Heartspace Counselling

08/02/2026

A series of free workshops for women are taking place in Barnstaple throughout February as the Flourishing Women programme continues.

The Flourishing Women Workshops are a series of one-off introductory empowerment sessions designed to support strength, creativity and connection. The events, which will be held at Barnstaple Library, are taking place in support of Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week (2-8 February 2026) and have been curated from feedback from people with lived experiences of domestic and s*xual violence.

While the workshops will not cover domestic or s*xual violence, trained emotional first aid support will be available at every session.

The programme of workshops is:
Manage Stress and Emotional Upset with EFT, with Jacqui Footman
Thursday 5 February, 11am to 1pm, Barnstaple Library

Women's self-defence training, with Jason Ashton and Debbie Okeefe (Zen Waters CIC)
Tuesday 10 February 10am to 1pm, Barnstaple Library

Reclaiming the power of your voice, with Jenevora Williams
Saturday 14 February, 10.30am to 2.30pm, Barnstaple Library

Follow the link in the comments for more information

03/02/2026

When a man is gentle, soft, and consistently respects you, your nervous system begins to heal. Emotional safety is one of the greatest gifts in a relationship. It’s not just about being in love; it’s about feeling secure, cared for, and valued. That’s why some women have a unique glow when they are loved right—it’s the emotional safety that makes all the difference.

When a woman feels safe, her stress levels drop, her mind feels clearer, and her heart feels lighter. She can finally relax and be herself without fear of judgment or rejection. Emotional safety gives her the freedom to grow and thrive in ways she couldn’t before. It allows her to focus on her dreams, her health, and her happiness.

Many women, however, struggle with emotional pain because they lack this kind of safety in their relationships. Without respect and gentleness, a woman’s heart stays guarded, and her mind stays on high alert. This constant tension can lead to anxiety, sadness, and even health problems. Healing begins when someone offers her love that feels steady, kind, and real.

A man who wants to create emotional safety for his partner doesn’t need to do anything extraordinary. Small, thoughtful actions make the biggest difference. Listening to her, respecting her feelings, and showing kindness every day help build trust. It’s not about solving all her problems—it’s about being there for her, no matter what.

When a woman feels emotionally safe, she finds her true self again. So many women are taught to hide their feelings or needs to avoid upsetting others. But when they feel safe, they can finally let go of those fears and embrace who they are. This freedom helps them feel more confident and alive.

That glow women have when they’re loved right? It comes from feeling whole and balanced inside. Emotional safety doesn’t just brighten her mood; it brings out her natural beauty, joy, and strength. She laughs more easily, her eyes shine brighter, and her presence feels warm and comforting.

When a man offers emotional safety, it’s not just the woman who benefits—the relationship grows stronger too. Trust deepens, communication improves, and the bond becomes unbreakable. Both partners feel supported and loved, creating a connection that can weather any storm.

For men, offering this kind of love means being patient, understanding, and willing to grow. It means learning how to listen, express their own feelings, and create a relationship built on respect and care. A man who can offer this becomes not only a better partner but also a stronger, kinder person.

Every woman deserves a relationship where she feels valued and supported, not one where she has to fight for respect or love. When a woman is loved in a way that helps her heal, she becomes her best self—and this transformation can inspire everyone around her.

At the heart of every thriving relationship is emotional safety. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about being consistent, kind, and reliable. When a woman feels safe, she blossoms, and that light spreads to everyone in her life. Emotional safety isn’t just love—it’s love done right.

- Abhikesh

09/12/2025

Most of us try to ignore, bury, or fight our emotions. But every feeling you experience—pleasant or painful—is carrying a message. When you learn to listen, you begin to heal, grow, and transform.

Here’s what your emotions may actually be trying to tell you:

🔴 Fear
Fear isn’t always a warning to run away. Sometimes it’s a signal that you’re standing on the edge of powerful change. Instead of resisting, allow the energy of transformation to flow through you. Growth begins where comfort ends.

🔴 Anxiety
Anxiety often comes from trying to control things that were never meant to be controlled. Life becomes lighter when you release the grip, breathe deeply, and trust that things will unfold the way they’re meant to.

🔴 Guilt
Guilt means you’re holding on to the past with clenched fists. You deserve forgiveness—from yourself more than anyone else. Letting go doesn’t erase the past; it sets you free from it.

🔴 Helplessness
You don’t have to be strong every second of your life. Feeling helpless is a reminder that humans are not meant to walk alone. Allow support, love, and care to enter. Strength also lies in receiving.

