Heather McLeod Counselling

06/11/2021

SO true! Can you relate?

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05/25/2021

Like all relationships, we can help our parts that experience extreme emotions or burdens by listening to them and attending to them, as we would any person we care about.

Jon Schwartz & Bill Brennan, From “There’s a Part of Me…” (available via link in bio)⁣⁣

https://ifs-institute.com/store/136

05/20/2021

Achieving a genuine state of self-compassion is a more challenging undertaking than many realize. Far from a little feel-better incantation you offer yourself when stressed, it’s a journey into multiple parts of yourself that may include the good, the bad, the ugly, the confused, the frightened, a...

04/20/2021

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.amp.html

The neglected middle child of mental health can dull your motivation and focus — and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021.

04/13/2021

We often know that it is not possible to be happy all of the time, but we can sometimes have a difficult time when we feel anything but happiness, and we can feel desperate to get back to feeling happy again. Often, we don’t know what to do with difficult emotions such as fear, anger, sadness or jealousy or with any emotion that feels uncomfortable (even if we can’t name that emotion).

However, it is important that we don’t turn from or reject painful or difficult emotions. If we do, they will often find another way out, often in ways that feel big, intense or overwhelming. Being curious about these emotions, from a place of non-judgment, and having compassion for the parts of us that feel such painful emotions is often a good place to start. Once we understand and acknowledge these emotions, it is possible to work towards increasing tolerance for them.

04/09/2021

This is a gentle reminder that we are still in a pandemic, and that the compound effect of prolonged hardship may have sneaked up on you.

As a therapist I have the privilege of seeing unfiltered snapshots of our lives throughout the pandemic. I've noticed a shift in recent weeks, a tiredness that we are struggling to articulate.

Here in Scotland we’ve been in a second lockdown since December, things are opening up, but slowly. It can feel like being in a suspended space of unknowns. Not wanting to hope, yet not wanting to remain as we are.

Wrapping our heads around our current reality is exhausting. This is exhaustion that goes beyond the very real energetic drains of parenting, zooming, cooking, schooling, being in proximity to people all day, or being alone all day.

I have no solutions over and above the 'sleep, eat well, get outside, connect when you can' advice.

But…acknowledgement can be helpful. Validating our fatigue and accepting this uncomfortable reality, without denying, minimising or criticising, can help. It's okay if you feel sad, angry, frustrated, frightened, excited, or all of the above.

If you feel like you should know how to ‘survive’ pandemic times by now, please remember that each phase brings us new challenges. Nobody knows how to ‘do’ this. You are doing the best you can.

Drop a line below to tell me how you are today. No judgement here, only validation. 💗

04/08/2021

Healing Trauma in the present 💝 you begin to accept that your responses may not seem make sense at times and slowly begin to understand that they do.