About Simge
Trained MSC Teacher. Originally from Turkey, based in Portugal.
Embracing Humanness
Simge İçen Aruh
Simge İçen Aruh spent over a decade working in technology and marketing, mostly in startups. She knows firsthand what the relentless pace, the uncertainty, and the constant pressure to produce can cost a person. She came to mindfulness and self-compassion during some of the harder periods of her own life. Anxiety, panic attacks, accumulated emotional weight — she experienced that a different relationship with all of it was possible. What she teaches today comes from both personal experience and professional training. Her work focuses especially on stress, self-criticism, burnout, and emotional resilience.
“The work isn't about feeling better all the time. It's about building a different relationship with yourself, especially when things are hard.”
Training & Credentials
Self-Compassion Academy
Simge completed her MSC teacher training through the Self-Compassion Academy. Her teachers included Mila de Koning and Chris Germer.
Center for Mindful Self-Compassion
The training is acknowledged and approved by the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, founded by Kristin Neff and Chris Germer.
How She Works
Simge believes transformation is real. But she's also clear about what it actually requires: honesty with yourself, and enough safety in your relationship with yourself to make that honesty possible.
Most people trying to change are doing it from a position of self-criticism. Pushing harder, raising the standards, treating struggle as evidence of failure. That produces movement, sometimes. But it doesn't hold. Lasting change tends to come from the opposite direction: when you can see yourself clearly, without the constant noise of your own judgment.
The work draws on MSC research, neuroscience, and Buddhist psychology, but it's taught practically. Not as theory. Not as wellness culture. Not as something you have to already believe in to benefit from. It's built for people who are skeptical and still showing up.
