Having the courage to reach out and seek support for your mental and emotional wellbeing is courageous. There is still lots of stigma around counselling and my mission is to breakdown that stigma. If we had a broken arm, we would naturally seek medical help, but yet, we still struggle when it comes to matters of our mental and emotional wellbeing. 

There is no shame and embarrassment asking for help and support, its essential for helping us move forward. 

Empathy is different to sympathy as sympathy is more aligned with a sense of feeling sorry for someone. In counselling, feeling sorry for someone does not work for either the client or the counsellor. Whereas, empathy is a sense of truly understanding how that person may feel, walking along side those feelings with that person and not trying to fix or tell them they do not need to feel that way, but to be there and witness those feelings and emotions. 

A return to your authentic self, now let’s say that again….

“A return to your authentic self” 

We are like onions – the core is our authentic self and since birth, all our conditioning from our caregivers,  other people's rights and wrongs, all the societal norms and expectations. All our experiences, how it impacted us and how we responded, all our needs, wants and desires - some being met, others being suppressed, has created a layer after layer after layer of the onion rings. 

Now its time to start peeling back those layers and having a look at who you really are, what you really want and need and reconnecting to your most authentic self. 

What a fabulous word which feels it has a lot of power and meaning to it. 

The Cambridge definition is, “the process of gaining freedom and power to do what you want or to control what happens to you”. 

When we go through our lives from a baby, we were completely dependent on our caregivers for survival. Through our developmental stages, teenagers, adolescence and adulthood, combined with not being heard, not understood, not valued and or having your needs met can and does have a massive impact on you. It can often leave you with feelings of low self-esteem, low confidence and a feeling of disempowerment. 

Now is the time to take back control and work on feeling, healing, learning, inner growth and development and exploring all the ways you can take back control, you can feel and be empowered and you can show up for yourself and be an active part in your own life. 

Trusting yourself because you know what you need. You know that something needs to change, you feel it, but sometimes we get a little stuck on the how we need to change. Putting your trust into another person can make your feel extremely vulnerable, all your deep, thoughts and feelings being said out loud. All those experiences that are soaked with lots of emotions, often painful, that we have learnt to suppress, bury, avoid or scared to let surface. 

• What if I am judged? 

• What if I am overwhelmed by these feelings? 

• What if I cannot do this?

TRUST yourself. You have come this far. You have got yourself through all you have been through up to now. Trust in you. 

Counselling is a trusting experience and it can take time to build the therapeutic relationship. Counselling is a process and a journey, one that is truly worth it and can be life changing.

I love this moto because it is true. We are so quick to be negative on ourselves and that critical self-talk is absolutely disgusting. We would never talk to our best friends like that and yet we speak to ourselves like this all the time. 

Try this exercise of being curious about your reaction. Write down the questions and ask yourself these questions, capture your first thought and write that down as well. 

• When was the last time you gave yourself a pat on the back? 

• When was the last time you where compassionate with yourself? 

• When did you last celebrate 3 wins that you did? 

• When did you last give yourself a hug when you felt a little low? 

• When did you last acknowledge you are going through a tough time and need a little breathing space? 

• When did you last say to yourself, “I am proud of you"?

• When was the last time you said to yourself, "I love you”? 

Was your responses interesting? 

Did you feel any emotions surfacing when reading and answering those questions? 

If you close your eyes, how do you feel about your responses, can you label any emotion? 

Next - examine your responses with curiosity questions. Some examples:

• Why did I find that question hard?

• Why did I roll my eyes?

• Why do I feel it is very difficult to say I love you to myself?

• Why did I want to reject the "I am proud of myself" question?

• Why was it very difficult to think of 3 wins? 

Critical self talk serves a purpose of protection, but it is a very outdated tool we have used and is counterproductive. Let's start a different self talk - How can I be my own best friend?