One of the things that I witness throughout my counselling sessions is how hard clients can find it to accept what is good about them. It is as if there is invisible barrier that stops short of them being able to accept that positivity.

Initially some clients can really struggle with anything positive being said, they may find this really uncomfortable and shy away from the comment or indeed find many reasons to discount anything good that is said about them. Over time though, as we work on a clients self-belief, worth and esteem, positive indicators start to happen. This reminds me of spring, when tiny buds start to appear, or a daffodil bulb breaks through the ground and whilst the bright yellow trumpet of the daffodil hasn’t yet appeared, we know it will eventually. (Unless you’re like me and accidentally mow them over at the end of season and then they grow back blind)!

Anyhow, I digress, over time you, the client, will become the trumpet and be able to fanfare your positives comfortably and at ease. But, what is happening to those who struggle to say them out loud, what is going on then? Sometimes a person might think “if I say something nice about myself or accept positive affirmations, am I in some way tempting fate?”

Or it could be: “what is the point? Someone else will put me down sooner or later”. Perhaps they can’t accept positive comments from those around them because they simply don’t believe them to be true.

I wonder how it might be if you could allow yourself to just sit and ponder with the deflections mentioned in the last sentence. You may even know your own deflection and if so, I would like you to write it down. Ideally, I would like you to write it down in the middle of a big piece of paper.

Then, I would like you to draw a circle around that and draw some ‘legs’ coming off the circle (as if you were drawing a birds eye view of a spider). At each leg, I would like you write down the reasons that you feel may have created that deflection. Following on from that, with a different coloured pen, I would like to put a tick or a cross next to it. A tick represents a fact and the cross represents fiction.

I am hoping that the ‘spidergram’ that you have now created will have given you food for thought about how your deflection came to exist. Now for the interesting part, why not book a free 20 minute introduction session for us to look at your ‘spidergram’ and see how together we can erase that sentence a replace it with a positive, accepting and fully embracing one instead.

You are not a spider – you are you – let’s break this web and do this!

So, what does happen in a counselling session? Let’s look at the first session; entering counselling may bring up all types of feelings. Maybe you have never been to counselling, or perhaps you have had a good or bad counselling experience previously, a whole manner of thoughts could be going through your mind.

When you arrive, I tend to ask whether you have had counselling before or not. If you have had counselling before I may ask you what worked for you and what didn’t. This enables me to understand where you are in relation to the counselling process.

As I am aware that it’s your first time meeting me, in order to help you relax a bit, I will say that I will talk about how I work. During these few minutes, I aim for you to get used to being in a room with me, the counsellor, getting used to the room size and proximity of the chairs. It isn’t not every day that you are sitting face to face with some you’ve never met and are about to start sharing what is going on for you.
Also whilst I am talking, this gives you the opportunity to ‘vet’ me, see how you feel about the way I talk and am. It enables you to see how you feel listening to me, you can ask yourself whether you feel you could work with me or not. I fully expect you to be making your mind up about me. I am no different to your hairdresser or dentist (although I don’t do hair or teeth)! But my point is, you wouldn’t see either of those if you didn’t feel comfortable and trust them.

As I talk, I explain how I will walk alongside you and am just half a shoulder behind you. This means that, as you describe what is going on for you, imagine we are going for a walk, side by side. I am listening to everything you are saying and even what you are not saying, by walking a fraction behind you (half a shoulder) I can see, feel and experience what you are sharing.

You may ask me how does counselling actually work, how can we get to where you want to be. I may suggest thinking of your situation like a ball of wool with knots in it. Together we will tease out the knots until you have one long piece of wool. Then you can roll your ball of wall up however you want it to be.

I am always tentative and if you find something too difficult or are not ready to explore an experience then we won’t go there, in fact you can choose to never go there and that’s ok. Instead what we can do is start working on a new script for you as of today. People sometimes feel that during counselling we will go back into your past and talk about your parents and yes in some counselling modalities that is the case. However, my training enables me to use a whole host of different approaches and so we go where you want to go.

Counselling sessions can be difficult, painful, we also can have laughter and many clients speak of relief of not having to hold it in what is going on for them and in turn feel better for coming.

I do offer a free 20 minute introductory session, to see if counselling is right for you, but if that feels a bit too much, you could always phone me and we could speak on the phone – 07252116668.

Counselling ~ the choice is yours.

It is a common phrase, sometimes used when things are proving difficult in a relationship. But what is it that can make us think that the grass is greener?

Now, please do not think for one moment I am saying all relationships are worth sticking out and that ‘the other grass’ isn’t really there. Because, if you are in an abusive relationship – be it emotional, physical, financial, psychological, sexual or cultural, then that is not okay and I strongly urge you to seek the support you need to be able to leave that relationship.

However, let’s say you are not in an abusive relationship, but you feel despondent and are noticing that your partner’s behaviour or lack of actions are having an effect on your happiness. This is where thoughts of the grass being greener may start to seep in

If your lawn at home started to go brown or moss was building up, rather than move (because that may seem a bit drastic), you will either feed it or find some moss remover. Apply the moss remover according to the instructions which may take numerous applications over several weeks and then start feeding the lawn to make it healthy again. Well that’s no different to a relationship.

