Addiction can feel overwhelming—not just for the person directly affected, but for their friends, family, and wider support network. It’s a word that often carries shame, fear, or stigma, and yet it’s far more common than most people realise. Whether you’re concerned about your own… Read More »Addiction: Finding a Way Forward, Understanding it and Supporting Recovery
A carer is a person who provides unpaid support and care for someone who has an illness, disability, mental health problem or addiction. The carer might be caring for their parent, child, partner, grandparent, grandchild, other relative or friend. Caring may be short-term or long-term,… Read More »Life as a carer
In this blog post we’re going to talk about people who self-harm. It is becoming an epidemic and we need to understand how to support people who do it. We will look at what self-harm is, identify types of self-harm and the reasons for it,… Read More »Self-harm, why we do it and what we can do to heal it
In this blog post the focus is on grief and loss and how to deal with them. Grief is a deep or intense sorrow or distress, especially at the death of someone or something that causes suffering. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist and a… Read More »Grief and loss and how to deal with them
Shame and guilt are common human emotions. Guilt relates to our sense of right and wrong, and most people experience it after making a mistake or doing something they regret. It can help us to recognise the effects of the choices we make. People who… Read More »How shame and guilt can affect us
Depression is when someone feels down for an extended period of time, not just a few days, but for a few weeks or months, and feels this way for most of the day, most days. They may feel hopeless, unhappy, tearful or lose interest in… Read More »Depression, how it comes about and what we can do about it
This blogpost about anxiety includes a summary of a training by Michelle Vickers, a UK-based psychotherapist and coach, given on the Counselling CPD website. Her experience rings true with mine as a counsellor and how she accompanies people with their struggles with anxiety. Anxiety is… Read More »Anxiety, what it is and what to do about it
