Jasmin Egner - Self-Care Coach

Research Study Invitation

My name is Jasmin Egner, and I am a mature BSc Psychology student in my a final year with the Open University.

I am looking for interview participants for a phenomenological research project exploring how people experience friendship through regular shared physical activity.

Each participant will be invited to a confidential one-to-one semi-structured interview, conducted on Microsoft Teams. Interviews will last approximately 45 to 60min.

To participate you must be aged 30–60 and have experience of friendship involving shared physical activity, such as informal walks or gym sessions.

Participation in the study is voluntary and you can withdraw at any point before interviews have been transcribed and analysed (expected 5 August 2026).

If you express interest, you will receive a participant information sheet and a consent form which I would ask you to return to me by 25 June 2026.

Please apply via SONA: �https://openuk-student.sona-systems.com/default.aspx?p_return_experiment_id=4352

Kind regards,
Jasmin Egner

openuk-student.sona-systems.com

So many times I felt frozen at the thought of making the wrong decision, catastrophising what a ‘bad’ outcome would look like. The higher the stakes the more frozen:

- when something important is more expensive than I’m ok with: 💭 ‘what if I’ll never recover from this hit?’
- when I have to have surgery: 💭 ‘what if it goes wrong?’
- when I need to have an uncomfortable conversation: 💭 ‘what if it ends in a falling out?’

The fear behind all of this is one and the same: 💭 ‘what if it makes things worse for me?’

The limiting beliefs that go with it are:

💭 ‘I make bad decisions.’
💭 ‘I won’t be able to cope.’

This needs generosity and self compassion, so I can remember to trust my capabilities.

So I sit with it, and I do 5 things:

1. I talk myself through the likelihood of the worst case scenario actually happening
2. I think about the avenues I can take if things don’t turn out as I hoped
3. I remind myself of why this needs to be done and what it will give me
4. I visualise it going exactly as I need it
5. When the time comes: I hand it over to the universe and trust it will work out

Do it in a way that works for you. You’re much more likely to get the results you need and be well.

This is me working on an assignment for my Psych degree studies last year. It looked a bit like this: 25min working, 30min nap, repeat for a few hours a day. I study part time and that is all my limited energy reserves will allow me. Untreated endometriosis and a lot of trauma have left me with very low energy, so I have to make sure I understand my needs - and meet them as much as I can muster. I *had* to learn to rest, to ask for help, and to accept help too. So I ask for extensions. I rest so I can achieve and maintain things that are important to me, and to be well.

For almost 4 decades I tried to operate the way most people around me did. It was painful, isolating and so much slower than the way I do things now. I crashed many times. I had to give up on dreams. I missed out on opportunities because I was too exhausted from trying to keep up.

Going against the mainstream is hard. It can feel exposing and like a threat to our safety. That’s why it takes so many of us so long to get to a point where we say ‘enough!’. And still I wish I’d done it sooner. I wish I’d learned to understand and respect my needs sooner. It’s a much better life this way.

➡️ I got the top grade on that assignment by the way 🙌

Make little pockets of rest part of your pattern. Today is a great day to begin ☀️

Âuthenticity y’all. It’s not easy. This journey will push all your buttons. It will infuriate some people while others will totally get you. Watch carefully how people react to you embracing who you are - it will tell you who is for you and who is not.

Sometimes just giving yourself kindness when you can’t forgive is enough of an accomplishment. There is too much shaming around forgiveness. We’re not required to shame ourselves.

Just sitting here, quietly judging myself for how I responded when my childhood trauma was triggered. And probably judging myself for judging myself 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Reminder:
Trauma responses are natural. The trauma itself is not our fault. The opportunity we have - and the responsibility - is to work on our response to it, in the best way with can, with what we have. That’s what we can do. And it will look different for different people.

Sometimes we slip up. And when that happens we need to be particularly kind to ourselves, so we don’t add to the trauma.

To the cycle breakers. You are changing the world.

These two 💕