Experience Wellbeing With Therapy & Coaching

12/05/2025

https://open.substack.com/pub/helenstone2/p/review-of-hagitude-sharon-blackie?r=1v0bj5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Subtitle for the book is: Re-imagining the Second Phase of Life

26/07/2024

🌟 THIS IS YOU! ALL YOU ARE IN A DIAGRAM 🌟🧠 Learn how this map of consciousness can help you understand and master your inner energies for personal growth ...

15/02/2024

Self-care practices that I recommend to you, both in therapy and for the rest of your life!

When we feel depressed, anxious or are beset by impossible problems, classically we can forget about self-care. I know that as therapists we can bang on about this without much detail, so here is a short list to highlight what I mean by it:

Nutrition. - it’s obvious that you can help your mental health hugely by just eating a good diet. Most people will say their diet is not perfect, but you can start by just eating regularly and to satiety. The Zoe Health Study, and Professor Tim Spector, recommend an intake of 30 plants per week which sounds unattainable, but when explained, it seems that herbs, spices, nuts and seeds, even coffee, count as ‘plants’, this becomes much more doable. https://zoe.com/learn/30-plants-per-week # There’s a minefield of advice out there which I won’t replicate, but please try to eat what you know is good for you, within your budget and from sustainable sources. If possible, go for locally grown / produced and fresh and put it together yourself. There is a mountain of evidence for how good nutrition acts on the mind and brain chemicals, so by doing this you’ll be helping yourself massively.

Hydration – water is so important for all metabolic processes, essential for thinking and good for weight loss too, and we can all drink more of it. If you come here as a client, you will notice that I always have a glass of water ready for you. If you can’t stand water, herb teas, hot drinks are good, so long as you don’t add loads of sugar to them.

Adequate rest – try to make the time once a day to stop and take stock. If you can, have an earlier bedtime or a later wake-up time, and take time out of your day to do nothing. So often we combine eating with sending emails or going for a walk with catching up on phone calls. Remind yourself, you are not a machine, and you must have well-deserved breaks, without guilt. When we fail to rest fully, we eventually break and burnout.

Enjoyment – it may sound odd when you are thinking of coming to therapy, but often part of the process is about reconnecting with what you used to love and what used to give you joy. Once you have found that source of joy again, try not to become distanced from it again!

Purpose – a lot of therapeutic work can be about identifying what Purpose means to you, as its personal to everyone and changes through life. In fact, at certain periods in life, it may feel extremely elusive. The main happiness studies done by Martin E. P. Seligman over the last 20 years have revealed that a sense of purpose was essential to wellbeing. If you want to find out more, he has numerous questionnaires on his website, https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter where you can literally explore the component parts of happiness and find out how happy you are right now!

Last words:
I like to think about the above, the 5 Pillars of Self-Care, in terms of the old CBT exercise, The Circle of Control. Very simply, what goes inside the Circle are the things that we can choose for ourselves e.g. how much water we drink, whether we eat vegetables regularly, how much exercise we do, the quality of our thoughts, what we occupy our time with.
What stays outside of the Circle (and therefore outside of our limited range of influence) are the things we can’t do too much about – the weather, the neighbours, people who judge us, the ULEZ scheme, who is the President of the USA etc.
So establish what works for you specifically; whilst it will undoubtedly take more effort than doing nothing, what you do today will pay off exponentially over time!

15/02/2024

Walk & Talk / Eco-psychotherapy
One of the things I offer in my practice, and which strangely came out of Lockdown, when meeting outside with social distancing in place was deemed safest, is Walk and Talk therapy.
This is the same as for an hour of counselling, in terms of it being a therapy appointment dedicated to the client’s needs, but for this, we meet somewhere in the countryside, or a park or a quiet part of town, and walk together during the appointment.
I safeguard the situation by ensuring that we drop our voices where there is a risk of being overheard, or stopping talking if someone is coming towards us – hence the need for the space we walk in to be somewhat less populated and as quiet as it can be to allow for reflection.
The idea behind doing this is that we’re outside in nature and the outdoors, experiencing the mental health benefits of walking, and at the same time fostering our resilience in relation to other elements: the unpredictability of the weather, temperature, terrain etc..
This therapy facilitates us in slowing down, calming and re-alkalising the body through breathing in fresh air and a mindful approach. If extended to other situations in our lives, it can begin to help us cope in times of overwhelm.
You may already go for walks anyway and I always encourage clients to get out in nature if that’s available to them. I’d suggest that to gain the most benefit, you pause from time to time to enjoy the view and notice the sounds around you, but most of all, that you try not to mask the experience with headphones, messaging or making calls.
If you’d like to try this form of therapy, please let me know. The cost is the same per session, and we generally allow up to an extra 20 mins within that price range to allow for any interruptions or situations where we cannot be in a therapy space.

15/02/2024

What to Expect / How Counselling works

If you’ve not had counselling before, this is a very brief explanation of what to expect. I am speaking naturally for myself and my own way of working, honed over 12 years, and not meaning to speak on behalf of others.
When I meet a new client for the first time, I welcome them into my counselling room, which I hope they find comfortable and a space in which they can feel sufficiently at ease. I’m a therapist that will ask you questions and reflect back on what I think I have heard you say.
I will explain psychological concepts where I think they may be relevant or enhance your understanding. I will also think with you about resources or sources of support, considering with you what you may need, both right now and going forwards.
I work in a relational, sometimes almost conversational style. I see it as my responsibility to listen actively, not to interrupt you, to give you space and time to think through what is or has been going on, and for you to hopefully see in my responses mirrored back perhaps an underlining of your own deep feelings about the situation.
I am here to hold the space for new insights and choices or for old and difficult ‘left-over’ feelings to emerge.
I’m not here to withhold or keep solutions secret from you, nor to drip-feed them to you over time. I’m happy whenever you make links or pinpoint themes that reveal some new learning for you.
I see it as my responsibility to facilitate a deep-dive into your life for these 60 minutes and to accompany you back to the surface before the end of the session, giving you chance to come back to yourself and re-enter the day-to-day with ease.
When you enter therapy, oftentimes it can serve to contain all those difficult thoughts and feelings which were previously consuming your every waking moment. This is not always the case of course, but for clients, therapy can serve as that ‘spare room’ / or basement of the mind where you can lock your ‘stuff’ away til next week. The by-product of weekly therapy can be that you regain some spaciousness and peace back to your everyday life.

24/03/2023

https://www.betterhelp.com/helen-stone/ -experience
It's Spring and time for a change. In addition to CAMHS work, private practice, Supervision work and some walk and talk therapy, I'm now working with some international clients through Better Help which is an online global platform.
Looking forward to this additional way of working + embracing the new.

23/03/2023

Dear counselling organisations, this is your daily reminder to pay your therapists!

Dear Membership Bodies, this is your daily reminder to challenge organisations who don’t!

TEXT ON IMAGE:

Clients living in poverty ➡️ Therapists living in poverty ➡️ Clients worrying about not being able to afford therapy ➡️ Therapists worrying about losing clients....

20/02/2023

SHOULD YOU EVER END A RELATIONSHIP WITH A TEXT MESSAGE?

Well, this happened to me yesterday …. I was seeing - or thought I was seeing as I now can’t be sure – someone from my past. We’d nearly got together in 2011 after chatting on a dating app and then moving it over to Facebook. We had a great connection and so I was surprised when I returned from holidays that spring 12 years ago, to find his status reading ‘in a relationship’ and some photos of him smirking with a slightly manic looking girl with jet black hair, leaping in the air with ecstasy in a bright blue coat.

Fast forward and we got through that, spent a few years talking, including me counselling him through the ending of that relationship several years later when he couldn’t extricate himself from it. We touched base then in 2014 and it seems we were leading up to something, but it looks like this time I was the one to take flight. He later sent me a link to an album by Carole King, called Tapestry, saying that the whole album was about me. Having no wish to feel any worse, I managed to avoid listening to any of that.

We somehow came back into conversation and over the years wished each other well, congratulated each other on our birthdays, new jobs, and relationship statuses.

Start of 2023, we begin talking again and I mention how sorry I am, that I believe I let him down in the past and feel bad about something I can’t quite remember. His memory is scarily clear. He remembers kissing me passionately in a pub. I honestly told him I did not remember that at all! He imparted that he would be coming to see me this year and how much I was on his mind and that he felt we could almost have skipped the last decade of failed relationships if he’d just decided on me in the first place rather than the manic looking girl.

So, we met two weeks ago. We looked pretty much the same but older of course. He was very complimentary about me – post menopause with now natural long browny-blond hair (caramel if I was to be nice to myself) and a more ample waistline and bosom, I don’t really see myself as all that attractive. But M looked at me with what I took to be disbelieving glances of admiration and love. The weekend developed. Despite my nervousness, I allowed myself to be seduced and then re-initiated into the most amazing experience of sexual connection and communion. From a deep ambivalence (because of a collection of factors – geography, life phases, transition etc.), I was now fully invested. And he was too. Well, I thought so!

He had to leave in the morning, and I miss him when I come home to the house later on. But my weekend has changed me. I’m suddenly alive again, looking at my clothes and jewellery and experimenting a bit and feeling like I’m awake again to colour, vibrancy, beauty. He doesn’t write back all that soon but when I hear from him, he’s kind and reassuring. We speak twice on the phone the following weekend and I am further reassured. All seems well.

Then there is a rupture in our communications, and I discover that he has become ill – it sounds like flu or covid – and he’s aching all over, flu’y, sleepy, restless, exhausted. I send some messages and say how sorry I am and wish him well and hope he can find something to ease the symptoms.

