The Power is Ours

For my first every blog on my newest venture I think it’s only fitting that I open with my Advocacy work because it has been my passion & a source of deep satisfaction & personal emotional growth for me for so many years.

They do say that we will find ourselves in the places & spaces that are meant for us & I think this is very true of my journey into my career in advocacy.

I never planned to be an advocate – as a child I wanted to be an artist & a fashion designer – but a teacher at school told my Mum that my passionate concerns for social justice meant she saw me becoming a social worker. Though it took some meandering her foresight was sharp as I spent many years working in Children’s Services.

I found myself embarking on my career within Welfare Rights after a brutally sharp career redirection – what felt a weeping end of a dream for me became a profound new beginning.

As I build the blend of support that is lbrucetherapies.com I can see that my advocacy career both helped me to heal emotional wounds around anxiety &low self-esteem & allowed me to positively leverage some of the family stories that define me & inform me & my core beliefs as I dedicated myself to supporting others to create change within their own lives.

So the truth is I found myself working within Welfare Rights after my career as a lecturer in art history ground to a stuttering halt. I had a real talent for art history & dreams to achieve but I was also wracked by crippling anxiety & low self esteem & a deadening cloak of imposter syndrome that told me that a working-class girl from the North of Scotland would never make it in a world defined by class & gender biases. It takes a gushing sense of entitlement to smash those glass ceilings & I couldn’t even manifest a trickle & so I proved myself right & after not getting a number of paid roles within the field of lecturing I found myself unemployed signing on & facing the classic crushing recruitment line of ‘you don’t have to take this job, but it will affect your benefits if you choose not to’.

I felt like the worst fool & failure but in fact grudgingly accepting that non-negotiable AO position in Jobcentre was life changing & in fact became a lifeline for me. Within months I was operating an unofficial networking group that was linking artists & musicians, helping me feed my creativity via a alternative route & within a couple of years I had found a career I loved helping lone parents to find a career that suited their lives.

Our stories of who we are & how we live are a deeply influential thread in in my mindset coaching work. Our stories can empower & disempower us & sometimes they do a bit of both with the balance always shifting & I had a dual package of stories that fed & starved me simultaneously. Building a successful career in advocacy has helped me to be true to my gloriously empowering stories that we must ‘do as we should be done by’ & we must always stand up for what is right whilst also bringing myself the emotional sustenance that helped me soothe toxic stories around never being good enough as I strengthened  my own self esteem through all the ways I was able to make a difference to other people’s lives.

(Learn more about our stories, narrative therapy & my mindset coaching style in future blogs – watch this space)

I came to work with lone parents at a time when it was possible to bring meaningful support that helped women make meaningful choices around careers that suited them & their families needs. I absolutely loved to hear women’s stories, building connection & working together to reach their goals & I never took shortcuts pushing people towards jobs that were unsuitable just because I wanted an outcome. Doing the right thing & seeing the joy on women’s faces as they actually found careers that inspired them & restored their self-esteem made me feel true to my core values on standing up for what us right & every time I did as I would be done by – giving others the mentoring & guidance I had needed myself - I slowly & significantly healed wounds within my own self esteem that was holey with a long-held sense of not being good enough. 

Fired on my joy in this career, I requalified in Advice & Guidance then moved from Employment into Welfare Rights & once again fate found me, giving me opportunities to live by my core values helping other to make change in their lives & opportunities to heal my own self esteem wounds within every encounter. I have always told the families I work with that the support I offer does as much for me as they feel it does for them & this is so true which is why I always say I bring my heart to every case. Every opportunity to help a family create change helps me to feel ever more grounded in living as the truest & happiest version of myself.

Working with families with children with additional needs became my deepest passion & source of achievement & self-esteem once again this new role emerged at a times of personal crisis & career change. My first success with a disability benefits form came as I worked with a young single parent who was coming to terms with her son’s ASD. He was only 3 & not yet diagnosed but we worked together to describe the ways that his challenges with speech understanding & behaviour affected his daily care & his ability to be safe outdoors & submitted the application. I had faith that we were right to make the application & the young woman had faith in me. When the parent came back to tell me that the claim had been awarded & at the highest rate, in truth we were both crying & laughing & profoundly grateful.

For her this had been a journey of acceptance around her son & his emerging needs, of recognising & feeling validated in her clarity that this was not a parenting issue – her son needed & warranted support & the award we achieved together helped her to have a clear portfolio of evidence that enabled her to ask for what she needed for him in the moment & for the future.

