Welcome to counselling

Sometimes starting counselling can be the hardest part. to help take some of the stress of starting, here is a short video for parents explaining some of ideas around counselling and perhaps answering some questions you may have.

My work is generally around families who have experienced Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) and it is important to keep a strong focus on this. Whilst DFV creates a great deal of trauma that can affect almost every part of your day to day life, challenges that are not directly attributable to the DFV experience may fall outside the realm of the counselling I can offer. Karyl MacBride in her book "Will I ever be free of you?" (2015 p. 95), provides a helpful list of what counselling may contain that sits well with my practice:

• Work through your emotions and trauma related to the relationship and violnce in a safe place.
• Establish and enforce new boundaries.
• Understand how your spouse has been manipulating you and how to defend yourself against manipulative tactics.
• Begin developing a healthier sense of self.
• Develop your own empathetic parenting style, a style that will help your children to develop into healthy young adults.
• Decide which battles to fight.
• Support you through the separation.

For children, perhaps watching this video may help make starting counselling just a bit easier. Be warned though, watch this first before playing for your children as it includes reading the book "I need a new bum" and includes several bum and fart jokes:

After a few weeks of having the first book reading up, I noticed that a number of children (and parents) found starting counselling easier if they had watched the book-reading video. So I thought, why not try a few more. Perhaps its the familiarity that helps? Anyhow, here is an explanation as to why dogs sniff bottoms: