Stephen Ellerker Life Coach

Stephen Ellerker Life Coach Living life on Purpose Coach. I'm a trained Counsellor, Transactional Analysis Psychotherapist and a Certified and Accredited Life Coach.

I specialise in Clients who have lost their way, and are lacking confidence and direction. I'm a trained Counsellor with a post graduate diploma in psychodynamic counselling, followed by a 6 year training in transactional analysis psychotherapy I qualified with an MSc in psychotherapy in 2006. More recently I've been certified and accredited as a Life Coach. I work from home, both in face to face, as well as Zoom consultations.

02/09/2026

Setting boundaries is often much harder in established relationships than it is with new people. When a friendship, family relationship, workplace relationship, or intimate partnership has developed over years, there are usually unspoken expectations about how each person behaves.
If you have always been available, accommodating, agreeable, or reluctant to say no, changing that pattern can feel uncomfortable for both people.
That does not mean the new boundary is wrong. It may simply mean the relationship is having to adjust to a healthier balance.
Retrospective boundaries work best when they are introduced clearly, respectfully, and consistently. Rather than blaming the other person, explain what you have realised about your own needs and what now needs to change.
Healthy relationships are usually capable of adapting.
And sometimes setting a boundary does more than protect you. It reveals whether there is enough mutual respect in the relationship for both people to have needs.

31/08/2026

The Stroke Economy is a useful way of understanding how deeply human beings need recognition. In Transactional Analysis, Eric Berne described a “stroke” as a unit of recognition, anything that communicates to another person that they have been noticed. This can be positive or negative, verbal or non-verbal, physical or emotional. Claude Steiner later described how families and organisations can develop restrictive rules around giving, receiving, asking for, rejecting, and even giving ourselves strokes. These patterns often begin in childhood and can continue into adult relationships, affecting self-worth, communication, and emotional connection. Healthy relationships are strengthened when recognition is freely and appropriately exchanged. We all benefit from being seen, valued, encouraged, and acknowledged. Sometimes a simple message of recognition, such as “I see you,” “You matter,” or “I’m glad you’re here,” can have a surprisingly powerful emotional impact

28/08/2026

Childhood abuse does not disappear when childhood ends. The child grows up, but the Inner Child may continue carrying fear, shame, sadness, confusion and a sense of being alone.
For many survivors, secrecy was a form of protection. A child may have feared that nobody would believe them, that the abuse would worsen, or that speaking out would result in rejection by family. Remaining silent was not weakness. It may have been the only option to a powerless child.
However, the secrecy that protected the child can imprison the adult.
In this video, I explore what it means to bring childhood abuse into the light. This does not mean telling everybody, confronting an abuser or revealing every detail before you are ready. It means entering a safe, confidential relationship with a trauma-informed professional, where your experience can become speakable, witnessed and validated.
Trauma therapy should not force you to relive or surrender control of your story. You decide what you share, when you share it and how quickly the work proceeds. The aim is to help you process what happened while remaining connected to the safety of the present.
Within that relationship, misplaced shame can be challenged, feelings can be expressed and responsibility can be returned to where it belongs.
Your Inner Child deserves to hear: “I believe you. What happened was not your fault. You do not have to carry this alone anymore.”
Healing begins when secrecy is replaced by safe witnessing, isolation by connection and powerlessness by choice.

26/08/2026

Your Inner Critic is not simply a negative voice in your head. It often develops in childhood as a protective response to unmet emotional needs growing up. When a child does not receive enough safety, connection, encouragement, acceptance, recognition, or reassurance, they experience feelings such as sadness, fear, loneliness, or rejection. Because children tend to personalise what happens to them, they may form beliefs such as, “I don’t matter,” “I’m not lovable,” or “There must be something wrong with me.” The Inner Critic then develops strategies designed to prevent further hurt, such as perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional withdrawal, overachievement, or avoiding vulnerability. These strategies may have helped you cope as a child, but they can continue shaping your relationships and self-esteem long into adulthood. Healing begins by understanding the difference between the Inner Child’s original pain and the Inner Critic’s protective story, and learning to respond with greater awareness, compassion, and emotional support.

