Camilla Holroyd Counselling Services

20/06/2025

Exciting news! I’ve been undertaking my training to work as a clinical supervisor, and I’ve been signed off to begin my practice hours! I’ve got 2 supervisees booked in so far and a few more people to meet- hoping to be fully qualified before the end of the year. It’s such an exciting new area for me to take my career in- watch this space for updates!

18/01/2025

Happy New Year, Ilfracombe!

I am coming towards the end of my Sabbatical and will be working face to face with clients again from 17th February. I will have availability for new clients, adults as well as children and young people, so if you are thinking that 2025 could be the year you invest in yourself in this way please feel free to get in touch.

Why might you consider counselling?

* You have a specific issue you would like to work on, such as stress, anxiety, grief or relationships.
* You feel pain or distress but can’t pinpoint why and would like explore what might be underneath your troubling emotions.
* You are a child or young person, or the parent of one, who is struggling with life and would benefit from a neutral space to talk about your feelings.

You can find out more on my website here:

https://camillaholroydcounsellor.com/

27/12/2024

Where are you going?

When a new year begins we often find ourselves taking stock of our lives and asking ourselves questions like this. Working with a therapist can help us find answers- perhaps ones we didn't know we already had. I work with clients to help them find meaning and direction, maybe a way forward in life.

Until mid February I am working solely via Zoom, until I return to the UK, and I will then resume in-person working. I have some availability for new clients to start in the new year. If you think this might be the year you find answers to some of those questions, you can find out more about me and my work here:

https://camillaholroydcounsellor.com/

13/12/2024

This is one of my favourite accounts to follow and this piece about our expectations of children and young people sums things up so clearly. So much of the work I do with young people is based on managing the impact of what our system has done to them.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17YwhoQ5aP/?mibextid=WC7FNe

We expect more emotional control from a seven-year-old than a CEO.

Think about that for a moment.

We give executives private spaces to manage their stress, while demanding perfect emotional regulation from thirty children in a crowded classroom. We design entire workplace strategies around natural attention spans, while expecting young minds to maintain focus through six hours of continuous instruction. We create wellness programs for adults, while telling children to "get better at self-regulation."

We've built a system where children must demonstrate more human capability than adults ever could.

We ask for more sustained attention from an eight-year-old than a software developer.
More emotional composure from a third grader than an HR manager.
More constant performance under observation than a graduate trainee.

Look at how we build our adult worlds: Quiet rooms for deep work. Flexible hours for peak performance. Time to process after challenging interactions. Freedom to move when focus wanes. Choice over when to tackle complex tasks. Permission to step away when emotions run high.

Then look at what we've built for our children: Rigid schedules that ignore natural rhythms. Constant evaluation without recovery time. Group work without processing space. Complex learning without choice of timing. Emotional challenges without private moments to reset.

We put children in environments we know would break adults. We surround them with conditions we'd never accept for ourselves. We place demands on their developing minds that grown ones can't meet.

We're not preparing children for the real world.

We're asking them to outperform it.

31/10/2024

Hello! I haven’t posted from here in quite a while but now seems like a good time to do so. Some people may know that I’m in Thailand at the moment with my family, on a sort of ‘Sabbatical’ for a few months.

My partner is here for his professional development, doing some training to support the next steps in his business. I am continuing to work online with clients and in my other role as an assessor for a Level 4 counselling course, but I have also been hoping to find ways to work on my own personal development while I’m here. I thought I would share some of what this has looked like in my first month here.

A big challenge for me has been learning to ride a scooter to get around the town, which is a necessity really to get anywhere further than the local market. I have never ridden anything like that before and I am a very nervy cyclist unless I’m riding in a straight line on a quiet, wide path, so this was terrifying to me and I initially thought I just wouldn’t even try, I’d just get used to walking. (It’s 30+ degrees here every day!) I am not usually avoidant about new challenges but I was very scared about this one! However, with the help and support of my family and some new friends, I faced my fears and gradually began to get the hang of it.

