Accanto Counselling

01/06/2026

🔥 The Fire That WARMS or the Fire That CONSUMES 🔥

Inside all of us, there are parts that need to speak. Parts that carry frustration, anger, hurt, or injustice, parts that need to be heard, witnessed, validated. This is healthy and human and necessary.

We call it VENTING. And venting, in the right conditions, can be genuinely healing.

But not all venting is the same.

Imagine a hearth.

A fire tended carefully, contained, warm, steady. You can sit beside it, feel its heat, let it illuminate the darker corners of what you’re carrying. In its glow, parts feel safe enough to speak. A warm, grounded witness holds the space. The fire does its work. Something releases. The part feels heard, seen, and gradually… settles.

This is venting that heals.

The part wasn’t silenced or dismissed. It was genuinely witnessed by someone whose own fire stayed steady, whose calm created a container for the intensity. And because of that steadiness, the part could eventually breathe out, soften, find some resolution.

Now imagine a different fire.

One that gets fed every time it sparks. Where the witness matches the outrage, adds their own fuel, stirs the flames higher. Where every grievance finds amplification, every hurt finds escalation, every story gets more vivid, confirmed and more entrenched with each retelling.

This fire doesn’t warm. It consumes.

And the part sitting beside it? It never settles. It gets more activated, more convinced of its narrative, more stuck inside the story it’s telling. What felt like release becomes a loop. What felt like being heard becomes being inflamed - and yes, it can feel good, validating and affirming.

Here’s what’s subtle and important:

The part inside this loop genuinely believes it’s finding relief. There IS energy discharge happening. It feels like something. But there’s a difference between a fever breaking and a fever being stoked. One moves through something toward resolution. The other keeps the whole system running hot.

And here’s what I find most clinically significant: chronic escalating venting can actually become its own protective strategy. If parts stay focused on the external story - the injustice, the person who wronged us, the situation that won’t resolve, then the deeper, more vulnerable wounds underneath never have to be approached. The fire keeps everyone busy so nobody has to look at what’s actually burning beneath it.

This is where Self comes in.

Not as a critic. Not as the part that says ‘stop complaining’ or ‘you need to move on.’ But as the tender of the hearth, the discerning, warm presence that can ask, quietly and without judgment:

‘How do we feel after this? Lighter? Or more entrenched?’

‘Is this fire warming us, or consuming us?’

‘What’s underneath the flames that might need our gentle attention?’

Self doesn’t extinguish the fire. Parts need to speak, and that need is valid. But Self brings discernment, the wisdom to recognise the difference between venting that releases and venting that loops. Between a witness who holds steady and one who fans the flames.

For those who recognise the consuming fire:

It’s not about blame. Parts in pain seek any form of release, any sense of being understood. The escalating loop offers something that feels like relief, and that’s why it’s so compelling.

But if you notice the stuckness, if you find yourself returning to the same fire, same story, same heat, without ever feeling genuinely lighter, it might be worth asking:

‘What is this fire protecting me from feeling?’

Because underneath the flames, there’s usually something quieter and more tender waiting. Something that doesn’t need to burn, it just needs to be held.

The hearth holds both:

The fire that illuminates what needs to be seen. And the steady warmth that remains after the speaking is done, when parts can finally rest, witnessed and understood, in the gentle quiet of what comes after.

That’s the fire worth sitting beside. 🔥🌿✨

Offering confidential Counselling, Internal Family Systems Therapy, and a Mentoring service for Counsellors. My focus is to support you in a space that provides opportunity for discovery, development and HOPE! (Online)

06/05/2026

💚 For Those Who Feel Too Much 💚

There are some of us who feel everything more deeply.
Not as a choice, but as the way we’re wired.
The world comes at us in full volume -
the beauty hurts, the cruelty devastates,
the smallest kindness can undo us completely.

If this is you, your parts probably carry a particular kind of sadness
as a backdrop to life.
A knowing that being open to joy, love, friendship, and wonder also means being open to pain.
That the same sensitivity that lets you feel connection so profoundly
also may mean loss might shatter you.

Your parts aren’t wrong about this.
They’re navigating a real paradox: to live fully means to feel fully.
And feeling fully, for someone wired like you, includes a level of hurt
that others might never touch.
Some days it can be small, a harsh word, a rejection, witnessing suffering you can’t fix.
Other days it can be profound, grief that feels like it will break you open completely.

