Abigail Paige Counselling

12/10/2025

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=825941716630104&id=100076428486012

Most of us try to get rid of painful thoughts:
“I shouldn’t feel this way.”
“Stop overthinking.”
“Just move on.”

But here’s what neuroscience shows us—
the more you fight a thought, the louder your brain makes it.

That’s because your amygdala interprets that inner struggle as danger, and your prefrontal cortex—the part that helps you regulate—temporarily shuts down.

So instead of calming your mind, you end up reliving the same emotional loop.

Those thoughts that keep looping aren’t random.
Many were formed in moments when your brain was trying to protect you.

That’s why healing isn’t about forcing positive thoughts—it’s about changing how you relate to what arises inside you. When you meet a thought with curiosity instead of judgment, you send a powerful signal to your body: “I’m safe now.”

Your body doesn’t know the difference between an external threat and an internal one. So if you meet your thoughts with fear or frustration, your brain reads that as danger— and your amygdala, the part that scans for threat, amplifies the sense of threat.

But when you pause, breathe, and simply notice what’s happening—without trying to fix or silence it—your nervous system receives a different message.

The amygdala quiets.
The prefrontal cortex—responsible for reasoning, reflection, and choice—comes back online.
And that’s where neuroplasticity begins.

Your brain starts building new connections that link awareness with safety instead of threat. Over time, that repetition teaches your mind:

“I can think and feel difficult things without being in danger.”

That’s what true rewiring looks like—not controlling your thoughts, but creating safety inside your relationship with them.

So the next time an old thought shows up— “you’re not enough,” “something bad will happen,” “they’ll leave”— pause. Notice it. Soften your response.

You don’t have to believe it or banish it. You can simply get curious about it—maybe even listen to what it’s trying to protect.

That’s where healing begins.

26/06/2025

I love that this has been called out.

As a supervisor I work with a lot of counsellors who have been taught to be a ‘blank page’, but there has been no clarification about what this really means.

Yes, you should be able to hold whatever a client brings with no judgement on them, but that doesn’t mean having no response.

This is particularly important when childhood distress, has been downplayed, ignored or gaslit.
When a reasonable response to horrific events has been deemed ‘too’ emotional, sensitive, dramatic, ….

Validation is essential. Our job as therapists is to bear witness to people’s lives, to be able to say you are absolutely allowed to feel something about this.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1226212942632265&id=100057307125122

As a therapist who works with childhood trauma, I have to challenge this meme 😬

Quite often, my clients will be telling me part of their story…

And quite often, they are so used to the story, they can re-tell it with zero emotion…

It’s only when I meet their story with a human response, expressing my authentic distress at how sad, frightening, shocking etc it is, that they start to realise that what they have experienced was not okay.

And I absolutely WILL interrupt if it is in the best interests of the client for so many different reasons.

To clarify information, to slow the client down to a more manageable pace, to help regulate the client so that they can feel safe in the moment and for many other reasons.

I do that because yes, I am trained to hear what’s going on.

To get beneath the surface means to help the client identify unconscious processes from the past which may be affecting how they manage in the present.

I think it’s important to challenge these memes on a deeper level sometimes 👍🏼

11/04/2025

These are wonderful, hold them close.

From .trauma.educator on IG

21/03/2025

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1206685937506947&id=100044966566880

This shot taken by Will Lindsay-Perez sums up one of the hardest few weeks of my life last year. Let me explain...

I had recorded 16 podcast episodes in 2 weeks in America, while running my companies. Flight Studio, Flight Fund and thirdweb.

I was severely jet lagged after flying between LA, the Middle East & The UK in 72 hours, I had then stayed up for 2 days over the weekend to complete a critical business project.

I was delirious, it was 8pm and there were 2,000~ people waiting for me on the other side of the wall in Dublin. It’s the first time in 8 years that my assistant Sophie Chapman told me she was about to intervene & cancel everything 😅

I was sat on a windowsill giving myself a little pep talk to get myself in the right frame of mind to not let those people down - while feeling like I had already let them down - I felt awful in every imaginable way.

This is not to be admired. It's unsustainable and your body will eventually find a way to slow you down if you don't listen to it.

I used to believe - especially when I was 16-25 years old that I was invincible in terms of mental health. At that age I thought mental health issues were things that happened to other people. I thought I was too "mentally strong" and "logical" to ever suffer with any mental health challenges.

Eventually, I found out I was wrong! We are all humans with a set of non-negotiable basic needs. If you deprive yourself of these basic needs your body will often send you signals - anxiety, depression etc etc as a last ditch attempt to get you to course correct.

I've never said this before, but I've started to think that somewhere inside me, there’s a young boy who still believes that everything he has could disappear overnight - that he could easily go back to zero - that he's still sprinting away from something. When you start with very little, the 'ghost of losing it all' can haunt you in a way that's both destructive and causes you to be scared of ever letting your foot off the gas.

Finding myself in a situation like the one you see in the photo basically means I f*cked up several months ago when a past version of me said Yes to too many things, which means a future version of me is now paying the price.

This is not the plan. The plan is to protect my first foundations (sleep, exercise, nutrition, relationships) while also being able to be professionally productive.

You never really master "balance" because life, opportunities and priorities are always changing.

You have to just stay tuned to your body and your mind and use what it's trying to tell you as the most important signal and instruction manual you have. When things get a bit too much, you have to be willing to let other people down, cancel plans and speak up, to defend your mental health.

Have you been listening to your mental health?

P.S shoutout to my team for understanding, supporting and carrying me on days like this! I really appreciate it ❤️

12/03/2025

11/10/2024

I have spent an absolutely amazing day learning with with Dr. Cocchiola, DSW, LCSW. So much to process but would highly recommend her extensively researched, trauma informed and compassionate work.

I have been a social justice advocate since the age of 19 educating on the prevention of domestic abuse and sexual assault, over two decades as a college professor in social work, and a clinician, yet I didn’t see the coercive control in my own relationship. Even the most astute of us may miss the...

02/10/2024

05/06/2023

“Try to see the past as a room separate from the one you live in now. You can go in there, but you don’t live there anymore.”
-Richard Templar, The Rules of Life

17/04/2023

You are not over sensitive, you are as sensitive as you have needed to be.