Emma Kelly Counselling

01/03/2026

♥️

01/03/2026

A recent article in The Guardian about a very young girl weightlifting has sparked debate that I feel missed out on the following:

Strength training itself isn’t the issue. The concern is the context.

When a child is praised for leanness, discipline, or body shape, her body can quickly become something to manage rather than something to simply live in.

That’s where eating disorder risk can quietly begin.
Children are meant to be in their bodies not monitoring them.

They’re meant to play, experiment, grow, and change without adult expectations about optimisation, aesthetics, or performance sitting on their shoulders.
Puberty will naturally soften, shift, and redistribute weight.

If a child’s identity has been built around being unusually lean or strong, those normal changes can feel like failure.

Eating disorders are rarely about food alone. They’re about control, worth, and identity.

Strength is powerful.

But so is allowing a child to just be a child free from body scrutiny and adult pressures before she’s developmentally ready.

28/02/2026

Such an important reminder. True empathy begins when we suspend our assumptions and genuinely step into someone else’s world. It’s not about fixing it’s about understanding ❤️

28/02/2026

Life is hard. Complicated. Confusing.
That’s why therapy matters. It gives you a safe space to untangle the mess, to wade through the mud with someone steady beside you. A place to feel it all, say the unsayable, process the experiences that shaped you — without judgement, and without doing it alone.
Therapy is support, structure, and space to breathe.
“You don’t have to figure it out alone.”

19/02/2026

TLDR; kids don't owe us.

19/02/2026

💯

Our children’s needs do not disappear just because the goalposts are moved by policymakers.

They can rename it, redefine it, restrict it all they like. But the needs are still there.

In classrooms.
In homes.
In children who are already hanging on by a thread.

Parents are worried. Teachers are worried. And rightly so.

We have posted our own inside information that was leaked to us by MPs and their caseworkers in November - it seems it’s all materialising now.

What is exhausting is the constant drip-feeding of “leaks” to the mainstream media. Headline after headline. Fear after fear. Before families have even had the dignity of clear, formal communication.

Enough. This is tremendously disrespectful.

If there are reforms coming, then publish them properly. Consult properly. Listen properly - TO THOSE WHO MATTER.

Stop ‘briefing’ the press while families sit in limbo.

To every parent lying awake tonight and every teacher trying to hold the line in an underfunded system… your concerns are valid. You are not dramatic. You are not overreacting.

We will respond with clarity.
We will respond with evidence.
And we will not allow children to be quietly written out.

You are not alone in this. 💛

We must stick together.

If you need support, we are here.

19/02/2026

Physical abuse is only one type of abuse. There are many others. https://carolineabbott.com/what-is-domestic-violence/

19/02/2026

👏

19/02/2026

Attachment styles are relational regulation strategies.

Anxious seeks proximity.

Avoidant seeks distance.

Disorganised oscillates between both.

Secure integrates closeness with autonomy.

They are not diagnoses. They are nervous system adaptations.

And they can evolve ♥️

19/02/2026

I don't always share women's health stuff because a lot of it I don't professionally agree with. But this is a post I can get on board with, such great things to give up that your future self will thank you for ♥️