At various times in our lives we will be faced with deciding how best to support family, friends, colleagues – and sometimes strangers – who are in distress. Perhaps we have a friend who has been bereaved or a family member dealing with a serious health problem. How to be…
How we deal with loss is fundamental to our mental and emotional well-being. Hopefully, we will have learnt that our connections to other people – family and friends – can help us make loss more bearable. But what happens if as children we are left to cope with a major…
Most families have secrets of some sort. Unwelcome truths are withheld, lies might be told and the burden of information that must not be shared is carried around. Often, as a result, trust is eroded and relationships falter. The weight of keeping such secrets – or a sense that something…
We all know that we are born, that we live – and then we die. Mostly, we manage to deal with the fact that we are mortal and get on with the business of living. However, sometimes we can become preoccupied with a fear of death or anxiety about dying…
I frequently come across examples of how unprocessed feelings associated with a distressing event or circumstances are passed down through the generations causing pain and confusion long after the actual trauma is over. Often, we might be unaware that we have been (usually unwittingly) handed a negative experience of the…
Many of us are prompted to come to therapy for one of two reasons: when something in our lives goes seriously wrong; or feelings such as anxiety (fear), anger and sadness become overwhelming. The last thing we want is for therapy to make us feel even worse.
When someone close to us dies, two things have to happen: we need to attend to the – often unfamiliar – feelings that we are faced with; and we need to get on with living our lives. Most of the time, we work through a period of mourning with the…
When we are going through a difficult time in our lives we often turn to those closest to us for comfort and advice. Talking to friends and family can help us make sense of what is happening in our world and give us much-needed support. What can we do to make it…
I’m a bit of a Grinch when it comes to positive thinking. When we are sad I don’t think it is helpful to feel like we always have to put a brave face on things.
Is there a right way to grieve? I think the simple answer to this question is ‘no’. People grieve for the loss of their loved ones in all sorts of different ways and usually find their own path through the untidy mess of feelings that often follows death. However, I…
