Essex and Suffolk Counselling

15/01/2025

Anyone who knows me well knows that I need the science 🤌 I describe myself as a holistic practitioner, meaning basically that I believe the mind, our bodies and our emotions are all woven together and can't be approached as single separate entities. The problem is the holistic world tends to have a demographic of practitioners who "spiritually bypass" as an approach to "heal" distress / trauma. For example I've heard a practitioner say "be thankful for their lessons" to those struggling with PTSD from abusive relationships.....eye roll... You just gas lit the s**t out of someone who's spent months / years being with someone who has eroded their sense of reality and trust in their own experience. Nice one chief 🙄 Manifestation constantly gets misrepresented in this uninformed trend of spiral bypassing. You can't just say I'm going to get this. Or this is going to happen. But you can practice rewiring your brain to form new narratives that create better more authentic choices. And this can be an absolute game changer 👌
El
Essex and Suffolk Counselling

18/11/2024

Our bodies are intertwined with the seasons. Wintering is an innate response ✨
It's ok to slow down. In fact it's very important.

El

16/11/2024

Working through pain, wounding, trauma, difficulties....whatever your language for it, can be heavy work indeed. But it's important to keep a balance with being playful and silly too...if possible. Today's funny for your evening entertainment!
El x

11/09/2024

With the natural seasonal changes, the summer to autumn transition, it is perfectly natural to start introspecting about what has been, and what needs to be processed / released. This isn't an easy ride. It might be something that we didn't want to say goodbye too, or something that feels scary or uncomfortable to unlearn. It is a very common thing to react to this raw experience by leaning into any animated old wounds. We aren't good enough, we shouldn't have made those choices, we should be doing better, we aren't attractive enough.... ultimately we start becoming overly responsible for painful things that have happened. We spiral. We snowball into old narratives. Compassion and kindness can be the way out of this spiral. But it isn't easy to change life long narratives. It can actually feel impossible. But once started, it tends to build momentum, because you see the fruits of what happens when you recognise your worth. Find something you value about yourself every single day. It's a nice way to start.

Never let a day pass without looking for the good, feeling the good within you, praising, appreciating, blessing, and being grateful. Make it your life commitment, and you will stand in utter awe of what happens in your life.
~ Rhonda Byrne

~ Art 'Unexpected Blessings' by Jennifer Yoswa

29/08/2024

A good morning reminder ☕ If you're not where you want to be, just keep moving 🤘 Yes indeed, I know it's not that simple... Growth / change / recovery is gritty, tiresome, sometimes injust, sometimes it feels down right impossible. Rest when you need to, reach out to those whom are emotionally safe, and keep cultivating compassion to yourself. One day at a time. Small changes. Little steps. Remember your worth. And if you don't feel it yet...rest assured... you will. It can take practice.
El x

08/08/2024

A little morning reminder that you should never have to constantly chase someone for respect, compassion, emotional availability and humanity. Go where when gifting those gems out, they are consistently returned to you.
El x

19/05/2024

Being the target of a smear campaign is an awful experience. Often the discard of a narcissist will happen when we have reached rock bottom, and we are ultimately depressed, shut down, dissociated and or experiencing panic attacks, or other symptoms of PTSD / being highly dysregulated. We are no longer a decent source of ego supply to the complex person. One thing that can make this traumatising experience a little easier, is to fully educate yourself about why complex types are triggered into smear campaigning us. It's most often the result of someone being too boundaried to be manipulated. If you triggered a complex type with high narcissistic themes, recognise that it is because you are not easily controlled. That can really help with the gas lighting. Especially if the smear campaigning has reached social group / community levels. Seek a specialist to gain extra support on dealing with complex types.
Love Ellie

16/05/2024

We all have our thing that adds a little bit of magic to the day.✨ I'm a relatively busy ol' bee, but i still hold sacredness around my free time. I love to gather fresh Pansies from the garden, to pick and dry press. What's your bit of magic for the day? It's important to find even a sprinkle of it, even when we are super busy.
Maybe you've yet to find it? Maybe take this as a morning prompt to remind yourself that you deserve the bunch of flowers, that you need that hot cup of tea, that you need that extra hug, or to talk a walk somewhere that reminds that nature is still out there waiting to hold you.
Maybe you need to lose yourself in a game, or a book, or maybe it's been too long since you made those amazing biscuits you can make ✨
Love Ellie

15/05/2024

It can be common for some to enter therapy thinking that distressing feelings will ultimately stop all together once working through trauma, difficulties and distresses. Holistically speaking this is not the case. What therapy can do is help you regulate the full spectrum of human emotion that we are supposed to feel. And do so without hitting crisis and high end dysregualtion. You wouldn't take the blue out of a rainbow, and we can't and shouldn't remove natural human emotions. That would take us into toxic positivity land....one way ticket to repression and bad mental health / well being. What therapy CAN do is help build compassion, kindness, accountability, reduce ultra independence, reduce over responsibility, thus making the emotion bearable. By knowing our worth, being self aware, being accoutable, holding healthy boundaries and believing our experience, we are so much better equipped to regulate emotions. As we are not operating from a place of lack or shame.
Love Ellie x

13/04/2024

There is a lot of simplifying that seems to go on in pop psychology. Cut em off if they displease you, stress you, or trigger you is not healthy. Firstly we might be the ones projecting, therefore with this rule we will spend our lives cutting people off without learning / introspecting. Secondly conflict resolution, and rupture and repair are important skill sets for life. The time to walk away is when someone tries to salve their pain by giving it to you / others. It doesn't matter whether it's clear as day grandiose style, or covert psychological f**kery style. THIS is when it's time to put in those boundaries and vitto.

29/02/2024

It's really easy in this day and age of encouraged self awareness, to take complete responsibility for an emotion, such as anxiety or depression. So many people assume it's part of their authentic self, and think they are the sole source of the emotion. And I'm absolutely all for supporting a sense of agency and accountability. HOWEVER, very often, someone's distress is environmental. Human beings have needs like connection and community, self expression, play, physical touch and emotional connection / emotional availability from the people around them. It's easy to assume the issue is us, when actually it's the environment around us, causing distress and wounding.
Love Ellie (The Holistic Therapist).

15/02/2024

Anyone who has worked with me knows how I'm passionate about validating healthy responses to unhealthy behaviour. One of the most damaging phrases I hear in pop psychology, that stems from toxic positivity (repression of natural feelings from the authentic self)' is "everything happens for a reason". Sometimes really painful and traumatising things happen that should not. And it is absolutely HEALTHY to never be ok with them happening. You do not have to forgive, to process, heal and move on.
That's a very healthy boundary to have.
Love Ellie