In Session
SULMUM In Practice
Remembering Wholeness
Counselling is meant to help you become aware of the beliefs, convictions, patterns, and stories that get in your way. Receiving guidance and support can help name, resolve, and release these. Awareness leads to agency: you hold who you are and decide how this is expressed. Based on study, ever evolving insights and lived experience, I have developed my integrative approach: SULMUM.
SULMUM derives from the Sumerian language. It’s a beautiful and all encompassing notion that holds well being and wholeness, as well as the question: are you well?
SULMUM intentionally steps out of the performance-driven tradition of quick fixes and rapid transformation. Even if it feels like a flash when something clicks and shifts profoundly, it will be because of extensive inner processing.
We have to be ready to hear our truths.
I do not engage in the more directive model of change work, often rooted in a “technician” mindset: the idea that the practitioner is the expert, and the client is the subject being “fixed.” It’s transactional, fast, and often focused on symptom removal rather than deep integration.
This stands in contrast to the trauma-informed, collaborative, relational approaches I am continuously building into my practice.
With SULMUM, healing is not something done to someone, but a space held with someone.
True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the Unbroken.
-Jeff Foster-
THE FIVE PILLARS
When we are pushed to our limits, we learn we have no bounds. When we face our mortality, we finally understand what it is to be infinite. When we fall into the core of ourselves, there is an entire universe to catch us. When we hold ourselves unconditionally, we discover a space to hold it all.
SELF
The self is not a single fixed thing. I see it as a dynamic, shifting constellation of parts, drives, memories, roles, and states of awareness. In psychology, thinkers from Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung have described the psyche as layered and multiple: instinct and restraint, persona and shadow, conscious thought and unconscious longing existing simultaneously within us.
Modern approaches often understand the self less as one unified identity and more as multiple. You can look at it as an ongoing internal dialogue between different needs, emotions, protective strategies, and ways of relating to the world.
Everything starts with ourselves. This is where the root lies of both the questions and the answers.
(EDIT: SOUL SOUP AS PART OF SELF)
Whether you are an atheist or agnostic, a humanist, or adhere to one of the World’s religions, it does not matter: We all long for connection and communion. With ourselves, our surroundings, and our loved ones, and possibly something even beyond that.
Who or what is at home in your soul soup?
LOVING LANGUAGE
The inner critic or the internalised critical voices of others undermine us. By not only consciously observing which words we let in, but also our self-talk and the stories we have created, we find our own loving language to liberate and motivate us.
Words have meaning. Choose them wisely.
INNER WISDOM
Every human being holds innate wisdom. It is held in the mind and the soul, but also in the body. Intuition, instinct, or this inexplicable knowing, are deeply rooted in our being. By reaching out and opening up to the inner voice, we are reminded we are whole.
Hear the whispers, before they become shouts.
INTEGRITY
Integrity is what we stand for — our wholeness. It is the alignment between what we believe, what we feel, what we say, and how we move through the world. Living wholly means living in accordance with our values.
By being honest with ourselves and others, we strengthen our sense of inner coherence. We become less fragmented by performance, fear, or the need to adapt ourselves to external expectations.
In that honesty, sovereignty steadies us: the ability to remain connected to ourselves while engaging openly with others.
It is not something we perform, but something we embody.
MEANING
Meaning is how we shape our lives. We are, by nature, meaning-making creatures. To live purposefully is not to control everything that happens to us, but to remain conscious of the meaning we give to our experiences. The events and experiences of our lives invite us to reflect on how we interpret, carry, and integrate them into our story.
Meaning is not always something we find immediately. It is also not static or fixed. Allow yourself time, give yourself grace. Sometimes it is something we slowly create through reflection and connection.
While we cannot always choose what we go through, we do have agency in deciding what it comes to mean to us. That agency can offer solace, dignity, and comfort.
ABOUT ME:
Because I am personally highly visible here on Substack, I have written a separate reflection on what means for my practice and my professional position: