved either. Throughout my twenties, I wasn’t using drugs, but I was desperately unhappy, traumatized and reactive. I got into a bad marriage and had my first two children. Becoming a mum was definitely profound, beautiful and life changing, but very difficult.
Back then I didn’t understand why I had become addicted, or that I had been self-medicating. As a parent, I carried the fear that my children might end up there, as I saw it as something that could happen to any kid. Now, thinking back, I couldn’t imagine my daughter in that environment. Not in a million years! Thankfully, that hasn’t happened with any of my kids, as the pain of imagining them there would be unbearable.My healing journey began in the strangest way when I was in my late twenties. I used to get reflexology because I really, really like having my feet massaged. One day, I met someone in my reflexologist’s workplace who called himself a spiritual healer. After initially dismissing him, I tried a session and something happened. I was lying on the massage table and he was doing his thing when I suddenly felt something shift in me, energetically. It felt amazing, and a question arose. “Who am I?” It felt really profound at that moment, and I had no idea what the answer was. So I started going for a spiritual healing every week. I felt so much better immediately after the healing, but that feeling faded over the week. So I’d go back the next week for a top up. One day I said, “I don’t want to keep coming to you for a top up. How do I do this for myself? How do I learn more about this?” He put me in touch with the National Federation for Spiritual Healers, now called the Healing Trust. They ran training programs, so I went and did all of their training. That was the beginning of connecting with something else that felt bigger than me.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe and share.
