It's Monday and for me and many of you it's half term! ☕️

Although no time off for me as I'm doing my tax returns, having window repairs done, painter coming to give the kitchen a gorgeous facelift and I'm dealing with my fence which collapsed (I know the feeling!!😴) into my neighbours garden due to the stormy weather. I managed to pull it up and secure it and prop it up with kettlebells haha.

⛅️ And here's a lovely update on the lady who won one free counselling session that I gave away in September's occasional letter. She came with health anxiety where it was affecting her private practice as a reflexologist. She was forever taking herself to the doctor's and A&E.

That single session was interesting and she subsequently booked 4 further sessions to explore the relationship between anxiety, the nervous system and her sense of the physical sensations she was experiencing.

Health anxiety is awful and I'm sure many of you can relate to this lady. Your brain can become so hypervigilant to any signs of illness and those ordinary bodily sensations, that we all have, can be interpreted as threatening which then activates the body's stress response and then produces further physical symptoms.

It's a frightening cycle where the fear can reinforce the very sensations that are causing concern.

💫 But if we look closer anxiety doesn't exist in isolation does it?

As was the case with this lady her fears were connected to earlier experiences of illness, loss and bereavement with her brother. An event from the past, such as illness and death, can have a huge influence on how we see our own health, our future and our sense of safety in the here and now.

We've looked at these connections, recognising habitual patterns of thoughts and responses and used guided visualisation to support a different experience in her body.

Guided visualisation can really help to shift our attention away from constant threat monitoring. I find it very useful in encouraging a calmer physiological response and in sessions we can create opportunities to experience familiar situations in a different way.

She's seeing how she's growing in awareness of how her thoughts and physical responses influence each other and with that understanding she's beginning to regain confidence in her body and her work.

It's her last session of counselling next week and she's booked in for a group healing experience that I offered to 3 of my healing clients. So that will be nice to do in November.

⭐️And to any therapists reading this..........you never know where your sessions will lead to so stay curious, go with the flow and allow the unexpected in