Wherever You Go, There You Are: Breaking the Patterns That Follow You Home | Part 1

Summary: In this episode, Katie welcomes Dr. Stephen Paul Edwards, an English businessman turned spiritual counselor with a PhD in spiritual counseling. Known for his precision, discipline, and high-achieving career, Stephen spent decades building successful ventures, tearing them down, and rebuilding again, never quite understanding that the restlessness driving him was rooted in running away from himself.

Stephen opens up about his fourth divorce, a period of deep burnout, and the toxic but transformative relationship that followed. Rather than protecting his image, he wrote it all down, the chaos, the shame, the humor, and published it as a book. His honesty about those experiences has become the very thing that helps his clients recognize their own patterns before losing years to them.

This first part of the conversation explores what happens when high achievers hit a wall, why we are drawn to people who reflect our hidden selves, and what it actually means to come home to yourself after a lifetime of running away from it.

Key Takeaways

• Wherever you go, there you are. Stephen spent decades traveling city to city, country to country, unconsciously believing the next place would be where he finally found himself. The pattern only broke when he recognized he was his own home.
• We are drawn to people who display what we are hiding. Citing Robert Greene, Stephen explains that we often enter chaotic relationships because the other person is expressing the dark or free side of ourselves we have suppressed.
• Material success does not bring happiness. Stephen has been there, built it, and lost it. Without inner alignment, the accolades and things are just empty.
• Vulnerability is freedom. Writing and sharing the most embarrassing chapters of his life released Stephen from the prison of trying to be someone he was not. It opened up conversations he never expected and gave him a sense of freedom he had never felt before.
• Knowing what to do and doing what you know are two very different things. Stephen kept journals for years in a personal development career and never actually used them. Awareness without action does not create change.
• You only know if you are healed when you are tested. Stephen had not responded to his ex returning into his life. For him, that silence was significant progress, not certainty.
• Being happily single is a valid and powerful place to be. Stopping the cycle of jumping from one relationship to the next and learning to enjoy his own company has been one of Stephen's most important growths.

Where to find Dr. Stephen

Website

Dr. Stephen Edward's LinkedIn

Twitter (X)

Resources

• Website
• Free Mini Cogno Mondays
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:28)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I have such a cool guest here with me today and I am very excited to introduce you to him, Dr. Stephen Paul Edwards. He is an English businessman turned spiritual counselor. That description barely scratches the surface. His early life was defined by ambition, discipline and control. That resonates. But mostly failure also resonates.

He built a successful career in business where precision, dominance, and results were everything. Then he tore it all down again. Then he rinsed and repeated. He thrived in high pressure environments and was known for being direct, impeccably presented, and uncompromising in standards. Then he got depressed and felt sorry for himself. Later in life, after a series of deeply personal reckonings, he transitioned into spiritual counseling.

Today he holds a PhD in spiritual counseling and work with individuals seeking alignment between mind, body, and spirit. His journey from power-driven businessman to guide and personal transformation has shaped both his work and his voice. But before he got into all that, he forgot about it and entered into a very toxic, destructive relationship and lost everything, including himself. I cannot wait to dig into this. Dr. Edwards, welcome to the Catapult Effect podcast.

Stephen Paul Edwards (01:40)
Well, thank you so much for having me and thank you for that introduction. don't know, I think it's, I remember it from somewhere, but the fact that you did that homework and did that is very nice and I'm grateful. So thank you very much and for having me.

Katie Wrigley (01:53)
thank

you. So I would love if you would actually just go a little bit into your journey, especially that little hook at the end of this toxic relationship that made you lose everything after you had made all this progress. And I want to start there because that is so common, that we change so much that we want to do in our lives. We think we're on the right path, and we're like, squirrel. And we go back into our old patterns again. So if it's OK with you to start there, I'd love to start there.

Stephen Paul Edwards (02:09)
Yeah. Yeah. So true. ⁓ absolutely.

It's always funny, though, you know, everyone everybody wants to know about when you screwed up, right? They don't care about the rest. It's good, though. It's good, right? I'm the same way. I'm the same way. Yeah. So. ⁓ exactly.

Katie Wrigley (02:25)
Hahaha

Well, it's what makes us relatable, right? Like the stuff that we do after

we screw up is what makes it more powerful, but the screw ups tend to be the relatable part.

Stephen Paul Edwards (02:37)
It's so true. It's so true.

You know, I spent most of my life, well, I spent a lot of my early years screwing up, you know, failures and all kinds of disasters, which is good. think, you know, it's good to make mistakes when you're young, But it would be good to stop making them at some point, right? Anyway, you know, so, yeah, so, you know, I was going through a divorce, right? And if you read the book, you know, it had a few. So I was going through this divorce, my fourth divorce, right? Just to be clear.

Katie Wrigley (02:47)
Yep. Right.

