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• Issues overview

• Emotions

• Confidence and self-esteem 1 - From self-doubt to self-belief
• Confidence and self-esteem 2 - How much do you like yourself? - a self-esteem test
• Confidence and self-esteem 3 - What causes low self-esteem?
• Confidence and self-esteem 4 - How everday-confident are you? - a quiz
• Depression 1 - How to overcome depression - key facts
• Depression 2 - The causes of depression of psychological origin
• Depression 3 - Therapy or anti-depressants?
• Depression 4 - Are you depressed? - a self-test
• Fertility and IVF
• Fertility and IVF - the evidence base
• Keys for transforming emotions
• Weight and eating 1 - Weight loss
• Weight and eating 2 - Bingeing and emotional eating
• Weight and eating 3 - "Have you got an eating disorder?" - a test

• Hypnotherapy

• Driving anxiety
• Driving anxiety - the RAC research
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• Fear of flying - reassuring facts
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• IBS symptoms
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• Insomnia - great tips for a good night's sleep
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• Smoking - quit forever with the right type of hypnosis
• Smoking - the truth behind bogus "85% success rate" claims
• Stress
• Stress - a test: is this you?

• Relationships

• Relationship counselling

Whole-person relationship counselling

Few things in our lives have such potential for joy and fulfillment as our intimate relationships.

Whole-person relationship counselling is a flexible series of sessions covering all the most important things needed to help make relating joyful - or, if it comes to that, to make splitting up liberating rather than depressing. It's aimed to liberate the power of love. That includes the self-love which carries you out of a hopeless or toxic situation.

Our intimate relationships can bring us to the very deepest places inside ourselves and can touch on deep wounds and fears left over from childhood. It can take real courage to be open and to trust another human being, and to enter into real intimacy. And when separating is the right thing to do, and it can be, it takes trust and confidence in ourselves to follow our inner voice and step into the unknown.

Whole-person relationship counselling may be for you if:

• You feel your relationship could be giving you more
• You're unhappy that you're not in a relationship
• You've been to Relate or other counselling but found that nothing changed
• You have a repeating pattern of relationship which you can't get free from - for example, problems with commitment
• You feel your relationship is in danger
• You feel the best way forward may be to split up, and want to explore that in a safe and supportive environment
• The relationship is breaking up against your hopes, and you need some help and support with your own options, confidence, and self-love
• You feel your individual issues are getting in the way with your partner
• You have trouble expressing your needs and boundaries
• You want clarity about one specific issue or conflict (work, money, children, sex, etc)
• You need help in recovering from a painful breakup or a toxic relationship
• Part of you wants to leave, part of you wants to stay
• There are things you and your partner need to change or understand and you don't know how to do that
• You want to work in more depth than normal relationship coaching

I work with singles or one partner or both.

You might choose to explore some or all of these areas, depending on what your relationship needs:

Feeling good and confident in yourself

Very normally, people feel bad inside themselves and look outside for the relationship to make them happy. Actually, what makes relationships work is when you feel good in yourself and have fun being on your own. Then your surplus happiness overflows as love and fuels a loving, affectionate and joyful relationship.

If certainly doesn't all have to be like that, relationships are also a place of healing and a place where it is safe to take the risk reveal hurt and vulnerability. But the foundation of a happy relationship is you being happy on your own.

Focus on the positives in each other - actually, that's what's real!

We all of us have a place inside where we feel ashamed, hurt or unworthy. It's important to have the courage to bring it into the light of day. But it's far more important to remember that that is not how you - or your partner - really are. That's all just conditioning from when we were children. The truth is that both you and your partner are loving, joyful, strong, wise human beings, even when you both totally forget that. The special healing magic of relationships is that when you forget you are wonderful, you can remind each other.

Focus on what does work in your relating

Sometimes, everything is OK. And somehow, you create or attract those moments. It's much more useful to concentrate mainly on what's right. Often, what's wrong will take care of itself.