🔴 Confusion
When the old has ended but the new hasn’t begun, your mind shakes. Confusion is simply the space between chapters. Give yourself time—clarity always arrives after the fog.

🔴 Despair
Even when it feels like there is no way forward, remember: breaking points often become turning points. Despair is sometimes the soil where a new path is born.

🔴 Emptiness
Feeling empty means you’ve drifted away from your inner self. It’s not a failure—it’s an invitation to return home. Reconnect, realign, and rebuild from within.

🔴 Regret
Regret whispers that you believe you could’ve done better. But the truth is—you did what you knew at the time. Take the lesson, not the burden. Release the past so it doesn’t steal your present.

🔴 Insecurity
Insecurity arises when you’re afraid of losing something precious. Remind yourself: what is truly yours will stay. What isn’t will make space for something better.

🔴 Resentment
Resentment is often the result of giving too much and receiving too little. If you feel this way, it’s time to set boundaries—not out of anger, but out of self-respect.

🔴 Envy
Envy doesn’t make you a bad person. It highlights the desires sleeping inside you. Instead of comparing, use it as a compass pointing toward your own dreams.

🔴 Anger
Anger is your inner voice saying, “This is not okay.” It’s a sign that your boundaries have been crossed. Listen to that voice—honour it, understand it, and protect your peace.

Your emotions aren’t weaknesses. They’re signals. They’re teachers. They’re guides.
Pay attention to them, and they will lead you back to yourself.

If this touched you today, let it remind you:
You’re human. You’re growing. You’re evolving.
And every emotion is part of your journey. ❤️

03/12/2025

THE TWO STAGES OF ATTACHMENT REPAIR (AND WHY MOST COUPLES NEVER MAKE IT TO HEALING)

We grow up believing love is supposed to be intuitive.
Natural.
Automatic.
Like if two people care about each other enough, everything else will magically sort itself out.

But romantic love is the most emotionally demanding relationship you’ll ever have.
And almost nobody was given the manual for it.

Even with everything we now know about attachment, bonding, emotional safety, and nervous system connection, there’s still one brutal truth:

Most couples never get out of the starting gate.
Not because they don’t love each other.
But because they don’t understand that there are two stages in repairing attachment…

…and almost everyone gets trapped in the first.

Let’s slow this down so your body can really absorb it.

The entire repair of a distressed relationship comes down to three emotional experiences: fear, sadness, and non-blaming anger.

These are the three emotions that actually create intimacy when shared properly.
Not positivity.
Not problem-solving.
Not “Let’s communicate better.”
Not logic.
Not techniques.

Fear.
Sadness.
Anger that reveals hurt without attacking.

That’s the core of attachment.

But here’s the heartbreak:

Most couples don’t know how to share these emotions in the way their partner’s nervous system can receive them.
So the transmission fails.
And the partner responds not to the emotion…
…but to the threat.

That’s why couples end up talking for hours while solving nothing.
That’s why the same fights keep looping for years.
That’s why good people, with good intentions, end up hurting each other in ways neither ever meant.

This misunderstanding ruins more relationships than cheating ever has.

Now let me show you the two stages, because once you see them, you’ll never unsee them.

Stage One: The Intellectual Description of Emotion

The first stage is when partners talk about their feelings.
They describe them.
They analyze them.
They explain why they’re scared, why they’re sad, why they’re angry.

And this is necessary.
It really is.
You can’t get to real vulnerability without first naming the pattern.

But here’s the catch:

When you tell your partner, “I’m scared,”
you’re not actually showing fear.
You’re giving a left-brain summary of fear.

That’s not your fault.
It’s the only thing most people know how to do.

So you say,
“I feel like I’m losing you.”

And your partner says,
“Well I’m hurting too.”

Two people trading sentences that feel emotional but land like logic.

This is where couples get stuck for years.
Because the words sound vulnerable…
but the nervous system doesn’t believe them.

Your partner’s body listens for safety, not vocabulary.

And when your partner can feel that you’re still guarded, still performing, still trying to manage them, still trying to protect yourself… their defenses activate.

That’s why stage one fails so often.

There’s fear in the room,
but nobody has shown it yet.

Sadness is being described,
but not expressed.

Anger is mentioned,
but not revealed without blame.

So each partner listens through threat instead of tenderness.

This is why couples therapy fails so often:
Most therapists never help people cross into stage two.

But stage two is where true healing begins.

Stage Two: The Actual Expression of Emotion

Stage two is almost nothing like stage one.

Stage one is words.
Stage two is the body.

Stage one is describing the emotion.
Stage two is letting the emotion be seen.

Stage one is,
“I’m scared.”

Stage two is,
“I can feel my chest tightening. I don’t know how to say this without messing it up, but I need you closer right now and I’m terrified to need that.”

Can you feel the difference?

In stage two, your nervous system sends a different signal.
Your voice slows.
Your breath changes.
Your eyes soften.
Your body shows the vulnerability your words are pointing to.

And suddenly, your partner’s body relaxes.
Their defenses lower.
Their instinct to protect themselves softens.

Because real emotion has a frequency your partner’s nervous system can actually register.

Memorize this:

Intellectual emotion doesn’t create safety.
Revealed emotion does.

This is the place where two people finally meet.
Not in words.
In felt experience.

This is where the nervous systems sync,
where the fight disappears,
where the moment starts feeling like honesty instead of battle.

And when both people can do this,
the relationship becomes repairable, resilient, alive.

Why Couples Rarely Make It to Stage Two

Because stage one feels like vulnerability.

It feels like you’re opening up.
It feels like you’re finally being honest.
It feels like you’re trying.

But your partner doesn’t feel it.

They feel the performance, not the pain.
They feel the frustration, not the fear.
They feel the pressure, not the sadness.

So they respond to what they feel, not what you meant.

You say,
“I’m scared.”
They hear,
“You’re failing me.”

You say,
“I’m lonely.”
They hear,
“You’re not enough.”

You say,
“I’m hurting.”
They hear,
“You’re the problem.”

This is why describing emotion isn’t enough.
It activates the other person’s defenses.

Revealing emotion disarms them.

Attachment repair is two nervous systems learning to hold fear and sadness together.

When this happens, something extraordinary appears:

Joy.

Not the kind you fake.
Not the kind that comes from distractions, or s*x, or chemistry, or apology.
Real joy.

Joy that grows from two people learning how to let themselves be seen and held in the moments that feel the most shameful, the most frightening, the most tender.

The whole manual for adult love comes down to this:

Reveal your fear.
Reveal your sadness.
Reveal your hurt without blaming.
Let your partner hold it.
And hold theirs.

When two people can do that, their relationship becomes the safest place on Earth.

~Derek Hart
Art: Pinterest

Empower Wholeness Intimacy

07/10/2025

07/10/2025

✨ Calling Local Therapists & Counsellors ✨

Hi everyone,

I’m starting up a peer group supervision space for local psychotherapists and counsellors who’d like a place to connect, reflect, and support one another.

So much of our work can be deeply meaningful — yet also isolating at times. This group will be a chance to:

🌿 Check in with each other

🪞 Talk about client work in a confidential, supportive setting

🎨 Share ideas, learn, and explore creative ways of working

💬 Reduce that sense of professional loneliness and find community

The plan is to meet once a month, in person, in a relaxed and professional environment. The focus will be on peer support rather than formal supervision — a space to nurture ourselves as practitioners and continue growing together.

If this sounds like something you’d like to be part of, please message me or comment below.

Would love to hear from others who feel drawn to building this kind of supportive network. 🌼

29/03/2025

I have been working as a counsellor and psychotherapist for many years now and helped many people get their life back on track. I know how hard it is to seek help, and I know from my own struggles that it is completely possible to turn your life around.

I have worked in the NHS as a Cancer Care Counsellor and with NDADA and have a history of teaching meditation and mindfulness. I truly believe counselling is a privilege and I love it with a passion. I have worked successfully with issues of abuse, anxiety, depression, anger issues, panic attacks, low self esteem, and bereavement and more recently through training I have been able to go deeper into issues of trauma.

I work with a range of techniques and models and adapt my approach depending on what you need.

I will not waste your time, and a short conversation should help you decide if we can work together. I am a compassionate and professional practitioner and I look forward to having a chat to see how we might work together.

I offer a free initial consultation.

Please call or text 07443 647604, if I cannot pick up please leave a message - this is a secure line - and I will get back to you promptly.

You are also welcome to email me at fiona.heartspace@gmail.com

If you wish to read more please visit my website:

Adults and Couples Therapy - Anxiety - Depression - Trauma - Bereavement - Relationship Issues.

05/02/2025

Is anger a personality trait?

This article points out that it isn't. Whereas being neurotic for example is seen as a personIlity trait, anger is deemed a coping mechanism, a learned behaviour and therefore can be changed through practice into patience and love.

In our closest relationships, we can learn compassionate assertiveness, standing up for our own rights and preferences while respecting the rights and preferences of others.

