Blogs - Thoughts of a Therapist

Grief rarely announces itself loudly. It does not always arrive with dramatic sobs or a clear beginning and end. More often, it slips quietly into our lives and makes itself at home. It sits beside us at the table, lies down with us at night, and wakes with us in the morning. Over time, I have come to see grief not as something that is cured, but as something that is lived with. Since volunteering at a bereavement group, I have been searching for language that could hold the

There is a particular kind of discomfort that does not announce itself loudly; it does not knock things over or demand immediate attention; it does not come with a clear story or an obvious reason. It simply sits there, like a low fog that has not quite lifted, blurring the edges of your days. From the outside, everything appears intact: you are functioning, showing up, doing what needs to be done. Your life, if someone were to look at it from a distance, might even seem calm

There’s a moment many of us recognise - when your mind suddenly feels too full, your thoughts too fast, your body too alert. Maybe you are sitting at a desk, or closing the fridge door, or trying to fall asleep, and without any obvious reason, you notice a familiar tightening in your chest, a sense of pressure, a restless feeling under your skin. You tell yourself that you are just anxious, that it is nothing. And, to a certain extent, this is true: feeling anxious is a compl

It’s been a long while since my last blog post - not because I ran out of ideas, or passion, or stories to tell, but because of one small, stinging moment: a negative comment. It’s surprising, isn’t it, how a single sentence from a stranger can feel like a stone dropped into the quiet lake of your confidence, sending ripples wide enough to push you away from the things you love. So, I stepped back. I went quiet. And in the quiet, something unexpected began to unfold. I have b

How many times do we hear someone explain an action with the phrase “I can’t help it – it’s my OCD”, casually naming it as an excuse for needing tidiness, or for persistently lining items in certain orderly rows? But Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is far more serious than this: it is not about being tidy, organised, or cautious: it is a constant battle between logic and fear, clarity and chaos. And it should not be taken lightly: just as feeling anxious is not the same a

It may seem strange to write about having relationships with books, particularly novels, but I definitely do. It occurs at that time when...

I love writing, and when I wrote my first blog, I did so feeling that it would be the first of many, that I would be writing at least one...

Everything I know about mental health cannot possibly be understood without understanding trauma - it is truly at the core of everything....

Mindfulness - Being Present in the Modern World In order to practice mindfulness, we need to understand what it is: for me, mindfulness...

Thoughts about how to reframe our opinions about Winter

This is a guide for teacher's experiencing burnout

I write about what is on my mind and what might also be on yours. 'Read widely. Study other writers. Be thoughtful, then go out and do...