Lauruna Counselling & Wellbeing

14/09/2026

🌙 When a young person manages something, it can be easy to assume that the support they needed before is no longer necessary.

They attended the lesson. They spoke to people. They completed the work. Perhaps they even laughed, joined in and appeared confident.

From the outside, those things can look like evidence that everything is okay.

But behaviour only tells us what we can see.

For some neurodivergent young people — although everyone's experience will be different — getting through a school or college day can involve constantly working things out.

What am I supposed to do here?
Have I misunderstood?
Am I talking too much? Not enough?
What does that person mean?
Where am I supposed to go next?
How do I respond?
Can anyone tell I'm struggling?

There may also be noise, lights, crowds, transitions, unexpected changes and the effort of managing their own responses to all of it.

And sometimes there is another layer: trying very hard not to let anybody see that any of this is difficult.

A young person may genuinely laugh and enjoy parts of their day and be using an enormous amount of energy to get through it. Those things don't contradict one another.

We may only see the cost later.

Perhaps they come home and need hours alone. They can't tolerate another demand.

Something seemingly small leads to overwhelm. They become irritable, tearful or unable to talk. Or perhaps they simply have nothing left.

That doesn't necessarily mean the young person wasn't coping earlier.

Perhaps they were.

The question is whether coping should be the only thing we're measuring.

Instead of only asking, “Did they manage it?”, perhaps we can also become curious about:

How did they manage it?
What did they need to do to get through it?
And what did it cost them afterwards?

Because being capable of enduring an environment doesn't necessarily mean that environment is working for you.

Curiosity can help us look beyond what someone appears able to manage, and towards what their individual experience might actually be. 🌙

06/09/2026

🌙 No lesson. No achievement. No reason needed.
Some things can just feel good. 🌙

02/09/2026

🌙 When did wanting to be happy become feeling that we should be happy?

There is nothing wrong with wanting happiness.

But somewhere along the way, wanting to feel happy can quietly become another expectation we place upon ourselves.

We're often encouraged to think positively, look on the bright side, be grateful and remove negativity from our lives.

Usually these messages are well intentioned.

But being human involves experiencing far more than happiness.

I've written a longer reflection exploring what can happen when happiness stops being something we hope for and starts becoming something we feel we should achieve.

The Pressure to Be Happy
Read the full reflection on the Lauruna Counselling website 🌙

Counselling for adults and young people aged 11+ | Harlow, Essex & online across the UK. Opening Summer 2027.

01/09/2026

🌙 Not everything we grieve is something we once had.

Sometimes it is something we thought we would have.

A future we imagined.

A relationship we thought would be different.

A career or opportunity that didn't happen.

The family life we pictured.

A version of ourselves we expected to become.

These things may never have existed, and yet letting go of them can still involve a very real sense of loss.

Perhaps part of what makes this difficult is that there isn't always an obvious ending.

There may be no particular day when something was taken away.

Sometimes there is simply a gradual realisation that life has taken a different direction from the one we once imagined.

And that can be complicated.

We might value the life we have now and still feel sadness for the one we thought we would have.

We might know that a different path has brought things we would never want to lose and still wonder occasionally about the path we didn't take.

Those things don't necessarily contradict one another.

Perhaps sometimes moving forward isn't about convincing ourselves that everything worked out exactly as it was supposed to.

It can also involve making room for the fact that something mattered to us, even if it only ever existed in our imagination.
🌙

25/08/2026

🌙”It's only a bit of rain."

Perhaps it is — when you're standing underneath an umbrella.

We can look at another person's situation and wonder why something seems so difficult for them when the same thing wouldn't affect us in the same way.

But we're not necessarily experiencing the same thing.

We bring different histories, resources, needs, sensitivities and experiences with us.

What feels manageable to one person can feel overwhelming to another.

What feels like freedom to one person can feel uncertain to another.

What feels insignificant to us might carry an entirely different meaning for somebody else.

Understanding another person's experience doesn't require us to experience it in the same way.

Sometimes it simply requires recognising that our experience isn't the only possible one.
🌙
Artwork created for Lauruna Counselling by Meg.

20/08/2026

🌙 Today is GCSE results day.

For many young people, receiving their results won't happen in isolation.

They may also be hearing what their friends got.

Seeing results shared online.

Listening to conversations about who did better than expected, who got the highest grades and where everybody is going next.

And very quickly, a result that meant one thing a few minutes ago can begin to feel different when it is placed beside somebody else's.

Pride can become disappointment.

Relief can become doubt.

A result we were pleased with can suddenly feel as though it wasn't quite good enough.

Comparison can make it easy to forget that two young people receiving the same grade may have travelled very different paths to get there.

Different circumstances.

Different strengths.

Different challenges.

Different things happening in the rest of their lives while they were trying to learn.

GCSE results can influence what happens next, so they can matter enormously to the young person receiving them.

But someone else's results do not make yours worth more or less.

Today doesn't need to be about where you came in comparison with everybody around you.

Your results belong to your story.
🌙

18/08/2026

Sometimes the anticipation of something can feel harder than the experience itself.

Before something happens, there can be so much we don't know.

Who will be there?

What will happen?

How will I feel?

What will I say?

What if something goes wrong?

Our minds can try to fill in those gaps — rehearsing conversations, imagining different outcomes and preparing for situations that haven't happened yet.

Perhaps sometimes this isn't simply “overthinking”.

Perhaps it is an attempt to make the unknown feel a little more known.

Then the event begins.

It may still be difficult. It may still bring anxiety.

But something has changed.

Instead of trying to prepare for all the different things that might happen, there is finally something real in front of us to respond to.

Sometimes the anticipation and the experience itself can feel very different.

18/08/2026

🌙 Sometimes an event itself only lasts a short time.

But we may have already spent hours, days or even weeks experiencing it in our minds.

What will it be like?

What if something goes wrong?

What will I say?

Who will be there?

What if I don't know what to do?

When something is unknown, there are gaps in our understanding — and our minds can become very good at trying to fill them.

We might rehearse conversations that haven't happened, imagine different outcomes, plan what we will do if something goes wrong or repeatedly go over everything we already know.

Perhaps some of this is our mind trying to make the unknown feel a little more predictable.

And sometimes, once we actually arrive, something changes.

Not necessarily because the experience is easy.

But because we are no longer trying to respond to every possible version of what might happen.

There is finally something real in front of us to respond to.

Sometimes the anticipation and the experience itself are two very different things.
🌙

14/08/2026

🌙 Guilt doesn’t always mean we’ve done something wrong.

Sometimes it shows up when we make a choice that someone else might not like.

When we say no.

When we change our mind.

When we choose what we need instead of what is expected of us.
If we’re used to putting other people first, doing something differently can feel uncomfortable — even when we know, logically, that we haven’t done anything wrong.

Perhaps the question isn’t always “Why do I feel guilty?”

Perhaps sometimes it’s:

“What does this guilt think I should have done instead?” 🌙

13/08/2026