04/02/2025

"Piglet?" said Pooh.
"Yes?" said Piglet.
"I'm scared," said Pooh.
For a moment, there was silence.
"Would you like to talk about it?" asked Piglet, when Pooh didn't appear to be saying anything further.
"I'm just so scared," blurted out Pooh.
"So anxious. Because I don't feel like things are getting any better. If anything, I feel like they might be getting worse. People are angry, because they're so scared, and they're turning on one another, and there seems to be no clear plan out of here, and I worry about my friends and the people I love, and I wish SO much that I could give them all a hug, and oh, Piglet! I am so scared, and I cannot tell you how much I wish it wasn't so."
Piglet was thoughtful, as he looked out at the blue of the skies, peeping between the branches of the trees in the Hundred Acre Wood, and listened to his friend.
"I'm here," he said, simply. "I hear you, Pooh. And I'm here."
For a moment, Pooh was perplexed.
"But... aren't you going to tell me not to be so silly? That I should stop getting myself into a state and pull myself together? That it's hard for everyone right now?"
"No," said Piglet, quite decisively. "No, I am very much not going to do any of those things."
“But - " said Pooh.
"I can't change the world right now," continued Piglet. "And I am not going to patronise you with platitudes about how everything will be okay, because I don't know that.
"What I can do, though, Pooh, is that I can make sure that you know that I am here. And that I will always be here, to listen; and to support you; and for you to know that you are heard.
"I can't make those Anxious Feelings go away, not really.
"But I can promise you that, all the time I have breath left in my body...you won't ever need to feel those Anxious Feelings alone."
And it was a strange thing, because even as Piglet said that, Pooh could feel some of those Anxious Feelings start to loosen their grip on him and could feel one or two of them start to slither away into the forest, cowed by his friend, who sat there stolidly next to him.
Pooh thought he had never been more grateful to have Piglet in his life.

01/02/2025

This is one you definitely don't want to miss, frankly it's relevent for all of us at some point in our lives.

He speaks with sooo much wisdom about this subject, I'll be listening to this again and again, there's so much to take away and practice.❤

Anxiety is a modern-day epidemic. In this podcast, Buddhist monk, Gen Rabten, uses his own experience of anxiety to explain how to deal with this debilitatin...

19/12/2024

Please look for me in the present
You won't find me in the past
There may be some wonderful memories there
But memories... they don't last
I'm here in every moment
I'm in every breath you take
I'm constantly watching over you
I watch every decision you make

I see you sometimes struggling
to be strong and a comfort to all
So I'm here to gently remind you
You can't always shoulder it all
Let me be the light for you
For I see the road ahead
It's paved with many new memories
So come with me there, instead

We can look to a brighter future
One that's exciting and new
Don't worry, you don't have to go it alone
I'll be standing right next to you.
It's an invitation I'm offering
To help you out of this sorrow and pain
Open your heart to new adventures
I promise you, life can be joyous again

Exploring a new way of communication
Let's experience the joy that it brings
I'll open your mind to the unexplored realms
I promise... you won't regret a thing
You have me as your very own 'angel'
Your guiding star... a guiding light
So take a step out of the darkness,
Let me show you a future that's bright.

~ 'An invitation from our loved ones...' by Dances with Dan: Embracing Grief from the book 'Embracing Grief A Love Story'
~ Dances with Dan: Embracing Grief

~ Art by Kürti Andrea

19/12/2024

Remember, you don't need...
to be merry and joyful this Christmas.
If instead, you're feeling blue or alone.
And you don't have to be brimming
with festive cheer, if you're struggling
to find your own.

The Christmas season can be especially hard
when loved ones are no longer around.
Memories start to surface, with certain
songs, sights and sounds.

Give yourself permission and space to
'feel your feelings', for every emotion
has its own purpose and meaning.
If you're feeling stressed, full of sorrow or pain.
Invite those feelings in, let them sit with you,
for a while, they are never in vain.

Let your tears fall,
release those sad thoughts.
If you need a hug, or comfort,
perhaps, tell someone you trust.
Give them a call.

Remember, it's okay not to feel ok...
After all...

Christmas is a time for love and peace.
And that includes being kind to yourself.
So be extra gentle with your heart please.
Acknowledge your worries...
Reach out and talk to someone, you trust.
For it may help, your pain soften a little and ease.

And if nobody has told you this today.

You are worthy,
you are beautiful and you are loved.

~ 'Christmas Blues' by Demelza Dhotel ~ Demelza Dhotel

~ Art by Nino Chakvetadze