What are the opening hours?

Monday 9:30am - 7:30pm Tuesday 10:30am - 7:30pm Wednesday 9:30am - 7:30pm Thursday 10:30am - 7:30pm Friday 9:30am - 2pm

http://LucyBorthwickCounselling.com/

Lucy Borthwick Counselling, Hagley (2025)

29/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Worry is part of human nature, if people didn’t worry, they wouldn’t be able to anticipate and prepare for life’s challenges. For some people, though, worry gets to be overwhelming.
You keep telling yourself something bad will happen and predicting the worst outcome, however in reality these things you’re predicting rarely ever happen. Worrying and anxiety are a way of trying to predict, prepare for and control the outcomes of life events. However this is future focused and it is virtually impossible to predict the future.
Even on those rare occasions when a person’s worry does translate to reality, the outcome is often better than the person had feared and they find they are able to cope and manage the situation.
No matter how effective we are at reducing worries, we’re not going to eliminate them. Unpleasant thoughts and negative emotions are part of the human condition.
Talking to a counsellor can help you learn techniques to reframe your worries and fears and shrink them down to size.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

28/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Going to therapy before you are in a crisis makes a big difference just like catching any physical issue early on makes treatment easier.
Going to therapy may be the first time you have ever shared intimate thoughts and feelings with someone about the challenges or problems you are facing. It can be very intimidating or overwhelming in the beginning but it will get easier as you start to build a relationship with your therapist.
When you begin to open up and your therapist starts to understand you better, they will be more effective in assisting you to develop strategies to address what’s bringing you to therapy. Once rapport has been established, you and your therapist will be on the same page when bigger challenges come up; which means you can head them off before they send you into crisis mode.
In therapy you will start to develop skills to help you resolve or mitigate what brought you to therapy. These skills are helpful as they can serve as protective factors against depression and anxiety. As these skills are developed in therapy, you are able to see things in life differently and learn how to use these skills outside of your therapy sessions. It’s all a part of the process to develop healthy coping strategies.
When you put in the work in your therapy sessions, and develop these skills, you are laying the foundation needed to deal with significant issues and future crises. If you start therapy in the middle of a crisis you don’t have the advantage of that foundation. You essentially have to play catch up and build skills and deal with an emergency simultaneously, and that can be really hard to do.
#
🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

26/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Coping with everything life throws at us is tough. Juggling all our different roles, trying to be all things to all people, and “shoehorning” so much into every day. You’re not alone.
From the outside, others also seem to be holding it all together. Have you thought that perhaps sometimes they’re not coping either?
If you’re struggling and pretending you are ok then the first step is to admit to yourself that you’re not. This shows great strength.
Ask for help. This isn’t a sign of weakness. Tell those who care about you that you’re not coping and talk about how you feel.
Counselling can provide valuable support when difficult feelings come up and can help you to identify the changes you can make to move forward.
Pretending that we don’t have any problems, difficult emotions, or conflicts is a facade. It’s the image we want to present to the rest of the world. You are, however, the only one who can start to change them. You can slowly start to think and act differently, you can validate your feelings and needs, and be more of your true self.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.Com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

25/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

The feeling that you should be further along in your career, relationships, finances, or any other area of life is something most can relate to at some point, and it’s a difficult thing to shake. Many experiences can lead to this thinking pattern. Societal pressure is a big one, especially when you have social media showcasing highlight reels of other people’s accomplishments and seemingly successful, happy lives.
‘Shouding yourself’ basically means putting pressure on yourself to do or be something based on what you think you’re supposed to do or be. Whatever the “should/shouldn’ts” are on your list, they always add up to the same thing: “You should be better, you should know better, you’re not doing it right.”
Shoulding strengthens our belief that, left to our own devices, we cannot be trusted. We use the word “should” so frequently that it takes the place of more accurate and powerful phrases like “I want,” “I can,” and “I will.”
Consider replacing the word “should” with “I want…can…will…am”. Using different words shifts your inner dialogue, your mindset and helps relieve unnecessary pressure. Simple changes to your vocabulary will allow you to feel more in control and less stressed.
Talking to a counsellor can help you identify your inner dialogue and the expectations you have of yourself. This can then lead to learning to adjust your inner voice, increasing your self esteem and living a less stressful life.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

24/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Are you living the life of your dreams?
If it were all to end tomorrow, would you be happy and content if you looked back down the years of your life?
Would you feel that you’ve achieved everything that you wanted to?
Do you live each day aligned with the things that are most important to you?
Although many of us hold a deep desire to seek change in our lives, we often turn away from opportunities and experiences because the reasons NOT to do things weigh heavier than the reasons to do them. Often we believe that we’ve left it too late to bring about the changes we crave.
The fact is that it’s never too late to change your life and be who you want to be.
It is most often our limiting beliefs and perceptions that make things appear harder than they are. Our subconscious does a great job of looking after us, but if we’re not careful, it can also restrict us.
We need to ensure that we prioritise what is important to us, work through our limiting beliefs, and take action.
Talking to a counsellor can help you to explore what might be getting in the way and holding you back. Therapy can enable us to have a new perspective on our lives and build the courage to make those changes.

🌐LucyBorthwickcounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

23/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Boundaries are a way to take care of ourselves. When we understand how to set and maintain healthy boundaries, we can avoid the feelings of resentment, disappointment, and anger that build up when limits have been pushed.
A person with healthy boundaries understands that making their expectations clear helps in two ways: it establishes what behaviour you will accept from other people, and it establishes what behaviour other people can expect from you.
Boundaries are important because they stop us saying yes when we’d rather say no. They allow us to focus on the important things to us in our life and not get distracted by things that aren’t that important after all.
Our emotional boundaries are important because they give us the personal space—emotional, mental, physical, or otherwise—we need in a given situation. When our emotional boundaries are respected, we feel valued, honoured, and safe. Whilst maintaining boundaries can be difficult, it increases self-compassion and self-esteem by allowing us to prioritise our own voice and needs.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

22/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

How many of us can relate to this?
Do you feel you give life your best, work hard, try hard, but still can’t give yourself credit? Are you constantly beating yourself up and thinking that somehow you should be more, do more, be better, and you don’t measure up in your own mind?
When you don’t feel good about yourself, you feel that you are being watched and judged, which increases your sense of not feeling good about who you are. This becomes a vicious cycle in which you are constantly under-valued and shamed by both yourself and others. It’s so easy be dragged down by your own thoughts. It’s so easy to feel like “I'm not good enough”.
Such thoughts combined with the pressures and stress of today’s world can quickly start tearing your confidence and your self-esteem to pieces.
Keeping these thoughts bottled up can make them spiral out of control. Letting them out can help you to look at things from a more grounded and constructive perspective. Talking to a counsellor can help you to identify why you think this way and together you can explore new ways of responding to your inner critic helping to build new confidence and greater self esteem.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

21/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

The outcome of counselling depends on many factors, but researchers have evidence to show that certain qualities in a therapist play a key role in increasing the odds of a successful outcome.
What makes a good therapist goes beyond the ability to make a client feel a little better.
A great therapist is a person who is totally committed to their client. Someone who can use compassion, empathy, respect and authenticity to form a genuine, trusting relationship with their clients.
Generally speaking, successful therapists have a strong belief in the possibility of personal growth and change, they are astute at sensing what other people are thinking and feeling and show warmth and acceptance, empathy, and a focus on others, not themselves.
Get in touch to see how we could work together.

