Returning To You with Kelly Allison | Ep. 60

On this week’s episode of The True North Show I am joined by a very special guest Kelly Allison. Kelly and I have a beautiful and deep conversation about her journey over the last 18 months and the very deep inner work she has been doing to move through another uplevelling in her personal and professional life. She shares with us why she believes healing isn’t about fixing yourself and the gifts and wisdom that comes with understanding yourself. Kelly’s journey is really inspiring and one that many women can relate to, it is a conversation you definitely don’t want to miss.

Bio:

For over 10 years, I have worked one on one with women, helping them understand the deeper emotional and behavioural patterns held within the body and nervous system.

At the heart of my work is a simple belief: healing is not about fixing yourself. It is about understanding yourself.

My work brings together mind body principles, intuitive insight and more than a decade of experience understanding the connection between our emotions, our behaviours and the body.

I help women understand the ways they have learned to be, the beliefs beneath them and the patterns that may once have served them but no longer feel right. When we understand why we think, feel and behave the way we do, we are no longer simply living through patterns formed long ago. We can consciously decide what we want to keep, what we are ready to release and how we want to move forward. Because awareness gives us something incredibly powerful: choice.

This work is not about becoming someone new. It is about returning to who you already are.

Social Media:

Website:         www.kellyallison.com.au

Facebook:       https://www.facebook.com/KellyAllisonAlchemy/

Instagram:       https://www.instagram.com/kellyallisonalchemy/

Transcript:

[00:34] Megan North:
Hello and welcome to the True North Show. I am your host Megan North, and I’d like to start by thanking the sponsors of the show: Quantum Awakening, Beth Lewis, and Anne C. Clarke.

Today I am delighted to welcome Kelly Allison to the show. Kelly is a mindset and empowerment coach and NLP practitioner who helps women return to themselves after years of living for everyone else. Her work is rooted in her own healing journey and built on the belief that the version of you waiting on the other side of this work is not a rebuilt version of who you used to be, but something entirely new and genuinely worth the effort.

Kelly works with women who are high functioning on the outside and quietly struggling on the inside. The women who have the career, the family, the full life, and who are sitting in their cars in the driveway wondering who they actually are beneath all of it.

Through NLP, mindset coaching, and nervous system work, Kelly helps women identify the patterns that have been quietly running their lives, understand where those patterns came from, and build something more current in their place. Her approach is warm, practical, and grounded in the specific kind of wisdom that only comes from having done your own work first.

Kelly, welcome to the True North Show. I am really happy you are here.

[02:12] Kelly Allison:
Thank you so much Megan. I am so excited and a little bit nervous, which tells me this matters to me.

[02:19] Megan North:
That is a beautiful thing to notice. And I think our audience is going to love you from exactly that honesty. So Kelly helps women find their way back to themselves after years of showing up for everyone else. Stay with us because after the break she is going to share what that actually looks like in practice and why it is never too late to begin.

Welcome back to the True North Show. I am here with mindset and empowerment coach Kelly Allison, and we are about to have a conversation that I think is going to land for a lot of people.

Kelly, let’s start at the beginning. What was the defining moment or journey that led you to this work?

[04:08] Kelly Allison:
I appreciate you asking it that way, because for me it really was a journey rather than one single moment. I grew up in a household where my mum struggled with her mental health, and from a very young age I became really good at reading rooms. At making myself smaller. At being the capable one who did not need too much because there was not always the capacity for me to need anything at all.

I did not know I was doing it. It just felt like survival. And it worked. I was good at school, good at relationships, good at work. Good at everything that required me to show up for other people consistently and capably.

But by the time I was in my mid-thirties I had a marriage, children, a career, and a beautiful home. And I was sitting in my driveway one evening unable to go inside. Not because anything was wrong. Because I genuinely did not know who I was anymore outside of all the roles I was performing. And that was the moment I knew something had to change.

[06:04] Megan North:
And it is such a specific and recognisable image, that driveway moment. I think so many women will know exactly what you are describing, even if their version of it looked different on the outside.

[06:22] Kelly Allison:
Yes. And I think the reason it is so recognisable is that it is not dramatic. It is quiet. It is not a crisis in the traditional sense. It is just this very quiet truth arriving. And the truth was: I have been performing a version of myself for so long that I have lost the thread back to the actual person.

For me, therapy came first. And it was valuable and necessary. But there was a ceiling to how far it took me. I kept understanding things in theory but not being able to shift them in practice. That is when I found NLP, and that changed everything.

