How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty: Setting Healthy Boundaries with Schema Therapy
November has a way of filling our calendars. Invitations arrive, family gatherings are planned, holidays are organised, and suddenly our carefully protected space has disappeared beneath a long list of commitments. For some people, saying “no” feels agonisingly difficult. A simple invitation can trigger an internal struggle: Will they [...]
What Is Schema Therapy? A Christian Counsellor’s Guide to Understanding Emotional Patterns
In my work as a Christian counsellor, I often meet people who genuinely want to grow, heal and live more freely, yet find themselves repeatedly reactive and repeating their unhelpful emotional patterns. Perhaps you become overly critical and harsh on yourself, struggle to trust others, feel rejected easily, live with [...]
What is Anticipatory Grief?
Grief is often associated with the moment a loved one, a beloved pet or a relationship or valued career actually dies or comes to an end. But sometimes grief begins much earlier. Anticipatory grief is the grief experienced in expectation of an impending loss. It can be felt intensely by those [...]
How to Weather Emotional Storms (Part 2): Seven Practical Distress Tolerance Skills for Difficult Days
In Part 1, we explored what distress is, why emotional pain can feel so overwhelming, and how Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) teaches us to balance acceptance and change. We learned that distress is a normal part of being human. Difficult emotions are not a sign that we are failing [...]
How to Weather Emotional Storms (Part 1): Understanding Distress, Radical Acceptance and Finding Peace
Life inevitably brings difficult seasons. At some point, we all experience moments when circumstances feel overwhelming—receiving painful news, navigating relationship struggles, facing a significant illness or uncertainty, grieving a loss, or carrying worries about the future. Emotional pain is part of being human. We cannot always choose what happens [...]
What is Cumulative Grief?
🌿💛 When Losses Accumulate: Many people who come to me for therapy are carrying not just one big loss, but an accumulation of multiple unresolved losses and sorrows from their lives. Often, they come seeking help for anxiety, burnout, emotional overwhelm, depression, relationship struggles, or a growing sense of [...]
What Is It Like Caring for a Parent with Alzheimer’s?
A Christian Counsellor’s Reflection on Grief, Love, and Faith Caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease is often described as a long, slow loss. It is a deeply painful unfolding in which pieces of a loved one seem to fade over time. Clinical terms such as “anticipatory grief” and [...]
Bilateral Drawing in Art Therapy: A Gentle Path to Healing Big Emotions
Not long ago, a client sat across from me on the lounge in my counselling room, her shoulders tense, hands tightly clasped in her lap, her body guarded. When I gently enquired what was going on for her in the moment, she paused and then quietly said, “I don’t [...]
International Women’s Day: Violence Against Women, Coercive Control and God’s Heart for Women
International Women’s Day is a wonderful time of celebration where we honour the strength, leadership, achievements and resilience of women around the world. I cannot dismiss our need, though, to also allow International Women’s Day to call us to action regarding the confrontation of a painful reality - that [...]
Finding Healing Through Creativity: How Art Therapy Supports Adults in Mental Health, Grief, and Growth
In our fast-paced, often overwhelming world, many adults find themselves carrying heavy burdens — grief, anxiety, unresolved trauma, or the quiet exhaustion that comes with simply holding too much for too long. While traditional talk therapy can be immensely helpful, it isn’t the only type of support or path [...]
What is Co-dependency in Romantic Relationships? Love, Identity, and Healing as Valentine’s Day Approaches
It’s coming up to Valentine’s Day again – the shops and social media ads are heaving with messages about romance, devotion, and soul mates. While this season can be sweet and meaningful, it can also bring on a range of pressures to buy gifts and make grand gestures as [...]
How To Enter into the New Year Well……
“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls…” Jeremiah 6:16 (NIV) “Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the [...]