Not what you say, but how you say it - the pattern of communication in your relationship

• listening instead of scoring points
• keeping calm while you talk
• Not blaming, not criticising, not judging, not diagnosing
• taking responsibility for your emotions instead of making the other responsible for how you feel. Emotions are a fact about you, not about the other person
• identifying the unmet need behind anger or judgment
• really trying to understand your partner, even if what you hear is painful
• saying "I feel" rather than "you are"
• breaking up all old patterns of communication which don't work. Stale, painful, repeating patterns - don't do them! - do anything else.
• Being alert for "rackets" - patterns of communication where, if you are honest, there is a hidden addiction to ending up feeling bad. Just don't do them.
• ... and many similar things. These may be basic, but they can make a big difference, often quickly.

How old are you in the relationship? - fifty-three, twenty-three, or just plain three years old?

Very often, the small hurt child in us is running our adult relationships. It can be shocking to realise that, but it's very liberating and healing. There's nothing wrong with it! More or less, most people are in this situation. But if you act without thought or awareness as if your partner is your mother or father, then you are not really seeing your partner in the present moment at all, and will dump ancient emotional demands on them which have nothing to do with them. If you are aware of the situation then the relationship can become a wonderful haven of healing and letting go of the past.

How old is your partner in the relationship?

Part of reminding each other that you are strong, joyful, wise, peaceful human beings is to treat each other as adults.

That doesn't mean you can't feel small or weak with your partner. It's part of intimacy to allow yourself, if it happens to arise, to feel tiny and want to curl up in your partner's arms and just be held. That's deeply healing and perfectly OK if it is honest and direct, if it nourishes your adult strength, and if over a period of time, it's balanced between you and your partner. It's a problem if it is always one-sided, or the hurt child runs the relationship or seems more real that the adult.

Be honest about your needs

Much anger, fear, manipulation, and co-dependency comes from trying to get the other person to meet your needs without being honest about those needs. Maybe you're not aware of them, or maybe they are scary to own - this can be VERY challenging. But you have to be straight about your needs. In particular:

Be honest about what you want sexually

The simplest piece of relationship advice is "Talk about sex, a lot." Do you ask for what you want? Do you share what turns you on? Do you share your fantasies? Do you say and do whatever comes into your head while making love? Again, this can be immensely scary and challenging; but also immensely healing and liberating. And in fact, like being open about your needs, it's one of those things to which there is actually no alternative. You either do it, or you and the relationship can feel dead and disconnected.

Assertiveness and saying NO

Especially for women, it can be very important to say NO more, to stop doing things only because you feel guilty, and to stop pleasing people. Men rarely find this difficult!

Being prepared to leave if that is right

What heals is always love. But love doesn't just mean "love for each other, which brings us together." Is most definitely includes love for yourself, which carries you apart and rescues you from a painful, hopeless or toxic situation. Self-love includes recognising when the love between two people is dead and has been replaced by habit and pretense.

Family or divorce relationship patterns

Many of us pick up relationship patterns from our parents. For example, we might be rejected by the opposite-sex parent, or feel super-special to them (ie one parent unconsciously gives the message "It's you I really want, not you mum / your dad.) Parents' divorce can leave painful scars, for example if children get forced to side with one parent against the other. All these can make it hard to trust and be open and act like a man or a woman in relationships.

Projections and the inner male and female

Every man and every woman has both a male and a female aspect. While we think we are relating to the outer woman or man, very often we are re-enacting on the outside, conflicts going on inside of us. We project parts of ourselves onto our partners, and then when we look outside, we don't even see our partner at all. As soon as you recognise what is going on, the projections start to drop.

A final thought ...

Sometimes, when people are trapped in an avalanche, they die because they dig down into the snow, not up into the light. Love is intrinsically healing.The aim of this work is to liberate that instrinsic healing power so that you, and your partner, stop digging yourselves a hole. And either together, or if necessary as individuals, you dig up into the light.

To take the first step, give me a ring and leave a message (24 hours.) I'll call you back. 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307. I work with singles or with one or both partners.

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Is your life as good as it could be? See the home page for an informal quiz on how much happiness you can gain from brief therapy, self-help personal development methods, hypnotherapy and relationship coaching

See here for fees, schedule, and money-back assurance for the first session, here for what makes the type of brief therapy and hypnosis which I do different.

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You've got to dance like nobody's watching and love like it is never going to hurt.

Ann Wells, columnist in the Los Angeles Times

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Love is the way messengers from the mystery tell us things.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

Gautam Buddha