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Managing strong emotions

By Gill Wier

Emotions are a universal human experience and they serve a useful function by indicating what is important to us and what we need to do to stay safe a...

A Letter To My Mugger

By Bay Whitaker

An exercise sometimes used in counselling is “The Unsent Letter”.  Wrting such a letter can help when something has happened that feels unfinished or...

Cultivating Gratitude

By Gill Wier

Pause for a moment and think back over your day so far….for which moment are you most grateful?  What difference would it make if you were able to...

The Benefits of Therapeutic Writing

By Gill Wier

“Have you tried writing it down? This is a question that I often ask clients, particularly when they are experiencing a complex range of thoughts a...

What is mindfulness?

By Gill Wier

The theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (May 11th – 17th 2015) is Mindfulness.  Gill Wier explains what mindfulness is and how it can h...

A Map for the Grief Journey - Worden's Four Tasks of Mourning

By Gill Wier

When someone close to you dies the range and intensity of emotions you feel can be overwhelming.  As we don’t talk much about death in our society man...

All About Anxiety

By Gill Wier

It’s Mental Health Awareness week (12th – 18th May 2014) and the focus this year is on raising awareness of anxiety.  Here is some information about a...

New Students - How to Protect your Mental Well Being at University

By Gill Wier

If you have just started University, welcome to Sheffield!  This is a significant time of change in your life and it’s not surprising if you are feeli...

What gives me hope?

By Gill Wier

I have come to realise that the concept of hope is really important to me.  Hope is the fuel for my work as a counsellor.  It encourages and energises...

Kindness

By Andy Whitehouse

“I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.” – Lady Gaga We all like to think of ourselves as being...

Why do I ALWAYS mess up?

By Bay Whitaker

Always?  Really?  That can’t literally be true.  In the branch of philosophy called logic, words like “always”, “never”, “nothing”, “everybody” are ca...

Do it Badly

By Gill Wier

So, it’s the middle of January, in the middle of a pandemic - it’s not an easy time to make and keep New Year’s resolutions so I wanted to share what...

Garden Therapy: Growing Garlic

By Taz Pasha

Gardening is a helpful tool to help with mental health as well as keeping us physically moving.  This is important for older adults, as we become less...

On Guilt: Fact, Feeling or Both?

By Bay Whitaker

Guilt is a state that can be incredibly destructive to people.  And our clients often say that they're deepy troubled by feeling guilty. It can...

Forest Bathing

By Debjani Chatterjee

Shinrin-yoku or ‘forest bathing’, started as a therapy in Japan, but is now growing in popularity all over the world. Unofficially, people have been p...

The Archetype Of The Queen

By Bay Whitaker

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and all the pageantry surrounding her death made me think about the Queen Archetype.  What makes someone queenly...

Poorly Me

By Bay Whitaker

Recently, I was off work for a couple of days with a really nasty cold.  This led me to reflect on how I respond to being poorly, and what we can take...

Best Summer Reads 1: Non-Fiction

By Bay Whitaker

The summer holidays often provide us with the time to enjoy a good read, so we asked our counsellors to recommend books that are both enjoyable and th...

Best Summer Reads 2: Fiction

By Bay Whitaker

We asked our counsellors to recommend their favourite summer fiction: gripping yarns, rattling good tales and super escapist page-turners. Diana Gi...

Executive Dysfunction - Why Sometimes You Just Can’t!

By Alistair Thain

Ever get that feeling when you want to be doing something, or maybe even should to be doing something, and for whatever reason you just can't? You...

Book Review - Eight Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin, Gwen Schubert Grabb, & Babette Rothschild

By Alistair Thain

Eight Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder is a self-help style book which supports the readers to help themselves with their eating disorder, bot...

The Comfort of Food

By Bay Whitaker

The Comfort of Food   These cold early spring days, I've been craving mashed potato!  I’m reminded of the important comforting properties of...