Latest articles on counselling and therapy

When I was 17, I found myself struggling. I had no idea of emotional well-being, my emotional intelligence was a 3/10 at best and I was not a happy person.Alongside some very unhealthy behaviours, I lived a dark and difficult emotional life and didn’t quite understand that this wasn’t the only way. Happiness when it came was fleeting and even in those moments there was always a dark cloud hanging over the experience.  I later came to understand this as depression, although I...

When someone significant to you dies the impact can be huge. Emotions whirl around in a seemingly endless torrent, going from sadness, to disbelief, to anger and back again. It can be hard to function and believe that life carries on when something so monumental has happened, but it does. Eventually though these emotions subside, the grief never goes, but you learn ways to integrate the grief into your life and find some new meaning and hope for the future.  But what happens when this...

Past abuse can have such a detrimental effect on our mental health, making daily life torturous. Survivors can often be left with depression or anxiety after experiencing trauma, which makes it hard for them to trust others or often do even the simplest of tasks such as leaving the house in the morning. The feeling of anxiety or worry that is induced can severely impact their social connections, work life, and ultimately their physical health. Survivors of past abuse need to start trying to...

We seem to find it so easy to criticise ourselves and so difficult to say something nice. Make a mistake, or even imagining we have done something wrong, will spark off those endless negative voices in our heads but most of us seem to struggle to acknowledge when we have done something well.  Often we don’t seem to be able to enjoy the moment, rejoice in our successes, and even if we can, we are swiftly off to contemplate or worry about the future, where the next opportunity will...

Living with anxiety can be debilitating and frustrating. Constantly worrying, catastrophising and creating worst-case scenarios do nothing but leaving you feeling exhausted and fearful, and it is taking away from you a precious little thing called living in the present. You might ask yourself what’s wrong with you. It might seem to you that you are the only one struggling, the only one that is experiencing devastating episodes of panic, fear, and a lack of control. Living with anxiety can...

Do you find yourself feeling anxious in meetings? You wait for your turn to speak but it never seems to come. Or you drum up the courage to say something but nobody seems to be listening. Or perhaps you notice that other colleague say the same things as you but get a better response? Or maybe you get an email from your boss and your brain starts to cycle through all the things that might be wrong. Did you make a mistake? Say something wrong? Are you going to be fired? You start to feel...