Martyn Blair Counselling

31/08/2025

What sits in our shadows

A self portrait can help form what sits just below our level of understanding. It is subtlety different from a selfie which is often posed and for display to others. It doesn’t have to include aspects of you that you would normally despise so perfect for those that “hate pictures of me” . It can be private, even when shared, like this, you only know your own meaning provoked by the image. You don’t have to share at all.

Of course many creative media can also help with forming an image of the self, but remember the phone camera is the most accessible form of creativity

10/06/2025

Men don't do counselling. Man up! chin up! Sort it out !

An interesting take on men and stress in this BACP article.

All I can say is that men do counselling, it's hard to come to counselling for the first time, but often it can help.

News from BACP | How to spot signs of stress in men

01/05/2025

Can’t see the wood for the trees?

Counselling can be of help to see things from a different perspective.

This water reflection wasn’t immediately obvious to me, however as I became aware of it the upside down perspective amused me.

How do you experience it, I’d love a comment .

11/04/2025

I often work with anxiety connected to the way others judge and criticise. Can you use a photograph to please yourself rather than others? Steve Gosling suggests we can and paradoxically produces amazing images .

Over the next 18 months, I’ll be sharing a series of blog posts for SIGMA exploring my thoughts and views on photography – what drives me, what inspires me, and how I approach image-making. To start, I want to address a fundamental question: who do I take photographs for? The answer is simple .....

26/03/2025

I have 16 years of experience, thousands of hours of training , insured, supervised, trauma informed. It’s hard for counsellors to be valued as it is without unhelpful government comments.

We’re deeply disappointed by the unfounded and harmful comments made by MP Stephen Kinnock.

Mr Kinnock's sweeping statements about private therapy don’t accurately address the challenges or reflect the skills, ethics, and good practice of our members working in private practice. These remarks show a lack of understanding of the sector and the training and expertise of our members, as well as the public protection safeguards in place.

Read our full statement 👉 https://orlo.uk/CYZfu

28/02/2025

Dead wood

Or is it?

As I explored this “dead wood” I was amazed by how much life it is a home to. In addition the textures, colours, light. Not just dead wood.

Counselling is often about getting a different or wider perspective on life. Get in touch if thus is something you want to explore

28/02/2025

24/02/2025

I do like Becky Hemsley Poetry this video and poem takes me back to a playful carefree me.

“Adventures to be seized “ maybe counselling with me can help

06/02/2025

Sometimes if you change your behaviour, it changes the way you feel. Gift yourself a smile, see what its like. Flash the smile at another individual and name their day.

Let me know how please how its going forcyou

See also

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24/01/2025

It's not a perfect picture

I thought it was webbing at first—the tangled strands caught on this teasel. It irritated me, marring what I wanted to see as a perfect, textured image of nature. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s not webbing at all—perhaps it’s fibers from another plant, carried by the wind, or remnants of a seed fluff that landed and stayed.

Funny how quick we are to label things as flaws without understanding them fully. It reminds me of how much effort we put into curating perfect lives—polished and tidy—when in reality, the things we call “imperfections” often have their own story and meaning.

Nature doesn’t obsess over being flawless. This teasel, with its stray strands and all, still stands tall, unapologetically itself. And maybe that’s the lesson: to stop chasing perfection and instead embrace the threads and tangles in life for what they are—part of the journey, part of the beauty.

20/01/2025

How are your New Year's resolutions progressing, or are they forgotten?

News Year's resolutions are a commitment to change. Change is hard and resisted strongly which is why many fail by Mid January

A simple definition of counselling is that it is about managing change. Every client wants something in life to be different. Sometimes it can be finding out what the choices are?

An interesting BACP article on maintaining our resolutions

01/05/2023

A simple definition of counselling is that it is “an identification and exploration of choice”

This poem is a metaphor for our life choices and the consequences resulting from them

The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.