Anger is an unpopular emotion, and frankly it gets quite a bad press. The caricature of an angry person is red faced, steam coming out of the ears, an unattractive figure that people feel comfortable judging and looking down on. Anger is actually a very normal and important emotion. Anger is what we feel when we are wronged and when our boundaries are ignored or trampled over. It's the natural emotion we feel when we see injustice. Anger energises. It mobilises us to defe

We’re not always in touch with all of the capability, wisdom and resourcefulness we have inside. While we are all multi-faceted, it's easy to get disconnected from our own sense of perspective, humour and groundedness. When this happens, you might not feel at your best, you might get stuck in repeating patterns that you know don’t do you any good, you might even feel like you go round and round in circles. When simple grounding isn’t quite doing it, another way of getting ba

Here we are, another festive season over, and the winter ahead of us. The Christmas lights are coming down. For many people the coming couple of months are the toughest of the year, there is little light or warmth, and the spring can feel far away. Add to that the ongoing pandemic and its consequences and whatever your perspective on it, it’s a complex and challenging picture. Often the advice is to look forwards, to skirt around uncomfortable feelings, and to imagine bett

I’ve had the pleasure of making some new connections personally and professionally in recent weeks, which has felt good after the extended period of altered social interactions we have been living through. I was intrigued to notice what it was I said in response to questions from people, and to notice how I explained who and how I was. This reminded me that we are each continually updating our own narration of our story to this point in our lives. As things happen in the her

“Adaptability does not prioritize drastic change over fierce rigidity. Adaptability is the conversation within us between stability and change, between continuity and innovation. It is the marriage of our fundamental needs for security and adventure. Adaptability is our ability to bend and come back to center over and over again, increasing our flexibility each time, whether we’re in our daily stretch or the fight of our lives. And the more we practice becoming adaptable, the

I was reading some Esther Perel this week, and happened upon a quote about self-love that really spoke to me. She describes it as “about letting others love us even when we feel unloveable” and as “about awareness and acceptance of our incompleteness.” I sense it’s natural at times to feel unloveable, and incomplete. We each have foibles, wrinkles and bumps we might prefer not to notice or acknowledge, and yet, when we turn away from them they somehow gain a power and impac

The work of psychotherapy is vast and deep. Themes running through the many ways it can help are enabling clients to learn how to tolerate differences, discomforts, uncertainty, intimacy, power and privileges. All of these matter, they are the stuff of human relating and they affect us all. We have seen some of these themes at the fore in recent times, with the social change that comes with the pandemic, its economic impacts, and the wider context of the climate emergency.

I discovered recently that the root of the word alone is all-one. Clarissa Pinkola Estes expresses this beautifully, saying “To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in one-ness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.” I sense most of us know this experience, to be wholly in the one place, to feel complete, to come home to who and what we truly are. We may find it looking at a beautiful landscape or a tiny flower, or fin

In my twenties, I recall going on a Dale Carnegie training course, and being told ‘seek first to understand, and then to be understood.’ As an incessant talker at the time, I found it a weird concept, but it was one that resonated with me and I took to heart. Funny perhaps that decades later I find myself working as a psychotherapist, deeply invested in hearing and seeing the other, and leaving my own personal story at the door! “Every person in our life is a unique, unfold

I just love my garden at this time of year. My therapy room looks out onto it, and it is delighting me to notice that sometimes hour to hour I can see how the plants have grown and changed. The garden puts me in mind of the way we are all in a process of continual growth. Even as adults, our bodies are not static and unchanging. On average our cells are replaced every 7-10 years. While the cells in the middle of your eye lenses do last a lifetime, white blood cells may only l

I’ve been reflecting on the continual change and uncertainty that our current environment presents us with, and its impact on well-being. Consistently, just as it seems clarity is emerging about what the next steps are for us socially and economically, new information comes to light, and adjustments need to be made. Plans for businesses, holidays, social events and more are made, cancelled, changed…and we do our best to adapt. It seems to me that it is natural and normal for

I was speaking to a wise colleague recently, and she shared an anecdote which made me smile. She came home one night, with a big bunch of flowers in her arms, along with a bottle of champagne and some chocolates. Her daughter asked ‘Ooo, what is the occasion?’ My colleague replied ‘I had a REALLY bad day!’ I just loved it. How often do we join in when our day doesn’t got to plan? How often do you find yourself getting flat and feeling defeated, and allowing that to impact

I was reminded this week of the important function of self-criticism. You know, that irritating, debilitating voice inside that nit picks and notices everything you don’t do well. Mostly, we think of it as a pain, and we just want it to go away. Trouble is, the more you try and push it away and silence it, the louder it gets. It’s useful to reflect on where the mental habit of self-criticism comes from. When it formed, it was there to help and look after you. When we are