How about first of all writing down all the things that are causing your unhappiness? When you have compiled your list, are there any items on the list that you could help with directly instead of trying to send signals to your partner that you hope they will pick up on?
Sometimes we may expect a partner to know to get something out of the freezer for dinner, but if a discussion about what to eat that night hasn’t happened, how are they going to know to do it? While you might prefer it if they could realise what needs to be done without being told perhaps it is worth having that conversation, rather than sit it out waiting for dinner to not happen and in the meantime you get yourself irritated.

What if there is something more pressing? How about setting aside some time to have a conversation with your partner and, if you know that they are likely to forget, suggest for them to put a reminder on their phone. We generally lead busy lives and trying to remember everything can be impossible. Explain to your partner how it makes you feel, ask them to imagine being in your shoes.

All of these changes takes time, remember the moss scenario. Another important part is to list the things you do like about your partner and partnership, these can easily be overlooked. A new lawn needs TLC for its first year to establish itself, relationships need TLC too. Imagine how life could be if you nurtured your grass….

The grass is greener where you water it.

We are really remarkable human beings, we can do amazing things without even thinking. Even simple things like growing and breathing are incredible when we stop and think about it.

Sometimes when we find situations difficult or uncomfortable we develop coping mechanisms. A coping mechanism can be so subtle (like growing and breathing) that when a client comes to counselling it can take several sessions for us to work together, to ‘unearth’ what is really going on.

Let me explain this a bit more, imagine you are struggling in your new blended family relationship. The different personalities, learning the different parenting techniques, working out where you ‘fit’ in. All of these are proving quite a tall order for yourself.

Throughout counselling sessions, we look at what doesn’t work for you and how things could be adapted or communicated. Some things start to change for the better but some are still niggling at you.

As the sessions continue you share how you had always wanted children but for one reason or another it didn’t happen.

Again we sit with how difficult it is knowing that you are now not going to bear your own children and how it feels to parent another person’s children. This enables you some insights as to how certain days or situations can be more difficult.

Over our sessions the divorce of your parents ‘pops up’ and in one particular session it dominates the whole time which leaves you feeling surprised as you weren’t expecting to talk about them. The next week we continue where we left off and explore the impact of the divorce, during this time it begins to unfold how painful and difficult that time was for you and how you would never want a child of yours to ever go through that.

That realisation is huge and over the next sessions we look at how subconscious decisions may have played out to ‘prevent your children from ever feeling your pain’.

Obviously, this scenario is not linked to any client that I have ever worked with and has been completely made up.

As you can see, what you initially came in to look at was about your new blended relationship, but over time we uncovered the painful experience of your parents divorce and that you would want to prevent your potential future children to have.

So that’s what I mean by “what’s really going on”. It takes time to build a rapport together and to to feel that you can trust your counsellor with your feelings. There is also the effect of how you feel once you leave the counselling session and return back to your daily life.

I am not saying you will or won’t know whats going on, just that sometimes we can put coping mechansims in place that work so well, that they may need time to come to the fore.

Together we can look at the bigger picture.

Now, there’s a question!

If I just answered “yes it does”, you would probably think, well of course she would say that, she’s a counsellor. But yes, counselling does work and as I finished working with a young adult recently their parting comment was, “I think everyone should have counselling” which sums up what a lot of my clients say to me at the end of our time together.

I would like you to think of the two following scenarios:
Firstly, you have toothache and therefore make an appointment to see your dentist. You explain the problem, then sit back in the chair and let the dentist fix it for you.
Secondly, you join the gym because you have decided you would like to get fit. Hopefully you will have an introductory session on how the gym works regarding classes and what the different machines / weights do and you may even have a personal workout plan created depending on your goals – BUT, You will need to attend the gym on a regular basis and You will need to work out – just having a gym membership sadly doesn’t get you fit.

Counselling is definitely more like the second scenario. Just turning up, explaining what the problem is and then sitting back in the chair isn’t enough. You need to partake, You need to want to make a change in order for whatever it is that brought you to counselling to stop causing you the anguish that it has been.

It is really important to acknowledge to yourself how long a feeling or situation has been difficult for you. I believe this is an important part of counselling, things take time, you weren’t born and immediately able to speak or run or cook a meal, you had to learn and sometimes it was difficult and frustrating and sometimes you felt proud – this is no different to counselling. There may be times of difficulty and frustration and there will certainly be times of feeling pleased with how far you have come and, dare I say it, moments of feeling proud!

Treat counselling as you would a hobby or interest – you wouldn’t do something that you don’t enjoy, like, or believe in.

Sometimes people come to counselling because someone has told them to, or have entered it half-hearted, maybe thinking it won’t really work. Again, I would reiterate you need to want to make that change.

A good starting point is finding the right counsellor, I would suggest researching counsellors and then choose three. Contact all three, tell them you are looking for a counsellor and could they offer you a free introductory session, this gives you the opportunity to see how you felt talking to them. After each session write a couple of lines down as to how you felt. You will know when you have found the right counsellor. You will feel safe and held – important factors to do good counselling.

I think what can sometimes be really difficult is if someone you know has had counselling and you can see the change in them and they recommend you having counselling or trying out their counsellor. Counsellors are unique too, so it’s important you find the right counsellor for you.

Counselling is like a partnership, we work together, we invest time together, we sit through the difficulties and frustrations and we celebrate the proud moments together.

By all means, feel free to have an introductory 20 minute session with me and see if I am the right counsellor for you.

A good partnership could be life changing!