Sarah Hopton Psychotherapy

24/07/2025

New Article: The Slow Path Back – Understanding Depression’s Impact
Depression isn’t laziness. It’s not weakness. It’s not something you can just “snap out of.”

It’s a nervous system in shutdown. A mind and body doing their best to survive in a world that feels too heavy, too fast, too much.

In my latest piece for Counselling Directory, I explore depression as a state of freeze, a natural, protective response to chronic stress, trauma, or overwhelm.
This isn’t about a diagnosis. It’s about compassion.

🔗 Read the full article here:
https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/articles/the-slow-path-back-understanding-depressions-impact?utm_source=counselling-directory&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_approved

22/07/2025

What a Hedge Can Hold

Sometimes boundaries don’t have to be barbed wire.
They can be wild, woven, ever-changing things, alive with birdsong, full of life and memory.
They can soften over time. They can grow.

This piece is part reflection, part rebellion against the hard edges we’re taught to build.

I wrote it walking the hedgerows of Old Hayes, but it’s also about the boundaries we hold in our bodies, in therapy, and in the spaces we create for ourselves.

There’s wisdom in the deadwood.
And sometimes the tangled bits are where new life begins.

Read the full post here:
www.sarahhopton.com/post/what-a-hedge-can-hold-soft-boundaries-deadwood-wisdom-and-growing-space-to-breathe

I’ve been building dead hedges. It’s a simple task, but surprisingly satisfying—woven stacks of branches creating space, structure, and sanctuary for insects, birds, and small mammals.It’s one of the oldest forms of boundary-making. Not rigid or harsh—just enough to guide movement, hold sh...

16/07/2025

Andrea Gibson died this week. And I keep thinking about how someone who helped so many of us stay — who wrote about queerness, grief, love, illness, and joy with fire and gentleness — is suddenly gone.

Their words changed me.
Maybe they changed you, too.

This is my tribute to them.
Not as a burden.
As a flame.

Read more here:

I first heard Andrea Gibson’s voice through my earbuds — somewhere between the soft, ordinary ache of a Tuesday morning and the sharp awareness that something bigger was happening. It was an episode of We Can Do Hard Things. Glennon, Abby, and Amanda were in conversation with Andrea, and what un...

14/07/2025

Ash dieback is reshaping the woodland around me. Limbs fallen. Crowns hollowed. The slow retreat of giants.
It’s painful to witness and yet, it holds something deeper too.

Because nature doesn’t just resist loss.
It reshapes itself around it.

This week, I’ve been reflecting on what these trees are teaching us about letting go, grief, and the quiet possibilities that live beneath the surface of transformation.

If you’ve ever stood beside a dying tree and felt something ache in your own chest, this one’s for you.
Read it here: https://www.sarahhopton.com/post/ashes-to-air

The ash trees are dying. Not just one, but whole corridors of them. Branches bare in midsummer, bark flaking at the base. A slow hollowing. Ash dieback doesn’t make headlines, but here, in the woods, it’s changing everything.There’s an ash I pass every day. I’ve leaned against its trunk on t...

12/07/2025

TRAIL TOOL | Low Self-Esteem

“Don’t confuse small with safe.
Don’t mistake self-abandonment for care.”

This week’s Trail Tool invites you to notice where you’re still dimming yourself to keep the peace. Where you’re shrinking to fit, even when the cost is high.

You weren’t meant to live small.
You were meant to feel safe being fully you.

Read the full Trail Tool blog via link in bio
www.sarahhopton.com/post/you-were-never-meant-to-shrink-to-fit-a-trail-tool-for-low-self-esteem

12/07/2025

“You were never meant to shrink to fit.”

It’s something I’ve said to clients… and needed to hear myself.

Low self-esteem doesn’t always show up as self-hatred. Sometimes it hides behind people-pleasing. Overthinking. Exhaustion from holding it all together.

In this new Trail Tools blog, I offer a small practice, a way of noticing where you still feel you need to earn your place. And how to begin shifting that pattern with gentleness, not force.

This one’s for anyone who’s ever felt too much and not enough all at once.

Read here:
https://www.sarahhopton.com/post/you-were-never-meant-to-shrink-to-fit-a-trail-tool-for-low-self-esteem

Somewhere along the line, you were told—explicitly or silently—that who you were wasn’t quite right.Maybe you were too loud. Too quiet. Too needy. Too much. Not enough.And so you adapted. You got smaller. You watched for cues. You worked harder. You learned to become palatable. Efficient. Pred...

