About Me
There is nothing you haven’t felt, thought or experienced that I haven’t. I know this because I've lived it.
Hi, I'm Carrie.
I grew up painfully shy. Only child, quiet, polite and carrying the weight of everyone else's idea of who I should be before I even knew what that meant. I was the one in the school photo looking like I'd rather be anywhere else. The one whose school reports always spotlighted my shyness - 'quietest in the class' and 'if only she'd participate more'. It was as if my quietness was something to be corrected rather than just who I was.
I know what it's like to pick up the phone only to keep putting it down again, going go over and over what you're going to say. To know the right answer to, to be sure of it but watch someone else say it and get the credit. To leave a perfectly fine social situation but still pick it apart. I know the exhaustion of performing a version of yourself that's more acceptable - slightly louder, slightly more visible, slightly less you, and the quiet fury of feeling like you have to do that to fit in.
I tried everything. The books. The tips. I pushed myself into situations that were supposed to get easier but just became more familiar in how much they took out of me. Some of it helped. Briefly. Then I'd find myself back in the same place.
What changed things wasn't a technique or coping mechanism. It wasn't a programme. It wasn't a better version of the same advice. It was a decision. A decision that I was done carrying everyone else's idea of who I was supposed to be. Done performing. Done fighting something that was never the enemy. I started working with my shyness instead of against it, and when I did - things shifted. Not because the shyness disappeared. Because the war with it did.
My shyness still shows up from time to time but it stopped calling all the shots a long time ago. It's part of who I am and I'm no longer interested in pretending otherwise. That transformational shift is what I now help other people find.
Professional Background
I'm a qualified counsellor with over a decade of professional training and experience. I'm and accredited member of the BACP and I work with clients both face to face in Kent and online. But what makes my work genuinely different isn't the qualifications. It's the lived experience of what it actually feels like to move through the world this way and the methodology I've developed from the inside of that experience, not just from a textbook. My work with shyness moves through four stages.
DECODE
We read what's actually been running your shyness. The beliefs absorbed so early they feel like facts. The rules inherited before you had any say. The code running in the background that nobody else has thought to look at.
DE-SHAME
We put down the weight. The verdict you've been handing yourself for years. The case you've been building against yourself at 2am. None of that was ever yours to carry.
REFRAME
We see the full picture of who you are. Because shyness comes with great things - deep listening, the ability to read a room, the noticing of what louder people miss entirely. This isn't hollow consolation. It's fact.
SHYNE
You move forward as yourself. Not a performance, not a fixed version, not someone else's idea of brave. Your own steps, your own pace, your own version of what enough looks like.
This isn't tips. It isn't strategies. It's a completely different conversation about what's actually been driving your shyness and what's been piled on top of it that was never yours to carry.
This is what it looks like when you stop apologising for being quiet and start living on your own terms. Skydiving. White water rafting. Motorcycling. Zip lining through jungles. Not because the shyness disappeared. Because I stopped letting it decide what I was allowed to do.
If you've been looking for someone who genuinely understands this, not just professionally but from the inside, I'm here.