Have you ever found yourself saying, “I need a holiday” when in fact what you mean is “I need a rest”? Returning home from a recent holiday, I found myself and other families I'd been away with saying, "I need another holiday." I was looking forward to returning home, where I imagined I could finally relax. Whilst I had thoroughly enjoyed the holiday, I also felt exhausted by it and, if I'm honest, a sense of relief that it was over. I had looked forward to the holiday expect

Have you ever taken multiple photos of the same thing then looked afterwards and picked the ‘best’ one? Or otherwise sought to refine or perfect an image by cropping, filtering or editing before sharing it with others. Last year, my daughter needed to take a disposable camera away with her for her school trip. It reminded me of when I used to use a disposable camera to take photos when I was younger, before camera phones became a thing. Back when the first photos you took w

Walking along yesterday, a lady selling something on the street asked me and my friend, "How are you?" My friend replied, "I'm fine," while I replied, "How long have you got?" During my counselling training, I've become increasingly comfortable with sharing how I'm actually feeling rather than automatically reaching for "fine." The contrast in our responses made me pause and wonder what we really mean when we answer that familiar question. When someone says, "I'm fine," are t

We often battle against our stress, trying to reduce, get rid of or fix it. Or we simply accept and live with it, normalising it as part and parcel of life. How often have you found yourself saying, "I'm stressed" and then continued to push on through? Have you ever wondered what your stress might be trying to tell you? What if the answer isn't in becoming stress-proof, but in opening ourselves up to our experience and asking, "What can I learn from this?" What if what you ne

What if the reason grief feels so difficult isn’t simply because of the loss, but because we’re trying so hard to leave it behind? I’ve often wondered whether our struggle is less with grief itself and more with our expectations about how we should grieve and for how long? Grief, like other life experiences, can come with its own set of perceived rules and expectations. Messages about grief can sometimes leave us with the impression that there is a “right” way to grieve. So

Have you ever found yourself believing that who you are right now is not enough? That your appearance could be better. Your job could be better. Your bank balance could be better. Measuring yourself against others and feeling like you come up short. Sometimes we come to associate worthiness with having more or becoming more. Believing that the more we have – more status, more wealth, more success, more admiration – the more worthy we are. We can spend a lifetime strivin

Have you ever found yourself going round and round in your mind, weighing every option, seeking reassurance, trying to figure out your next steps, make a decision or find a solution to a problem? In our efforts to make the ‘right’ choice or do the ‘right’ thing, we can analyse, compare, and question ourselves, believing that if we just think hard enough, we’ll get it right. How many times have you said, “Let me think about it ”, “I just need to think some more” or even “I’ll

How much time have you spent thinking about what you truly want from your life? What kind of person you want to be? How you want to be remembered? Growing up, many of us receive messages about what a successful life should look like. We can become so caught up moving from one task to the next, achieving one goal after another on a never-ending treadmill of doing what we think is expected of us, that we never stop to question whether what we are working so hard towards is w