CBTMindfulness

27/08/2026

Women whose children are in care are often told to get therapy. But what happens when therapy itself becomes another form of monitored compliance?

I write attendance reports for women whose children are in care. Often, all I can honestly certify is: she attended.

This piece grew out of a recurring theme in supervision. Therapists are being asked to do work no one has designed a pathway for, while attendance and progress may be read as bearing on whether a woman sees or lives with her children.

Many of the women I encounter have come out of relationships built on control. Then we place them in a therapy arrangement with the same features: conditional access to their children, monitored compliance, and very good reasons not to be completely open with their therapist.

The clinical situations discussed are composites; no individual case is described.

Read the piece:
https://www.cbtmindfulness.com/blog/2026/8/27/attendance-is-all-i-can-tell-you

12/05/2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jennifer-darling-2b843433_internationalnursesday-nursingjourney-mentalhealthnursing-activity-7327601918577360898-cKMT?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAcBL6wBOff2K24PiiX_uurSQ3c1tBsQw7o

Thinking about my journey of 30 years in nursing and International Nurses Day.. How did that happen? I became a student nurse in 1995, from a background of finishing an art degree, and being unsure of what I wanted to do in the future. Knowing that I had worked as a nursing assistant, I felt like I....

15/12/2022

Even though, I won't be stood on the picket line with my colleagues tomorrow. I'll be supporting every single one of you as this happens due to being backed into a corner by an inept government.

Over the next few weeks there will be a lot of bad press fired at nurses and many who work within the NHS. For those who don’t work in healthcare, I wanted to help give some facts and context in support of my nursing friends/colleagues:

- In 2022/23, a newly qualified nurse will leave University with an average student debt of £50k.

- Their starting salary in the NHS will be £27,055.

- They will pay mandatory £120 for NMC registration to practice every year.

- They will pay between £200-500/yr in parking fees (depending on Trust) before even stepping through the front door.

- They will pay £15-£20/month for Union membership and professional indemnity.

- Their breaks are unpaid. They have 2x 30 minute breaks per long-day (13 hour shift) - if they can take them!

- 9% of their gross salary will be taken each month in student loan repayments. It is now estimated most nurses will never pay their student loans off in full under the new loans system, meaning this 9% deduction will continue for the majority of their professional lives until it is written off after 30 years.

- After adjustment for inflation, despite the most recent pay deal, nurse’s real wages have dropped by £1583 on average per year since 2011. Nursing pay bands are worth an average 11% less than they were a decade ago. Comment's such as "they knew what they were letting themselves in for" don't wash.

- There are currently thousands of vacancies across the country for nursing jobs, due to years of underinvestment and under recruitment, costing approximately £6 billion/yr in expensive agency staff.

- An independent study found a 10% pay rise to nursing staff would pay for itself through greater tax income from higher wages, and by reducing the amount of student loans needing to be written off.

- Another study found for every extra patient a nurse is asked to look after beyond a safe amount, the risk of harm increases by 7%. I have often seen nurses looking after patients on a ratio of 12:1. A safe amount would be considered 5:1. Do the maths.

Nurses are not greedy. They worked through a grueling pandemic to keep you and your loved ones alive.

Over 850 healthcare workers are estimated to have died over the pandemic. Nurses have lost colleagues and family members to COVID-19.

Please support nurses in the weeks to come and don’t listen to Government propaganda. The recent pay deal amounted to a pay cut in real terms. It is not right that a nurse (or anyone!) should be afraid to put on the heating, or be forced to go to a food bank to provide food for their families.
Copied and pasted. Not my words.
Support nursing
Support fair pay
Support patient safety

18/09/2020

Worth a listen maybe? In a panel discussion talking about creative approaches in mental health nursing

episode 5 - Creative approaches with Mark Pearson, Robert Griffiths, Lisa Reynolds and Jennifer Darling

29/07/2020

https://www.cbtmindfulness.com/blog/2020/7/29/stress-and-mindfulness

In stressful times it's good to think about different ways we can look after ourselves. This post about mindfulness is really just thinking about how we can begin to use mindfulness-based techniques to manage challenges and look after ourselves

24/05/2020

https://www.cbtmindfulness.com/blog/2020/5/24/perfectionism-social-media-and-social-media-holidays

How have you spent your lock-down? It seems looking out there, that a huge amount of people have spent their time during lock-down as productively as possible. The self-improvement in either their bodies or minds appears to have been accelerated by the fact that they cannot go out rather than

11/05/2020

https://www.cbtmindfulness.com/blog/2020/5/11/beginning-to-return-to-normal-life-a-confusing-time

It is expected that today the lock-down measures may begin to be rolled back as they have in Wales. As we move forward into this next phase of the lock-down, it may be difficult to adjust to these new measures, just as initially it was difficult to adjust to the lock-down itself. Many of us may have

04/05/2020

https://www.cbtmindfulness.com/blog/2020/5/4/lock-down-low-mood

As we enter our seventh week of lock-down, the impact of this bizarre situation on our mood may be becoming obvious to both ourselves and those around us. The cumulative effect of an extended period spent predominantly indoors may be, for many of us, either the beginning of difficulties with low moo

27/04/2020

Proactive Anti Loneliness, Social Distancing Doesn’t Mean Social Isolation

At the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, they study (as you might have guessed), happiness. In a study published by the Happiness Research Institute for the United Nations, the World Happiness Report (which you can read here https://www.happinessresearchinstitute.com/publications ) proved, u

22/04/2020

https://www.cbtmindfulness.com/blog/2020/4/22/managing-uncertainty-with-cognitive-behavioural-therapy-and-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy

We are currently living through a situation that, for the vast majority of us is completely new.  There exists a new threat to our physical and mental health. For many of us, financial instability has become a new norm and the guidance for how we ‘should’ live our lives seems to have done a