Ideas and guidance
Articles for understanding, reflection and change
Practical insights from counsellors across Aotearoa, written to help you make sense of what you are experiencing.
What Did Colonisation Teach You?
When I wrote about poverty, I asked what it taught me. To do, to hide, to carry, to become, to want.Then a bigger question came up. Who set the lessons?Poverty didn’t just happen to my whānau. It was made. Land was taken, ways of living were broken up, and families were moved into towns and…
Attachment Styles Explained: What They Are and How Counselling Helps
Attachment styles are patterns in how we seek closeness and respond to distance in relationships, shaped by early experiences and later ones. The four commonly described styles are secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganised (fearful-avoidant). They are not diagnoses, and they can shift over time. This article is general information, not clinical advice or an assessment.…
Anxiety in Aotearoa New Zealand: Finding Counselling Support
Anxiety is a common human experience in Aotearoa New Zealand, and support is available. Counselling offers a private space to talk through worries and explore ways of coping, although what helps differs for each person. What is anxiety, and when might it be worth seeking support? Anxiety is the body’s way of responding to something…
I feel like a failure
If you’ve ever had the thought “I’m a failure.” Read this. Maybe it will help.
Anger
Anger is a secondary emotion meaning that others’ feelings, such as frustration, lie beneath it.
What Did Poverty Teach You?
In religious class one day, we were asked to talk about the rich and the poor. How the gap grows. What it means. What should be done about it.I couldn’t do it. I tried, but the conversation sat outside me. It talked about poverty, the way you talk about weather in another country. I didn’t…
Online Therapy- 10 Reasons Online Therapy is the best Mental Health Game-Changer.
Changing the norm of access to counselling through online therapy.
What is Solution-Focused Therapy?
Solution Focused Therapy (SFT) was developed in the 1980s by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg.The approach, as the name suggests, emphasises solutions, not problems. In this article, I discuss the 12 core assumptions that SFT makes and cover the techniques involved.
What type of therapy do I need?
Not sure what therapy type you need? Learn how to choose a therapist and why the relationship you have with them matters more than the approach used.
Snobs Hill – They Were Not Mine, But I Lived Them
This term in religious studies, the readings took me into Aotearoa’s land history: David James’s timeline of land dealings, laws, and schooling, and James Belich’s chapters on land, law, and the wars of the 1860s. The Native Land Court, the confiscations, the long consequences for Māori communities. I have studied colonisation for months through Te…
Aggression: One hidden weakness in our relationship.
Aggressioncomes from hurt and frustration. On the surface, it can appear as anger. Consequently,when the pressure accumulates, outbursts can happen. Heightened emotionaldistress often leads to less desirable choices of words and actions.
CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT is one most effective therapies backed by scientific research that exists today. It is an effective therapy for people who suffer from anxiety, phobias, stress, & depression.