Dr. Terry Murphy, an Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) trainer and therapist, opens up about the deeply personal journey that unfolded as she prepared to step more fully into her role as a teacher and trainer. What began as a recognition that she needed to stop building outward and start turning inward became what she describes as a “dark night of the soul”—a season of intentionally stepping away from work, achievement, and external identities to discover what remained underneath it all.

Terry shares what happened when she reduced her clinical practice by 75%, stopped taking new clients, paused business coaching and supervision, and created space to simply be. Rather than immediately finding peace, she encountered grief. She revisited childhood narratives, relationships, identity, and the layers she had developed over a lifetime to navigate the world. She describes the experience of peeling those layers away as painful, disorienting, and ultimately transformative.

At the heart of Terry’s story is a powerful question: Who are we when we strip away the roles that tell us who we are? Therapist. Trainer. Mother. Partner. Teacher. When all of those identities were set aside, Terry discovered a deeper sense of simply being—and with it, a renewed understanding of worthiness, self-compassion, boundaries, and connection. She also shares the daily practices that now help her stay grounded, including journaling, meditation, movement, reading, time with loved ones, and protecting space for reflection.

This conversation offers a beautiful look at how personal transformation can reshape the way we care for others. Terry talks about bringing this deeper sense of presence into her work with clients, supervisees, and therapists in training, emphasizing that our compassion for others is incomplete if it doesn't include ourselves. Her story is an invitation to slow down, listen inwardly, and discover what might be waiting beneath the identities and expectations we have accumulated along the way.