The Wallet & Bucket Chronicles - A metaphorical guide to emotional regulation, inner growth, and mental wellness.

In our sessions, I often use metaphor to explain your brain’s regulation system:

The Bucket represents accumulated stress and emotional overload - what we call the limbic “overflow.” When it fills too high, symptoms appear: irritability, insomnia, anxiety, fatigue, IBS, addictive habits.

The Wallet represents your cognitive and emotional resources - confidence, clarity, resilience, adaptability, courage, stability, intuition, meaning. Each positive interaction, action, or thought adds coins to your wallet. The deeper work of hypnotherapy is strengthening the Wallet while lightening the Bucket.

A series of 12 stories in the Wallet & Bucket universe will be coming soon. They explore in the accustomed metaphorical language, the neurocognitive, emotional and physiological processes that are related to the play between Wallet & Bucket. I am sharing a brief introductory for each story in the chronicles: 1. The Garden Between Then and When

Theme: Emotional composting & restoring natural cycles

Use: REM sleep, unresolved grief, insomnia

Excerpt: “In the garden of deep time, everything that once felt heavy is slowly turned to fertile soil...”

2. Bucket Meets the Herd

Theme: Social interaction and energy exchange

Use: Loneliness, burnout from over-giving

Excerpt: “At the edge of the clearing, Bucket saw others who had learned how to fill and be filled...”

3. The Bubble Boil

Theme: Managing anger and emotional spikes

Use: Emotional dysregulation, explosive reactions

Excerpt: “When the fire under Bubble's base burned too hot, everything inside began to boil...”

4. The Wallet Blueprint

Theme: Long-term goals and habit-building

Use: Motivation, planning, self-trust

Excerpt: “Wallet opened its quiet scroll and began sketching a plan - not of tasks, but of values…”

5. The Sugar Swing

Theme: Blood sugar & emotional reactivity

Use: Metabolic wellness, emotional eating, impulsivity

Excerpt: “Wallet was feeling jittery again - and the swing between highs and lows was growing...”

6. Inflammation Forest

Theme: Chronic stress, immune response, internal overload

Use: Autoimmune flares, mood volatility, trauma

Excerpt: “Deep in the red woods, Bucket noticed the air was hot and heavy. Even the leaves looked inflamed...”

7. The Mitochondria Workshop

Theme: Cellular energy, motivation, burnout

Use: Fatigue, depression, metabolic healing

Excerpt: “Tiny engineers were at work inside the cells - tuning the energy engines of the self…”

8. The Vagus Bridge

Theme: Nervous system repair through breath, rest, and connection

Use: Panic, vagal dysregulation, shutdown states

Excerpt: “Crossing the Vagus Bridge meant entering a space where calm wasn't optional - it was inevitable…”

9. The Gut Garden

Theme: Microbiome, digestion, emotional processing

Use: Gut health, trauma, intuition

Excerpt: “Wallet found tiny creatures beneath the soil who whispered in chemicals... and dreams.”

10. The Cortisol Caves

Theme: HPA axis, survival mode, chronic stress

Use: Exhaustion, adrenal fatigue, hypervigilance

Excerpt: “Inside the caves, echoes of ancient alarms still rang... but a different rhythm was waiting.”

11. The Serotonin Springs

Theme: Pleasure, mood regulation, emotional resilience

Use: Depression, anhedonia, disconnection

Excerpt: “It was said the Springs ran warm only for those who remembered joy... even if only in memory.”

12. The Dopamine Dunes

Theme: Reward systems, addiction loops, focus

Use: ADHD, tech habits, impulsivity

Excerpt: “The dunes shifted with every step - but the trick was not in chasing, but planting.”