Here’s why you check your emails in bed.
Sometimes I yearn for the days before the internet, when the TV output became a dark fuzzy hum late at night. It stayed that way until the next morning, and no-one complained! If you wanted to be in touch with someone far away, you could telephone them. We used a...
How I reclaimed calm in my life from an unexpected place (and you can too.)
From the outside you’d think my life is pretty calm and stress-free. I live in a beautiful area in rural Scotland. Nature surrounds me. I have woodland trails on my doorstep. There's open fields and fresh country air filled with birdsong. But I often can’t focus, or...
Procrastination: The trap you never chose to be in.
I want to tell you a story of what happened to me last week. I’ve been locked into a high fixed rate energy deal since 2022 (it seemed great at the time, but not so great now energy prices have dropped). I read that I can request to leave that deal without...
The hidden impact of your childhood experiences.
We all struggle in our lives from time to time, and some of us struggle more than others. We might tell ourselves it’s because we’re lazy or stupid or incapable. But most of us have very little awareness of what the real reason is. Whether we had an unhappy childhood,...
Building assertiveness: How to deal with someone who never does what you want them to do.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to live in a world where people treat others with thoughtfulness and respect. Treating everyone with the same kindness and generosity they would hope for themselves. Instead, it often seems as if the people you have to deal with are thoughtless...
You’ve got bad habits you’re not even aware of.
Like many people, you might have pledged a New Year resolution to get fitter, eat more healthily or get more sleep. You might decide you’re going to quit your bad habits like smoking, drinking or biting your nails. When I talk about ‘bad habits’ I’m talking about...
Why I do what I do.
The truth about why you’re stuck in unhelpful behaviour and what to do about it. I knew this was coming weeks ago but I kept putting it off. Now there’s only 4 days left to go and I’m starting to feel a rising sense of panic. An old friend I haven’t seen in years is...
5 Reasons why making sense of your difficult emotions matters
We all experience a wide range of emotions in our daily lives, whether we choose to tune into them or not. We tend to notice when we’re feeling ‘positive’ emotions such as happiness, joy or love. But many of us have a tendency to block out our ‘negative’...
What your unhelpful habits say about you.
We all like to feel that we’re in control of what happens to us and how we behave. But very often there are things we seem to do over and over. Even though we know they’re not helpful, we can’t seem to stop. Once you realise where these unhelpful habits really come...
The biggest lie you need to stop believing to be more confident.
Life would be much easier and more fun if we were blessed with abundant confidence in all areas of our lives. But it seems that life blesses some people with natural confidence and others are left wanting to be more confident. We might look at people who appear...
Why your ‘failure’ is essential.
On some level we all want to learn and grow, be a “good person” and feel happy as often as possible. That’s not too much to ask the Universe is it? But there’s a whole load of layers, not to mention potential messiness in that description. Because first of...
How breaking the rules around crying is good for your mental health
From when we are very small many of us learn that shedding tears for emotional reasons is ‘bad’. We’re told to ‘get a grip’ and ‘pull it together’ if we’re seen to be crying in public. We’ve developed internalised ‘rules’ around crying. These come from both our...
7 Questions you should ask yourself if you “Need a holiday”
As soon as Christmas is over it seems, we’re inundated with holiday adverts on TV and in the media to entice us away. The lure of a holiday, to ‘get away from it all’, is so appealing, especially after the pandemic. We all could do with a break after the two years of...
How catastrophe could turn out to be your saviour
Most of us go through our days trying to be happy, healthy and living the best life we can. We avoid conflict and drama, and try to forget those past times in our life that were difficult. But sometimes life conspires to bring us face to face with those things...
What is complex PTSD?
There are things that happen within our own families and communities that have a long term negative impact. And it’s those things that go on unseen, over many years, that can have a devastating effect on the lives of people who experience them.
Let me introduce you to something called complex PTSD.
The real reason behavioural therapy isn’t working for you.
When you know you’re not coping well with everyday life, you might decide to try behavioural therapy. You might have heard great things about it, and been recommended to try ‘CBT’ (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). You might have many weeks or months of therapy but it still doesn’t seem to make any difference. You do your therapy ‘homework’, yet still feel uncomfortable in some situations.
If therapy isn’t working, you might start to question whether there is any hope for you. Well, I want to reassure you, and give you some clarity about what’s actually going on.
There is a good reason why behavioural therapy isn’t working for you if you’ve experienced trauma.