You don’t have to be alone to feel lonely. But when you’re surrounded by people and still can’t shake it, it’s easy to tell yourself you must be imagining it.

You finally stopped. You’d been looking forward to it. So why do you feel worse, not better? There’s a reason for this, and it’s more common than you might think.

Are you bored of picking your words carefully, keeping quiet or not having enough fun? Or maybe you’ve had enough of constantly checking yourself whether that’s your appearance, your work output or the way that you hold yourself. Let’s look at what might be happening and how you can start to break free from the mould.

I’m a trauma-informed Counsellor and I’ve realised that the term ‘trauma-informed’ is a phrase that’s used a lot, but there is little consistency about what it means. As such, I thought I’d explain what being a trauma-informed Counsellor means to me.

It isn’t unusual to have felt, as a child, that tears weren’t okay. Perhaps your caregivers found tears uncomfortable. Perhaps they told you that it was better to ‘be strong’ or that ‘worse things happen at sea’.