Hey!
My name is Anna Vickroy. Thanks for wanting to get to know me. I’m gonna lay it all out so you know how and why I do what I do.
I should’ve been happy.
You see, on paper, I had it “all”…engineering degrees, successful career & university lecturer in the Master’s Program of Engineering, a loving husband, two beautiful children, a custom home and I traveled the world.
I cycled between anxiety, depression and periods of achievement. I thought this was normal.
I was always looking outside myself to feel good enough…a good enough engineer, a good enough mom, a good enough wife, a good enough body etc. And nothing ever seemed to change the way I felt inside, which was that I was a fraud who would never be enough.
After 13 years in my engineering career, I was still hustling for my worth and burning out. So I left to follow my passion and I built a successful award-winning photography studio. But that wasn’t the answer either because I created the same pattern of achievement and burnout and still felt like an imposter.
This was my cycle:
I’d feel happy if I had X.
There would be temporary satisfaction
followed by a deep realization that X wasn’t it.
Then I would set out to accomplish the next thing
that promised fulfillment in my classic overachiever style.
Positive-thinking strategies yielded temporary results.
A decade of talk therapy solidified my knowledge of my life’s challenges but didn’t change my behavior or the way I felt
Work-Life balance offered more time for “life” but that felt empty so I filled it with more numbing and distracting activities
Pursuing my passion still led to burn-out and unfulfillment.
Diet and exercise was an exhausting battle as the weight kept coming back
I forced myself to put on my mask, pretending I was happy and had it all together...but I was screaming inside.
The turning point was when my 4th grader came home from school upset telling me he didn’t feel like he was enough. It triggered me because I knew I felt the same and I was teaching him these ways. I knew I had to figure out how to feel better in my life.
Everything changed when I began healing my relationship with my body
I LEARNED TO:
ACCEPT my body
LEARN the language of my body through sensation
LISTEN to my body’s needs
CHOOSE to take action based on those needs
RESPECT my body for its wisdom as well as for its limits.
TRUST my body in differentiating between survival responses and my intuition
FEEL my feelings to release the trauma held in my body
REGULATE my nervous system to create capacity to feel more
BE in my body to be in the present moment
My relationships with my loved ones improved.
I had a lot more energy because I wasn’t wasting it feeling anxious or people pleasing.
I found more ease in my interactions, even the uncomfortable ones.
Allowing myself to feel the wholeness of my experiences, including the pain, sorrow and grief, I also felt so much more joy, freedom and LOVE.
I feel more free being my whole authentic self.
My analytical mind needed to understand the science before I could trust the process because honestly some of this seemed very woo-woo and I’m a very practical logical thinker. What I learned blew me away as it was so contrary to what I (and most of us) was taught growing up. This is when I began taking courses in polyvagal theory (nervous system regulation), neuroscience, meditation, somatic and hypnotherapy. And it lights me up to share all that I’ve learned to my clients.
When we heal ourselves, we help heal those around us and the planet herself.
Imagine a generation of children who grow up in tune with their bodies, trusting their intuition, encouraged to process their emotions, able to self-soothe and care for themselves intuitively, courageous enough to set boundaries and strong enough to speak up for themselves. I imagine a world rooted in love....and it starts with ones Self. This vision is my motivation.