[07:19] Megan North:
Can you tell us more about that? Because I think NLP is something a lot of people have heard of but do not really understand.

[07:32] Kelly Allison:
Yes, absolutely. Neuro-linguistic programming, at its core, is about understanding the structure of your own internal experience. Not just what you think or feel but how you are organising those thoughts and feelings internally. How you represent memories to yourself. What submodalities are present in an experience, whether it is close or far, bright or dim, loud or quiet in your internal world. And then, importantly, how to change that structure.

Because when you change the structure of how you are holding something, the feeling changes. And when the feeling changes, the behaviour changes. It is not about positive thinking. It is not about convincing yourself of something you do not believe. It is about going into the architecture of the experience and making an actual change at that level.

What I found personally was that I could understand why I was a people pleaser, I could trace it all the way back to childhood, I could articulate it beautifully in a therapy session. And then I would walk out and do the exact same thing I had always done. Because understanding it and shifting it are two completely different things. NLP gave me the tools to actually shift it.

[09:18] Megan North:
And that gap between knowing and being able to embody it is so real. I have experienced it myself. So how long did your own process take, and what did returning to yourself actually feel like?

[09:37] Kelly Allison:
Honestly, it is still happening. I do not think there is a finish line. But the most significant shift happened over about two years. And what it felt like, in practical terms, was a kind of gradual lightening. Not dramatic, not sudden. Just things that had always cost me energy starting to cost less. Things I had always said yes to out of obligation starting to feel more optional. A quiet growing sense that my preferences were valid and worth acting on.

The practical starting point for me was noticing. Just noticing. Not trying to change anything immediately. What do I actually enjoy? Not what I used to enjoy or what I think I should enjoy. What do I actually enjoy right now in this season of my life? What drains me? What fills me? And then beginning to trust those signals rather than overriding them with logic or obligation.

[11:02] Megan North:
Yes. That noticing piece is underrated. It sounds simple and it is actually quite confronting when you start doing it honestly.

[11:16] Kelly Allison:
It is. Because when you are honest with yourself about what actually fills you versus what you have told yourself should fill you, sometimes those are quite different things. And that discrepancy is important information.

I had a client who had built an entire identity around being a certain kind of mother. Involved, present, doing all the things. And when she sat with the noticing exercise honestly, she realised she resented a significant portion of what she was doing. Not her children. But the performance of the role. The expectation. The relentlessness of it. And sitting with that truth was hard. And also completely transformative. Because it led to a much more honest conversation about what she actually needed and what her family actually needed from her, which were not the same thing.

[12:48] Megan North:
Yes. And I think women especially carry this enormous weight of the maternal identity in particular. The idea that good mothers feel a certain way and do certain things and enjoy certain things. And when the reality does not match, the guilt is immense.

[13:12] Kelly Allison:
The guilt is enormous. And I think the guilt is actually one of the most important things to work with, because guilt is almost always a sign that you are bumping up against a belief that does not fully belong to you. A belief about what you should be or should want that was installed somewhere along the way without your full conscious participation.

When I work with women on guilt, one of the first questions I ask is: whose voice does this guilt sound like? And nine times out of ten, it is not their own voice. It is a parent, a cultural message, a religious framework, a comparison to someone else. And once you can see that, you can begin to examine whether that belief actually fits who you are and what you value now. Sometimes it does, and that is fine. And sometimes it has simply been running the show long past its useful life.

[14:30] Megan North:
That is such a useful question. Whose voice is this? I might borrow that.

[14:38] Kelly Allison:
Please do. It is deceptively simple and genuinely powerful.

[14:46] Megan North:
So I want to talk about the always being the capable one piece. Because I think this is something a lot of women carry and it looks like strength but it costs a lot.

[15:00] Kelly Allison:
It costs everything, eventually. And it looks exactly like strength. That is the thing. From the outside, the woman who always handles it, who never drops a ball, who you can always call and she will know what to do, she looks like she has it together. And inside she is often running on fumes.

The pattern almost always has its roots in childhood. Some version of: if I am capable, I am safe. If I handle everything, I am needed. If I do not need anything, nobody will be disappointed in me or leave. Those are the underlying beliefs. And they are not conscious. They are just the operating system that was installed when you were young and still running, decades later, without being questioned.

The cost shows up in the body as chronic tension and fatigue. In relationships as a slow drift toward isolation even in the presence of people you love. In the self as a growing disconnection from your own needs, desires, and preferences. Because when you are always managing the external, you slowly stop attending to the internal.

[16:47] Megan North:
And when did you start to notice that in yourself?

[17:00] Kelly Allison:
Honestly, not until the driveway moment. Before that, being capable was just who I was. It was not something I questioned because it had always worked. The problems it was causing were quiet enough that I could keep functioning. It was only when the functioning stopped, when the performance ran out of fuel, that I could see what had been underneath it the whole time.

[17:30] Megan North:
Yes. And I think that is really common. We do not question the things that are working, even when they are quietly costing us. It is only when they stop working that we are forced to look.

[17:46] Kelly Allison:
Exactly. And for a lot of women, the thing that forces the look is actually perimenopause. Because perimenopause does something very specific. It strips away the biochemical softening that has made it easier to tolerate things that do not serve us. The hormones that smoothed the edges start to change. And what is left is a much clearer signal.

I have a client who came to me convinced something was wrong with her because she had suddenly stopped being able to tolerate a relationship dynamic she had accepted without question for fifteen years. And my response was: nothing is wrong with you. Your body is finally telling you the truth loudly enough that you can hear it.

[19:02] Megan North:
I love that reframe. And I have had my own version of that experience. Things that I tolerated or managed around just stopped being things I was willing to do. And it was not a decision. It was more like a door closing.

[19:22] Kelly Allison:
Yes. Exactly. A door closing is exactly the right description. Not angry, not dramatic. Just done. And I think if we could shift the cultural narrative around that from something going wrong to something going very right, it would change how women experience this transition completely.

The intolerance for inauthenticity that comes with perimenopause and menopause is not a symptom. It is information. Your body has been softening things for decades and it is now saying: let us tell the truth. And the truth is worth hearing.

[20:14] Megan North:
Absolutely. I am fifty-two and in menopause and I have never felt more like myself. Which is a strange thing to say when so much of the cultural narrative suggests this is a diminishment. But it genuinely does not feel like that.

[20:33] Kelly Allison:
Because it is not. And the research is catching up to that. There is growing evidence that the postmenopausal brain actually operates differently, with some cognitive functions improving after menopause. The fog that can come during perimenopause is real and frustrating and worth addressing. But the version on the other side of that transition is not lesser. It is different. And in many ways, freer.

[21:12] Megan North:
Yes. So from a mental health and wellbeing perspective, what are the non-negotiables for you personally? What do you do to maintain yourself?

[21:28] Kelly Allison:
Movement is the first thing. For me that is walking, mostly. I need to be outside and moving. It is not about fitness in the performance sense. It is about what it does for my nervous system. When I walk, particularly in nature, something shifts. The thoughts that felt stuck start to move. Problems that felt fixed start to offer different angles. I do not know if I could do this work without it.

The second is what I call protected time. Time that is mine, that is not allocated to anyone or anything, that I protect fiercely. For a long time I felt guilty about this. It felt indulgent. Now I understand that it is the thing that makes everything else possible. You cannot give from empty. That is not a metaphor. It is biology.

And the third is honesty. Ongoing, sometimes uncomfortable honesty about how I am actually doing. Not performed wellbeing. Not toxic positivity. Actual honest assessment of what I need, what is not working, what needs to change. I see a supervisor regularly as part of my professional practice, and I still see my own coach. Because I believe strongly that you cannot ask clients to go where you are not willing to go yourself.

[23:18] Megan North:
Yes. That walking the talk piece is so important. And I love that you named protected time as a non-negotiable rather than something that happens when everything else is done. Because it never happens that way.

[23:36] Kelly Allison:
It never happens that way. And I had to grieve the idea that rest would ever arrive naturally, that the to-do list would eventually be empty enough that rest would just happen. It does not. You have to choose it. And for women who have been conditioned to put themselves last, choosing rest feels almost transgressive. And that feeling is worth examining rather than just overriding.

[24:08] Megan North:
Yes. So for someone listening right now who recognises themselves in what you are describing, the woman in the driveway, the capable one who is quietly running on empty, what is the first thing you would suggest?

[24:27] Kelly Allison:
The first thing is to stop pretending you are fine.

Not to anyone else necessarily. To yourself. Because the pretending takes energy. And it keeps you in a loop where the gap between how you are presenting and how you are actually doing keeps widening. And eventually that gap becomes very hard to close.