11/07/2025

Some things live just beneath the surface.

Tunnels under our feet.
Old stories in our bones.
Grief we carry quietly.

This blog began with signs of a badger sett in the woods… and unfolded into something deeper. About the lives we bury. The instincts we follow. And the unseen paths that still shape us.

If you’ve ever felt like your wildness was just out of reach—or like parts of you are hidden even from yourself—this one’s for you.

Read Burrowed Lives & Hidden Paths here:
https://www.sarahhopton.com/post/burrowed-lives-hidden-paths

11/07/2025

Some things live just beneath the surface.

Tunnels under our feet.
Old stories in our bones.
Grief we carry quietly.

This blog began with signs of a badger sett in the woods… and unfolded into something deeper. About the lives we bury. The instincts we follow. And the unseen paths that still shape us.

If you’ve ever felt like your wildness was just out of reach—or like parts of you are hidden even from yourself—this one’s for you.

Read Burrowed Lives & Hidden Paths here:
https://www.sarahhopton.com/post/burrowed-lives-hidden-paths

Some things don’t ask to be seen. They live below the surface—quiet, hidden, and necessary.There’s a badger set just beyond the old beech line. I’ve never seen them, not directly. But I’ve seen the signs: fresh earth, narrow tracks, a clump of bracken pressed into a trail. Foxes move throu...

08/07/2025

We didn’t come here to be productive.
We came here to be wild and true.

This quote came while writing under the Mead Moon, dreaming ahead to the Wild Folk People gatherings later this month, a place for bare feet, off-key songs, and joy that doesn’t need polishing.

We gather at the edge.
Where the fire is.
Where the wild folk are.
Where the stories begin again.

Read the full Forest Edge Diary via the link in bio:
Mead Moon, Wild Folk & Reclaiming Joy
www.sarahhopton.com/post/mead-moon-wild-folk-people-reclaiming-joy-at-the-edge-of-the-map

08/07/2025

We didn’t come here to be productive. We came here to be wild and true.

I’ve been writing under the Mead Moon this week, dreaming ahead to the Wild Folk People gatherings later this month.

This isn’t just a festival. It’s a return.
To bare feet and firelight.
To cider jars, folk songs, and the kind of joy that doesn’t need to be earned.

I wrote this blog in anticipation of what it means to gather at the edge of the map, not to fix ourselves, but to remember we were never broken.

Read:
https://www.sarahhopton.com/post/mead-moon-wild-folk-people-reclaiming-joy-at-the-edge-of-the-map

There’s a certain kind of magic that lives outside the algorithms.You won’t find it in self-help books or therapy worksheets. It lives in stories told around campfires. In folk songs that make your chest ache in the best way. In people who show up as they are—muddy boots, open hearts, and all....

04/07/2025

This morning, the Emperor returned.

A Purple Emperor butterfly. In my woodland.
Not fluttering past. Not drifting overhead.
He landed—just for a second—on the tail of Bynke, my Friesian mare.

Of all the horses, he chose her.
Not the quiet one. Not the gentle one.
Bynke—bold, punk, regal.

It was a second.
It was everything.

I haven’t seen a Purple Emperor since childhood—when summer meant jam jars, field guides, and wild hope.

We didn’t reintroduce him.
We re-invited him.
And he came.

This one wrote itself.
Read the full Forest Edge Diary here:
https://wix.to/Ps7SYDk

The Emperor, the Mare, and the Wild Return

03/07/2025

A Song for the Wild Ones
This summer, something shifted.

The meadows bloomed in chaos, flares of yellow and orange orchids rising without permission. The birds came thick and fast, wren, firecrest, warbler and one evening, just before the light slipped away, I heard my first nightingale.

I’ve been thinking a lot about rewilding, not just the land, but ourselves. The parts of us that don't fit neat categories. The ones that bloom sideways. The voices that don’t follow the script.

This latest Forest Edge Diary is a love letter to that kind of wild.
The fierce. The punk. The quietly unmanageable.

Read it here:
https://www.sarahhopton.com/post/forest-edge-diary-a-song-for-the-wild-ones