Illustrated guides on the things people most often bring into the room. Written plainly, free to download, yours to keep — whether or not we ever meet.
A good deal of what happens in counselling happens between sessions — in the ordinary hours when something you've noticed starts to make sense. These guides came out of that. Each one takes a single theme and sets it out properly: what's actually going on, why the usual advice so often misses, and what tends to help.
None of them is a substitute for talking to someone, and none of them asks you to work through it in order. Take the one that sounds like your situation and read the part that applies.
Three states your body moves between: safe and connected, mobilised, shut down. You don't choose which one you're in — but you can learn to recognise it, and find your way back.
Download guideAnxiety understood as protection rather than malfunction: something in you that took on a job early, without much choice, and has been keeping watch ever since. On meeting it rather than overruling it.
Download guideFor when part of you wants to change and part of you doesn't. Both parts are real and neither is the problem — it's the tension between them that needs attention, not one side arguing the other out of existence.
Download guideThe four ways shame tends to show up — withdrawing, turning on yourself, avoiding, turning on other people. None of them is the truth about you. All of them are what shame teaches the body to do to survive it.
Download guideAn illustrated workbook: five steps from noticing a feeling to naming what it's actually asking for, and putting that into words someone else can hear. Best worked through slowly, ideally alongside counselling.
Download guideAn ADHD brain isn't poorly motivated — it runs on interest, urgency and novelty rather than importance alone. A look at working memory, time sense, emotional regulation and motivation, and how to work with them rather than against them.
Download guideGrief moves between facing the loss and getting on with life, and healthy grieving needs both. There's no fixed sequence to complete here and no timetable you're falling behind — only the shape grief actually takes.
Download guideWhat actually happened to you after a betrayal, what trust is made of, and what genuine repair requires of both people. No promise that trust can always be rebuilt — or that it should be.
Download guideFor when helping has become the price of having value. The loop that keeps conditional worth in place, how to catch it early enough to choose, and how to keep caring without having to prove your right to belong.
Download guideNothing here yet under that heading — more guides are on the way.
These guides are general information, not personal advice, and they're no replacement for talking things through with someone. If something in one of them lands close to home, do get in touch. If you need help urgently, please contact your GP, call 111, or ring the Samaritans free on 116 123.
If you're working with me and I've made you a personalised companion, you'll have been sent your own private link and password. It isn't listed here.
A guide can only take you so far. If you'd like to talk about what's going on, I offer a first session at half my usual rate — no obligation beyond that.
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