You do not have to do anything dramatic. You do not have to blow your life up. You just have to start being honest, even privately, even just in a journal or in a conversation with yourself on a walk, about what is actually true. What is not working. What you are tolerating that you do not want to tolerate anymore. What you are missing. What you actually want.

From honesty, the next steps tend to become clearer. And help tends to become something you feel more entitled to seek. Because once you stop pretending you are fine, you can see that you need support. And that is not weakness. It is the most intelligent thing you can do.

[25:44] Megan North:
Yes. Asking for help is such an act of courage. And it opens everything up.

[25:53] Kelly Allison:
It changes everything. Every woman I have worked with who reached out for help, even when it was terrifying, even when they were convinced nobody could really understand what they were going through, has said afterward: I only wish I had done it sooner. Not one of them has said: I wish I had kept trying to manage this alone.

[26:16] Megan North:
Absolutely. So what does your client work actually look like day to day? And who is the woman who comes to you?

[26:30] Kelly Allison:
The woman who comes to me is almost always someone who has been functioning at a high level for a long time and has hit a point where the functioning is no longer enough. She has tried to think her way through it. She has read the books. She has listened to the podcasts. She might have done some therapy. And something is still not shifting.

She is not someone who has given up. She is someone who is still deeply motivated but is frustrated because she keeps bumping up against the same patterns, the same feelings, the same situations. And she is starting to wonder if this is just who she is.

It is not who she is. It is who she learned to be. And that is a very important distinction.

In terms of what the work looks like: we typically start with what is currently happening and what she wants instead. Then we start looking at the patterns underneath that. Often this involves some timeline work, going back to understand where certain beliefs or responses were installed. And then we do the actual change work using NLP techniques and somatic practices to shift things at a deeper level than conversation alone can reach.

The results are often faster than women expect. Which is both a relief and, occasionally, slightly disconcerting. Because when things shift quickly it can prompt the question: what was I holding onto all that time? And that question deserves a compassionate answer. You were holding onto it because it served a purpose once. And now you do not need it anymore.

[28:44] Megan North:
Beautiful. And what about boundaries? Because I feel like this comes up for almost every woman in this kind of work.

[28:56] Kelly Allison:
Always. Boundaries are such a rich area because so much of the popular conversation around boundaries focuses on the mechanics, what to say, how to say it, scripts and templates. And those things have their place. But if the boundary is not coming from a clear sense of your own values and needs, it often does not hold. Because a boundary that you are not fully convinced you deserve to have is very easy to talk yourself out of.

What I work on with women first is the inner permission piece. The belief that you are actually allowed to have limits. That other people’s discomfort with your boundaries is not your responsibility. That saying no to something that costs you too much is not selfish. It is sustainable.

Because here is the thing: women who never say no eventually cannot say yes from a genuine place either. Everything becomes obligation. And the relationships that were built on your availability and capacity, rather than on mutual care and respect, start to feel hollow. And often they are.

Boundaries are not about keeping people out. They are about protecting what is inside. And what is inside is worth protecting.

[30:42] Megan North:
Yes. That is beautifully put. I often say to clients that boundaries are not walls. They are doors with locks that only you hold the key to.

[30:55] Kelly Allison:
I love that. That is exactly right. You get to decide who gets access and when and on what terms. That is not cruelty. That is self-respect.

[31:06] Megan North:
So we only have a couple of minutes left. The question I always ask my guests before we close: what is one lesson or truth that you have learned on your journey that you wish you had known earlier?

[31:24] Kelly Allison:
You are not too much.

For most of my life I carried this quiet but very persistent belief that I was somehow too much. Too sensitive, too emotional, too needy, too whatever the room required me to be less of. And I had become so skilled at managing myself down to fit whatever space I was given that it no longer felt like a choice. It felt like who I was.

The truth is: I was never too much. I had simply been in spaces that were too small. And the work is not to make yourself smaller and more manageable. The work is to find and build the spaces that are large enough to hold all of you.

I wish I had known that earlier. But I am also grateful that I know it now. And I pass it on to every woman I work with, because I think it might be the most important thing most of us need to hear.

[32:31] Megan North:
That is beautiful. You are not too much. You have been in spaces that were too small. What a way to close this conversation. Thank you so much Kelly. I have genuinely loved this.

[32:46] Kelly Allison:
Thank you Megan. This has been such a gift. I am so grateful.

[32:50] Megan North:
And I would like to thank all of my amazing and dedicated audience, my supporters, and my sponsors. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing you all again next time. Thank you again Kelly.

[33:04] Kelly Allison:
Thank you.