This is our first guest blog and it’s written by my son Aiden Aitken. Yes, I was once the mother with the awful smoker’s cough. While I was risking killing myself with the cigarettes I was smoking, I was killing myself in my son’s mind,...
Developing a Workforce Working as an Operations Manager for a large Residential Care organisation, I was often disillusioned with the training provided for workers. Although it might appear to meet the needs of the organisation, it was often generic and therefore didn’t pack a punch or...
As a trauma specialist and therapist, it hit hard when I heard my cousin had taken his own life this morning. He hung himself and was found by his mother, that’s all I know at present, we’d lost contact as families sometimes do. Of course, I...
The danger of measuring yourself against others is that you will inevitably end up feeling bad about yourself and therefore disillusioned with your own life. Comparing yourself to others isn’t helpful in that it focusses you on somebody else’s life and can leave you feeling...
When one parent leaves another, it’s because the relationship between them has broken down in some way. It’s an issue concerning the adults in the relationship and the fact that it is no longer working; it is not about the children but sadly this is...
I don’t want to add to any existing ‘parental guilt’ by giving you anything else to stress yourself over, but I do believe if a parent knew just how much their own stress could affect their child they might just make some changes and start...
Do you ever feel like a fraud? Do you feel like you could be caught out at any moment and that you don’t really belong? Or do you feel that you don’t really deserve your accomplishments, job or status and that any day your friends...
The idea of a retreat brings to mind far-flung getaways; sweat-lodges in the Amazon, Himalayan mountain temples. But not all retreats require extensive travel, in fact some of them are designed to be accessible, affordable and fit easily into your life, such as day, afternoon...
If someone ever tells you they live a stress-free lifestyle, you’re either speaking to the latest incarnation of the Buddha or a liar. The truth is that stress is a universal constant in our shared human experience; an undefinable but immediately familiar emotional state. It...
Working Therapies recently worked with a fabulous Residential Care Service, facilitating a Mindful Communication Workshop. One factor which made it such a marvellous event was that all departments took part; from Directors, Finance and HR to the very newest residential workers. Having worked in Residential Care...
