Earlier this week, we hit the infamous “Blue Monday,” Hit what now? Yes, Blue Monday is usually the 3rd Monday of January and supposedly the bleakest point of the year. It’s dark, it’s cold, xmas is long passed and there’s still a bit to go before we get paid, so on top of all that we’re skint. Those are some common sense observations for things that can be negatively affecting our mood at this time of year, but ultimately Blue Monday itself is a pseudoscience. Back in 2005 p

I came across a brilliant metaphor online last week and it’s stuck with me since, so I had to share! In The Lord of the Rings, Denethor, the Steward of Gondor had been using the palantir, a magical crystal ball that can show him events from afar. Despite warnings, he used it to keep up to date with what was happening in the world.   But what it showed him served the purposes of the enemy, slowly chipping away at his resolve. By the time the enemy was at the walls of Minas Tir

How are you doing? (or maybe "How you doin?" We’re a week into 2026. This can be a time of year that hits us hard. We’re dealing with the financial part of xmas and we might be facing a long month of scrimping to get through. It’s still dark in the mornings and dark by late afternoon, it’s cold with a lot of the country now freezing and getting some snow. The festivities of the xmas period are over and ordinary routine can hit us like a jumpscare. This is what we do for a li

It’s a new year and it’s that time when we look back at what we’ve achieved over the last year, how we measured up to what we had planned for ourselves and how we’re doing alongside the people that we love. If part of you is cringing in horror as you read this, you’re not alone. Understandably  this can be a really rotten time of year for some of us and as the holiday period we were maybe holding on for is receding in the rear view mirror, it can be exactly when our mental he

At some point this month, we reached a full year of weekly wee counselling blogs, so that’s nearly 60 blogs on mental health topics or related areas. Over the year counselling has become very much my focus full time in a number of roles and is an incredibly rewarding experience. I'm very grateful to all of my clients for allowing me to support them on their journey in 2025. Over the next year I’m going to be looking at some professional development and hopefully making some

What does it take to be forcibly detained under the mental health act? If you’re a fan of Tennessee Williams, getting institutionalised seems to be a pretty routine occurence for any number of mental health issues. Whether that’s the delusional Blanch Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire or the traumatised Catherine Holly in Suddenly Last Summer, there’s always an unreal almost romanticised element to it in some ways. But what is it in the real world? What circumstances would

It’s a bit of a cliche in pop culture that someone who isn’t into xmas is being a grinch and actively wants to ruin things for everyone else. Usually in tv and films, the person who wasn’t into it at the start will have a revelation (which may or may not be induced by meddling ghosts) and by the end of the story will be Xmas’s biggest fan. Hurray! Over here in the real world there are lots of different reasons why someone might not be feeling it and not want to join in. Xmas

We’re getting to the point of the year when those around us look back at what they’ve achieved, and this can be pretty tough if we’ve not had the best year ourselves and maybe we feel we’ve just not succeeded at what we wanted to get done. Life gets in the way and everyone has different things going on they need to contend with. So looking ahead to what we might want to get completed next year, how can we set ourselves off on the best foot? I’ve put together some quick tips o

This time of year, we often talk about making sure we check in on other people. That’s absolutely valid and hugely important, but I wonder how often we check in with ourselves. How long has it been since you asked yourself “How are you getting on?” “Are you feeling okay” Many of us put our own wellbeing right at the bottom of the list, especially when we’re parents or we have caring responsibilities. It’s easy in the hussle and bustle of the season to almost on autopilot do