Mental Health Awareness Week:

The Action of Coming Back to Yourself

When Mental Health Awareness Becomes Personal

Health Awareness Week takes place in the UK from 11–17 May 2026, and this year’s theme is Action: the reminder that awareness matters, but change often begins in the small, steady actions we take for ourselves and for one another.

For me, this theme feels deeply personal.

Because mental health is not an abstract subject. It is not simply something we talk about once a year, or something that belongs only in clinical rooms, statistics, or public campaigns. Mental health lives in the body. It lives in the nervous system. It lives in the stories we carry, the grief we have survived, the words we never heard, the recognition we longed for, and the ways we have had to keep going when life asked more of us than we ever imagined we could bear.

This week, I find myself reflecting on the many layers of my own journey.

There have been times in my life when I did not feel seen, heard, or recognised in the ways that mattered to me. Particularly in early family relationships, where we naturally hope to feel held, understood, valued, and emotionally met, there were wounds around not being received in the way my heart needed.

Those experiences do not simply disappear because we become adults, build lives, raise families, or learn how to cope. They can leave imprints. They can shape how safe we feel to be fully ourselves. They can affect how we respond when life becomes overwhelming.

I have also faced abuse, sexual violence, trauma, deep uncertainty, and loss.

Some of these experiences are difficult to write about publicly. Abuse and rape are not easy words to place on a page. They carry weight, pain, and a history that does not need to be explained in detail for it to matter.

But part of mental health awareness is allowing truth to have a place, without shame.

Experiences like these can affect how safe we feel in our own body. They can shape our relationship with trust, voice, intimacy, boundaries, and belonging. They can leave imprints that show up years later, especially in times of overwhelm, exhaustion, pressure, or when we feel unseen and unheard.

I share this with care, not because I need to tell the whole story, but because I know there will be others reading who have carried their own silent experiences too.

Breaking my neck was one of those moments when life changed instantly. The severity of the injury brought very real fears about physical survival and the future of my body. Yet alongside that was another layer: I was a single mum, with children depending on me, a business to keep going, and a mortgage to pay. There was no easy pause button. No simple space to collapse. My body had been through something life-altering, but life still demanded that I show up.

Then came the death of my first husband, just twenty months after our wedding.

For two years, from the first diagnosis of terminal cancer, we lived inside a reality that no couple ever wants to face. There was love, fear, hope, exhaustion, practical pressure, anticipatory grief, and then the finality of loss itself. Bereavement does not end when the funeral is over. It rearranges the inner landscape. It changes how you meet the world. It asks you to keep breathing when the shape of your life has been broken open.

These experiences have shaped me.

They have also taught me that mental health is not about pretending to be positive, spiritual, strong, or sorted. It is not about rising above everything as though the body has not kept score. It is about learning how to return. Again and again. To breath. To body. To presence. To relationship. To nature. To the small actions that remind the nervous system: I am here. I am safe enough in this moment. I do not have to carry everything at once.

Even now, these old wounds and experiences can still show up.

They can appear in moments of overwhelm. They can arise when I feel unseen, unheard, or under pressure. They can speak through exhaustion, sensitivity, vigilance, tension, or the feeling that I have to hold everything together. Trauma is not always loud. Sometimes it is the tightening in the chest. The need to manage everything. The ache of not being understood. The old fear that there is no one there in the way we need.

This is also why, this week, I have chosen to honour how I truly feel.

Rather than pushing through, overriding my body, or pretending I have more capacity than I do, I have taken down some of my sessions to give something back to myself. That decision has not come from weakness. It has come from listening.

It is one thing to speak about mental health, self-care, embodiment, and nervous system awareness. It is another to live it honestly when your own body is asking for space.

For many years, I have been the one who keeps going. The one who holds, supports, teaches, organises, provides, and shows up. And while I deeply love my work, my clients, and the beautiful community around Sense Greater Peace, I also know that I cannot offer from a place of depletion and call that service.

