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

It’s (somehow) only a few weeks to go before Christmas and before long our streets will be full of xmas lights and any shopping trip will involve taking a risk of the inevitable whammageddon. It can also be a tough time for a lot of us. Christmas is heavily promoted as a time for families and being with the people that we love, and life being what it is, sometimes we’re in circumstances that don’t support that. Maybe we don’t get on with our families.. Perhaps we’ve lost peop

I was recently asked to give a workshop on men’s mental health for HR professionals and it was a bit of an opportunity to draw attention again to the gender differences we still see in the expression and diagnosis of mental health issues and how we can better support mens mental health. Even in 2025 men are disproportionately negatively affected by poor mental health due in significant part to outdated gender norms that insist that men have to be strong, that they have to be

In an ordinary counselling relationship a client wouldn’t be contacting their counsellor in an emergency situation. At the beginning of working together, a counselling agreement sets out how the Client and counsellor will work together and typically include information on emergency services that can be contacted in a crisis or support that can be accessed outwith sessions. This can happen. Sometimes a person's mental health can worsen between sessions or something happens tha

It’s halloween, so what better time of the year to have a little look at night terrors? These are sometimes conflated in popular culture with nightmares or bad dreams (especially in horror films) but they’re a bit different. Nightmares happen during the REM part of our sleep cycle, we wake up fully and we can typically remember the dream that’s scared us, at least for a bit. In contrast night terrors happen during non-REM sleep at the start of the sleep cycle. You’re only par

An important part of traditional CBT is a formulation and clients typically encounter this early on in the counselling process, usually after the first few sessions have taken place. Having explored with the client what their situation is and what is bothering them or brought them to counselling, a formulation applies this to a cognitive model together with any modifications (which can sometimes get pretty complicated). It’s essentially my view as a counsellor of what’s going

With it getting darker earlier in the evenings and taking longer for the sun to rise in the mornings, autumn is a time of change. Here in Scotland we can often find ourselves leaving for work in the dark and then coming home in the pitch dark too. Unless we happen to work outside our actual exposure to daylight can be pretty limited in this time of year. Some of us are more vulnerable to these changes than others and we can really find ourselves struggling with our mood and e

I’ve written previously about tips for setting yourself up for a good night’s sleep but I thought this time I’d have a look at a related...