If life came with an instructions leaflet, conveniently pinned to your crib by the midwife, then it might read something like this: Feed your enviable human brain Look after your amazing body Be kind to others, including yourself Love and respect nature Nurture your children Accomplish your dream Share your wisdom A guide like this [...]

Have you ever told someone that they have mud or perhaps a bit of food on their face? I know I have, and usually because a friend has lipstick on their teeth. It comes with the territory of wearing brightly coloured lips! But why, when we care greatly about someone else, do we frequently make [...]

From our first day at school, and frequently through to adulthood, we compare ourselves to others.  It’s human nature, because we enjoy meeting people who are like us in personality or who have the same interests as we do. In the playground we might be drawn to those who have the same hair toggles, pencil [...]

When we’re caught up in anxiety or feeling overwhelmed, it’s hard to see through the fog-like cloud in our heads. Perhaps we know what we should do: breathing exercises, planning ahead, dealing with a single task at a time etc. But often in the moment our sensibilities seem to betray us. We are amidst a [...]

When we try to comfort a young child, we’ll often crouch down at their eye-level and utter soft and soothing words. It is extremely effective in helping them to understand and to help them feel at peace. Yet, and especially for those of us who endure trauma, stress or depression, we find ourselves acting in [...]

It drills its screeds at me: Diligently pulsating – bones outwards It’s an ever present mass So known, yet eludes description Its monstrous whispers incessant But the quiet is my respite If it notices a trigger, it misses none, placards are beamed behind my sockets Thankfully the duration quicker than the ever present moving film [...]

Abuse and trauma survivors tend to overthink, and even though we feel numb, it’s because the cogs in our heads are set on overdrive. There is still much debris of historic trauma that we’re trying to process and make sense of. We have a human desire to sort things out tidily and orderly, in much [...]

Abuse and trauma survivors often feel unheard. We have gone along with situations with fear beating in our hearts. We grow up, often acutely empathetic of other people’s plights, and we go to extreme measures so that we don’t offend others. We have little regard for our own feelings. We are still numb with shock [...]

Abuse and trauma survivors fear upsetting others because it equates to rejection. We spend much of our lives caught up in other people’s tides, often giving little thought to our own needs and aspirations. Yet we all deserve to live happy and full lives - so how can we grow our inner strength? Firstly, we [...]

My wonderful late father used to tell his children to always look after number one. It was something he said frequently, and yet decades on, I’m only just realising the value of his wisdom. He had good reason to make these words his mantra: he was an abandoned baby, found outside a pub.  Against the [...]