Here at counselling connections this week we were talking about how an episode of depression and in particular how it is treated can represent an opportunity. That may see like an odd thing to say because nobody would willingly choose to have depression. The point is that we often find that depression can occur at a crossroads in life. It is probably accurate to say that an episode of depression can eventually lead to making great changes.
Depression is experienced in different ways. People often describe a loss of interest in life and specifically a loss of appetite for food and sex. Concentration can become difficult and simple tasks which we would have carried out without giving them a second thought can suddenly appear quite difficult. This can have the effect of shaking our confidence further. Sleep often becomes a problem with clients reporting that it can be difficult to get off to sleep or that they wake in the middle of the night. These symptoms are often accompanied by a general low mood.
Low mood can vary quite a lot from person to person. At times someone will describe a low mood which is quite persistent, which doesn’t really lift but which is not severe enough to stop the person from working or interacting with others. This kind of low mood is sometimes present for a long time before deciding to talk to someone about it. At other times mood levels are sufficiently low as to be quite debilitating. It is not unusual for someone to be quite self-critical at times like this and unfortunately this can make an already gloomy outlook on life appear worse.
All of these symptoms are telling us that at a very fundamental level inside us we have become dissatisfied with how our life has evolved. We can drift somewhat into a position in life where our job or lifestyle or key relationships just don’t match up with how we imagined they were going to be. We may have developed strong internal beliefs say in fair play or reward for hard work and honest effort. And these might meet again and again with frustration and rebuttal in the world. Our depression offers us a chance to re-evaluate all these kind of beliefs and presents us with an opportunity to change.
This is easier said than done and we would not have developed a depression in the first instance if we hadn’t been trying really hard for some time to make things work out. We also have to face, perhaps for the first time our internal critic. This figure in our imagination has likely been the cause of many a plan being abandoned and many an opportunity for contentment missed. This is the internalised version of a harsh parent or other significant person from our past. And sometimes rather than confront the idea that ‘I can’t do this’ it is just easier either to give up or not try at all. This kind of behaviour becomes very fixed and can be difficult to change.
Change is brought about by becoming aware of our internal beliefs and standards. It is about getting to know and understand ourselves at a very fundamental level. It becomes possible to challenge our fears and misconceptions about our own capabilities. Sometimes during therapy and following a depression we have to face our own anger at others or at the world for how things turned out. This is in fact a very healthy process and is part of getting to really know our deepest self. Armed with this self knowledge and with realistic expectations of the challenges we may face along the way we can again set about living life and trying to find a balance in our relationships; in love and in work; with all aspects of the world outside.
Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

In previous posts we have referred to the experience of PTSD following childbirth and we now turn our attention to Postnatal Depression. In the days following the birth of your baby, it is not unusual to experience some degree of mood swings. However, it is the mildness or severity of these which determines what category one falls into. There are three main kinds of mood swings namely ‘The Baby Blues’, Postnatal Depression or Puerperal Psychosis.

In its mildest form, the Baby Blues is unpleasant for new mothers who may have been caught unawares with tearfulness, irritability and feeling vulnerable somewhere between day two and day four following childbirth. It is thought that this is due to the drop in hormone levels at this time and it resolves itself within a few weeks. Puerperal psychosis is a severe form of mental illness, where a woman loses all contact with reality following the birth of her child. This is very rare, affecting 1 in 500 and requires hospital admission and psychiatric treatment. Mothers can make a full recovery with professional help and family support.

About 15% of women in Ireland fall into the category of Postnatal Depression. This can begin as a form of baby blues that doesn’t lift but lingers on and gets worse. It can last for months and even years if undiagnosed. One of the problems with it is that women often don’t know what’s wrong and it can take a family member to notice that there is a problem. Symptoms can include crying, irritability, anxiety (sometimes manifesting as panic attacks), often not knowing exactly why. Loss of interest in yourself, your appearance and your relationships is common. This can manifest in social withdrawal, where you don’t want to see family or friends. You may experience loss of appetite and insomnia, finding it hard to sleep even when your baby is asleep. This results in tiredness and a subsequent inability to deal with the demands of motherhood. This coupled with not really feeling huge love for your baby can leave you feeling pretty awful about yourself. Self Esteem is often low as mothers feel they are not managing as well as others seem to do ( I am reminded at this point of the photo shoots in magazines portraying new mothers (and babies) as perfect, living in a perfect house with a perfect partner). Life isn’t like that but somehow the media’s portrayal of new motherhood sticks and we feel inadequate when we don’t match up to that standard. It is not unusual for some mothers to tip into obsessive behaviour like excessive tidying or some may develop an overwhelming fear (e.g. death).

The good news is that Postnatal Depression is treatable and you will recover. Like any illness, recovery takes time. It is important to concentrate on the practical aspects of daily living, like getting enough rest and eating well. Accepting help from others is a big part of this, reminding yourself that it is temporary. It can be difficult to admit that you need help but your recovery will be quicker if you do. Talking about your feelings to your partner, family, friends, GP or Public Health Nurse will certainly help. Some GPs may offer anti-depressant medication as part of treatment.

