Fife Occupational Therapist Supporting Women's Mental Health

14/03/2025

I am currently unable to take on new clients or answer new enquiries. This notice will be removed when this situation changes. Thank you for your understanding ❤️

03/04/2024

I no longer update this page, but if you arrive here via my website, I am still offering therapy. If you would like to explore starting therapy with me, please enquire for current availability 💕😊

Karen x

11/03/2024

CBT banana 🍌

02/03/2024

I’ve had several new start clients over the last two weeks and at the early stage, we work together to “formulate” or map out, the clients life experiences and how these may relate and shape the current difficulties that have led them to seek out therapy.

A consistent theme has been the experience of being parented by parents with difficult traits. It can be hard to know what might count as “relational trauma” when it’s your own childhood and it’s just how things are. Though you’ll probably realise that friends seem to have families that are supportive and not chronically stressful.

There are lots of ways parents can be emotionally immature, eg the controlling parent, the parentifying parent (relies on you for emotional support and company and guilts you for not meeting these needs.), the emotionally or physically absent parent etc

What is key is that the child learns to be hyper vigilant of parents moods and needs and learns to focus on the needs of the parent. They learn that their own needs and emotions are not important and love is keeping the parent happy. The seeds of people pleasing and vulnerability to unhealthy adult relationships are sown in this way.

Here is a video by the Holistic Psychologist discussing “emotionally immature parents” .

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01/03/2024

Feeling physically tired, numb, apathetic are common symptoms of depression and these symptoms can drain motivation to engage in life and even previously enjoyed activities. This then leads to the cycle below and lack of engagement can make us feel worse.

Behavioural activation is a way you can begin to help yourself. It works by disrupting the cycle. It involves gently and at your own pace, taking part in activities again. You are not trying to do everything, but scheduling in things to do and over time, this can help your mood.

There’s research on the benefits of behavioural activation for depression and it forms one aspect of the CBT approach to help depression.

14/02/2024

Thinking about love on Valentine’s Day 💕🌹

31/01/2024

Certainly my understanding from many years of working with women, listening to their stories and making sense of how their experiences contribute to their present lives.

Our childhood experiences become stories that weave themselves into our bodies, our identities, and our beliefs about ourselves and the world.

Which is why we often need to look back before we can move forward in healing, our present lives.

Some people are lucky to inherit secure attachment patterns from their families of origin. But so many of us did not have that luck, and instead have to put in healing work to learn what it means to be secure in ourselves and our relationships.

It can feel scary and emotional and overwhelming to process our childhoods, but when we do so, we offer our children the potential to have childhood, they don’t have to heal from. And we do that by making sure there are secure, close adult relationships in our lives, where we are seeing heard and cared for an offer the same to others.

For help in doing this important work, get yourself yourself a copy of 📖Securely Attached📖… I wrote this book as a guided journal on purpose so that, instead of simply learning about attachment, everyone has the chance to process their specific attachments experiences and heal through them.

Love on.

29/01/2024

So honoured to talk with one of my clients, a young woman, this morning, where we reviewed her journey (of a couple of years), out of a mental-health crises. Previously, struggling with significant anxiety and depression, my clients path of recovery has led to some quite remarkable post-traumatic growth.

Post-traumatic growth refers to transformational changes, that can sometimes take place after difficult or traumatic experiences.

Without going into the finer details, some of this growth included:

❤️ Finding healing through a loved and valued activity.
❤️Closure on a painful early life experience and clarity on her future in relation to this.
❤️Developing boundaries, specifically, no longer feeling everyone’s emotions for them and no longer people pleasing as a default.
❤️Growing connections that are supportive of well-being and a big shake up of her social environment, so that she no longer tolerates toxic relationships.
❤️ Feeling more capable and strong and able to deal with life’s up and downs.
❤️ Acceptance regarding difficult mental-health days and “giving herself a break” on these days.

See Post Traumatic Growth Inventory in comments, for further examples.

Recent research shows these areas are the areas we need to challenge and reflect on in our lives for growth to occur. - see pic…

Factors associated with post traumatic growth or recovery include
- openness
- giving/ gratefulness
- spirituality
- connection
- creativity

As you go about your week - try to reflect on what areas of my life do I need to do further reflection and growth. Are my core beliefs serving me, are they true, is there a descrepancy between how I think and what is objective reality.

E.g. thoughts that I am an unworthy of love
- are these true, grounded in current reality and serving me in my journey towards wellness.

Creating Space for Awareness is the first step.

Go gentry and Be kind to yourselves 💚

Want to do some further thinking check out the links

https://youtu.be/PH2PhXyxx58

https://results.wa.gov/sites/default/files/WendyFraser_Oct28_HANDOUT.pdf

26/01/2024

Understanding the challenges faced by new mums is something close to my heart. You may be aware of post-natal depression, but may not have heard so much about post-natal anxiety.

This is something I struggled with, after the birth of my first daughter and if I’m honest it robbed me of the chance to really enjoy and saviour those moments with my beautiful baby. When I look back at photos from that time, I can see I was suffering.

Sharing this relevant article around this topic by BACP and UKCP registered psychotherapist, Dr Claire Oakeley (link to article in comments).

“New motherhood can be a time of excitement and joy, but it can also be challenging in a multitude of ways. The journey into motherhood is a period of uncertainty and unpredictability, coupled with the responsibility of looking after a new life. Research shows that approximately 15% of mothers experience persistent anxiety in the first year after giving birth,1 and a recent UK report also highlighted that su***de is the leading cause of death among women in that first year.2 Numerous studies show that early motherhood is recognised as being a particularly vulnerable time”.

25/01/2024

Australian Psychiatrist, Dr. Russ Harris, explaining how we may inadvertently magnify emotions, using the example of “The Struggle Switch” and what we can do instead of struggling.

Dr. Russ Harris, Acceptance & Commitment Therapist, explains the struggle switch metaphor through this entertaining and educational clip.To learn more about ...

20/01/2024

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