Abigail Paige Counselling

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.

25/12/2022

Sharing this valuable perspective for anyone who needs to hear it, whether for Christmas or any other celebration or event that feels difficult. I hope the end of your year is as peaceful as possible.

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

So said someone. The internet isn’t sure who exactly. If anyone knows, please tell me so I can credit them.

This is particularly true at Christmas. It’s a time when we are encouraged to compare our own lives with the lives of others, and to find them lacking. Our Christmas isn’t as sparkly as the one everyone else seems to be having, and the one we were promised by the adverts (so we’d better buy lots of things to make up for that). Our children are finding it hard to leave the house – and yet the children of our friends are winning Olympiads and prizes for music and we can see because it’s all on Facebook. Our family isn’t like the ones we imagine where everyone plays Cluedo together on a Christmas afternoon, before settling down to watch The Sound of Music.

The gap between reality and the life we imagine is out there is a tough place to be. Many of us spend years wishing that things were just a bit different, and waiting to be happy until it is. ‘Just got to get this sorted out’ we say to ourselves, ‘and then I’ll be able to relax’.

It never happens. Life is very rarely sorted out. And we will never stop finding people to compare ourselves too who are doing better than us. Humans have this amazing capacity to pick out an area where they feel inadequate and to compare themselves with others who appear to be doing better. If it’s not children’s behaviour, it’s our career. If it’s not how tidy our house is, it’s how many friends we have. If it’s not how many GCSEs our children are doing it’s how well turned out they look. There is always someone whose life seems better.

The humbling thing about being a therapist is that I get to hear the stories of all sorts of people. And one common theme is that almost everyone compares how they feel on the inside with how other people appear on the outside. We knew the worst parts of our own lives, but generally we see only the public face of everyone else. The curated version, where they cleaned the toilet before you came round and washed the sticky floor. We see how effortless it all appears, and don’t see the hours of preparation and how much the children protested about the piano practice for the performance of Jingle Bells which charmed everyone so much. We just see the front, and we assume that that is all there is. And it makes us feel terrible. We can’t measure up, and we never will. Because we know all the unvarnished bits of ourselves and our children, and that’s exactly how it’s meant to be. Families should be where children feel safe to be themselves, and that includes the parts of them that the rest of the world doesn’t see.

So this year, give yourself the gift of letting yourself relax, just as you are. Things will change, you won’t be in the same place for ever, and there will always be people to compare yourself to. Take back the joy of your imperfect life, and don’t let anyone steal it away. You’re doing okay.

Happy Christmas.

Image credit: https://unsplash.com/

23/12/2021

my brain and
heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was
to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become

eventually,
they couldn't be
in the same room
with each other

now my head and heart
share custody of me

I stay with my brain
during the week

and my heart
gets me on weekends

they never speak to one another

- instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week

and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:

"This is all your fault"

on Sundays
my heart complains
about how my
head has let me down
in the past

and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future

they blame each
other for the
state of my life

there's been a lot
of yelling - and crying

so,

lately, I've been
spending a lot of
time with my gut

who serves as my
unofficial therapist

most nights, I sneak out of the
window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine
and collapse on my
gut's plush leather chair
that's always open for me

~ and I just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up

last evening,
my gut asked me
if I was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head

I nodded

I said I didn't know
if I could live with
either of them anymore

"my heart is always sad about
something that happened yesterday
while my head is always worried
about something that may happen tomorrow,"
I lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

"I just can't live with
my mistakes of the past
or my anxiety about the future,"
I sighed

my gut smiled and said:

"in that case,
you should
go stay with your
lungs for a while,"

I was confused
- the look on my face gave it away

"if you are exhausted about
your heart's obsession with
the fixed past and your mind's focus
on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now
there is only inhale
there is only exhale
there is only this moment

there is only breath

and in that breath
you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out."

this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves

and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs

I packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs

before I could even knock
she opened the door
with a smile and as
a gust of air embraced me
she said

"what took you so long?"

~ John Roedel (johnroedel.com)

Poetry, Writer, John Roedel, Hey God Hey John, Author, Speaker, Comedian