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Managing Fear 2: Inhabiting our bodies to calm our threat system
If, like me, you sometimes struggle with anxiety for no apparent reason, or can be triggered into feeling vulnerable and frightened, you...
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Managing Fear 1: Regulating our Breath to Calm our Threat System
Following my recent post about Trauma-Related Fear , this is the first in a series of articles exploring some of the ways in which we...
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Trauma-Related Fear
Alongside the constant ebb and flow of grief, many of us will be experiencing ongoing episodes of the terrible, sometimes crippling fear...
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Joy after Loss
Alek and I escaped to southern Spain again this winter . It was the fourth anniversary of Anton's death just before Christmas. One...
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Words of Hope
I have often found others' words to be of comfort along my grief journey, and I thought I would share a few of the pieces that have...
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Anger
Like you, I don't deserve to be a bereaved parent (sibling/grandparent/relative/friend). I was and am a good mum. I always loved my...
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Continuing Bonds
Your green eyes are steady and clear. Loving, giving Living. So alive. So full of life. Were you talking? Did I stop listening? What did...
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Be more kind
This photo shows the singer- songwriter Frank Turner after one of his concerts, giving my youngest son Stef a big hug. Stef has just...
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Winter Grief
Anton died in the winter time. December 18th 2019. That first cold season passed in a blur, my shock-addled brain functioning only in...
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The Stone
I like stones. Since Anton died, I have collected heart-shaped ones that I find on the beaches near where we live. I have quite a...
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Kiss the Joy
He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise William Blake,...
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Sorting
I can't think of many things more heart-rending than an empty hoody that used to be worn by my son. Almost 3 years after Anton died the...
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Triggers
Happier times. My 3 boys together, at the airport before we went on holiday a few years ago. So many memories, over 32 years of having...
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Lost Hours Walk
On 29th October 2022, our family and friends took to the streets of Portsmouth to do the Lost Hours Walk to raise funds for CALM Campaign...
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Losing Anton
The memory of the call from our youngest son Stefan in the early evening of Saturday 21st December 2019 will haunt me forever. There was...
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Traumatic Memory
I've posted this for everyone who, like me is interested in the way the brain works and how trauma memories affect us. There are several...
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Choices
Working as a psychotherapist I have often helped clients to recognise that we always have some element of choice, even if sometimes it...
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Dual Process Model of Grief
Any death of someone close to us is painful. No matter how old the person or the manner of their dying, death demands that we grieve for...
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Suicide Loss: Notes for Therapists
If you are a therapist working with a parent or anyone bereaved by suicide or other traumatic death, it can be hard to see the light in...
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The Jar Analogy for Mental Health
I came across this analogy a few years ago, just a few months before Anton died, in a BBC 2 documentary called Alastair Campbell:...
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