Couples Counselling Practice
Keeping the feel-good factor in our relationships
September to me often feels like January. It’s the start of real change as summer holidays fade into the background, darker evenings are creeping in and its back to work and our old routines. As we start to make these adjustments, perhaps this is also the time to reflect on our relationship with our partners […]
New Website and Olympic Values!
I’m very excited to welcome you to my recently launched updated website. To coincide with this, I ‘m going to be posting more regular blogs mainly based on issues that often show up between couples in my consulting room. Added to this will be shorter blogs on any topic that grabs my attention, or I […]
How do partners navigate mental illness in their relationship?
Last week’s Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19 May) theme was Movement. Simply making time every day last week to step outside in daylight and increase my steps made a significant change to how I felt and managed my stress. Working as a couples ‘therapist for over 25 years I am acutely aware just how many more of […]
Do you have a passive aggressive partner
In couples therapy sessions, focus is often taken up with hearing and seeing aggression and anger being played out. Passive aggression on the other hand is harder to identify often staying under the radar just bubbling away. Passive aggressive behaviour is defined as “behaviour that is seemingly innocuous, accidental or neutral but that indirectly displays […]
Do continual arguments badly affect your relationship?
In recent days the world has been horrified to witness how the age long history of conflict in the Middle East has now turned to full blown war. Families are being torn apart as the conflict escalates. In no way is this a comparison, but over the years I have worked with so many couples […]
Anxiety – The Theme of Mental Health week 2023
ANXIETY is the theme of this Mental Health Awareness Week (15-21 May 2023). As we try to navigate our lives in an increasingly changing world, our mental wellbeing is constantly being tested which has led to a huge increase in anxiety: the UK’s most common mental health disorder. Mentalhealth-uk.org have been driving an innovative campaign […]
Not Enough in the Tank – How to know when to Quit
Reading this headline in the Times last weekend and hearing Jacinda Ardern announce her resignation as the youngest serving prime minister of New Zealand saying: “I am human, politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then its time. And for me it’s time”. This made me […]
When Words Resonate
Over the recent High Holidays in the Jewish calendar, we are told that from the lst day of Rosh Hashana (new year) the book of life is opened and ten days later, on the Day of Atonement the book is closed, and our fate is sealed for the coming year. During this period, it is […]
Do you feel lonely in your relationship?
It is very fitting that LONELINESS is this year’s theme of Mental Health Awareness Week 2022. According to the Mental Health Foundation, one in four adults feel lonely some or all the time. There is no single cause and there’s no one solution as we are all different. However, the longer we feel lonely, the […]
Relationship Challenges 2: Caring for Ageing Parents
Following on from my previous blog focusing on a relationship challenge where one partner wants to leave - in this blog I want to focus on the challenges that couples can go through when either one or both partners need to care for ageing parents. Many couples I see in my practice struggle with […]
Relationship Challenges 1: When one partner wants to leave
Relationships are complex and challenging, of that there is no doubt. Never more so than over the past two years when we have had to manage Covid and all its implications on top of everything else going on in our lives. Over the coming months I am going to focus on different relationship challenges that […]
Loneliness in our Relationships
If there is anything positive that’s come out from this current Covid pandemic, it’s that issues of loneliness and isolation experienced by so many, especially during this last year, are firmly at the centre of our awareness. Organisations such as Campaign to End Loneliness believe that people of all ages need connections that matter and […]
Managing Uncertainty During Lockdown
For therapists, uncertainty is an issue that often comes up in therapy and never more so than now. It feels that over the past eight months when the first lockdown started, couples therapy sessions became more focused on uncertainty and anxiety than I can ever remember. Uncertainty about health, job security, schooling, finances, aging parents […]
Articulating the Importance of our Closest Relationships
Celebrating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year this weekend was a very different experience this year. Covid 19 prevented many people attending synagogue services and participating in the familiar customs. The rule of six made it difficult for families to celebrate all together and partake in festive meals. This period is the start of the […]
The Effect of Lockdown on the Client and the Therapist
Who would have thought that at the beginning of March when lockdown started and we were all in a state of shock, that three months later we would all still be coming to terms with this global pandemic and its unknown implications for the future. Rarely before, in over 20 years working as a therapist, […]