Some conversations arrive like a hand on your shoulder — quiet, steady, and impossible to ignore.
In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, sits down with Fareda Barlas, sister, therapist, and founder of Hadley Wood Practice, for a deeply human conversation about the ways our past shapes not just what we do, but who we become. This is not an interview about techniques. It’s a conversation about the hidden rules we’ve lived by, the layers we keep protected, and the surprising tenderness that shows up when someone truly witnesses you.
Expect a few laughs, honest confessions, and moments that land in the body.
If you’ve ever wondered why success can feel hollow, why asking for help is so hard, or why the same survival patterns keep showing up even after “doing the work,” - this conversation will meet you there.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why some of the strengths you’re proudest of began as the strategies that kept you safe and how they now limit you.
- What “bringing all of who you are into the room” really looks like in therapy and leadership.
- How dissociation and hyper-competence help you survive... and why they can quietly block joy.
- A simple way to spot when vulnerability is being traded for productivity.
- Why therapists and high-achievers often feel stuck even when “everything looks fine” on paper.
- What shifts when therapy becomes a living relationship instead of a checklist.
About the guest: Fareda Barlas
Fareda Barlas is an integrative, trauma-informed psychotherapist and the founder of Hadley Wood Practice. She is BACP-registered and works across psychodynamic, attachment-based, existential/humanistic, and somatic approaches. Fareda focuses on the whole person, including the nervous system, relational patterns, and lived experience, and is known for bringing intuition, authenticity, and presence into deep trauma work.
Find her at Hadley Wood Practice (website), Instagram @fareda.psychotherapy, Book a session to Work with Fareda.
FREE RESOURCES:
- Follow Farya Barlas on Instagram, Substack to stay connected with the version of you who’s ready to expand. Follow for daily insights on identity work, nervous system capacity, and feminine leadership — so the part of you that’s growing has a place to land.
- If this episode helped you hear something true inside yourself, help us get this work into more hands. Join the From Trauma to CEO Launch Squad, support the series launch, and enter to win some beautiful prizes along the way.
- Want to know which identity is running your success? Take the Success Shift Quiz to uncover which nervous system patterns shape your business, leadership, and ambition.
- If you’re ready to stop building success from survival and start leading from regulation, ease, and capacity, join my email list to be the first to know about upcoming programs, retreats, and ways to work with me. Click here to join.
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