Welcome!

Shy dreamers get to have adventures too – and you don’t have to change who you are to get there.

As a lifelong student of shyness and social anxiety — and how they can keep your expression and creativity locked away inside — I’m here as your gutsy guide to all things showing up and speaking up, so you can stop waiting for an invitation to your own life and make moves towards more belonging, connection, ease and fun.

What’s Gutsy all about?

Gutsy helps people who are shy, quiet, introverted, inhibited, self-conscious, socially anxious – or anything else in that lonely, shut-down and cut-off realm – to find ease and freedom in their expression, and the internal safety and confidence to be more themselves.

Mostly we do this through working with characters that allow permission to try on new behaviours, and stories that tap into the deep unconscious. We unlearn the inhibitions and relearn to play, and get profound insights about ourselves along the way.

Imaginative play guides us towards connection, inner strength, creative expression, belonging and belly-deep authentic confidence.

I believe…

We all deserve the skills to let others see, know and love us, to represent and express ourselves joyfully and easily, to make sure our efforts and creations are recognised, respected and rewarded, to make ourselves heard, especially when asking for help, defending ourselves and others, advocating for ourselves and others, and standing up for what we believe in.

What happens when you take the brave step into a Gutsy course?

Gutsy People usually experience:

  • a sense of ease and peace with being a quieter person

  • the deep relief of sharing struggles with others who get it

  • connection, friendship and mutual support

  • feeling more okay with being nervous, uncertain or uncomfortable

  • anxiousness replaced with playfulness, curiosity and enthusiasm

  • feeling more comfortable in their skin, more at ease in their bodies

  • more ease in social interactions or when speaking in a group, letting go of fear of judgement

  • more flow in interactions, and not worrying about what they’re going to say or hovering on the outside of conversations

  • the confidence, expansion and growth that comes through challenging yourself

  • a connection with their inner strength and unique gifts

  • more self-trust and less self-doubt

  • more energy and the confidence to pursue new creative ideas — and to share them

  • knowledge that further change is possible and that you don’t have to change who you are to have more adventures and a big life

“Susannah is a knowledgeable, skilled and sensitive facilitator who creates a space where it feels okay to tackle thorny topics. I am massively grateful.”

Hex

“Susannah met me with warmth, kindness and lots of laughter. She guided me through challenges and helped me understand a lot about myself, and what I can change and how… it has been a wonderful journey and potential to be life changing.”

Sarah

“My hesitation about performing was replaced by curiosity about what would be created by the group each week, and how I would relate to their stories. I ended the course feeling hopeful.”

Chloe

Quiet is not a sickness and needs no cure.

My hope for everyone who takes the brave step into one of my workshops or courses, is not to become ‘fearless’. It is not to overcome, defeat, conquer, triumph or prevail over shyness – violent metaphors are not my thing.

I’m not particularly interested in helping you become an outgoing go-getter or a charming schmoozer, and especially not in teaching you tips to grease the wheels at work or learn slick tricks to fake confidence and veil your authentic ways. We’ve done enough hiding behind masks.

It’s time to stop the personal development shame cycle! So much self-help, inner work and personal development fuels shame by treating us like broken things that need to be fixed. True, lasting change is rooted in self-acceptance and self-trust. We get access to deep wells of inner power when we allow, trust and accept, instead of fighting and shaming our feelings, emotions and responses.

Gutsy can help you discover ways to feel safe to be seen and heard, and to do the things you want to do with the thumping heart, hot face, shaky voice and fluttery fingertips (although in time, and with practice, those experiences will also fade.)

Confidence can be quiet.

Hello! I’m Susannah.

Or Suse ;)

I used to hate introducing myself. And talking about myself. And then I’d feel isolated and invisible, and wonder why it felt like nobody really knew me. Sound familiar?

Now I know how to let the guard drop, show who I am, and let people in.

So! What’s my story?

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being a music critic. I plastered my bedroom walls with pages from Kerrang! magazine, lived for nights at Brixton Academy, and idolised Courtney Love and Patti Smith. I doubted my ability and compared myself to all the opinionated dudes with their seemingly encyclopaedic music knowledge. But it wasn’t that which ultimately deterred me. It was being told I wasn’t “cut out for journalism”. That I was too quiet. Too shy.

I’d been a whisper-voiced child, allergic to the spotlight and totally phobic of the phone. And my childhood shyness hung around, adding low self-esteem, disordered eating and a vicious inner critic to its bag of anxious tricks.

I solo struggled for many years. It wasn’t just that the idea of opening up about my problems was scary, but it didn’t even cross my mind that things could ever be different. And I didn’t have the language to explain how terrified I felt, how inept, trapped and lonely. Now I might describe it as being locked behind thick safety glass, watching life happen from the outside, not knowing how to reach out, desperately hoping someone might notice me.

Sometimes we need a shield up against the world; and sometimes that shield becomes the thing that blocks our way.

Put on a brave face

I got pretty good at putting on a brave face (aka a mask). I achieved ‘proficiency in disco dancing’ from Kelly’s Dance Studio aged 8 (let me know if you want to see my certificate), blushed and sweated my way through a few school plays, and made a lovely best friend or two to cling to.

In time, I learnt a bunch of ways to fake confidence and social ease. And it seemed to help a bit. But I was feeding that inner critic the message that it was right – that if I was less like me and more like some idea of a socially confident, ‘normal’ person, then I would get along better. The critic got stronger and meaner.

It’s hard to feel love, when you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. It’s hard to feel connected when you’re offering up a guarded and semi-fictionalised version of yourself to the world.

Drama? No F-ing way!

I always knew that drama was my worst nightmare. And I think I always had a sense that it was the exact thing I needed. ‘The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek’, after all.

I’d had enough of anxious inner wrangling and longed for the feeling of anything coming naturally. The idea of being carefree or unselfconscious was alien. I desperately wanted to feel ease, acceptance, a sense of belonging, closeness.

I found a workshop run by dramatherapist Claire Schrader, and gave it a go. I was drawn to Claire because she’d also been a very shy, withdrawn child, who transformed her life through drama. She understood my story. I did my first course with her in 2014 – something huge shifted and a little light cracked in. I did many more courses over the years, and went on to train in Claire’s Sunflower Effect method in 2021.

Dream outweighs the fear

In time, and with practice, the balance shifted until the risk of not showing people who I am and that I care, the risk of not sharing my work and my gifts, the risk of not standing up for myself and what I believe in, all outweighed the fear.

With each step, I was gathering evidence that I wasn’t some fragile thing that needed to be carefully bubble-wrapped, but rather I was someone with inner strength and gifts worth sharing.

I was unlearning underestimating myself — because being quiet doesn’t mean that you can’t.

While I never became a music critic, I went one step better: I played in a feminist punk band for eight years, released an album, played and talked live on the radio, and toured all over the UK and Europe. Turns out nobody accuses you of being “too quiet” when you’re sat behind a drum kit.

I also wrote a book about feminist performance art (published by Zero Books), spoke in front of a crowd at the launch party, contributed writing to various other publications (including Calvert Journal, Christie’s Magazine and Saatchi Gallery’s Art & Music), developed my book into a workshop and gallery exhibition, and collaborated on various social art projects, which always took extra care to explore ways to gather for people who don’t always find socialising easy. I (will!) also write Sharky Club over at Substack.

In some ways, the most profound changes in my life are the ones that don’t look like much on paper, but fill me up every day.

Unselfconsciousness, peace of mind. Being a better friend, making people laugh. Setting boundaries, having difficult conversations, standing up for what I believe in. Showing up for my business. Being able to chat to a tearful stranger. Being able to show up to celebrate my friend at her wedding, even though I didn’t know a single other person there. Being able to speak at my grandma’s funeral.

Throughout it all, I haven’t transformed into a slick, loud, poised extravert. Far from it! But I have become someone who knows that:

Fear is not a stop sign and discomfort is not an error message.
These are signals that we’re on a Gutsy path.
And we can build our capacity to handle them and keep moving.

Humans are social things (yes, even introverts!), and I believe we shy ones are actually the most socially sensitive of all — and that’s a gift. When isolation is no longer your M.O., and you get more comfortable making connections and being in groups, whole worlds open up in unforeseeable ways.

One door opens and three more appear behind it.

The shy ones get to choose their adventure too.

Ready for much more?

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