Randburg Counselling Centre #LetsTalk

14/11/2025

There are two clever ways the mind tries to avoid pain: ‘intellectualising’ and ‘rumination’.
One turns emotion into theory, the other turns theory into worry. Together, they make us feel like we’re making progress, when really we’re just circling the same ache in slightly different words.

Intellectualising often begins with the best of intentions. It’s the mind’s way of trying to make sense of what hurts, to bring order to chaos. We analyse our heartbreak, our shame, our fear, hoping that if we can understand it, we can control it. But understanding isn’t the same as healing. We can know everything about our pain and still be standing outside it, unable to move through.

Rumination starts when the mind begins to panic. It’s when we replay the same scene, the same conversation, the same regret, again and again, as if thinking about it one more time might finally change the ending. Rumination isn’t really thinking. It’s the mind trying to do with logic what only gentleness and time can do.

Both habits come from care. We ruminate because we want to make things right. We intellectualise because we want to make things clear. But both are, in their own quiet way, ways of avoiding what we don’t want to feel.

Moving beyond them doesn’t mean we stop thinking. It means we start thinking differently. It means letting the mind serve the heart, instead of trying to replace it. It means allowing the ache to exist without rushing to turn it into an idea or a conclusion.

Sometimes the wisest thing we can do is stop intellectualising. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is stop ruminating.

To simply sit with ourselves, without trying to solve or explain anything. To let things be unfinished for a while.

Because healing doesn’t come from finding the perfect answer. It comes from giving ourselves permission to feel what’s really there, and to trust that this, somehow, is enough.

04/11/2025

Confidence doesn't come from winning.

It comes from failing so much that failure stops being scary.

Everyone thinks confident people never fail.

Wrong.

Confident people fail constantly. They just stopped caring about it.

I used to treat every failure like the end of the world.

Bombed a pitch? Proof I wasn't good enough.

Lost a client? Must be a fraud.

Project didn't work? Should quit entirely.

Now?

Failed pitch: Okay, what didn't land?

Lost client: What can I learn from this?

Project flopped: What's the next experiment?

The difference isn't talent. It's just repetition.

You fail enough times and your brain stops treating it like a crisis.

It becomes data:

→ This didn't work
→ Try that instead
→ Move on

Confident people aren't unafraid of failure.

They're just bored of it.

Do the thing. Fail. Learn. Repeat.

Eventually failure stops being scary and starts being useful.

That's confidence.

04/11/2025

Reconciliation without accountability isn’t healing, it’s permission to keep getting hurt.

Too often, people are told, “Just forgive. Just move on. Just make peace.”

But real peace isn’t pretending everything’s fine.
Real peace comes when truth meets change. 💛

You can’t rebuild a connection with someone who won’t acknowledge the damage.

You can’t heal in the same environment that broke you.

And you don’t owe anyone access simply because they feel ready to “move past it.”

Accountability isn’t punishment — it’s maturity.
It says:
✨ “If you want relationship, it must be safe this time.”
✨ “If you want closeness, it must come with honesty.”

Reconciliation without accountability isn’t restoration — it’s repetition.

You’re allowed to require more than “I’m sorry.”
You’re allowed to protect your healing.

Because closure doesn’t come from them rewriting the story…

It comes from you deciding not to relive it. 💫

04/11/2025

I ended up rereading CS Lewis’ A Grief Observed for the umpteenth time.

And boy, I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with anger and fury. That’s the part of healthy grief not often encouraged.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"The time when there is nothing at all in you except a cry for help may be just the time when God can't give it; you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear. On the other hand, 'Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac?"

“Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face… After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.”

“I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief.”

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

BOOK: https://amzn.to/43fwQn4

02/11/2025

The memory loss from deep depression and trauma is not talked about enough. It’s not just forgetting small things — it’s losing entire pieces of your own life. Whole days, months, even years blur together into one long, hazy stretch of survival. You try to look back, to remember how you got here, but there are blank spaces where moments should be. It’s like flipping through a book only to realize entire chapters are missing, and all that’s left are fragments that don’t quite fit together.

People talk about sadness, anxiety, and pain — but rarely about the way trauma steals your memories. Your brain, in its attempt to protect you, starts shutting down parts of itself just to keep you functioning. It doesn’t care about memories or milestones; it only cares about getting you through the next moment. So while everyone else was living, laughing, and making memories, you were just trying to breathe, to exist, to not break.

And when you finally start to heal, you notice the gaps — the forgotten conversations, the birthdays you can’t recall, the entire seasons of your life that feel like they happened to someone else. You scroll through old photos and feel nothing but confusion, because you can see yourself there, smiling, but you don’t *remember* being there. You can’t feel what that version of you felt. It’s eerie, almost haunting, to realize that you’ve lived through moments your mind chose to erase for your own protection.

It’s not laziness, it’s not carelessness — it’s survival. When your brain is consumed with pain, it can’t process experiences normally. The constant fight-or-flight state rewires you, and instead of storing memories, your mind focuses on staying alive. You lose time, not because you didn’t care, but because your body and brain were in survival mode.

And that’s something few people understand: healing from trauma isn’t just about easing the pain — it’s also about mourning the pieces of your life you’ll never get back. The days you were alive but not really living. The memories that should’ve been yours but were stolen by the weight of what you endured. It’s heartbreaking, but also proof of your strength — you survived what your mind couldn’t even bear to remember.

01/11/2025

26/10/2025

Grandparents … adult children .. a superpower - emotional regulation!

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1362512661897481/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

22/10/2025

Evening reflection:

Life Becomes Beautiful When We Accept What It Is

Life is not beautiful because it is fair. It becomes beautiful when we learn to accept what it truly is.

At its core, life is threaded through with misunderstanding, disappointment, injustice, and confusion.

This reality offends our human nature — a nature that instinctively demands clarity, justice, and fairness. Especially when history has left us bruised, slighted, or crushed beneath injustice, the longing for explanation and restoration can be overwhelming.

But beauty begins at the doorway of acceptance.

Forgiveness becomes possible when I acknowledge that I cannot control the forces that shape everything.

My weakness, my limits, and my inability to make sense of it all — these are the places where God’s strength quietly enters.

Yielding to Him is not passive resignation. It is an active surrender that allows His strength to be revealed through the cracks in my humanity. It is an ideal — not easy, but attainable on earth. It remains an invitation, because human nature resists it.

That’s why we need a bridge. A way. A truth. A life.

Jesus doesn’t just teach truth — He is the Truth.

And the fruit of that Truth is the fruit of the Spirit, from which true wisdom grows. Only from that ground can we hear God clearly.

Only from that place can wisdom — not cleverness, but divine insight — flow freely.
(Christo)