relationships

In this article, we’re looking at how mental health counselling eases the challenges of divorce in 2024 and we explore how mental health counselling can play a pivotal role in easing the challenges posed by divorce.

Divorce is a life-altering event that brings about significant changes, both emotionally and practically. The dissolution of a marriage often involves complex emotions, legal processes, and adjustments to a new way of life.

Amidst these challenges, mental health counselling emerges as a crucial support system, providing individuals with the tools to navigate the emotional roller coaster that accompanies divorce. Between counselling professionals and Cardiff divorce solicitors, separated Welsh Families can receive all the help needed to get through a difficult time. [Read more…]

Anger is a natural human emotion that we all experience from time to time. It can arise due to various triggers, such as frustration, injustice, or feeling threatened. While anger can be a valid response, it is essential to learn how to manage and reduce unnecessary anger. [Read more…]

In this post, there are some examples of cognitive distortions – unhelpful thinking styles that can cause us emotional distress and get in the way of taking positive action towards a happier and more balanced way of being.

Fact or Fiction?

Our thoughts can be very convincing. They can make us believe certain things are fact, when perhaps, the reality is quite different. Whilst our thoughts may not always be telling us the truth, they feel true and so we buy into them. We judge them to be rational and our subsequent behaviours are therefore deemed perfectly reasonable. For instance, we may think a friend is upset with us when they ignore us at a party and so we delete them as a contact or we may think, as we didn’t pass something first time, we’re bound to fail again, so we don’t bother trying. [Read more…]

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects individuals of all ages. It is characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

ADHD is not a one-size-fits-all condition; there are different types that vary in symptoms and presentation. In this post, we will explore five types of ADHD and delve into the medications that can be used to manage its symptoms. Additionally, we will provide a link to a free online ADHD assessment that can help inform potential traits that can then be more fully explored with trained and appropriate medical professionals: [Read more…]

Toxic relationships are harmful and destructive connections between individuals that can negatively impact one’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Relationships without boundaries are characterised by a lack of respect, control, and manipulation.

Part I

In a toxic relationship without boundaries, the partners may engage in behaviours such as constant criticism, *gaslighting, or even physical abuse. There may also be a power dynamic in which one person attempts to control the actions, thoughts, or decisions of the other.

*Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow doubt in the mind of their victim by making them question their own perception of events or reality.

[Read more…]

At this time of year, when we are perhaps feeling under pressure to please others, we look at how we can notice and reduce ‘people pleasing’ behaviours, refuel our ‘emotional tanks’ and be more present for others by being kinder and more compassionate to our ‘selves’.

Putting other people’s needs first can seem like a noble thing to do, but when it becomes all we do, this can be problematic, not least because eventually we can run out of ‘fuel’ – physically and emotionally, leaving us unable to do much for anybody, including ourselves. [Read more…]

Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) is evident in most clients I work with at Anglia Counselling, who present themselves for counselling and therapy.

There remains for others a misconception that CEN must be that the experience of obvious and overt abuse and trauma has occurred, and while these do fall into ‘neglect’ or abuse category, there are many more subtle examples, the symptoms of which can remain hidden from our conscious awareness for decades.

It is common for symptoms to only become more obvious once we embark on deep relationships – and then if we ourselves become parents.

So, who does not have any symptoms of neglect from childhood?

Very, very few humans have no symptoms at all.

So, what can be classed as childhood developmental neglect that leads to at least some level of psychological injury? Here are a few:

• Failing to attend to the infant and toddler when crying or otherwise distressed.
• Abandonment, temporary or permanent (attachment issues in later life, such as infidelity or difficulty committing).
• Not being ‘seen’, heard, or believed (Healthy attunement may be missing from ruptures with caregivers, especially when the child is shamed by unrealistic expectations, and most commonly today, with the newly acquired digital ‘soother’ that keeps the child occupied but without eye-to-eye contact that is crucial for healthy esteem and connection to others and oneself.)
• Uncertainty in the environment due to hostile relationships, anger, or inconsistent caregiver behaviours as seen in domestic abuse and violence.
• Parents and caregivers who put their own needs before the children.
• Parents and caregivers who are too busy.
• When a family member needs more care and attention than others, such as with long term illness or disability of a sibling.
• Poverty may or may not impact depending on whether love, attention and connection remain available.
• Overly protective parenting (Helicopter Parenting).
• Narcissistic parent or caregiver.
• Alcoholism and substance abuse, other addictions such as gambling and porn.
• When the child is bought-off with material possessions.