What your protector parts know:
They’ve been watching.
They see how much the world can hurt you.
So some parts may stay braced, anticipating the next pain.
Some parts may want to close down, numb out, create distance from anything that might pierce through.
They whisper:
‘Maybe if we don’t let ourselves feel this much,
want this much, hope this much, love this much, maybe it won’t hurt so badly if it ends.’

These parts aren’t pessimistic.
They’re realistic.
They’re trying to manage an impossible situation:
how do you stay open to life when life keeps proving it will hurt you?

And your sensitive exile parts?

The young ones who feel everything intensely, they carry this too.
The overwhelming beauty of a sunset.
The ache of being in love.
The weight of knowing how much suffering exists in the world.
They feel it all, and it can be so much.

Sometimes these parts blend so heavily that Self disappears behind the cloud of their intensity.
And then you’re left wondering:
where’s the calm, grounded presence IFS promises?
How do you access Self when the overwhelm is total?

Here’s the difficult truth:
There isn’t a way to make the world stop hurting for someone wired to feel this deeply.
No technique that will dull the sensitivity without also dulling everything else - the joy, the love, the aliveness that makes life worth living despite the pain.

But there are some things that might help when Self feels unreachable:

Sometimes you can’t access your own Self-energy, the cloud is too thick, the parts too activated.
In those moments:

🌿 Borrow presence from someone else.

🌿 A therapist’s grounded calm.

🌿 A friend who can hold steady while your parts storm. Their Self-energy can create enough shelter for your own Self to peek through.

🌿 Find your body. When thoughts spiral and emotions flood, the body can be an anchor.

🌿 Movement that clears adrenaline - walking, yoga, anything that lets the energy move through.

🌿 Breathing that signals safety to your nervous system.

🌿 Touch that grounds, weighted blankets, cold water, textures that bring you back.

🌿 Create something. Art, music, writing, not necessarily to produce something beautiful, but because creative expression can give overwhelmed parts somewhere to go. Sometimes they unblend when they have another channel.

Remember: Self hasn’t actually left. It’s behind the cloud, not gone. Parts can relax their grip when they feel safe enough, and sometimes that safety comes from external supports until your own Self can emerge again.

The ‘meaning’ question:

Here’s what I want you to consider, gently:
Would you actually want a life where you felt less?
Where you were protected from pain but also from the depth of incredible connection, love that many others might never experience, unbounded beauty, colour, texture, profound experience of relationship, music, nature and a true meaning that your sensitivity allows you to encounter?

Because parts might be trying to choose that, to numb down, close off, stay safe.
But is that what your soul actually wants?
Or is there something in you that chooses to feel, even knowing the cost?
Maybe take real time to reflect on this.

What Self might offer (when it is accessed):

Not a way out of the sensitivity.
Not a promise that it won’t hurt.
But maybe this:

‘Yes, we feel deeply.
Yes, that means we’ll hurt deeply too.
And I can be with you through that pain when it comes.
You don’t have to carry the fear of it alone.
We can open to the richness of life, knowing we have each other if the hurt arrives.’

And for the moments when you can’t find Self?

You’re not doing IFS wrong.
This is not about brokenness - far from it.
Yes, some moments are genuinely overwhelming, and the model has gaps for this reality.
In those times:

Find someone whose presence feels steady.
Let your body be your anchor.
Know that this intensity will shift, not because you’re fixing anything,
but because feelings move when we stop fighting them.
And trust that Self is still there, just behind the cloud, waiting for the storm to ease.

A reflection for your sensitive soul:

You feel too much for a world that often feels too harsh. That’s real.
Your parts are right to be cautious about opening, because opening does include the possibility, perhaps the inevitability of pain.

But the same wiring that makes you vulnerable to hurt also makes you capable of experiencing many other things that can bring beauty and true joy.

The question isn’t whether to feel.
You don’t get that choice, it’s how you’re made.

The question is: can you find ways to be with the feeling, all of it, the beauty and the hurt, without having to numb yourself into a smaller life?
Your sensitivity isn’t a flaw. It’s how you experience being alive.
And that aliveness, even with all its pain, might be exactly what your precious soul came here for. 🌿✨

An Individual Counselling Service in Newton Abbot and Exeter

10/04/2026

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07/04/2026

💫 When You Realise You’ve Been Living as if You Don’t Count 💫

There can be a moment, sometimes sudden,
sometimes gradual through layers of healing, when you come to realise something profound:

You’ve been living as if your perspective doesn’t matter.
Not dramatically.
Not consciously.
But somewhere along the way, you absorbed a pattern:
Other people’s views count.
Other people’s needs matter.
Other people’s experiences are valid and important.

Yours?

They’re… optional.
Secondary.
The ones that get set aside when things get complicated.

The parts that carried this:

Some parts might still be operating from this old software,
the ones that automatically defer,
that minimise what you think or feel,
that assume your perspective is less important than everyone else’s.
They learned this pattern so deeply it became invisible, just ‘how things are.’

But here’s what’s shifting:

Self always knew!

Quietly,
Steadily,
Patiently, Self has been holding a different truth.

YOU COUNT!

Your perspective matters.
Your experience is valid and important.

Not as something you need to earn or prove.
Just as a simple, unchangeable fact.

The awakening isn’t always dramatic.
For many of us, it’s gradual.
Layers of healing converging.
Small moments of recognition building into something unmistakable.
And then one day you see it clearly:

You’ve been living as if you don’t count.
And that’s not true.
That was never true.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

This realisation can be both painful and liberating:
Painful because you recognise how long you’ve been minimising yourself,
setting your own perspective aside, operating as if everyone else’s truth matters more than yours.
Liberating because now you have a place to build from.
A solid foundation:
You matter.
Your perspective counts.

What becomes possible:

It can often be like emerging from a chrysalis.
Something that carried and protected you,
that you can now fold up carefully with gratitude,
but that you’re ready to leave behind.

You step into a space that feels remembered.
Like coming home to something that was always yours but you’d forgotten.
Free from constraints you’d accepted without even knowing you were carrying them.

Moving forward looks different now:

Not with rage or drama or being shouty,
Not proving anything to anyone.
Just… differently.
Firmly.
With that quiet, unshakeable knowing:

‘Your perspective matters.
Your experience is valid.
You count.’

You stop automatically deferring.
You notice when you’re about to minimise what you think or feel, and you pause.
You give your own view the same weight, the same consideration, the same respect you’ve always given to others.

This isn’t selfishness.
This is Self leadership.

It’s the recognition that you belong in the equation of your own life.
That your truth deserves space.
That your perspective has value, not because you’ve earned it through performance or perfection, but simply because you exist.

For those still discovering this:

If this post found you today and something resonates,
if you recognise that pattern of living as if you don’t quite count, know this:

Self has been holding the truth all along.
You matter.
Your perspective counts.
Your experience is real and valid and important.

The awakening might be gradual.
It might come through layers of healing,
through small recognitions that build over time.
But once you see it, once you really know it, everything shifts.

You get to live from that knowing now.
Quietly.
Firmly.
Differently.

You count.

You ALWAYS have. 🌿✨

22/02/2026

Just putting this here if today feels heavy:

Take a look at this video, 'you are held lenzspot'

If today feels heavy, this song is here to hold space for you. “You Are Held” was created as a gentle reminder that you don’t have to carry everything alone. This is a place to slow your breathing, soften your thoughts, and let your heart rest for a moment. Whether you’re feeling stressed, o...

18/02/2026

🌿 When Hiding Kept Us Safe

There's a part in many of us that learned something profound and painful early in life: ‘being seen is dangerous.’

Not as a dramatic conclusion, but as a quiet, cellular knowing. Absorbed in those critical early years when we were most vulnerable, most dependent, most in need of safety. When the adults around us might have been unpredictable, critical, absent, or overwhelming, our young systems made a logical, brilliant, survival based decision:

‘Stay small. Stay hidden. Don't be noticed.’

Because being noticed meant trouble.

How childhood trauma teaches us to hide:

When a child learns that expressing needs leads to punishment, that showing vulnerability invites ridicule, that being ‘too much’ results in rejection, or that simply ‘existing’ might trigger anger or abandonment, their system responds with extraordinary intelligence. Protector parts emerge, working tirelessly to keep that child safe.

These parts learn to:
• Scan constantly for signs of danger in others' faces and moods
• Perform whatever version of themselves gets the most safety
• Keep the real, authentic self locked carefully away
• Equate visibility with vulnerability, and vulnerability with pain

The world becomes a place where being truly seen as unmasked, unperformed, genuinely yourself can feel life threateningly dangerous. Not metaphorically. To a young nervous system, it is most definitely that dangerous.

Those critical early years:

The first years of life are when we form our deepest beliefs about whether the world is safe, whether we are worthy, and whether other people can be trusted. When those years are marked by trauma, neglect, criticism, or unpredictability, the conclusions our systems draw make complete sense:

My real self is not acceptable.
If people see who I truly am, they will leave.
Being visible means being punished.
Staying small is the price of belonging.

Protector parts built walls. Not out of weakness, but out of profound wisdom about what was needed to survive. Those walls were never the problem, they were in fact the solution to a very real problem.

How these patterns follow us into adulthood:

The tragedy is that the walls that protected us as children become the barriers that isolate us as adults. The nervous system that learned ‘visibility = danger’ doesn't automatically update when we grow up, leave home, or find safer relationships. Our protector parts are still faithfully running childhood software in an adult world.

And so the hiding continues, but now it wears different clothes:

🟩 Imposter Syndrome- the constant fear that if people really knew us, they'd see we're not good enough. So we perform competence while internally bracing for exposure.

🟩 People Pleasing - keeping others happy at all costs, because a part learned that other people's emotional states directly determined our safety.

🟩 Perfectionism - if everything is flawless, there's nothing to criticise. The perfect performance keeps the real, vulnerable self hidden behind a shield of achievement.

🟩 Fear of Intimacy - genuine closeness requires being seen. And being seen still feels dangerous, no matter how safe the relationship actually is.

🟩 Self Sabotage - when success or visibility looms, a protector part pulls the emergency brake.

Don't get too visible.
Don't shine too brightly.
Remember what happened last time.

🟩 Chronic Over-Explaining - justifying our existence, our decisions, our needs - because a part learned that simply ‘being’ wasn't enough justification.

What this creates in our lives:

Exhaustion.
The performance of a self that isn't quite real is relentless work. Loneliness, because even when surrounded by people who care, the walls keep genuine connection at arm's length. A persistent sense of fraudulence. Relationships that feel safe but somehow always slightly distant. Dreams quietly abandoned before they could attract too much attention.

And underneath it all, that exiled part, the real authentic self, waiting. Wondering if it will ever be safe to come out.

Here's what IFS offers:

We don't tear down the walls. We don't force exposure or demand vulnerability. Instead, we approach those protector parts with deep curiosity and gratitude.

Thank you for keeping us safe all these years. What were you afraid would happen if we were truly seen?

And we begin the slow, tender work of helping those parts discover something new: that the world they're still protecting us from may no longer be the world we're actually living in. That being seen, truly seen, without performance or pretence, doesn't have to mean punishment or abandonment.

That visibility, in the right conditions, doesn't just bring danger.

It can bring connection.
It can bring belonging.
It can bring the profound relief of finally being known.

Your protector parts aren't the enemy. They're exhausted guardians who've been on duty for decades, waiting for permission to finally rest.

🌿 That permission begins with Self.

12/02/2026

How does this land for you today?

When parts seem to feel too much, sense too much.

Does it feel like a double edged sword?

Self is always there. Steady. Warm. Courageous.

19/01/2026

The Therapeutic Fermata🎵

In music, there's a symbol called a fermata. It looks like an eye hovering over a note. It means: hold this. Pause here. Let it breathe. The conductor keeps their baton raised, the musicians sustain the note, and time suspends. Something is happening in that held space, even though no one is playing forward.

This is what therapeutic silence can be.

When I ask a question in session and then... stop talking, I'm creating a fermata. Not an awkward gap to be filled, but intentional, alive space. A pause held with presence.

Here's what can happen in that silence:

Parts that usually get drowned out by the ‘quick response’ manager part suddenly have room to speak. The part that needs time to feel before it can articulate. The young part that's been waiting for permission to emerge. The wise part that knows the answer but needs spaciousness to access it.

The fermata isn't empty, it's full of possibility.

In that held pause:

• Emotions can land before the mind rushes to explain them away
• Parts can sense whether it's actually safe to be vulnerable
• The client discovers their own wisdom rather than looking to me for the ‘right’ answer
• Something deeper than words can be felt and honoured

Why this matters:

So much of our lives is filled with noise, rushing, producing immediate responses. Parts learn to speak quickly or not at all. But healing often needs slowness. It needs ‘the fermata,’ that suspended moment where we're not pushing forward, just... holding space for what wants to emerge.

The therapist's role is like the conductor holding that baton steady, present, attentive, comfortable with the pause. Not abandoning you in silence, but creating a container where your parts can unfold at their own pace.

A reflection:

What parts of you need more fermatas? What wants to emerge when you're not rushing to fill the silence? What would it be like to give yourself that held pause, that spacious moment where you don't have to perform or produce, just... be?

Your parts have their own rhythm. Sometimes the most profound thing therapy can offer is the space to let that rhythm emerge. 🎶✨

05/01/2026

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05/01/2026

The New Year can bring expectation of resolution that disappoints.

Internal Family Systems carries HOPE!