24/08/2026

Some emotions don’t simply disappear because we learned not to express them. Sadness, in particular, can become interrupted when a child discovers that crying, needing comfort, or showing vulnerability is ignored, criticised, or shamed. Over time, the sadness may become hidden beneath withdrawal, anger, over-giving, people-pleasing, or fierce independence. In therapy, the aim is not simply to “release” a stored feeling. It is to understand the protective pattern that developed around it, and to create enough safety for the original emotion to be felt, witnessed, and understood. This is emotional completion. It allows us to recognise that the feeling itself was never the problem. The problem was often being left alone with it. Healing can involve finally giving that sadness the compassion, meaning, and connection it needed in the first place.

19/08/2026

Sadness is a natural part of being human. The deeper problem often begins when we experience sadness alone. For those who grew up without enough emotional mirroring, comfort or parental support, present-day sadness can awaken an older experience of abandonment and emotional isolation. We may then look outside ourselves for relief through relationships, achievement, alcohol, gambling, food, work, religion or other forms of distraction. But these strategies do not always address the deeper wound. In this video, I explore the idea of “unaccompanied sadness” and how healing can begin by inviting the Inner Nurturing Parent into that emotional space. Rather than trying to eliminate sadness, we learn to accompany ourselves through it. Over time, this helps dilute the authority of a neglectful or critical inner introject and creates room for a new, loving internal presence. Sadness may remain, but we no longer have to experience it alone.

17/08/2026

Have you ever felt as though your real life is just about to begin—once everything finally falls into place? This is what I call the Myth of Arrival. It’s the belief that peace, confidence, or happiness will come after we solve enough problems, achieve enough goals, or become “enough.” In my work as a therapist and Identity Coach, I see this pattern as part of the Filial Psyche. The Inner Child longs for certainty because certainty feels like safety, while the Inner Critic pushes us to strive, perfect, and please. Together, they keep us chasing a moving finish line. But healing begins when the Inner Nurturing Parent steps in with compassion, offering a deeper truth: safety is not the absence of uncertainty, but the presence of self-trust. We don’t heal by controlling life—we heal by no longer abandoning ourselves within it. Real security is staying with yourself, no matter what unfolds.

15/08/2026

Why do we sometimes become most attached to the relationships that create the greatest anxiety, uncertainty and confusion?
The answer may lie in what our Inner Child learned about love many years ago.
If affection was unpredictable, love may have become associated with waiting. If approval had to be earned, love became performance. If keeping others happy created safety, love became self-sacrifice.
Within the Filial Psyche, these early lessons can create what I call the Filial Loop, where the frightened Inner Child activates an Inner Critic still using childhood rules to keep us safe.
Healing begins when we develop something different: the Healing Loop.
The Inner Child feels. The Inner Nurturing Parent responds with compassion and reassurance. The Adult considers what is actually happening and chooses from present-day reality rather than past fear.
Because familiarity is not compatibility. Intensity is not intimacy. And healing means learning that love no longer requires abandoning yourself.

12/08/2026

Becoming You was never about becoming someone different. It was about finding your way home to yourself. In this final reflection on my forthcoming book, Becoming You, I explore what happens when we begin changing the most important relationship we will ever have: the relationship with ourselves. Through the Filial Psyche, we learn to recognise the needs of our Inner Child, understand the protective role of our Inner Critic, and strengthen the Inner Nurturing Parent who can offer compassion, reassurance, guidance and appropriate challenge. Healing does not mean becoming perfect or never feeling anxious, frightened or uncertain again. It means becoming someone you can trust not to abandon yourself when life becomes difficult. If you recognise yourself in this series but find that understanding your patterns has not been enough to change them, therapy can help. I work as a psychotherapist and life coach, and you are welcome to contact me using the details accompanying this video.

10/08/2026

Chapter 14 of my Becoming You series, called “Awakening to Life,” brings us to the deeper purpose of the healing journey.
Most of us begin therapy or personal development because something hurts. We want relief from anxiety, insecurity, difficult relationships, self-doubt, or the painful patterns that keep repeating themselves. But healing was never meant to become the final destination. Healing is what makes something greater possible: living.
Throughout Becoming You, we have explored the Inner Child, the Inner Critic, and the development of the Inner Nurturing Parent. We have learned about self-trust, acceptance, compassion, boundaries, values, and becoming emotionally safe within ourselves.
Now the question changes from “How do I heal?” to “How do I want to live?”
Awakening to life means moving beyond endlessly fixing yourself and beginning to participate fully in your own existence—with greater freedom, authenticity, curiosity, connection, and courage.

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