Ian Catterall - Person Centred Therapist & Counsellor

10/04/2026

There are so many ways our mind will create and run with unhelpful habits. The first part of helping with this is noticing them.

Take 5 minutes to work through these and see many you recognise from your own thinking…

In the next few days I will post a simple process that can help disrupt these process’ & give you an opportunity to break those patterns

Ian Catterall Therapy & Supervision

09/04/2026

It’s the denial of our mortality that can limit us. We think we have both forever & also feel fear when we know we don’t.

Ian Catterall therapy & supervision

04/04/2026

I think people grieving fear that if their grief shrinks they forget the person. However the grief is always the same size - our life simply expands around it. Of course you don’t forget the person you lose. ❤️

Ian Catterall therapy and supervision

17/03/2026

A young man once approached a wise monk and asked,
“How do I stop overthinking?”

The monk replied:

“You overthink because your mind is trying to protect you… from a future that does not yet exist.

Tell me—who has ever seen tomorrow?
Whatever you fear about it is not reality, but imagination wearing the mask of truth.

So the mind creates problems that aren’t real…
and then exhausts itself trying to solve them.
Like a cat spinning in circles, chasing its own tail.

If you wish to be free, remember two things.

First—your thoughts are not facts.
Most of what you worry about will never happen.

Second—life will unfold as it must.
Release what you cannot control, and respond wisely to what actually comes.

Do this, and your restless mind transforms…
from a loop of fear into a steady river—
flowing, adapting, and at peace with whatever lies ahead.

Understand this clearly:
the mind is often trying to solve problems it created itself.

Trust life.
Act where you can.
Let go where you cannot.

This is the way.”

Moral:
Overthinking is not wisdom—it is fear pretending to be preparation.
Peace begins the moment you stop battling an imagined future… and start living in the present.

14/03/2026

13/03/2026

I’ve talked about this sort of thing a lot this week in sessions: it’s really helpful to disrupt the patterns of thought we have that can be unhelpful when we can…

Ian Catterall Therapy

22/02/2026

The usual warnings apply…somethings just hurt…

But generally we tend to always have an eye on the door that closed with a sense of regret rather than a fuller sense of joy at the one we may be going through…we have hopes that go unmet - expectations. The failure of these expectations being met is more painful often than what in reality happened.

And we never will now what might have happened anyway:

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

— Cormac McCarthy

12/02/2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/jonathanshedler/p/feeling-better-is-not-the-same-as?r=72tga&utm_medium=ios

This feels right to me. Therapy isn’t easy…it’s not always pleasant and it does require work on behalf of the client…but it can also be life changing when the hard work is done.

The goal of psychotherapy is to make itself unnecessary.

09/02/2026

We cannot stop all the thoughts we have or how some can be troubling but we can perhaps work out ways of coping with them better…

Ian Catterall therapy

01/02/2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/experimentalhistory/p/how-to-be-less-awkward?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

This will take maybe 20 minutes to read but it’s really interesting and helpful I think. Worth the investment of that time if you’re the kind of person who struggles with social interactions…

a three-part treatment for a near-universal affliction