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https://ramblingpsychotherapist.co.uk/, https://ramblingpsychotherapist.co.uk/index.php/courses/

The Rambling Psychotherapist, Leeds (2026)

21/04/2026

Did you know that a warm drink can be all kinds of soothing for a nervous system that has found itself in a sympathetic response?

It's true, it can support you to feel really grounded and steady.

My usual everyday drink is coffee, but at the moment I am being super conscious not to overstimulate my system, so I am easing into the day with a mug of dandelion, nettle and primrose tea, preferably enjoyed in the garden, accompanied by some early morning rising sunlight. That way, I get a double whammy, light to keep my circadian rhythm on an even keel, and some super nutritious tea to set me on a good track for the day.

What does your start to the day look like at the moment? Let me know in the comments 🔽

Happy National Tea Day 🫖

20/04/2026

April is Stress Awareness Month here in the UK, and I am sharing a weekly tip to help you navigate stress more smoothly.

Today's tip is potentially controversial -

Spend less time on your phone!

We are mammals, and our health is massively dependent on social connection, so you'd think that being able to be in contact with anyone at a moment's notice would be a good thing, but it's actually making us more stressed.

Evolutionarily, we are not designed to be as connected as we are today. We are built to pay keen attention to the small section of the environment and our tribe that we find ourselves surrounded by, but thanks to the digital world, we are absorbing information from people across the globe, in vast quantities, and concerning ourselves with events which are far beyond the reach of our little neighbourhood.

You might argue that it is good to be abreast of world events as they do have an impact on us, and that we can now access information at the touch of a screen, which can be really helpful. While these things are true, it's also very real that our minds are not designed to be able to handle that.

And digital technology is having a massive impact on our social connections: instantaneous, 24/7 responses to messages and calls are unrealistic yet expected, many prefer messaging rather than actually speaking on the phone, and people are seeing each other face-to-face way less than we used to. The result is that we are actually less connected and more stressed by social expectations than at any other time in recent history.

And, to cap it all off, digital technology is absolutely ruining our concentration spans and our internal reward system.

Getting conscious about why, when and how you use your phone is really quite important.

📱Decide what you really want to consume digitally, be mindful, avoid the doom scroll.
📱Restrict screen time; use technology to limit your access to apps, put your phone in another room & remove apps that feel like they suck up too much of your time.
📱Set realistic & achievable expectations with your people about how available you will be for digital communication & what is realistic in terms of response times.

15/04/2026

Art is a form of creative expression which connects people in ways that language may not. At its most basic level, it is a form of communication, and yet 'Art' has become associated with the idea of a finished product which others will wish to consume.

Humans have been expressing themselves by making marks for thousands and thousands of years, but somehow over the centuries 'Art' has become only for the 'talented'.

If we take away the idea of the finished article needing to be pleasing for other people, art and other forms of creativity such as music, writing, singing, crocheting etc can be really satisfying forms of personal expression.

Do you avoid expressing yourself creatively for fear of being criticised?

If so, today on World Art Day, I encourage you to reclaim 'Art' for yourself. We make marks very early on in our lives, as soon as we are old enough to handle the materials. No-one has the right to take that form of expression away from you.

I personally love a good bit of doodling to support the opening up of my creativity or a bit of earth art. Earth art is the act of finding items as you wander mindfully through space and then arranging them in a way which is meaningful.

I enjoyed making this piece of earth art a few years ago to mark a transition, a letting go of something and a reflecting on what had gone.

14/04/2026

We live in ever increasingly sterile environments. We have had it hammered home for decades now that dirt = disease. And yet, the best estimates tell us that each human is made up of around thirty trillion human cells, and thirty-eight trillion bacteria.

We have to get those bacteria from somewhere, without them we can't perform vital bodily functions.

So when we sanitise our homes and our work places to within an inch of their lives and carry wet wipes to keep ourselves clean when we are outdoors, we might not be doing ourselves as many favours as we might think.

Studies have now shown that spending time, digging around in the dirt might have some surprising health benefits. Not only does it make us move our bodies and give us exposure to sunlight, all of which are well known requirements for good health. It also helps us sooth our nervous systems, as they respond favourably to natural environments. It boosts our immune systems when we inhale the volatile gasses that plants produce. And there have also been some studies that have identified a bacteria that is only present in soil, which may help us stave off depression by increasing our serotonin levels when it ends up in our gut.

Who knew gardening could be so good for you.

If you do a bit of research, it can be good for the world too. Designing and planting gardens that increase biodiversity helps us give something back to a world that supports us so freely.

National Gardening Day is 14th April, maybe you could get out in yours for a while to reap some of the benefits.

(If you don't have a garden of your own, there are tonnes of volunteering schemes that will give you access to a little bit of earth you can tend, at least temporarily. Check out what's available in your area.)

13/04/2026

It is Stress Awareness Month, and I promised to share something with you every week to help you handle stress better. This week, you'll get a double whammy as tomorrow's post is also relevant.

Today though, I want to talk about the impact of connecting with the natural world...

Our neurology and biology has not moved on massively since hunter-gatherer times. There are cues of safety for our nervous system everywhere in the natural world, and our bodies respond to them rapidly.

Just exposing yourself to green and blue spaces has a direct impact on your mood and how resourced you feel. Natural light is essential for our bodily functions, green signals safety to the nervous system, there is a structure in our eyes that when it perceives a fractal-like structure (trees) sends a signal of safety to the nervous system, being able to see the sky has been shown to have profound effects on our mood and perceptions, being around moving water has countless health benefits, and all plants and trees emit chemicals that can boost our mood and support our immune system. You get all of these benefits, just from going to a natural space.

If you want to enhance the experience to get even more benefits - slow down:

🌿go for a mindful walk
🌿count colours
🌿name the things you see
🌿watch how the trees move
🌿listen to birdsong
🌿do a bit of cloud watching
🌿hang out under some trees and do some extended exhale breathing

Getting outside will not remove the stressors from your life, but it will enhance your resources to enable you to deal with them. When you connect regularly with natural environments, your nervous system, mind and body reap the rewards.

07/04/2026

Sometimes we can be going along in life, under a bit of pressure, and we start to notice that we are having what feels like disproportionate responses to events and situations we suspect we might ordinarily handle a little better. It might be that someone's tone of voice makes us angry, or we feel more anxious than we usually would about an upcoming conversation, for example.

Most people's response to this is to feel a bit embarrassed or ashamed, issue some apologies, and to try to puzzle out why they are behaving that way so that they can change their behaviour moving forward.

But this 'overblown response' business is a sure-fire sign that your nervous system is currently perceiving you to be under threat. It's an automated system and takes over your rational thinking-brain when it perceives a threat to be present. It doesn't respond to rational thinking and most of the time it doesn't respond to words at all.

What it does respond to are cues of safety, which it perceives through your senses.

So asking yourself why it's happening is often not a good first port of call.

Understanding your compulsion to be a response to perceived danger, and finding the brief pause between stimulus and response to ask yourself 'am I actually in danger here, or can I perceive some signs of safety around me right now?' can really help to de-escalate that alarm which has been triggered in your system.

A great method for this is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method. Take in your environment and name:

🌸5 things you can see
🌸4 things you can hear
🌸3 things you can feel/touch
🌸2 things you can smell
🌸1 thing you can taste

This brings you right into the present moment and lets your nervous system know that you are actually not about to die. It can be really helpful in navigating times of stress with a little more ease.

It's not a fix-all, though. It can help de-escalate in the moment, but if you find these overblown responses are an ongoing pattern for you, there may be more stuff under the surface that needs attention, and it can be helpful to get some support to work this stuff out.

If you think you might want some support, get in touch.

02/04/2026

It's International Children's Book Day today.

Did you know that reading to your children isn't just about ensuring they are more intelligent when they grow up?

Did you also know that sometimes (admittedly very occasionally), I will read a children's book to my adult clients?

And no, I have not gone completely mad...

Our nervous systems are not fully formed when we are born into the world, and we need safe, calm adults in our lives to show us how to return to a rest and digest state.

This education starts really young, before we can understand language, so our nervous systems are not designed to respond to specific words. They respond to sensory input instead. A calm, caring tone of voice is much more important when it comes to re-regulating ourselves than the specifics of what is said. This is why reading to an infant or toddler can have a really calming effect on them, even though they don't understand what you are saying.

This act of a calm, caring other helping someone return to a rest-and-digest state is known as co-regulation and is just as powerful for adults as it is for infants. And for those of us who never really received this early education, it is essential for helping us to train our nervous systems to be more flexible now.

So, when I am with a client who is greatly distressed, trying to reason with them and calm them by offering rational explanations and solutions can be totally ineffective. At this stage, breaking out a children's book and reading gently together can have a much more potent effect.

Once the nervous system alarm is down-regulated, the brain's processing centres come back online, and problem-solving can commence if it is going to be useful.

I love being read to. How about you?

31/03/2026

April is stress awareness month, and I have been busy thinking about what I want to say here that might be supportive for people. And guess what?

I have just found myself getting really angry about living in a world that has a whole month dedicated to campaigning to reduce and manage stress better, but that also exists in (and adds fuel to) a system which contributes directly to our stress.

Take this here, what you are doing right now, consuming content on social media; if not done with really strict boundaries and self-awareness, it has so much potential to erode your attention span, disrupt your inbuilt reward pathways, mess with your sleep, present you with a view of the world which is designed to keep you anxious and/or angry, and keeps you from experiencing the fullness of what the world has to offer.

And yet here I am contributing to the endless scroll of content that can be consumed, because I want to support people. And here is where many stressed people are hanging out, so it's a really good platform to talk about the things that are getting in the way of leading a life that feels fulfilling. I feel very much caught in a double bind.

What to do?

After wrestling with my dilemma, I have come to a level of acceptance that here is where the support often starts for many people, so I have decided to share a post every week this month, with some info or a strategy that may help you navigate stressful periods a little more easily by sinking your roots a little deeper and gaining extra nourishment when it is most needed.

I am also going to put it in blog form, so if you want to spend some time away from social media, and you don't want to have the information drip-fed to you, you can be a little more conscious and discerning about what digital media you consume, and when you do it.

For simplicity's sake, I am going to concentrate on the type of stress that leaves you feeling a little less functional in the world, because that is the stuff which people find the most disruptive to life and would benefit most from addressing. But just for the record, not all stress is bad!

29/03/2026

It is the start of BST, which means that the clocks have changed again 🌜🌑🌛

Evidence is showing that this means so much more than just an hour less in bed. Recent studies suggest that this twice-yearly schedule shift can have a detrimental impact on our health.

We all have a body clock inside of us which follows a natural rhythm (our circadian rhythm). This rhythm shapes physical, mental and behavioural changes in us that follow a 24-hour cycle, and it regulates things like alertness, sleepiness, appetite and mood.

Shifting our sleep/wake times by as little as one hour on an ongoing basis, can have a dramatic impact on our circadian rhythm, and can result in low energy levels, disrupted sleep, dysregulated appetite, and wildly fluctuating or low mood.

To top it all off, recent studies show that disruption to habitual sleep patterns also has a profound effect on cardiovascular health.

What can you do if you find yourself impacted by the clock change?

🌞 The main thing you can do is make sure you get some exposure to natural light every day. Our circadian rhythms are highly influenced by this. Try to get outside every morning, as early as you can after you get up and aim to get 20-30 mins of light exposure. For an even more impactful light prescription, try to get out for a similar period of time as dusk approaches too.

🌜 Establishing a standard sleep and wake time and sticking to it can help you to adjust more quickly to the change. Avoiding caffeine and other stimulants past midday, and avoiding electronic light stimulation in the evening can all help you to drop off more easily and get a more restful night.

🌞 Consider layering in some extra self-care strategies for the next few weeks as you adjust to help you regulate your mood more effectively and get better sleep. Breathwork would always be my primary go to for this, because it's simple and easy to incorporate into your schedule.

On the plus side, at least at this time of the year, we get the benefit of increasing daylight hours, which supports our mental health positively.

26/03/2026

Why am I showing you a photo of my arm (and one of my tattoos)?

I am banging the nervous system regulation drum again today.

'Dod yn ộl at fy nghoed!' It's a beautiful Welsh phrase - it translates loosely as return to my trees, and means to return to a peaceful state of mind.

It's not necessarily easy to retrain a nervous system that has got stuck in an activated state, but it's not rocket science either!

Small, repeated action wears a new groove in your nervous system programming over time. You just need to trust that the interventions you are implementing have a cumulative impact. It's not about feeling great immediately, the whole point is to interrupt the existing program when you notice it running, and offer up a new option that becomes familiar and safe when repeated regularly.

I was working with someone the other day who identifies anxiety as their primary issue. They wanted to know what to do when they find themselves spiralling into unhelpful thinking patterns.

I reminded them that in the beginning, interrupting the cycle is key, so any strategy that brings them out of their heads and provides some sensory input which confirms safety, is useful. We tried an experiment...

The strategy we used in that moment was a brief system scan.

The instruction: do a quick scan of your body and tell me about an area of your body that feels particularly pleasant right now. The client picked their arm and described the sensations they were experiencing.

"It's like magic!" they exclaimed. "When I focussed in on that one part of my body, the anxiety switch got flipped off immediately."

Is this an instant cure for anxiety? No.

But it can help your nervous system to feel safer in the world in any given moment, and over time, teach your nervous system that the world is a safer place than it currently thinks it is.

Try it yourself and see what impact it has.

Please be aware though, this alone is not a solution. It's just one strategy that can provide a cue of safety to your nervous system. It's helpful, but on its own will only take you so far.

23/03/2026

I'm doing an awful lot of nervous system work with people recently, and honestly, I'm not surprised. The world seems to be on fire at the moment, and people are wondering why their resilience is being challenged.

I keep reminding people that the basics are simple. Regulation does not require complicated strategies or fancy equipment; it just needs small, repeated actions.

The nervous system needs sensory input to let it know it is safe.

Breath is always high up on my recommended list for people to try as a strategy, as it offers a direct line of communication with the nervous system. Personally though, I find movement-based practices are waaaay more immediately effective, and breath adds an extra layer on top, the icing on the cake if you will.

I explored the idea of regulation and building mindfulness skills through movement in a blog I wrote a couple of years ago. If you're interested in finding out more, grab yourself a cuppa and settle in for a read here https://ramblingpsychotherapist.co.uk/index.php/2024/09/11/watch-where-you-step/

21/03/2026

The Forest

One day, when you wake up, you will find you’ve become a forest.
You’ve grown roots and found strength in them that no one thought you had.
You have become stronger and full of life giving qualities.
You have learned to take all the negativity around you and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing.
A host of wild creatures live inside you and you call them stories.
A variety of beautiful birds nest inside your mind and you call them memories.
You have become an incredible self-sustaining thing of epic proportions.
And you should be so proud of yourself, of how far you have come from the seeds of who you used to be.

~ Nikita Gill

Today is World Poetry Day and International Day of Forests. I think these beautiful words from Nikita Gill could be a celebration of either and give a little insight into how therapy can support you to change your experience.

The Rambling Psychotherapist

21/04/2026

20/04/2026

15/04/2026

14/04/2026

13/04/2026

07/04/2026

02/04/2026

31/03/2026

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26/03/2026

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