Stephen Paul Edwards (03:02)
And divorce, one divorce, any divorce is traumatic, right? It's never a good, I I don't think anybody gets married to get divorced, right? They think this is gonna be it, and that's what you want. So it was traumatic, but I was also at a point, which is reflected in why I was getting a divorce, I was burned out. know, as it says in my history, I've been really good at building things and then tearing them down, because I lose interest.

Katie Wrigley (03:05)
Yeah.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Stephen Paul Edwards (03:27)
It's not my passion anymore,

right? And sometimes I get to the end of that wall and I go, well, what do I wanna do when I grow up, right? And then you go, well, I don't really wanna grow up, but if I have to do something different, what's it gonna be, right? And so I've reinvented myself so many times, I guess a pattern for me is to think that's a good thing, right?

and then reinvent myself. It's a challenge, right? I need a challenge. This relationship was definitely a challenge, right? She challenged me on every level and I challenged her too. But I was just at a point where, you know, all the things I've done and you mentioned about being successful in the physical world and the material world as it were, don't give you happiness, right? I know everybody says that and then people say, easy for you to say, right? But I've been there, I've done it and they really don't bring you.

Katie Wrigley (03:52)
Thank

Stephen Paul Edwards (04:12)
They're just things. So I decided that I just wanted to have a good time. I'm at the point where I'm living this controlled life. My day was so disciplined, right? You know, getting up at five o'clock in the morning, meditating for an hour, going to the gym, coming back, having a juice, you know, getting myself ready to go out and speak, speaking for seven, eight hours, coming back.

Katie Wrigley (04:12)
Yeah.

Stephen Paul Edwards (04:33)
you know, having dinner with the team, going to bed and doing it all again. So it's very structured. Now there's anything wrong with that, but I just got to the point where it wasn't new anymore. It wasn't exciting anymore. I wasn't passionate about anymore. And I just wanted to be free. I can remember so many times I was traveling every week, every week to a different city. And you couldn't remember which city you were going to or which city you'd been to, right? It was just, it was just moving and moving and moving.

Katie Wrigley (04:54)
Right?

Stephen Paul Edwards (04:56)
But that was also reflection of my life. It was a pattern in my life. You know, I grew up in an environment and I think everybody can say this at some level. I had a terrible childhood. Well, who didn't, right? Most people do at some level, right? You think yours is the worst and nothing can compare, right? But I had a tough time. And so I always wanted to get away from my home. I wanted to run away from, I mean, I did run away from home about eight times, but they kept catching me and bringing me back, right? So anyway.

Katie Wrigley (05:20)
you

Stephen Paul Edwards (05:21)
Finally, I got away from home and I spent the rest of my life traveling all the time. I'm from England originally, right? So I was traveling all over England. I lived in most cities in England. Then I decided I was gonna come to America. Lived all over the United States. And so I came to a point pretty late in life though that I realized I was running away from my home, which was myself. I'm my home, right?

Katie Wrigley (05:44)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Paul Edwards (05:44)
And

so I was running to all these different places, excited to go to the new places because deep down, unconsciously, I thought that was gonna be where I'd find myself. But as you and I both know, right, wherever you go, there you are, right? So I went through this relationship, which was extremely traumatic, but it was also amazing. So it appealed to my excitement, the adventure. And...

Katie Wrigley (05:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Stephen Paul Edwards (06:07)
I was just listening this morning, you know who Robert Green is, right? I'm sure you do, the author, right? So I'm listening to a podcast and he's a guest. And the interviewer is just saying, you know, well, why do people do this? Why do they get into these crazy relationships? you know, why do women like bad guys and women like bad women? You know, and he goes, it's just natural, it's our nature. Because we tend to hide the dark side of ourselves because we're too afraid for other people to see that.

But then we're drawn to it, because it has to come out one way or another. So we're drawn to it. We're drawn to the fact that that person is displaying really what we want to display, right? Who we want to be. And so we're drawn to that. And I thought, wow, so true, because, you know, all those things that happened in the story in the book, which most of them are incredibly embarrassing, right? And things that you wouldn't normally tell people about yourself. But actually doing that gave me a sense of freedom I've never had before.

because now I can tell everybody about that, about my sexual desires, if they want to bring that up, my childhood when I was in a mental asylum, when I was left out at school for having a small dick, all this stuff, right? That trapped me. I was so afraid. So I was in a prison of trying to be someone I really wasn't. And that makes you alone. That makes you feel alone. So I'm very grateful for what happened.

I'm not gonna go through it again, but I'm grateful for it happening to me or for me, right? I'm grateful to Tomas for bringing her, you know, you probably heard this, you in life you tend to attract certain characters in your life. Sometimes you get a master teacher, right? She was a master teacher for me, right? And maybe for me, maybe for her too. But anyway, I just learned so much about myself and let go of so much shame, so much guilt, so much fear.