So this week, my action is rest.

My action is honesty.

My action is not abandoning myself.

My action is allowing my practices to support me, not just others.

Taking down some sessions has given me space to breathe, to move more slowly, to be with nature, to listen inwardly, and to allow my own nervous system to settle. It is a reminder that caring for ourselves is not something we earn when everything else is done. It is part of how we remain whole.

Perhaps this is one of the most important messages of Mental Health Awareness Week: sometimes the most healing action is not doing more, but recognising when we need to do less.

And yet, alongside all of this, there has also been healing.

My practices have been my way home.

Mindful movement has helped me listen to the body without forcing it. Yoga has given me a place to meet myself honestly, breath by breath. Meditation has shown me that I am more than the thoughts and fears passing through me. Breath work has helped me regulate when life feels too much. Being in nature has reminded me that I belong to something wider than the immediate storm.

The sea, the sky, the land, the rhythm of the seasons, the feeling of the earth beneath my feet, the presence of dogs, the honesty of animals, the love of my husband and children, and the beautiful relationships I have with my clients have all been part of my healing.

Not because they erase what happened.

But because they remind me that life is still here.

Connection is still possible.

Joy can return.

The body can soften again.

The heart can learn new forms of trust.

One of the greatest gifts of my work is witnessing how many people are carrying invisible stories. People arrive for yoga, Pilates, meditation, sound, or body-based work often thinking they are coming for strength, flexibility, relaxation, or relief from pain. And of course, those things matter. But often, something deeper begins to unfold. They start to feel themselves again. They begin to notice where they have been holding tension, grief, responsibility, or unspoken emotion. They begin to come back into relationship with themselves.

This is why I believe so deeply in embodied practice.

Mental health is not only in the mind. It is in the way we breathe. The way we stand. The way we move through the day. The way we feel supported, or unsupported. The way we speak to ourselves. The way we allow ourselves to rest. The way we ask for help. The way we let love in.

This week’s theme of action feels important because action does not have to be dramatic to be powerful.

Sometimes action is taking three conscious breaths before reacting.

Sometimes it is stepping outside and feeling the air on your face.

Sometimes it is placing a hand on your heart and acknowledging, “This is hard, and I am still here.”

Sometimes it is booking the class, making the call, walking the dog, resting without guilt, crying without apology, or allowing someone trustworthy to see a little more of the truth.

Sometimes action is no longer abandoning yourself.

For anyone reading this who has carried trauma, grief, loss, abuse, sexual violence, emotional neglect, overwhelm, or the quiet ache of not feeling truly seen, I want to say this:

You are not broken.

Your responses make sense.

Your body has been trying to protect you.

Your nervous system may still be responding to old danger, even when your present life is safer.

Healing is not about becoming someone else. It is about slowly reclaiming the parts of you that had to hide, brace, cope, perform, or survive.

And you do not have to do that alone.

For me, the path has never been one single answer. It has been a weaving together of practices, people, nature, animals, breath, movement, love, meaning, and time. It has been learning to honour both strength and tenderness. It has been learning that survival is not the end of the story. There is also restoration. There is also belonging. There is also peace.

Mental Health Awareness Week reminds us that awareness is important.

But the deeper invitation is action.

The action of listening.

The action of reaching out.

The action of moving the body.

The action of resting.

The action of telling the truth.

The action of creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, recognised, and valued.

The action of coming back to ourselves, one breath, one step, one moment at a time.

At Sense Greater Peace, this is the heart of the work.

To breathe.

To move.

To restore.

To flourish.

Not by denying what we have lived through, but by learning how to meet ourselves with compassion, courage, and embodied presence.

Not by denying what we have lived through, but by learning how to meet ourselves with compassion, courage, and embodied presence.

May this be a reminder that whatever you have carried, you are worthy of care, support, tenderness and the quiet possibility of peace.

Sue Dawson xxx
Sense Greater Peace