And there are many more developmental stage experiences that will ultimately shape the adult that the child becomes – and the relationships, including parenting styles, they have.

Who is to Blame?

It’s usually unhelpful to blame our parents and caregivers. They did the best with what they had in their awareness, usually repeating a transference via a culture of parenting that may well have been passed down the ancestral line for countless generations, until a ‘chain-breaker’ intervenes and with awareness and counsel, passes on to their own offspring a new, more mindful, less emotionally neglectful experience from which to enter adulthood, relationships, and parenting with.

*We always welcome working with clients who are planning to become parents and who have become aware that they themselves would rather avoid passing on negative approaches, including ‘over-parenting’.  

The roots of anxiety and depression in adulthood are often to be found in the child’s formative years while the nervous system was still being developed.

The natural way a child’s underdeveloped nervous system regulates is through relationships. The unnatural way is to regulate on its own which is the source of trauma.

When a parent or caregiver is unavailable for regulation and emotional support or when the parent or caregiver is the primary source of physical or emotional distress, the nervous system of the child is “pushed” to find strategies to regulate on its own and make the pain less painful.

Without emotional and biological support (co-regulation), the child’s brain learns: “I have to do it on my own“

The way to regulate on its own is via survival adaptations, responses and mechanisms that substitute for the co-regulation. It will become hyper-aroused, hyper-alert, disconnect, tense, freeze or shut down.

Walls Built That Can’t be Seen

Protective emotional barriers, or ‘walls’ are unconsciously created to try and protect the individual from further emotional pain. But these ‘walls’ also fail to allow us in adulthood to ‘feel’ the love of another.

The adult will also have learned through life to move pain into a problem-solving intellectual brain to solve, practically, an emotional problem. The result of this is a disconnection between the mind and body, leaving emotions to become subconsciously stored in the body while ‘we live in the brain’. Not only is this a safety behaviour, but it also has the effect of emotions with nowhere to go; no completion or catharsis, then we as adults become more and more distressed, affecting behaviourally our relationships with ourselves and others, our social and professional performance, our familial and domestic relationships.

We turn to numbing behaviours associated with alcohol or other substances, or allow anger and coercion, manipulation, and distrust, to affect many facets of our lived experience.

The Child Needs to Have Been Seen, Heard, and Believed!

Put simply, the child that learns there is value, and it is safe to express herself will continue to do so in adulthood. In this expressiveness she will be more able to set healthy boundaries, will have raised self-esteem, and be able to regulate her emotions so they do not lead to ill health and the assortment of other turbulence mentioned above.

Resources

Jonice Webb, PhD, author of “Running on Empty” and her website which contains a ‘self-assessment questionnaire’ for Childhood Emotional Neglect.

“The book I wish my parents had read” – Philippa Perry

This guest post, sponsored by An Epic Series of Failures Series some very interesting information around NPD.

The term “narcissist” typically refers to someone who is both self-absorbed and emotionally distant. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a serious mental illness after all, and should be diagnosed by a trained mental health professional.

Some narcissistic traits can be displayed without the presence of NPD. A few examples of them are:

• being in continual need of adulation
• using other people for your own benefit
• lack of awareness or consideration for the needs of others

[Read more…]

The narcissist – and the recipient of narcissistic personality disorder behaviours both behave the way they do primarily because of the brain chemicals (Neurotransmitters) that drive their respective behaviours. Read on to learn more. [Read more…]

Today we look into the area of criticism, our reactions, and feelings around it – and how we respond to it.

Criticism, at home or in the workplace can be hard to take. It can be embarrassing. It can prompt feelings of being devalued or inadequate in some way. When we’re on the receiving end of criticism from a loved one, colleague, boss or friend it can feel like a personal attack. It’s perfectly natural, therefore, to react to this attack defensively. Reacting, however, is different from responding. [Read more…]