Katie Wrigley (07:39)
Yeah.

Stephen Paul Edwards (07:51)
that I would never have done had it not been for her. Never have done that. So she was a great teacher for me. And the whole story is a great teacher for me. It's also freaking hilarious. I mean, it's just so funny when you really get into it. It wasn't funny at the time, but afterwards you go, that was freaking funny. She did this, I did that. It was like, I mean, it was a war for control. It was a war for control. And she's very, very strong and very smart.

Katie Wrigley (07:55)
Thank you.

Stephen Paul Edwards (08:17)
So there's this battle of wits going on, battle for control, sex was off the charts. At that time, I was doing pretty well financially, so we could go anywhere we want. She would come to my events and we would cause all kinds of chaos and mayhem there as well. And so it was quite a ride. And I had to get off at some point, because otherwise I would have lost a lot of myself, but I would have lost myself entirely.

Katie Wrigley (08:39)
Wow, there's so much that really resonates in your story there. And I'm kind of giggling at the hot sex thing. So I used to joke with my friends that no one puts up a bullshit for bad sex. No one. Like if the sex is bad, we're out. Like it is the good sex that we continue to justify. Like no one's in a horrible relationship and having horrible sex. Like just no. At least I hope.

Stephen Paul Edwards (08:54)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah!

Yeah. But you know, it's

funny. Yeah. And it's crazy. You know, when you, when you talk about that stuff, you think, Oh my God, everyone's going to vilify me. No one's going to want to talk to me. You know, they're going to say this is really bad, but it's amazing how it just opens up the conversation.

Katie Wrigley (09:17)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Stephen Paul Edwards (09:19)
And I was talking to,

I was doing a group session somewhere and I was talking to people about, know, do you think I should tone it down? Do you think I should like just rewrite it and not write it so explicit? And they went, no, that's one of the best parts of the book. And these are like women that you would think, there's no, they're probably thinking, this is ridiculous. You know, you can't say that, you can't do that. But they were all for it, you know, and it's just like you realize that this is just part of our nature. There's nothing wrong with it, right?

And so it's going to push some boundaries, right? It's going to push some boundaries, I hope, right? And what I hear from people is, you know, they see some of their own patterns from a non-confrontational perspective. You know, you're reading the book and you go, I've done that, you know, I do that sometimes. And it can help wake people up to those patterns. And then, you know, like you, I do coaching. So sometimes people then bring that to the table and we go through it and it can save them years of their life.

I wish I'd have known, right? This is saving me years of my life. So I didn't write the book because I'm trying to say I got it all together, right? I just wrote the book because I lived it. It's my story, right?

Katie Wrigley (10:25)
You know, I had this thought the other night that it's sometimes really hard to write the story because it's still being written. So we may get a chapter done or we may feel like, okay, this is a good place. And like I just went through the process of writing my own book. It's going to get released next month. And like as I it was a year of writing it and then a year of editing it and so much changed in those times. And thank you, by the way, it was

Stephen Paul Edwards (10:32)
That's right.

Congratulations.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (10:50)
It's a lot to write a book. So kudos to you for having your book already out there. I'm excited for you. And I haven't read it yet, but it is totally is very high on my list. I'm a very avid reader and avid audible listener person. And yeah, I consume as much as I can and self help, real stories, all of that. And now I totally got off track with what I was thinking there. It was more.

Stephen Paul Edwards (10:52)
you

Yeah, thank you.

Sure, yeah.

Well, were just talking

about you're talking about how it was evolving as you were writing.

Katie Wrigley (11:17)
Yeah, yeah, and it's hard to capture the story when, and we're gonna be writing our story until the day we leave this plane. And so giving ourselves permission to continue to change from that place, sometimes that can be really hard to do because we're that whole identity piece that's big part that's integrated in the nervous system. Like as we're evolving our identities,

Stephen Paul Edwards (11:26)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Katie Wrigley (11:42)
and becoming more of the person that we want to be and letting go of the things that didn't serve us, but keeping the things, much to your point, that are still fun, that still feed into those things, but in ways that are less detrimental to our health, to our lives. That's part of the trick of growth, but it can be hard to really sum up where we are. So kudos to you for getting that book out there being able to tell that story and continue to live your story too.

Stephen Paul Edwards (12:09)
Well, it is a little easy for me because I was writing a story that happened 10 years ago, right? So it wasn't still evolving at that time, but it's very synchronistic that you bring that up now because she has come back into my life, right? Which is crazy, right? Well, and there are reasons for that. We're not going to get into too much detail, but here's the point. There's three books already. I've written three books, right? So this is the first one.

Katie Wrigley (12:24)
interesting. Yep.