I worked towards to small milestones- the longest journey so far, my first ride in the dark (to quiz night, a big motivating factor!), the first time I took my son as a passenger! I remember my first solo journey, I was heading to a yoga class I really wanted to attend and as I prepared to leave, I spotted a little kingfisher flying over our garden. I hadn’t seen one there before and I haven’t seen one since. I love kingfishers, and I have one tattooed on my shoulder as part of my yoga sleeve, and I decided this kingfisher had flown over at that moment to tell me I could absolutely get myself to yoga on the scooter. It worked and I got there on time and in one piece- although I did forget to take the keys out of the ignition before I went to the class! Luckily Pai is the kind of place you can do that, and they were still there waiting for me when I had finished the class! I still notice my progress on the scooter- going a little faster this time, turning the corners a little more precisely, pulling into a gap I wouldn’t have dared to do last week. So that has been one of my biggest challenges in the last month, and it still scares me sometimes but I’m giving myself a lot of grace and continuing to make progress! I will share another of my personal challenges in another post- what about you? What are you challenging yourself to do and how is it going? How do you treat yourself when you are learning new things?

19/02/2024

Is this something you could think about doing? Would you like some support to help you identify and sort through those unhelpful beliefs? This is such a huge part of what counselling can support people to do so please get in touch if you think this could be helpful for you or someone you know!

04/06/2023

How’s this for an al-fresco take on the therapist’s couch?!

I love my comfy, cozy counselling room but in this sort of weather it’s great to be able to take advantage of the beautiful natural surroundings and take sessions outside. The benefits of eco-therapy are well documented, and I have really enjoyed offering this service for the past 2 and a half years now!

I have some availability for new clients so please feel free to get in touch if you’d like to know more about how eco-therapy works.

27/05/2023

Clients often talk to me about ‘Imposter Syndrome’ and we explore where it comes from and how to manage it. I just stumbled across this fascinating video which looks at it from a different angle. What do you think about this viewpoint?

People ask me all the time: how do I overcome ? And honestly, I’m done answering that question. Because here’s the thing: imposter syndrome isn’t a syndrome at all — it’s a scheme. This is something I’ve been wanting to say for a long time, and in this speech I finally f...

15/05/2023

Better days ahead! It seems that this is true of the weather, and that means using the outdoors to support clients in feeling better is a great option. I have a few spaces for new clients, and can offer eco-therapy in the beautiful natural surroundings of Ilfracombe, whether that’s the woodlands, the hills or the beaches. Get in touch if you’d like to know more.

30/04/2023

Parents!

This can be a really stressful time of year for young people, with increasing pressure at school, which has a knock-on effect on relationships with family and friends.

I’m also seeing an ever-growing trend of young people being deregistered from schools as more and more families are choosing to home educate instead. This can come with a period of uncertainty, of lethargy or withdrawal, which can be worrying for young people and their families.

If your young person is schooled and is struggling with pressure, or if you’re embracing other options but dealing with the fallout from negative experiences, you might want to consider some counselling for them.

Many young people are already, bravely, asking for this support but finding services are limited and waiting lists are long. I am a fully qualified and insured private counsellor, with a specialism in working with young people, and I currently have some availability for new clients.

If you think I could help a young person in your life please get in touch to find out more. I offer a free consultation service with no commitment, so please contact me if you’d like to see if I can help. You can use messenger through this page or use my website here:

https://camillaholroydcounsellor.com/

20/02/2023

This captures exactly what I feel and what I wish I could figure out how to work to change!

What would happen if we saw school related distress as feedback on the system?

As a psychologist, I meet many children who are distressed by school. Usually I'm being asked to change that. Can I make them less anxious? Can I make them attend without protest? A psychologist is often the last resort, parents and teachers have not succeeded and so maybe I can work some magic?

The tools I have are limited and they are focused only on the child and their family. I could do some anxiety management, or some trauma therapy. I could listen to how the child and their family feel and empathise. I could advise their parents on low demand mornings.

None of that will change the core of the problem, which is the way that this child experiences school and how it makes them feel. Not because there's anything wrong with the child, but because there are things about school which they find deeply stressful.

It's the pressure, the lack of choice, the loss of time to play. It's the developmentally inappropriate expectations. It's the relentless competition and behaviour charts. It's the way that school is organised, with a curriculum planned by someone many miles away who has no idea of the interests of this group of kids, today.

If we saw these children's distress as feedback, maybe instead of sending them to a psychologist we'd be sending the psychologists to government policy meetings. We'd be asking how we could change our school system so that it prioritises flourishing over curriculum. We'd be asking how we can put emotional well being on a par with test scores as an outcome.

For no, I can't make children attend school without protest when every part of their body is telling them that it isn't the right place for them. I can't make them less anxious when anxiety and shame are being used to motivate them. There's nothing wrong with the children.

They are the canaries in the mind, letting us know that all is not well. Their distress is a product of the system, just as much as an exam result. As long as we continue to ignore their distress, it will multiple. It's the system which needs fixing, not the kids.

Photo, Ryk Naves on Unsplash.