Natural Space Counselling

10/11/2025

10/11/2025

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

- Rumi
(Translated by Coleman Barks)

💛 Sitting with our feelings, especially uncomfortable ones, takes curiosity and practice.

For some, this can feel especially difficult. Around one in ten of us experience alexithymia — a neuropsychological phenomenon sometimes called emotional blindness. This can make it challenging to identify or describe emotions, or to distinguish between our feelings and physical sensations.

It can be helpful to gently explore body sensations, to expand our emotional vocabulary, or use more abstract concepts like colour, texture, or imagery to describe what we’re feeling. 🌿

💓This image brings to mind a beautiful little children’s book inspired by Rumi’s poem - ‘Visiting Feelings’ by Dr. Lauren Rubenstein. If you’re curious it can be found here: https://amzn.eu/d/h2ekOFo

It’s a gentle reminder that all emotions have something to teach us when we learn to welcome them in. 🌈

Image@rockinruksi

09/11/2025

Struggling a bit as the days get darker?
You’re definitely not alone, more than half of us find this time of year difficult 🌓

If you’ve been wondering about counselling, now could be a good time to start 🌱

I have some new client spaces available and offer a free 30-minute introductory chat to see if it feels like a good fit.

Pop me a message if you’d like to know more 💜

Natural Space Counselling: Pluralistic Counsellor & Psychotherapist. A professional and confidential counselling service tailored to you. Specialising in Creative Counselling & Nature Based Therapy with adults and young people across Tayside & Fife. Sessions take place at my cosy therapy room, from....

12/10/2025

How we feel and the emotions we experience are a central part of our mental health. Conversely how we respond to emotions is critical for our health, mental and physical. While they can perplexing, stubborn, frustrating, annoying, frightening and downright depressing at times, emotions are a fundamental and necessary part of brain functioning. In fact, they are central to being human.

Unfortunately societal beliefs often tells us we shouldn’t have emotions or some emotions are bad. Telling your brain it shouldn’t have emotions is like telling your heart not to beat or your lungs not to breathe, and it doesn’t make your brain very happy.

Emotions don’t always feel nice and can make us want to run away from them. And like any avoidance, short term this seems to work, we feel relieved. But inside your brain is feeling pretty annoyed at trying to hold it all in.

How you respond to your emotions is important. Research shows suppressing, berating and shaming emotions doesn’t help us deal with them at all and just creates more stress and make emotions feel even more difficult.

Naming, validating, expressing and recognising emotions seems to help us process them and help us become friends with them, rather than them having power over us. It seems to soothe those emotions and instead of adding a layer of more stress and difficult feelings, helps us deal with the ones we have.

read more about the science of emotions and how we can help our emotions in my books
📕‘A Toolkit for your Emotions’.
📚 A toolkit for modern life
📖 A toolkit for happiness

25/09/2025

‘Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.’
- Rachel Carson

05/09/2025

Sunday 7 September 2025 at 3pm

30/08/2025

🌙 Autumn Healing Doll Workshop Series

A 3-part creative journey to pause, honour and craft.

As this year shifts into Autumn, join me at the Mabon New Moon for the first session of this grounding and nurturing creative workshop series.

✨ About Doll Making

Doll making is one of the oldest crafts, found across many cultures under many names: healing dolls, spirit dolls, medicine dolls, nature (corn husk) dolls, Kachina dolls, Hoko dolls, worry dolls... Traditionally, they are imbued with intentions during the process of making.

The practice is both grounding and meditative. It can be deeply personal, a witnessed experience, or a shared creative moment. Your doll may symbolise any or many things - self-love, the inner child, peace, gratitude, fun, healing, transformation, or intuition.

The making process gently holds both conscious and unconscious material, creating space to explore and honour an event, a process, an emotion, a person, a part of yourself, a place, a season, trait, or transition.

🌀 The 3-Part Journey

🌱Part 1. Planting Seeds
We begin by creating a group agreement and contemplating the process. Through creative resources and exercises, we explore hopes and intentions - planting seeds and creating foundations.

☀️Part 2. Weaving & Growing
We gather in nature to gently centre ourselves and set the stage. From here, we move into creation, integration, and growth.

🌟Part 3. Breathing in to Life
In our final session, we refine, adorn, and name our dolls - aligning intentions and bringing energy to our creations. Together we reflect on the journey and give space to this transition.

Practical Details
• When: Three 3-hour sessions (you must be available for all dates)
2-5pm Sunday 21st & 28th September and Sunday 5th October.
• Where: My therapy room in Broughty Ferry (upstairs – so unfortunately not accessible for those with mobility needs)
• Group size: Small and intimate – 6 people maximum (including myself)
• Investment: £135 per person (for the full series)
• Included: All materials, refreshments, and snacks. You’ll take home your completed doll in Week 3.

*Please note: this creative group is not a substitute for personal therapy.

🌸 About Your Facilitator

I am Nova, a pluralistic counsellor and psychotherapist, and an outdoor therapist, qualified and experienced in holding therapeutic groups.

✉️ Booking

If you are curious or interested in attending, please contact me at:
NaturalSpaceCounselling@protonmail.com

21/08/2025

I’m often asked how long therapy takes, or whether I expect a minimum number of sessions. Sometimes people ask, “Is it ok to stop after one or two sessions if it isn’t working?”

The answer is yes — everyone is different, and there’s no minimum. Of course, you can end whenever you choose (although working toward a mutually agreed ending has real value).

If your therapist doesn’t feel like a good fit, I’d encourage you to find one who is - that’s completely normal, necessary, and part of the process.

Single-session therapy is a real and valuable option. It can help if you want to explore a dilemma, clarify a goal, tackle a specific issue, or leave with some strategies.

But (and it’s a big but)…

* Building safety takes time.
* Relationships take time.
* Exploring needs takes time.
* Finding the right tools takes time.
* Change takes time.

You deserve to be valued, noticed and heard.
Your experiences, words, thoughts, and feelings deserve to be respected, gently considered, and given space - Rushing past them is often part of what creates difficulty in the first place.

Therapy isn’t an instant fix, and therapists don’t have magic wands (sadly!). The real work always happens with the client.

To put it in perspective: eight sessions with a therapist - whether over 8 weeks or 16 - add up to just one working day. One day, spread out over time, to build trust, deepen understanding, and to create change together.

29/07/2025

🌿 Take a break in Nature - medicine for the body, mind & soul

In today’s world, our nervous systems are constantly activated: overwhelmed by screens, noise, deadlines, and nonstop social demands. 😵‍💫

This state of constant stimulation can lead to stress, anxiety, and nervous system burnout.

But nature is a powerful antidote 💚

The act of spending time outdoors - listening to birdsong, feeling sunlight on our skin, breathing in the scent of trees and the ocean air activates something called bottom-up regulation.

This is when the body begins to naturally recalibrate, not through effort or thought, but through the senses. 🌊🌲☀️

These natural cues engage the parasympathetic nervous system - our rest & digest mode - helping to reduce cortisol, lower the heart rate, and bring us back to a state of calm and groundedness. 🧘‍♀️

✨ Nature helps the nervous system reset.
✨ It restores balance from the ground up.
✨ It reminds us we belong.

Take a breath. Step outside. Let the earth hold you. 🌍💫

10/07/2025

❤️☀️🌼🌺🌹🌻❤️

❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