Creative Counselling

23/07/2026

I'm currently on annual leave and will be back working on Monday 10th August.

05/06/2026

Having worked with survivors of religious and polical cults this research is relevant to those cults as well as the church.

PART 2: Neuroscience and Faith Series

Nobody told you that what happened to you in that church could end up in your body.

But it did.

Religious trauma isn’t just a theological problem. It isn’t just a memory you revisit when someone mentions church. For millions of people it lives in the nervous system, in chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, the inability to rest, the feeling that something is always slightly wrong even when everything is fine.

That’s not weakness. That’s what happens when a child’s developing brain is repeatedly told that the God who made them is watching for their failures. That danger is spiritual, invisible, and everywhere. That their worth is conditional on performance they can never quite achieve.

The body keeps that score.

Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s leading trauma researchers, has documented what sustained threat-based environments do to the nervous system. The brain stops distinguishing between real danger and perceived danger. The body stays braced. Rest becomes impossible not because you won’t slow down, but because your nervous system genuinely doesn’t know how.

Sound familiar?

This is why so many survivors of fear-based religion don’t just struggle with theology. They struggle with sleep. With trust. With receiving love without waiting for the condition attached to it. With sitting in silence without it feeling threatening.

It got into your body because it was designed to.

Control through fear is most effective when it becomes biological. When you don’t just believe you’re not enough, you feel it in your chest before you can even form the thought.

Here’s what I want you to know:

Healing is possible. Not just spiritually. Neurologically. The brain rewires. The nervous system recalibrates. The body learns safety when it’s consistently given it.

And the safest place your nervous system was ever designed to exist is in the presence of a God who is not a threat.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”

That’s not poetry. That’s a nervous system finally coming home.

Drop a 🔥 if this is naming something you’ve never had words for.

👇 How did fear-based religion show up in your body?

30/03/2026

I'm currently on annual leave and will be back working on 13th April.

11/03/2026

Great Free webinar, take a look.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14ZijA9i9R8/

Are you a team leader or HR manager? Would you like to know more about the role of therapeutic listening in the workplace?

Improve workplace mental well-being by incorporating active listening into management skillsets. This webinar provides an introduction to therapeutic communication in the workplace, giving you an understanding of the core principles of active listening, promoting psychological safety, mental wellbeing, and more effective teams, without turning the workplace into a clinical setting.

Register now ➙ https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_q7nlqNGwSGWYu4E3lFHvlA

24/01/2026

Counselling sessions available in Brighton and online.

You don't need to be at breaking point.
You don't need to know what to say.

If something has been on your mind, however small it feels, we can start there.

www.mentalktoo.uk
07410 040348
[email protected].

06/10/2025

These lovely counselling rooms in Queens Park area, the top of Hanover are available to rent. Daytime and evening sessions available. Carl Evans who owns the rooms is a practicing therapist and supervisor so understands the importance of well appointed rooms and a fair rental policy.

There is a very accessible online booking system too.

Peaceful. Spacious. Flexible.

24/09/2025

24/05/2025