For me, being able to work with this young woman & help her open doors around financial emotional & educational support just made me feel a deep sense of self-worth. At this point in my life I was a single parent’ I was struggling with feelings of loneliness & isolation & this achievement restored my battered sense of self, soothing another layer of my lifelong issues with anxiety & self-esteem.

I’d never really thought of my anxiety as a disability, for me it was more of a shameful dirty secret that I masked behind stories of being shy & reserved &of liking to be quiet & enjoying my own company but the truth was & is that I suffer from anxiety that this has a social aspect & at this point in my life I was feeling so vulnerable & I was locked in a survival mindset that was forcing me to keep going even though I was suffering from insomnia & palpitations that were affecting me throughout my working day. My desire to do as you would be done by but my incapacity to bring that motto to myself saw me crushing down my anxiety symptom so I could feed my low self esteem by helping others to change their lives.

Of course, we can’t ignore our health & its symptoms forever & after a period of brutal workplace bullying I ended up off sick for 6 months as unwell with anxiety as I have ever been & once again my work supporting families with children & additional needs became my saviour & source of emotional healing as I managed my to return to work.

This period brought me the deepest sense of personal achievement & self esteem I had ever experienced within the workplace & it gave me the opportunity to pursue excellence – in building relationships, in winning awards & in building advocacy skills. I developed a project under the auspices of Children’s Services & at its peak I was raising £500k in additional benefits & associated income for families in my local area as a successful Representative working to Tribunal & Upper Tribunal Level.  

There was a point where I felt my professional life could get no better but at a time when local & national government were slashing social support a targeted project that supported some of the most vulnerable families was not going to survive & I was utterly devastated when my project was cancelled & I was redeployed to work on another project.

I’d fought a year-long battle to save the project & families I was working with begged me to carry on. I even contemplated leaving my job to set up a business as an independent Tribunal Rep & advocate, but I was a single parent & I had no other financial support & the fear of poverty & my personal discomfort with the idea of charging people for my support held me back. This was moral – I sincerely believe this kind of support should be available when required & to an appropriate standard for free & while it is - through Citizens Advice etc - I have spent most of my professional life supporting families who have just not been able to access that support because it is so constricted & overburdened by the dual penalties of lack of funding & overwhelming demand. It was also personal. My own struggle to value my own skills made it very hard for me to feel comfortable asking for payment for something that I seem to just naturally have a talent in & something I actually passionately enjoy doing.

But we are all entitled to be paid for the work we do & to be financially rewarded for the skills & talents we have & so my final journey into working on the relationship between my advocacy & my own issues with anxiety & self esteem came after another of the crunching gear changes in my career – my sudden & unexpected redundancy in November 2020.

In the years since then I have retrained as a a holistic therapist & mindset coach whilst also offering ad hoc advocacy support to women who knew about my capacity as a Welfare Rights Adviser & Tribunal Rep.

This has been a period of both profound learning & humbling personal growth for me. I had hoped that I would continue on my path of bolstering my self-esteem via helping others, keeping on working as I retrained but the depth of my self-exploration & a series of personal losses & bereavements led me to step back so I could as Nicole Lepera says, ‘do the work’.

I increasingly noticed that while I love helping others, I had never really allowed myself the privilege of taking care of the wounds that were feeling my issues with anxiety & self-esteem.

As I retrained, I dreamed of a blend of support that would help bring balance to mind body & soul & the more I learned the more I realised I needed to learn techniques that offered support on a physical & energetic as much as an emotional & psychological level & the more I recognised that I needed this blend of support as much as anyone that I hoped to help in my future role.

So I stepped back & as I learned I practiced first on myself trialling everything that I thought I might offer so I knew its impact & potential before I even contemplated offering the support to others.

In doing so I opened up to stories of trauma – personal, familial & cultural – that were at the roots of my anxiety & low self esteem as well as my physical symptoms of joint & back pain. My journey to manage my own health became integral in the blend of somatic, energetic & mind-set tools I brought to my therapeutic portfolio in Embody Loving You.  

I’d always held a story that taking care of my own needs was self-indulgent because at my core I just didn’t feel I was entitled to have those needs met & I ultimately felt ashamed of my anxiety & the joint issues that had always caused me to suffer what my son calls ‘spectacular face plant’ falls.