It would also be quite common for women experiencing postnatal depression to seek counselling as part of their treatment. Counselling can offer you a safe place to explore your feelings in a non-judgemental way, something that may be difficult to do with people close to you. For some there are other issues from their past complicating or impacting on their mood and recovery. These issues can be conscious or unconscious e.g. If a woman has lost her own mother she may feel this more at this time or if she has had an abusive childhood this may be affecting her at an unconscious level.

Support groups can be very helpful where you can meet with mothers who have had similar experiences to you, facilitated by a trained counsellor. Here at counselling connections we run groups for mothers who are suffering from PTSD and Postnatal depression where women share their experiences with each other. If you are a partner reading this and want to know how to help the first thing to do is get outside help. Remind your partner that this illness will pass and support her in whatever way you can practically and emotionally. This can be a trying time for you too and for your relationship but with the appropriate help, it will resolve.

One of the more common referrals to us here at Counselling Connections from General Practitioners is for anxiety disorders and panic attacks. The symptoms are often very physical with a racing heart and shortness of breath and this is why we are likely to go to the GP for a check up as a first port of call. And it is important to first rule out a physical cause for these symptoms. Sometimes other factors such as drug use or alcohol intake can exacerbate the condition. These have to be dealt with as part of the treatment. Anxiety can be associated with depression and your doctor will check to see if you are feeling depressed as part of considering the next step. Sometimes anti anxiety medication is prescribed and a referral for counselling is made.

At the beginning of the counselling process your trained and experienced counsellor or psychotherapist will first ask you about your own personal details and the major landmarks of your life. These may include losses and childhood events that stand out for you as being significant. If nothing strikes you as being important at this early stage that does not prevent progress as looking for underlying causes is actually the second part of a two pronged approach. The first part of the treatment is a cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT approach. This has proved most effective in dealing with symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks.

The initial work of the CBT is to learn to tune in to your own patterns of thought. In this way we can collaborate in challenging some of these thoughts and checking to see of they are appropriate to the situation in which they occur. Often it turns out that our thinking is actually making our anxiety much worse as we tend to make everything seem worse than it really is. We see a catastrophe where one doesn’t exist. We may think that people are looking at us and judging us whereas they may not be. Challenging these thoughts and understanding the part they play in our anxiety or feelings of panic represent the beginning of changing the way we think.

It is a very empowering process to take charge of our own thought patterns and get on top of our fears. Sometimes we will set ourselves goals as part of strengthening our belief in our ability to cope with our environment. These may involve deliberately placing ourselves in a situation which would have caused us anxiety in the past. It is important to approach these tasks slowly and to be respectful of the fear of overwhelming ourselves. That said, to achieve some successes in anxiety provoking situations helps to give a sense of confidence in the process and strengthen our self belief.

There will be times where we may be faced with thoughts such as ‘I will never do this’ or ‘I am no good’. Oftentimes thoughts like these can be traced back to things that a significant person may have said to us repeatedly at times during our childhood. And moving into dealing with these represents the second part of the two-part therapy. Here we begin to get in touch with the root causes of our anxieties and the core beliefs which we have developed about ourselves. It is important to state here that core beliefs are learned and as such they can be unlearned and replaced with newer, more appropriate ones.

We are often asked how long this process takes and the truth is that it is difficult to say with any accuracy. Initially it would be expected that a therapy like this would last somewhere in the region of three months. As you move into the second phase of the therapy as we have described it becomes more of a journey and we would not attempt to put a time limit on that. You can take time take to explore areas of your life and to consider major events and relationships again and maybe re-order them in your mind and choose to respond differently to things in the future. In this way the practice of knowing yourself and your hopes and fears can become an integrated way of being for you. You wouldn’t expect anxiety or panic to become a feature of life again once this practice becomes established.
Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

We tend to think of mothers and babies when we think of birth trauma but what of Fathers? How do Fathers deal with the aftermath of traumatic birth? When birth goes well a Father can feel empowered by the experience, in which he may have been largely involved. This often serves to bring the couple closer together, bonded by this unique experience. However, the opposite can also be true and men can be left feeling isolated and alienated from their partner and baby through the experience of traumatic birth.

For the most part, men are encouraged to be actively involved in their partner’s care, if this is what the couple want. But men may also be asked to take a back seat by hospital personnel if there are complications. This can leave men feeling powerless to protect their partner and baby at a most vulnerable time. They become onlookers in a drama, where a few minutes previously they were active participants. Men can be left feeling they have let their partners down, when choices in labour have been reduced by the nature of the sequence of events. He may feel that as the spokesperson on behalf of his wife/partner, he has been unsuccessful in having her wishes heard and followed through. This feeling of inadequacy can be further complicated where problems with the baby necessitate a visit to the special care baby unit. Men can feel torn between staying with their partner on the delivery suite and going with the baby to ensure all is well, while all the time feeling neither choice is the right one.