Stephen Paul Edwards (12:33)
Second one is coming out in a few weeks. The third one, I'm almost finished, not quite finished yet. But her coming back into my life is gonna be a fourth book. Though it is still a volume, right? From a very different perspective because people have said to me for so long, know, because I really kind of, I took time out to write this book. I had other relationships after this relationship.

Katie Wrigley (12:41)
Haha.

Stephen Paul Edwards (12:56)
And obviously the same result, right? So I finally said, I got to take your time out. I have to really sit down. And as I'd said to you earlier, I spent my whole life running away from my life. I never ever reflected on my life, Katie. And yet there's just such a wealth of wisdom in there that I was, but I was just running away from it. So.

I said, really need to sit down and write this book. Now this is not an easy to, this would not be an easy book to write in a relationship, right? I mean, you know what I mean? You understand that, right? I mean, you're with a woman and you're writing about all this crazy sex and all this stuff is going on. You're like, what the hell have I got here, So I realized from that perspective that I needed to take a time out. I've wanted to write the book for quite a long time. Anyway, so I took a three year timeout and I'm still on that timeout.

So my point is people say, you've taken all this time out, you know, all this work, but are you healed? What would happen if she walked in the room right now? And I go, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, the only way you ever know if you're healed is if you put in that place, right? You know, so, and of course, writing the book, I'm thinking about her a lot and you know thoughts attract, right? So I pulled her into my life. I know that, right? I know that I pulled her.

Katie Wrigley (14:02)
Yup.

Oops.

Stephen Paul Edwards (14:07)
So, and it was a, it's a test for me. Are you ready? You know? And so not out of any, not trying to be disrespectful, not out of any resentment, not have any anger. I haven't responded. I haven't given any energy to it. Right. And so for me, that was big, right?

Again, I'm not saying I'm over it completely, right? But at this point, I don't want to go back there. I have no interest. I don't want to be mean. I'm not trying to be disreputable. But I know any response I have, I'm back in. Right? I know that. Right? It's like, you know, a heroin addict, you know, you say, well, I'll just do it one more time. No, you're not going to do it one more time. You're back in. Right? So I was pleased with myself from that perspective. Now,

Katie Wrigley (14:23)
It is big.

Stephen Paul Edwards (14:48)
I'm not in a relationship right now. have no real desire to be, I mean, I'm not saying I won't be in a relationship again. Let me just put it that way. If the right circumstances came up, but I'm not out looking for it. If somebody organically came into my life, great, I'm open to it. But other than that, I'm not looking for it. I'm not on any websites. So I think that's a good place to be. I think it's a good place to be. I feel great. One of the other things that's really important, Katie,

is I always had to be in a relationship. I went from one relationship to another, right? I never spent any time on my own. I mean, I used to write journals. I mean, you think about the business that I was in, personal development, spiritual development, you know, all these things that you got to have a journal, you got to write a journal every day and you got, and I did, but I didn't use it.

Katie Wrigley (15:15)
Mm.

Hahaha

Stephen Paul Edwards (15:33)
journals like this right so you know it's one thing to know what to do is another thing to do what you know right yeah so anyway the wake-up call for me too so now I'm prepared to look back on my life and I enjoy it you know and I enjoy the single life

Katie Wrigley (15:39)
Right, ⁓

Nice.

Stephen Paul Edwards (15:50)
I thought I could create a phrase in my mind and this might be other people who said this probably many times and I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but I came up with a phrase in my mind. I think I came up with it. Yeah. So people, you know, people say, you know, yeah, I'm married and go, ⁓ nice. Very good. I'm very happily unmarried. I'm happy to be unmarried. I don't I will never marry again. And that was big, right? was huge. Maybe maybe I need to not push that away so much, but.

Katie Wrigley (16:07)
Nice, I love it.

Stephen Paul Edwards (16:15)
And I don't know if I'll ever live with anybody again. I love my own space and I love spending time with myself, you know. Apparently not many women feel that way, but I'm okay with me, you know.

Katie Wrigley (16:22)
Mm.

And I want to end this part of the episode on that thought, but I actually, that's where we're going to pick up in the next part of this episode is I've actually come to a similar place myself where like I would like to have a partner at some point, but I want someone that maybe doesn't want to live with me because I love my own space. like historically, even with great people I've lived with, which

Stephen Paul Edwards (16:46)
Yeah, right!

Katie Wrigley (16:52)
I didn't choose great people to live with for a long time, but even having really good people live with me, I'm just so used to having my own space that I prefer it that way. Like I'll split a duplex with someone. They can have one side, I can have the other, and we can share as many nights in our beds together as we want. But I do the best when I get a lot of room to breathe in a relationship.

Stephen Paul Edwards (17:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, me too.

We should get into that in the next one.

Katie Wrigley (17:12)
Yes, absolutely. So come join us again. We are going to pick this up later this week if you're listening to this live and come join Dr. Edwards and I again to continue this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today and until next episode, please be well.