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Gateway Counselling and Therapy Leicester
Gateway Counselling and Therapy Leicester
Safe Professional Counselling and Therapy in Leicester
Safe Professional Counselling and Therapy in Leicester
My Blog
Blog
Are you being controlled and abused by your partner or someone else in authority?
Posted on June 10, 2015 at 8:15 AM |
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All abuse is dangerous, but Narcissistic Abuse is, to me, particularly insidious. The Abuser appears so loving to start with, but slowly over time cuts off support mechanisms and positive relationships, isolating the victim, and then being incredibly manipulative, making the abuse seem like the victims fault, making them feel like it is them who have failed in some way, not good enough, must try harder, be better. The reality is that it is the Narcissistic Abuser who has failed, who is not good enough. Somewhere in their childhood they did not form secure loving relationships and learned to get what they need by manipulating others, isolating others, abusing others. As I commented on Facebook, they appear to be strong but are actually weak. Do you recognise this pattern? Are you a victim of a Narcissistic Abuser? Has your partner or another person isolated you from family and friends? Do they control where you can go and who you can see? Are they critical of your family and friends when you do go and see them? Do they have temper tantrums and then blame you for making that happen? Do they apologise and promise to change, or tell you that it's only because they love you? Do you feel like you are walking on eggshells, afraid of upsetting them at the slightest thing? Do you feel your needs have definitely taken a back seat to their needs? Do you feel constantly Not Good Enough, a failure, low self esteem, no confidence? The truth is that you have a right to be you, To have a voice To be respected To be free from fear and abuse If you are the victim of Narcissistic Abuse, please please get in touch TA Therapy is an excellent way for you to discover who you really are and be able to understand why you have ended up where you are, but more importantly, how you can change and move on. And if you are so insecure that the only way you can get your relationship needs met is by controlling the person you love, by abusing them (let's be honest here), then realise what is happening and get in touch for therapy also. It does not have to continue this way, and abusers need to find healing also. To get in touch, click the big red button to go to the Contacts page : |
Counselling in Leicester with Gateway Counselling
Posted on December 6, 2014 at 6:34 AM |
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www.gateway-counselling-leicester.co.uk Tel. 0116 2120807 E-mail : [email protected] So what kind of issues to people seek help for:
Seeking Help Is Not A Sign Of Weakness It Is A Sign That, Very Often, We Have Tried To Be Too Strong For Too Long. If you or someone you know would benefit from counselling, then please do get in touch or encourage them to get in touch. The picture above is the back page of my brochure. If you would like a brochure or several brochures for yourself or your workplace, contact me. |
Letting Go (If it is time) ...
Posted on January 24, 2014 at 12:36 PM |
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What does it take to let go in our lives? To allow for loss – of a loved one, a cherished object, a known and familiar feeling or experience. How do we go about surrendering and letting go? My experience is that most of us will cling to that someone or something, refusing to let it go completely. We make excuses, rationalize and bargain with ourselves. Confronted with the event of loss we tend to grip, to cling, to wrap ourselves around the very thing we need to let go of. What will we have once we let go? Once we surrender? It takes a leap of faith, a belief that once we release our grip we will be able to continue our life in a different, and perhaps even fuller way. We build our lives around loved ones, family, things, objects, habits, beliefs, you name it. And letting go of “it” whatever “it” is, threatens our very sense of being. Talking with a patient about her struggle letting go of her persistent binging, and of her tendency to isolate and sleep, to wrap herself in familiar patterns, her fear that she will always have a black hole inside, she tells me a Buddhist story: To let go is counter intuitive to us, and yet, we cannot advance without doing so. The very act of clinging keeps us immobile, tightly wound around the thing we cling to. Even when we want to let go, we fear… the precipice. I think this must be akin to what Sartre had on his mind when he described existential angst. Very unlike the next example, which celebrates letting go as part of the natural order of life.Around Christmas time of 2009, I heard a beautiful sermon on WQXR radio (by Reverend Bruce from the Unitarian Church in NYC) on this very topic. He was speaking on the need to let go with gratitude and an open heart. He shared an experience, which was recorded by an observer in the Metro section of the New York Times newspaper. It went something like this: A woman steps out of a subway car and starts to put her gloves back on when she realizes that she is missing one. She turns to look at the subway car and sees one lonely glove on the seat, the companion to the one she is holding in her hand. It is now too late to retrieve the glove from the train, so with a shrug of the shoulders she throws the glove that is in her hand back into the train as the doors close. She smiles and walks away. Surrendering with gratitude and open heart. My colleague, Dr. Mark Epstein (Open to Desire) talks about the difference between holding and clinging. Clinging is more akin to gripping- tightening our hand around something so that it lies prisoner within our grasp. Surrendering with gratitude and open heart requires an open hand. It requires a lightness of touch, a lightness of being. Openness rather than tightness. Think about what we do when we are afraid: we tense up, tighten up every muscle we have; we crouch, cross our arms, we close up. We grip and hold onto ourselves. We do this to try and protect ourselves. The question is: from what? Some fears, perhaps most fears, come from within, even if they are triggered by external events. In the case of letting go, it is our fear of not having, of looking into our own precipice, of losing our (known) sense of self, that makes us grip and hold on.Once we think of surrendering with an open heart we are immediately confronted with the fact that to do so requires an act of faith on our parts. I do not mean of the religious or spiritual kind, I mean of the personal kind. A personal leap of faith. The woman on the train platform did exactly that when she threw her remaining glove into the train: she released her grip with a smile. Her act of faith exemplified in her release of the glove – in her belief that she could let go, and that she was better off throwing it back into the train to join its companion, rather than bemoaning her loss, or worse – attempting to retrieve it. The act of letting go creating new possibilities of ownership (anyone need gloves?) as well as freedom. Can any of us disagree with that? Surrendering has to do with acceptance. Acceptance of who we are, of all of those parts of ourselves that we spend much our lives not wanting to know, but nevertheless know of. Acceptance of what we do, how we think, what we say, and of course, of what has happened to us in our lives. Acceptance of our limitations and our not so nice parts. Like the man hanging on a limb in the precipice, most of us will do “anything” not to let go. We will bargain, get angry, deny, all part of the cycle that leads us to acceptance and surrendering. We all have much to learn from the woman on the train. Velleda C. Ceccoli, PhDFirst published on Dr. Ceccoli’s blog, Out of My Mind, on June 21, 2010. And one more, just because I think it's a cool list ... |
Alternatives to Self Harm
Posted on November 30, 2013 at 6:31 AM |
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Grounding Technique For Nightmares (also works for other anxiety stuff)
Posted on November 21, 2013 at 11:00 AM |
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Nightmares can be truly horrible and waking from one can leave you feeling very shaking and vulnerable. Trying to banish the pictures in your head of what has been happening in your dream can be very hard. Grounding techniques can be helpful in bringing you back to the real world, for nightmares, anxiety attacks, panic attacks. Put on a light. Try to get out of bed and put something warm on if you feel shivery. Make a hot drink and sit somewhere safe and comfortable. As you sip your drink say out loud your name, where you are and tell yourself you are safe. Look round your room and identify familiar objects. Your pictures on the walls, a favourite ornament, a special soft toy, which you may want to pick up and cuddle. If there are still images in your head that you don’t want to be there tell them out loud to go away and immediately focus on something very familiar in your room. Put down your drink, place your feet firmly on the floor, hold the arms of your chair, or clasp your hands in front of you, and physically feel the floor with your feet and feel the arms of the chair, or one hand grasping the other. Achieving this will literally “ground” you in the here and now. Now try to focus on your five senses; SEEING – look around you and say out loud five objects that you can see – maybe a picture, a bedside rug, a vase of flowers, your curtains, and a clock. HEARING – Maybe you can hear your own breathing, a clock ticking, birds beginning to sing outside, a familiar creak of floorboards, a car in the distance TOUCHING – the softness of one hand against the other, the fabric of your chair, the material of what you are wearing, the warmth or coolness of your skin, the hardness of a wooden table. SMELLING – any scent you might be wearing or soap you have used, the detergent you have washed your clothes in, maybe a cigarette if you are a smoker, any flowers that are in your room (leaves too have a distinctive smell), furniture polish TASTING – the saltiness of your own skin, the trace of toothpaste in your mouth, the drink you have made yourself, imagine the taste of your favourite food, the cold taste against your tongue of the by now empty mug. All the above are only suggestions – you will find your own “five senses”. This will take as long as it takes. There is no time scale. Everyone is different. Like anything else it takes practise. We are all individuals. When you feel strong enough to return to bed tell yourself very firmly that you will not have that bad dream again. If it does visit you again, don’t blame yourself – it is NOT YOUR FAULT |
Life or Death
Posted on September 13, 2013 at 4:47 AM |
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