🌐LucyBorthwickcounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

18/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Your physical health can have a direct impact on your mental health, and vice versa.
When our emotions, like anger and sadness, are not dealt with, the body is adversely affected. Holding our feelings inside is just one way they can end up festering out of control.
If we don’t talk about them and get them out into the open, eventually they’ll blow up. The result could be an emotional breakdown or a physical ailment.
Talking to a therapist can improve your mental wellbeing and in turn have a positive impact on your physical health.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

15/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

The human brain has a natural tendency to give weight to (and remember) negative experiences or interactions more than positive ones—they stand out more. Psychologists refer to this as negativity bias. Not only do negative events and experiences imprint more quickly, but they also linger longer than positive ones.
The negativity bias can even cause you to dwell on something negative even if something positive is equally or more present. This can then often lead to feelings of self-recrimination, insecurity, sadness, anger, bitterness and other negative emotions, really impacting our lives and experiences.
But how can we change things?
The single most important underlying factor is how we talk to ourselves about our experiences. Basically, we need to put effort into truly valuing all the good and positive aspects of our lives so that we are not overcome by the negative. Even if we are facing a multitude of objectively negative situations, we can try to appreciate the positive aspects of our life, regardless of how small they may be. The sun is shining, you had time for an extra cup of coffee, a friend is visiting or your favourite song is on the radio.

🌐LucyBorthwickcounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

14/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

There are many misconceptions about therapy. Firstly, it is not there as a bandage. In fact, when therapy is effective, things often get worse before they get better. The therapist’s role is to work with us and help us to navigate to where we need to be. This means we need to be ready to be sensitively challenged on our incongruence, poor decisions, or destructive thoughts and behaviours.
A good, effective therapist will help us to see how we perpetuate our problems by our thoughts and actions. An effective therapist will empower us to be an agent of change in our own lives by making different, better choices.
A therapist will keep our secrets.They want to work with us and will help transform our lives, even though they will likely never get to see the end of our stories.
Therapy is not an instant cure. It may take weeks, months, or years. Of course, it’s faster when we work on our issues outside of our sessions and have self-awareness about our patterns of behaviour.
Therefore Therapy with me is…
* A place of validation where you can talk about shameful feelings without judgement.
* A place for you to discover that your problems, though very personal to you, are a normal response to life’s stressors.
* A place for you to put words into the scary and uncomfortable thoughts you’ve been trying to keep buried inside you.
* A place to improve the relationships you care most about.
* A place to let it all out.
* A place where you don’t have to compete for who gets to talk next. You are the most important person in each conversation.
* A place to heal from trauma.
* A place to understand yourself better.

🌐LucyBorthwickCounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

12/07/2025

Lucy Borthwick Counselling
-Counselling Practice based in Hagley-

Do you ever hear yourself saying, “Yeah, sure!” when, all you really want to say is: “NO”! Or saying sorry when deep down, you know that the other person was actually in the wrong?
At its core, people-pleasing is the act of prioritising pleasing others over ourselves. It might look like selflessness, but it can be motivated by a fear of not being accepted and a desire to be liked.
This can manifest in being overly agreeable to others and/or putting too much effort into gaining acceptance or approval from others.
The need to fit in or avoid conflict may lead us to constantly seek affirmation, even at the expense of our own well-being.
Low self-esteem plays a significant role in people-pleasing tendencies. People with low confidence may believe their worth is tied to others’ approval, perpetuating a cycle of seeking external validation to boost their self-worth.
People pleasers often struggle to set and maintain boundaries. This can develop from a fear of disappointing others or an inability to prioritise personal needs over the desires of those around them.
Efforts to keep other people happy can stretch our own physical and mental resources too thin. Trying to manage it all can leave us plagued with stress and anxiety, which can have detrimental effects on our health.
Talking to a counsellor can help you explore the reasons for your people pleasing tendencies, help manage your behaviour, prioritise your own needs, and learn to establish healthy boundaries.

🌐LucyBorthwickcounselling.com
📧Lborthwickcounselling@gmail.com
☎️Tel: 07392 903 735

Lucy Borthwick Counselling

29/07/2025

28/07/2025

26/07/2025

25/07/2025

24/07/2025

23/07/2025

22/07/2025

21/07/2025

18/07/2025

15/07/2025

14/07/2025

12/07/2025

Address

Opening Hours

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Monday	9:30am - 7:30pm
Tuesday	10:30am - 7:30pm
Wednesday	9:30am - 7:30pm
Thursday	10:30am - 7:30pm
Friday	9:30am - 2pm