Beech Tree Counselling

10/11/2025

A time to raise awareness about the impact of bullying and to remind both children and adults that kindness is powerful.
In my work as a counsellor, I often see how deeply bullying can affect a person’s confidence and sense of self. Long after the teasing or exclusion has stopped, the emotional wounds can remain. Children may begin to believe there’s something wrong with them, or that they somehow deserved it ... but no one ever deserves to be bullied.

Bullying isn’t just physical harm or name-calling. It can also include:
• Leaving someone out on purpose
• Humiliating someone
• Whispering or laughing about someone
• Spreading rumours
• Sending unkind messages or excluding someone from group chats

What all these behaviours have in common is intent and repetition, the aim is to make someone feel small, different, or powerless.
If someone has been told that their words or actions are hurting somebody and that person keeps going, it’s important to understand:
That’s not the victims fault.
It isn’t the victims job to convince them to stop.
A bully’s goal is often to upset you or get a reaction. They may be struggling with their own emotions, insecurity, or have a lack of empathy. That doesn’t excuse their behaviour, but it helps us understand it.

Teaching empathy starts with us - through modelling it. Children learn empathy when they feel empathy. When adults listen without judgement, show understanding and model kind boundaries, children internalise those lessons far more deeply than through any rule or assembly.
Empathy doesn’t mean allowing bad behaviour. It means setting clear boundaries with compassion - showing that you can disagree or say no while still being respectful. If we want children to treat others with kindness, they need to experience being treated with kindness even when they’ve made mistakes.

When we model respect and empathy, we show them that:
• Everyone deserves to feel safe and valued
• Standing up for others takes courage
• Kindness isn’t weakness - it’s strength
We can model small daily acts... checking in on a friend, including someone who’s left out, apologising when we’ve hurt someone.

05/11/2025

In IFS therapy, anxiety isn’t viewed as a malfunction. It’s seen as a part of you—often called a “manager” that’s working overtime to keep you safe. That racing heart, the tension, the endless what-ifs? They’re all signs that a part of you is trying to control the future so you don’t get hurt.

Rather than trying to silence or suppress your anxiety, IFS invites you to ask, “What is this part trying to do for me?” The answer is often surprising and deeply human.

01/11/2025

01/11/2025

23/10/2025

15/10/2025

Research has shown us, without a doubt, that a sense of belonging is one of the most important contributors to wellbeing and success at school.

Yet for too many children, that sense of belonging is dependent on success and wellbeing. The belonging has to come first, then the rest will follow.

Rather than, ‘What’s wrong with them?’, how might things be different for so many kids if we shift to, ‘What needs to happen to let them know we want them here?’❤️

12/10/2025

Depression and anxiety are not personal flaws.
They are messages from our bodies and hearts that something important is missing.

For decades, we were told that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain — specifically, a shortage of serotonin. Yet research now shows this idea has little scientific basis. A major 2022 review published in Molecular Psychiatry by Professor Joanna Moncrieff and colleagues found no consistent evidence that low serotonin causes depression. Even the authors of early serotonin studies have since acknowledged that the theory was oversimplified and unsupported by data.

Despite record numbers of people in therapy and on medication, symptoms of depression and anxiety have tripled in recent years. Su***de rates continue to rise. Nearly one in six people feels lonely, and tens of millions live without access to meaningful mental-health care.

As .hari describes, we are facing a crisis of connection. Humans evolved for community, purpose, and belonging, but modern life often isolates us through digital overload, frantic work schedules, and fragile social ties. When our needs for intimacy, rest and meaning aren’t met, the nervous system protests: with panic, with numbness, with exhaustion.

That’s why therapy can help us understand and process our pain, but for many, it doesn’t fully resolve it. Because what we’re experiencing isn’t just a “brain disorder” it’s a whole-person response to disconnection, stress, and unmet emotional needs. Healing often begins not in suppressing symptoms, but in reconnecting, to ourselves, to others and to the things that give our lives meaning.

10/10/2025

Love these inside out resources

Teaching young people to identify the nuance of their emotions is so powerful for their ability to feel and then process them ✨️