A lovely book to remind us about self compassion.

What might counselling do for me?

Personally

Don't let indecision or fear hold you back. Therapy can give you tools to lower your stress levels, strategies to help to reduce anger or anxiety, help you to become more assertive or to get in touch with your emotions. Learn to notice the good things in your life rather than concentrating on what is wrong with it. We can explore just about any problem which you are facing in a calm, confidential and non-shaming way.

Professionally

Careers are a very different thing today compared to when our parents started work. You are far more likely to retrain several times during the course of your working life, due to changes in your family role, companies closing down, a desire to seek more meaningful contribution or even changes in your own physical abilities. You may have several jobs at one time, as opposed to a career for life, be supporting yourself while you pursue an acting break, or wanting to take a gap year to travel.

Are you being overlooked for promotion because you don't have enough presence in your organisation, or perhaps losing staff and you don't know why? Together we can explore your feelings about your career, start to plan a complete change in direction, or see how you might achieve a better work/life balance. We can discuss redundancy, getting the best out of your team, role play interview skills, identify strengths and weaknesses, examine workplace bullying or consider how you start a case for industrial tribunal.

Family

Gain perspective on family situations by discussing them with a third party completely unattached to the outcome, learn to speak so that professionals and your loved ones will listen, discuss your feelings about challenges with starting a family, establish boundaries where before there were none. It is important to recognise what challenges you had when you were younger and how they have affected you moving forwards, we often downplay our childhood losses in the belief that others have it far worse, but these were your losses and will have affected how you view your world. Talking therapy gets you used to being more open with others and gives you insight into the way in which you think.

Relationships

Therapy can help you to identify unhelpful patterns in your relationships and enable you to resolve issues rather than argue, ignore or run from them. It is possible to fall in love with your partner again and counselling can help you to come closer together, or conversely assist you to get your head around ending a relationship which you have been struggling for a long time to leave. Our roles in relationships change as we age, from child to teenager, young adult to parent, perhaps on to becoming a carer for your own parents. You might be exploring your own sexual identity or even considering gender reassignment. All of these types of relationship change can cause anxiety as you pass through them, but can also be seen as opportunities for growth rather than loss.

Loss

There are many sorts of loss in life; moving home, divorce, injury, losing jobs, bereavement or stillbirth, losing touch with friends, losing our physical or mental capabilities as we age, loss of sex drive or identity around the menopause, death of our beloved pets to name but a few. Often we can feel that we have to put on a brave face for those who are close to us, so we might never acknowledge our own feelings of grief and despondency, therapy can be a safe environment in which you can let those feelings out.