s humans, it seems that we always gravitate towards the negative and our fears. We tend to prepare for the ‘worst case scenario’ in order to give us the security of knowing that we will cope if the worst happens (and, therefore, every possibility therein), even though our worst fears are rarely realised. We puzzle and ruminate day after day, our minds following many different pathways and then returning back to the beginning, informing us that we can – or cannot – cope with each scenario that our minds present to us. We then act according to our newly-held belief (which, often, is just the result of many years or ‘patterns of thinking’) guiding or steering us in a way that we feel is most helpful to us.

We always have a valid reason for doing what we do, and I feel that this behaviour is further validated by our survival instinct – that we need to know that we can survive no matter what happens. What we are not programmed to do is to look for the positives, feel our confidence within which will inform us that of course we can cope with anything that presents itself to us – the feeling that we do not need to forever shuffle through the many possible scenarios just to prove to ourselves that we will cope. We forget just how creative we are, just how strong and capable we can be if only we just stopped and allowed ourselves to remember this. These feelings are often buried deep within ourselves, overshadowed by the many times we have been told to ‘Be careful’, Don’t upset anybody (another primitive reaction to stop us being outcast by the ‘Group’) or that ‘The world is a dangerous place’ (an opinion reinforced by the media).

The stimulants in life often take us away from our ‘selves’, causing us to become ungrounded, diluted and often blindly following ‘rabbit holes’ that ordinarily would not interest us in order to ‘keep up’ and ‘stay abreast’ of life’s current.

Sometimes it is difficult to change our long-held belief system, we cannot ‘see the wood for the trees’, or we may struggle to make sense of things that are happening around us or to us, and that is where counselling can be extremely helpful. To talk through the things that are on our minds, to look at different aspects of our lives in greater detail, to learn to manage life events in a better way or to work through difficult emotions that are interfering with our life can give us a better perspective, help us to know ourselves better and to make decisions with greater clarity and assuredness, based on a greater understanding of ourselves and our needs.