As I write this, the Strait of Hormuz is closed and we seem locked into oil prices and the price of everything connected with them (which feels like just about everything) continuing to skyrocket. It’s completely out of our control, and we can anticipate being under even more financial pressure and face even more challenges making ends meet in the weeks and months to come. I’ve talked in the past about the link between financial stress and poor mental health. It’s a loop and

“What did your parents not give you?” It was a question that came up earlier in the week in a supervision session* and it’s really stuck with me. It sounds so ominous, doesn’t it?  Most people are aware of attachment styles, but our early experiences can have such a pervasive influence on so much of the rest of our life we can sometimes nod a general agreement of the principle and then get a surprise when we’re forced to face a difficult reality. Our needs as children are pre

Yes , practicing gratitude. I can feel the cringing from here, but trust me on this! When we’re feeling low it can be harder to notice anything else; all we can see is things that support that negative view of things. It’s like we have blinkers on and we find it hard to see anything else. Clinical depression makes that even more difficult, with the depressive filter over everything and sucking us dry. But there are things we can do day to day to help challenge that. More on t

Legend of UK comedy and now mental health advocate* Ruby Wax once asked ‘How do you want me?” It’s so easy to prioritise what other people need from us or how we imagine they want us to be over our own needs or what might be better for us. DC comics character Harley Quinn is a bit of a poster child for that behaviour and a journey out of it. For a lot of us this can be a habit and maybe even one that we’re not even sure how it started, but we know that we do it. And we know t

Life can be pretty tough sometimes. The news is telling us that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, prices for just about everything are going through the roof and job security feels worse than ever. Things can come out of nowhere that challenge us and feel overwhelming. But there are people who are important to us, who inspire us in some way and give us strength in difficult times. Often these are people who have changed the world in some way and made a difference, b

Whether you’re raising a child or multiple children with a partner or on your own, children are hard work.  As Edwina Monsoon from the BBC’s Absolutely Fabulous once lamented: “They make you think about someone else the whole time!” These days it’s rare for someone to be able to be a stay-at-home parent, so we have to fit that and all the associated responsibilities around the need to earn a living. On top of that there’s societies expectations about how we should behave as p

A few weeks ago we took a look at some “mental health truths” from the depths of reddit and I thought it would be worth a sequel. I was original inspired by a thread on reddit about 'mental heath truths' that seem cruel but there's an element of truth to them. Naturally lots of people on the internet have lots of opinions (about everything!) but I thought it could be interesting to take a look at some fo the top voted comments. For our sequel post, let’s start with a big one

Right now, there’s a lot going on in the world and it feels like there are fresh injustices every day. A.I. is taking jobs and ravaging our environment, our politicians and the super rich seem to get away with anything, and just recently the U.S has recklessly started another illegal war which some news sources are excitedly hyping as a precursor to a nuclear apocalypse. Not being evil and actually giving a damn about what's happening can feel pretty exhausting sometimes Just

There’s been lot of discussion in the media this week around how John Davidson, someone who has the form of Tourette Syndrome (TS) with involuntary verbal tics was heard to use offensive language towards two actors of colour at the BAFTA awards. There have been plenty of hot takes and opinion on how things should have been handled and what is more upsetting; the monstering of someone with a disability when steps were taken at the event to inform the audience and minimise disr

Money, or perhaps more accurately not having it, can be scary. Money is after all fundamentally how we look after ourselves as adults, keep a roof over our heads, stay alive. Managing our money and staying on top of things in the busy world that we live in can feel overwhelming, particularly if we’ve had challenges with money in the past, or we’re having money difficulties at the moment. It's no surprise that money issues and mental health issues are strongly interlinked. Ope

We all know we’re supposed to exercise and stay active to stay healthy, and most counsellors will encourage their clients to be more active. But sometimes exercising, whether that’s doing it in the house, doing a routine at the gym or going to an exercise class dpesn’t have the miracle impact we want it to have. We might feel embarrassed or self conscious, frustrated and wind up making ourselves feel terrible.  What is contributing to this and what can we do about it? Exhibit

I bumped into an interesting Reddit thread the other day about mental health, specifically “What’s a truth about mental health that sounds cruel but is still real?” It’s a bit of a loaded question, but naturally the people of reddit had a lot to say. This is an area where lots of people have an opinion, based on their own bad experiences, or, I suppose bluntly, from their own bad or outdated opinions. I’ve grabbed a few of the top voted suggestions below. "Your mental health

It’s finally arrived! The end of January! Over the month we’ve looked at checking in with our mood, looking after ourselves when things are more strained and the infamous (and inaccurate, but you get the idea) ‘Blue Monday’. We may have had to tighten our drawstrings and make sacrifices to get through it but here we are, we made it, for many of us it’s payday at last! So now what? While it’s tempting to just crack on with things, I want to encourage you to treat yourself! You

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