Relationships become easier when we understand what’s really driving behaviour in ourselves and in others.
The Knowing Self
The Knowing Self is a simple philosophy for understanding behaviour in ourselves and in others.
When we begin to look beneath reactions and responses, the patterns in our relationships start to make sense, and when things make sense, they become easier to navigate.
About Amanda
Amanda Stokes is the founder of The Knowing Self and has spent years helping people understand the emotional patterns that shape behaviour in families, schools, and leadership environments.
Her work draws on emotional intelligence, neuroscience-informed frameworks such as the Iceberg Model and SCARF, and real-life relational experience.
Rather than offering advice or quick fixes, Amanda focuses on helping people understand what sits beneath behaviour because when behaviour begins to make sense, relationships become easier to navigate.
The Knowing Self was created to offer grounded tools that help people pause, reflect, and respond with greater clarity in their everyday lives.
Two ways to begin understanding behaviour
Some people first want to understand the people around them.
Others realise they want to better understand their own reactions.
Both are powerful starting points.
Beneath the Iceberg: Understand behaviour in others
Helps you see what sits beneath the reactions, misunderstandings and emotional responses in your relationships.
This Is Human: Understand behaviour in yourself
Helps you recognise the emotional states and patterns that shape your own reactions and experiences.
A short guided audio that changes how you understand behaviour in the people around you.
Most conflict happens at the surface: words, tone, reactions, but behaviour is only the visible part of the story.
In this guided audio reflection, Amanda explores the deeper drivers of behaviour, including the fears, needs, beliefs and experiences that sit beneath the surface.
Often the moments that confuse us most in relationships come from reacting to what we can see, rather than understanding what might be happening underneath. When we begin to recognise that behaviour is often a response to something deeper, uncertainty, pressure, insecurity or a need to feel respected, people start to make more sense.
Through powerful real-life examples and practical frameworks like the Iceberg Model and SCARF, this session helps you understand:
• why people react the way they do
• how misunderstandings develop
• how to pause and respond with greater clarity
When we understand the iceberg, we respond to the human, not just the behaviour.
A reflective guide + guided audio experience
When life feels heavy or confusing, it can be difficult to make sense of our reactions.
Moments where we feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or unlike ourselves can leave us wondering why we responded the way we did.
This Is Human is a guided audio experience that helps you understand the emotional and nervous system responses that shape how we think, feel and behave.
Through a compassionate exploration of how the brain and nervous system respond to pressure, uncertainty and emotional overload, this session helps you understand:
• why your reactions can sometimes feel confusing
• how emotional states influence the way we think and behave
• why moments of overwhelm are part of being human
When we understand what is happening inside us, we can meet ourselves with greater compassion and clarity.
What changes when we understand?
When we understand what drives our reactions, we stop turning on ourselves.
When we understand what protects others, we stop taking everything personally.
When we recognise state, protection, projection and repair, relationships begin to feel lighter.
Understanding creates freedom.
Freedom to respond instead of react.
Freedom to repair what matters.
Freedom from carrying what was never yours.
Beneath the Iceberg helps you understand behaviour in others.
• Why people react the way they do
• Why misunderstandings escalate so quickly
• How to pause and respond with greater clarity
It’s a powerful starting point for understanding the people around you.
Beneath the Iceberg is $29 AUD.
This short guided audio is designed to give you a powerful shift in how you understand behaviour in the people around you.
Many people find it changes the way they view conversations, conflict and emotional reactions in their everyday relationships.
If you’ve ever walked away from an interaction thinking ‘that escalated quickly’ or ‘what just happened there?’, this will likely make sense of it.
If you'd like to go deeper into understanding your own emotional patterns and nervous system responses, This Is Human offers a more comprehensive guided experience.
This Is Human helps you understand behaviour in yourself.
Amanda explores what sits beneath your own reactions, including the emotional states, protection patterns, and nervous system responses that shape how you think, feel and behave.
Through grounded explanations, real-life examples and reflective prompts, this experience helps you understand:
• why your reactions can sometimes feel confusing
• how emotional states influence the way you think and respond
• why certain patterns repeat in relationships
• how to pause and respond with greater clarity
This is Human is $49 AUD.
This experience is designed to help you understand what is happening inside you, so you can meet yourself with greater awareness, compassion and choice.
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is slow down and think.
If you'd like to explore your patterns, relationships, or reactions more personally, you can book a one-hour reflection session with Amanda.
These sessions aren't about advice or quick answers.
They are a space to step back, look beneath behaviour, and bring greater understanding to what’s happening in your relationships or your inner world.
Many people find that even a single hour of thoughtful reflection creates meaningful shifts in how they see themselves and the people around them.
One Hour for Reflection – $188
One Hour for Reflection
Some things you may be wondering…
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If you’re most curious about understanding the behaviour of the people around you, Beneath the Iceberg is a helpful starting point.
If you’d like to better understand your own emotional reactions and patterns, This Is Human goes deeper into the inner experience of behaviour.
If you’re currently navigating a specific situation or relationship dynamic, a reflection session provides space to explore it more personally.
Many people begin with the guided sessions and later choose to book a reflection hour.
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Once you purchase, you’ll receive immediate access to the experience you selected.
For the guided sessions, this includes the full written guide and the audio reflection.
You can move through it at your own pace.
There is no timeline or pressure, just space to reflect, pause, and return whenever you need.
Many people revisit the material when they find themselves in a situation that feels reactive, confusing, or emotionally charged.
If you book a reflection session, you’ll receive a confirmation email with the booking details and a link to our conversation.
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The written guide for This is Human is around 30 pages and the audio reflections can be listened to in one sitting.
However, they’re designed to be moved through slowly.
Beneath the Iceberg is a 15 minute audio.
Some people listen once and return later when something in their life brings the ideas back into focus.
There’s no timeline. You move through it when it feels helpful.
Reflection sessions are 60 minutes and focused entirely on exploring a situation, pattern, or dynamic that you would like to understand more clearly.
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The Knowing Self sits at the intersection of lived experience and psychological insight.
It draws from attachment theory, nervous system science, emotional intelligence, and trauma-informed practice.
It is influenced by the work of researchers such as Dr Stephen Porges (Polyvagal Theory), John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth (Attachment Theory), and Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence).
This work is the integration of those ideas into everyday life; into parenting, partnership, leadership, friendship, and self-reflection.
You don’t need to understand the research to benefit from it.
You simply need a willingness to pause and look beneath behaviour.
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A reflection session is a 60-minute one-to-one conversation focused entirely on you.
You bring a situation, a pattern, or a relationship dynamic that feels charged, repetitive, or confusing.
Together we slow it down and look beneath what is happening.
During the session we may explore:
• the state you move into under pressure
• the story you’re telling yourself about what it means
• the protection strategy that is showing up
• where that strategy may have first formed
• what belongs to you, and what does notThis is not therapy and it’s not advice-giving.
It’s a space for thoughtful reflection and deeper understanding.
Most people leave with language for what has been driving their reactions, a clearer sense of their patterns, and practical insight into how they may want to respond differently moving forward.