With so many counsellors sitting in the room straight-laced and distant, it might sound like heresy to suggest counselling should be fun, but in this post, that is precisely what I will argue. Although ‘counselling’ and ‘fun’ may not be...

In this series of blog posts on fun, I explain why I am interested in fun and what I mean by fun. A serious question to start with, how would you define fun? I am not asking you to describe...

Fun is a strange word. We all know what we mean by fun, but it is tough to define it; each of us will explain it differently. As part of my research, I looked back over time to understand...

Hope comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but only radically critical hope grounded on right mindfulness helps us build mental fitness and saves us from wishful thinking. Hope! It is a word I often hear from clients, yet...

Being mindful does not mean being mindless! Over the last year, I have delivered a series of workshops for a large company on mindfulness at work. In the workshops, I explored how people can use mindfulness techniques to live a...

I struggle with many of the fads that affect the work of counselling and, more broadly, the world of work. I have lost count of the different ‘best practices' that have been inflicted on many workplaces, including counselling. Managers,...

Online counselling helps restore mental health and build mental fitness. During the pandemic, many counsellors moved to provide online counselling. It was quite a big adjustment for many. As things are opening up again, at least for the present, we are having to...

One issue seems to crop up repeatedly in discussions with clients; how to take back control and challenge negative thoughts. These thoughts could be about us or someone else; the connection is that the thoughts are negative and seem...

How often do you get frustrated when the art of conversation seems lost when a friend refuses to shut up and let you speak, or you just get cut-off mid-sentence? If you do, then you are not alone. 1 in...

Ancient insights An ancient insight suggests that a human comprises two parts: being an Individual and a Person (Gracia, 1991; Luhmann, 1992). The Individual links us to other animate and inanimate objects, where we are a category bound by the...