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unsplash-logoEdwin Hooper Hands up who’s struggling at the moment? I’ve been doing fairly well in coronavirus isolation so far, being a proud introvert not socialising is the norm for me and I’m generally happy with my own company but today has threatened to break me a bit. The children are starting to get bored and twitchy, my 7 year old has involved me in an impossible craft project that has been more stressful than my art degree show. My 5 year old has been project managing me by helpfully reminding me (while i’m on my hands and knees with a…

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Someone asked me the other day why I became a counsellor, no one had asked me before, in fact not many people talk to me about counselling, maybe they are worried I will analyse them and dig out their secrets (I won’t!). I didn’t always want to be a counsellor, when I was a child I wanted to be either a vet or She-Ra. My woeful lack of aptitude in the sciences and in mathematics meant that I was unlikely to qualify as a vet and I didn’t have the right family connections to become the Princess of Power. So…

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By now you have probably heard of this art installation “84 Men” by Marc Jenkins at the ITV studios on the South Bank in London. It represents the 84 men who end their life each week in the UK. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45, this is still shocking to me no matter how often I hear it. Image taken from https://www.thecalmzone.net/2018/03/the-stories-of-project84/   Art can be a powerful messenger and whether people connect with this or not , consider it to be ‘good’ art or not I hope it will raise awareness and facilitate a conversation about…

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So I missed World Mental Health day this year because I was ill, physically but even though I’m a couple of days late I really wanted to talk about high functioning depression precisely because there is a lack of understanding and awareness of it even from people experiencing it. It flies under the radar, affecting the people we would least expect it to and though it shows itself in different ways to what we think of as depression it is every bit as serious.   So what does depression look like to you? Not being able to get out of…

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Apparently when I was a child I used to cry at the opening credits of ‘Lassie’ I must have seen it often enough to know that it would break my little preschool heart and I just did what was natural, I expressed my emotions. But somewhere along the way as I grew up I learned not to cry at ‘Lassie’ (well to avoid the film to be fair , I can’t not cry at it, i’m still human!) and later not to cry at much at all. Crying is often viewed as a childish or silly thing to do but…

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A student once asked his teacher “Master what is enlightenment?” The teacher replied “Eat when hungry, sleep when tired” (Disclaimer: Though I may be filled with wisdom I am not a Zen Buddhist and this story is largely open to interpretation, we can take as little or as much from it as we choose to.) If I took this literally I would probably only get out of bed to eat! For me this story is about identifying what you need and then asking for it. It sounds so simple doesn’t it and yet so many of us struggle with both…

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