Now there is something rather askew in offering loving support to the additional needs of others whist denying & loathing our own needs & so my own journey into self-care has helped me reach into a self-acceptance that has been profoundly healing.

Far from being self-indulgent I have found that it has in fact strengthened my capacities as an advocate in ways I could only have dreamed of.

In the glory days of my local authority funded advocacy work the truth is my anxiety fuelled my success. I was driven to succeed for every family, but I was also unconsciously functioning in survival mode, stalked by a toxic sense of imposter syndrome, constantly fearing that I’d be exposed as not good enough. This cocktail made me able to empathise with parents sitting before Tribunal judges because my heart was pounding as much as theirs, but it is hardly healthy to spend several days a week functioning in a state of holy terror of the threat of public failure. No win totally erased my fear of failure & every success fed my imposter syndrome – I’d succeeded this time, but the moment of crashing failure was just around the corner. As Bessel Van Der Kolk says Our Body Keeps the Score & my body was increasingly affected by joint pain & numbness & I knew that could not go on.

As an advocate & holistic therapist the blend of support I practice & offer has allowed me to reach a space of internal peace & security that allows me to be my loving & compassionate self -  the advocate who instinctively understands my families, their children & their needs - whilst also feeling secure in my capacity to be forensic in working on their behalf & razor focused on getting the right outcome - I feel the buzz of anticipation that spurs me to deliver but I'm no longer plagued by the spectre of imposter syndrome - I've befriended her as a vulnerable part of me that is at the core of my capacity to connect.

This inner work & also my work with the women who have sought out my support in my time away from the workplace has also helped me to explore my money mindset & to recognise that I like anyone else am entitled to be paid for work that I am skilled & talented in. I’m so profoundly grateful for that journey & to the women who sought my support & who actually paid me more that I asked for because they received my support & they could see that 8 was undervaluing my work. As in every stage of my journey in advocacy, support has been mutual & my work has helped me heal & grow into a deeper sense of myself & for that I’m profoundly grateful.

I am now open & secure about the charges for the advocacy work I offer.

I charge £80 for the completion of a DLA or PIP form. I offer a free initial consultation where we discuss your or your child’s additional needs & I will never take forward a claim if I don’t think it will he successful. This is informed by my need to do as you would he done by & to stand up for what is right. I think it is morally wrong to take someone’s money on the promise of an outcome you don’t believe you can achieve & so if I doubt the possible outcome I will advise & support on additional evidence that may be needed & we can work at any point in future because I want you to have a successful outcome.

£80 can be a lot of money for those who are struggling financially & this was a significant part of my issues with charging for my work, but I offer opportunities to discuss & pay in instalments to help manage worries about the cost of support.

When it comes to Tribunal work, I charge £200 for Tribunal Representation. A Tribunal is a year-long process that involves working through all the paperwork on the case to build a Tribunal case to be presented in court. If I have assisted with a family’s forms & my DLA or PIP has been refused the £80 paid for the initial application is deducted from this £200 Tribunal fee.

When it comes to benefits forms outcomes are not guaranteed & I always tell my families I work with that there are 3 variables – the needs we are seeking support for; my capacity to articulate those needs according to the rules on benefits applications & the attitude of the person who is making the assessment.

Since we cannot control the attitude of the person making the assessment & all the variables around tiredness, overwork, hunger or even biases or family arguments that may be impacting on their view at the moment they make the assessment I like to make sure that those things I can control – my assessment & my capacity to clearly articulate those needs is as strong & powerful as I can make them so the balance of power is as strongly in our favour as I can muster.

Along with completing DLA & PIP forms I also offer support with eg medical forms for social housing & eg Blue Badge & other related support. I charge £50 for this support & again this includes a free consultation to look at likely outcome H advice if I think additional information will be required to achieve a successful outcome.

My blend of holistic therapeutic support ranging from Reiki, Emotional Freedom Technique & somatic therapies, meditation & breathwork as well as mindset tools also offer options for tailored support that may also be of interest because so often as has been my own lived experience our need to care for others directly impacts on out capacity to bring self-compassion & self-care to ourselves. Prices are reasonable & vary dependent on the tailored support needed so I welcome discussions to explore what may help.

If you would like my support, I am happy to chat with you & arrange a consultation.

You can contact me on 07507107508 or via email at laura@lbrucetherapies.com

Warmest of wordy hugs

Laura