Are you happy with your body? Happy with your body as it is now, with how it functions, how it looks, how it feels? If the answer is yes, that’s brilliant, read no further. If you answered with a resounding ‘no’ or had to have a think about it, you are far from unusual. […]
Like many people, I have a peculiar relationship with cameras and photographs. I recoil when a lens is pointed in my direction and tend to avert my eyes when I’m confronted with the resulting images of myself. There are large gaps in my ‘photo history’, when I simply didn’t have a camera, or when I […]
We frequently talk about being ‘stressed out’ or even ‘traumatized’ by our everyday experiences. But what distinguishes manageable ‘stress’ from something more damaging to our wellbeing and when are we mistaking being traumatized for stress? Neither stress nor trauma can be objectively nor definitively categorized. There is not a discrete set of events or circumstances […]
At this time of year, we’re bombarded with messages about change, mostly about changing our bodies, our appetites and our activities. Most of these are bound up with other messages about buying something to facilitate change: gym memberships, detox programmes, smoothie makers, nicotine patches. Conversely, one of the other things we’re reminded of at this […]
There have been a number of reports in recent weeks of the rising demand for counselling services in universities, and ensuing debates about the causes of this increased demand. Some have pointed to the relentless pressures on children and young people throughout the UK education system, which, when combined with the difficulties which can happen […]
Picking up a phone may not often lead to making a phone call. It is now possible to check emails, browse social media, watch a film or listen to music with a flick of the thumb. Sometimes, our phones may communicate with us first, reminding us of events in our calendar, or, as the number […]
People are natural storytellers: not just the performers amongst us, who can entertain an audience with their anecdotes, but all of us. By storytelling, I mean the way we communicate and give shape and order to our world. Even from infancy, when we babble incoherently, we’re verbalising our inner experiences, explaining ourselves through sound if […]
Of the range emotions that people explore in counselling, many feel most afraid and ashamed of anger – their own anger as well as that of others. Anger makes us feel out of control, unlike ourselves. It is an emotion that we believe needs to be ‘managed’; even very young children talk of having ‘anger issues’, as though […]
Perhaps most of us associate counselling with ‘private’ or personal problems: anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties or loss seem to belong to the inner world of our individual psyches, or to the private realms of our intimate lives. Counsellors emphasise that they provide ‘safe spaces’, client confidentiality and emotional ‘containment’, for sound ethical reasons. Such language, […]
Statistics can be terrifying. The news from Cancer Research UK that the proportion of those expected to develop cancer at some point in their lives has ‘risen’ from one in three to half of those born after 1960 has an apocalyptic ring to it (Sarah Boseley, The Guardian Society, 4th Feb, 2015). Hidden in the […]