The messages slowly fizzle out. There is a ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been rubbish, but Happy Valentine’s Day’. No flowers or anything and I don’t know his address so I can’t send him any.

The week wears on and less comes through; I tailor my messages accordingly, and then receive a ‘Thank you for your concern’. Perhaps that is the warning I miss.

I speak to a friend, and we surmise how being ill can make us feel and how men are wired up differently; whilst we might think we must be in touch, perhaps this man (or men!) is inclined to focus on getting well rather than anything else.

Sunday morning – its sunny, one of my cats is stretching out luxuriantly in the sun and my dog lies golden under the window. I sit in my pyjamas, happy about last night’s dancing (I’m a seasoned partner dancer and have been to a nice chilled out evening freestyle). And then there is a message …. M C in purple on messenger. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been thinking whilst I’ve been ill … I’ll just come out and say it, I can’t do another long-distance relationship. Don’t hate me, I hope you’re okay’ and two kisses.

What!!! No discussion, no courtesy phone call, no real explanation. I’m not ‘another long-distance relationship’ – I’m the one, no? Shouldn’t we have always been together? Am I somehow being blamed for all the ‘crazy ex’s’ in the meantime, who lived in Surrey and Cheddar Gorge and Eastbourne. Excuse me, but where am I in this?

I am shocked. I write back and say, ‘Well, I do feel exploited, actually. That wasn’t kind what you did.’ I feel I have allowed myself to trust and be vulnerable and now a swift change of mind, with no discussion, and I’m supposed to just stay silent and accept this? I add some other remarks, thanking him for being clear and the point above about not being identified as just a ‘long-distancer’. I ask him why he did not make a point of being brave enough to phone? ‘Personally I think this was something special and you ought to have been braver. But you do you and I‘ll stay in the flow of my life.’ I write lastly.

No reply comes
20 mins later, I think FFS, I’ll phone him. He can take one call at least.
No reply to messenger.
No reply to his mobile but there is a facility to leave a message, so I leave one.
My voice isn’t fully level. I say how upset I am and surprised and that it doesn’t make sense to me.
I ask him to be in touch within the hour to talk at least.
I say that if I don’t hear from him, I’ll go ahead and delete all contact with him, and I ask him to never call me again.
Lastly, I ask him to never ever do this to another person ever again.
And then I ring off.

A while later, a message, ‘I’m driving an ambulance until 10 pm tonight so I can’t call back.’
Right, so you left a text for me and thought ‘that’ll do’ and then went and occupied your guilt in being busy, did you?
I reply, ‘okay, but would you be willing to talk later?’

No reply within an hour, so M C gets deleted. I’ve never done this before, and it feels so much cleaner and somehow spacious.

The next day I resist looking at my phone for a while, but there is no attempted call or contact from him when I do look.

I can’t unblock him now, so it appears I must now accept the finality of my actions and begin to process my grief and my complex feelings. I wonder: Have I been duped? Was this a revenge thing? Did he plan this just to hurt me?

Nothing seems too far-fetched because there is no explanation that fits the content. I’m left speculating and obviously trying hard not to. What was going through his mind? Why would anyone do this to someone? Did he not realise that having split with my long-term partner only a few months ago, that I was bound to be a bit fragile?
So many questions …

I find it hard to concentrate today, but remembering the feeling of space and clarity, at lunchtime I spend a little time deleting some other more questionable people off my FB and phone, including the ex that I mentioned above. It feels GOOD!

For me, it will now be about processing the raw feelings of rage and unfairness, alongside extracting the essence of beauty and ripeness and the flow of life, that I am also paradoxically left with from this entanglement. The younger parts of me would love to polarise this and call him out as the ‘baddie’, but we were both in this and it is the relationship with me that has been rejected, rather than me.

Personally, I do think it is his mistake – what I thought we had is very rare, and this much I know, hard to come by. But if it must be traded in for a relationship nearer home, then he is the one that has to live with that.

So, to answer my own question, I don’t believe a text is a good way to end things, (even things that haven’t even begun!), but there is a lot you can do on your side if it happens to you, as I hope I’ve shown. You can find your voice and say what you need to. Even talking into the void is voicing your needs in this. You can take actions that feel congruent. And you can separate yourself from the toxicity of their decision (even though it’s not toxic to them, it is to you). By knowing what belongs where, you can emerge from something personal and painful and release yourself from them. It may be hard to trust next time, but the main thing for me is to absorb the learning and keep my heart open and my mind clear.

Comment below if you wish to ….

And if you’d like to come for a session of counselling, I’m also happy to help. Please see my website, www.wayaheadcounselling.co.uk for details

12/09/2022

Now this is garden decor!

13/05/2020

“If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.”
Masaru Emoto - Secret Life of Water

Warwick Goble

03/03/2020

22/10/2019

This is so beautiful. I was crying by the second line, Written by Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 – 17 March 1918) was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford