About the book

During my years of work as a counsellor and psychotherapist, and thanks to my academic background as pedagogue, it became very apparent how little emotional education children generally get, which, in my opinion, is one of the significant factors responsible for our suffering as adults. This suffering is inherited from generation to generation together with maladaptive coping mechanisms to deal with problems and emotions.

This has been very present for me for a long time and I can confidently say I see this in most of the clients that come through my practice doors. The most common way to cope with issues and unpleasant emotions is avoidance. We avoid, dismiss, brush under the carpet, deny, and neglect our mental health and all of a sudden it takes its toll and it becomes too much, it becomes unmanageable and we don’t know what to do. We can’t avoid anymore because avoiding becomes futile and we get lost, we only know we want to fix it now, we don’t want to look at what is happening and what is there, and often we go to therapy looking for quick fixes.

I work with metaphors a lot, I am a visual person and, as the book warm I am, I love stories, one day I came up with a metaphor, called the pile of sh** (yes, I do use swear words in my practice sometimes, especially if I know my clients will relate better to that, and because sometimes there is not a better word to describe something). I used this metaphor so much with my work with adults, it basically means to explain that in order to process our issues the only way is sitting on them, facing them, looking at them, exploring them, being uncomfortable, basically, the only way is through, avoiding is not going to work anymore, there is always a limit to how much we can avoid an issue or an unpleasant emotion.

So, I started to think how could more people benefit from this metaphor, how could I share this message for it to reach more people than just my clients? How can we get people to learn or understand this concept? What if we also share it with the little ones? Can they become adults who manage emotions and life difficulties better?

It was one day during lockdown, when I finally decided to do it. It was a sunny day, I took one of my many notebooks and sat down in my little side garden. I had the idea, but it took me quite a bit of time to figure out how to make it an engaging visual story that can be appealing to not only children but also young people or adults.

And so, one of those morning breaking my brains thinking in ways to make it fun, Ulises was born and with him his superpower, and it all made sense! Words started to flow, I couldn’t stop writing! And the rest is history…