The Blog
Counselling, Coaching and Support for Mums
3 Ways to Improve Family Relationships
What do you think of Valentine’s Day? Do you see it as a chance to celebrate love, or a day hijacked by commercial exploitation? Is it fun and meaningful, or do you feel cynical about it? Perhaps you enjoy it, or perhaps you feel excluded by it. For some people it...
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Start as You Mean to Go On: Be Kind to Yourself in January
Did you make New Year's resolutions this year? If so, how are you doing? Do you like the thought of a new year and a fresh start? Or are you one of those people who feel cynical about resolutions? Perhaps you've tried on previous occasions to make a change and it...
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How to Handle Grief at Christmas
December can be a very poignant time of year for bereaved people. It can feel very lonely. The happiness that everyone else seems to be experiencing underlines the pain of loss. What might have once been a happy time now seems to have lost its lustre. The glitter,...
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Party Outfits and Body Image
"We can't hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love" - Lori Deschene As we approach the festive season, the shops are full of party dresses. However, Christmas parties - with work colleagues, friends, or families - can be a source of worry for Good...
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Three Steps to Self-Kindness
Every 13th November is World Kindness Day - when acts of kindness are promoted across the globe. It got me thinking. Is it sometimes easier to be kinder to others than to ourselves? Have you ever noticed how you might be being unkind to yourself? This might be in...
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The Shoulds and Shouldn’ts of Stress
In speaking with mothers, one of the issues that often arises is that of the difficulty of juggling work and home life. Many working Mums find it stressful. They wonder if they're good enough and often feel guilty that they're unable to dedicate enough time to either...
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Finding Hope in Failure
Have you ever felt defeated when you have tried to do something different? I often find it difficult when I'm trying to master a new skill and I don't get it right first time. There's a part of me that believes that I should be more capable and failure brings out...
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Parenting Mistakes: Expectations vs Reality
How do you feel about making mistakes? The fear of making mistakes can hold people back in all sorts of ways. It can cause people to never get started on a project. It can cause loneliness because people find it difficult to let others see who they really are. It can...
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Supporting Parents who Experience Baby Loss
Yesterday marked the end of Baby Loss Awareness Week in the UK and I ran a course for counsellors on working with bereaved families. The main concern for the counsellors is one shared by many of us. What do I say? Will I put my foot in it? Anyone who mixes with...
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The One Thing You’ve Been Missing About Your Teenager’s Mental Health
It's World Mental Health Day and the focus this year is youth. We're all familiar with teenage moodiness, but have you ever considered that one of the causes of this may be sleep deprivation? The Problems of Sleep Deprivation in Teenagers Research has found a link in...
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8 ways to cope with the empty nest
Jennifer Quinn says there are two times when parenting is most difficult. When the baby first arrives home, and when the adult child first leaves home. Most of us are familiar with the chaos and disruption that a new baby brings to a family. There are so many...
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I get by with a little help from my friends
When people have low self-esteem it can be difficult to recognize when they’re being treated badly. Simply, if they have not experienced respectful relationships, they do not know when someone is being unkind, controlling or bullying. They do not believe that they...
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8 Signs You’re Wasting Time on a Friend
It’s Friendship Month. Friendships have been so important to me as a Mum, and in fact, it was becoming a Mum that helped me to make friends in my local community. Having friends who share the ups and downs of parenting has sustained me for 25 years and I’m looking...
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Three Ways to Handle School Transition without Stress
Change. What do you think of it? Do you like it or hate it? I asked the question on my Facebook page and received a variety of answers. Someone said they find change interesting and think they learn from it. Someone else said that if the change involves learning...
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Feeling Frazzled? Ways to Cope at the End of the Holidays
The end of the summer holidays may bring a mixture of feelings to parents: Exhaustion from juggling childcare with work or with being available 24/7 Delight that the holidays are nearly over Guilt about wanting some time to themselves Sadness about the passing of time...
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How to Stop Worrying about Your Child’s Future
The other day I found a diary from the time my oldest was in Year 10. This is the year before they sat their GCSEs and I’d just read their school report. I was so upset and worried. It seemed like they weren’t working and were wasting their potential. They’d missed...
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Disappointing Exam Results? Don’t Panic
If you’re a parent with a student expecting A Level results you don’t need me to tell you the results are due this week. Naturally the focus is very much on students but for parents this can be a terrifying time. Sometimes it feels like the results reflect on us,...
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Tips to Stop Comparing Your Children with Others
The summer holidays in the UK is a time when the academic chickens come home to roost in terms of exam results. Graduations, A-Level and GCSE Results Day are all happening. If children have not performed well, or as well as expected, parents may experience a range of...
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How RAIN might help us to calm down
The long hot spell in the UK has well and truly broken and after the very humid weather, rain feels like a welcome relief. However it also made me wonder how parents looking after their children are faring. It can be hard when everyone is stuck indoors and ideas...
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Five Ways to Cope with your Children Growing Up
This time of year is a time of transitions for our children and for ourselves. There are a lot of lasts. Last time at toddler group before pre-school. Last time at pre-school before school. Last time at primary school before secondary school. Last exams, last time...
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Five Ways to Relax and Enjoy the Summer
“School’s Out for Summer” is a great rallying cry on social media in July. I notice my Facebook feed has a definite trend at this time of year. For the first week of the school holidays there are general celebrations that school is out and there’s no need to get up...
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The First Step in Being Kind to Ourselves
Vicissitudes is an interesting word to roll the tongue and lips around. It is a word I’ve been learning to use recently. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as follows: changes that happen at different times during the life or development of someone or...
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New Fathers and Mental Health
When I was working with new parents, a midwife related a story of visiting a mother who had recently had a baby. The extended family were all there celebrating. During the course of the visit she asked the new Dad how he was – he became upset and told her she was...
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Father’s Day and Grieving
As a counsellor one of the things I witness is the hurt that people have suffered when they have difficult relationships in their past. The days celebrating fathers or mothers can be very hard for them. Even where there has been a close, loving, relationship with a...
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Eight Ways for Parents to Cope with Exam Stress
I was walking the dog this morning and heard a mother shouting at her teenage son. It made me remember what a stressful time of year this is for families of young people who are embarking on their exams. Sometimes parents think it would be easier for them to sit the...
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Free Yourself from Emotional Slavery
In her book “Feel the fear and do it anyway” Susan Jeffers asks herself the convoluted question: “What am I not doing in my life that I could be doing that I am blaming him for not doing?“ She was talking about moments of anger with her husband and making the point...
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Change How You See Yourself
In The Universe Has Your Back, Gabby Bernstein asks us to imagine that we’re watching a horror film in a cinema. We know that the main character is about to walk into a life-threatening situation and we want to scream “don’t do it!”. Our lives can be like that. Time...
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Letting Go of Guilt
I took a trip down Memory Lane today and walked past the house where I’d been a young Mum. It is easy to romanticise memories of those days and think about the fun but sometimes I also feel regrets about the times when I was stressed and cross with the children. How...
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Optimism in the Face of Adversity
This week in my video I wanted to address how people can remain optimistic even in the face of adversity. With the help of my ever cheerful partner, I’d managed to reframe a broken glass as a stroke of luck (I didn’t break the more precious water jug). However, how...
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How Looking for Ease in Life can make a Difference
Sometimes I make life hard for myself. As a counsellor I put myself under pressure to have all the answers. I expect myself to have life all sorted. I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you to know that I don’t! So, like everyone else, I can have days where it...
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