Antenatal preparation in the form of parentcraft classes can help shape expectations and can help men to familiarise themselves with what they may encounter on the delivery suite. Men are often witness to instrumental deliveries i.e. by vacuum or forceps, or they may accompany their partners into the theatre for caesarean sections. Seeing a baby born from this angle is very different from the experience the woman has. While in no way minimising the experience of the woman, it is also important to recognise that men may suffer a different kind of trauma in these situations, witness trauma. A man’s role in the birthing process is one of support, comfort and protection. When he has difficulty fulfilling this role through circumstances beyond his control, he can feel frustrated and worthless and frankly ‘less of a man’… This can further lead to low self-esteem and relationship difficulties. It is not uncommon for couples who have experienced a traumatic birth to have sexual problems as a result. While there may be physical and emotional issues on the part of the woman, a man can feel emotionally scarred and reluctant to cause his partner any physical pain or upset.

The dynamic of the couple relationship changes following the birth of the baby. Fathers who have witnessed something traumatic during the birthing process may find that they have difficulty bonding with their baby. The baby can be a reminder of all that went wrong, at what was supposed to be a happy time. He may also be left trying to deal with a traumatised wife, who is struggling herself, while coping with sleepless nights and trying to work. Although society generally views the birth of a baby as a happy time, it can be an extremely stressful and testing time for a couple. There seems to be very little room for couples to say how awful it is for them in these early weeks and months. While women tend to talk about their problems to other women, men are often left with no outlet, fearful of being perceived as weak if they are upset at what the experience of the birth of their child and the impact it has had on them. In the absence of support from family or friends, counselling will offer a safe place to vent these feelings and to learn how to incorporate your experience into your life, allowing you to move on. We at Counselling Connections also run a group for men who have been upset in any way by the pregnancy and birth of their baby. Here, men get to meet with other men who have similar experiences, leaving them feeling less isolated. Knowing there are others who feel the same way as you do and sharing those experiences can be powerful in helping you to deal with this kind of trauma.

The recent loss of a young person has had us here at counselling connections reflecting on bereavement and the process of mourning. There are no words to say to those who have been affected by the sudden loss of a loved one. Shock, disbelief and an inability to process what has happened are initial reactions. We just can’t believe what has happened. We just can’t grasp that we will never again see the person we loved and who is now gone for good. It seems impossible to take it in.

A loss like this can make us wonder about our own position in life. We may question why we would get stressed for example about our personal finances or exam results. What is the point, we may argue in worrying about these things? We could be dead tomorrow. This is a natural reaction to bereavement and can be considered as a sort of anger at the whole world following our loss. There may even be times when we are tempted just to give up; to drop out because there seems no point

One of the things that people say when trying to comfort the bereaved is that ‘time is a great healer’. While this is true to an extent it is not really time itself that does the healing. The role that time plays is simply to facilitate the natural process of grieving. Sometimes this process can become blocked. Some aspect of the loss of our loved one may be too traumatic or upsetting to deal with. At times like this we can bury our feelings and just put our head down and try to plough on.

That is where bereavement counselling may be able to help. The aim of the counselling is to work through the full range of feelings and meanings attached with a loss. Indeed one of the aspects of this process as it develops is that there may be many losses associated with the death of a loved one. There are all the possibilities of what life may have brought and the potential which will now go unfulfilled. Friendship and love are among these losses.

There are often questions surrounding the actual death itself. There may be any number of ‘what ifs’ which we can become preoccupied with. The fragility of life and the often random nature of loss are real fundamental questions which we don’t normally stop to consider but which may be forced on us when dealing with bereavement. These things can be talked about in counselling and gently and respectfully considered. Our whole outlook on life can be changed in this way.

Mourning is a natural process. At times the scale of a loss can cause this process to become delayed or stalled. Bereavement counselling is there to facilitate a movement through the various stages of grief. The idea is to explore and express the full range of feelings about our loss. Sometimes feelings of anger or depression are difficult to get in touch with. We hope that counselling would help with this and we further hope that it would lead to eventually achieving some level of acceptance in coming to terms with the loss.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

Is addiction a disease; a genetic disorder or inheritance or is it a learned behaviour? These are the questions to which there are no clear answers especially when we are trying to work out if someone we know or love is an addict. There has been a lot of research on addiction looking to find answers to these questions but to date none of it has been conclusive.

The AA model of addiction as a disease has been a powerful model and the results speak for themselves. It is the largest fellowship in the world and has saved countless lives. In our work with clients we recommend the support of fellowships or self help groups. They can offer twenty four hour support, knowledge and friendship.

Therapy provides an opportunity to explore addictive behaviour, to provide a safe space to look at the personal experiences that may have brought ant of us to a place in our lives where we may feel a loss of control. Often we find that we have learned these behaviours from our environment; experienced, copied or observed.

They can represent a search, looking for a result, insight, change, control, reward, something to happen. At other times it is the opposite; wanting to block out awareness, to lose control. It may be a desire to numb ones feelings or to take a step back from reality.  Addictions are a way of changing ones reality; changing the mood.

A very simple example of this is the way in which we use food as a reward. In stressful situations people can to turn to food such as chocolate as a comfort to get us through a crisis. Once the crisis has passed food can be used to reward ourselves for surviving said crisis. The same things can apply to alcohol, drugs, food or sex when they are sought to relieve stress or are introduced as a part of our reward system.

We can then begin to create a relationship that shows signs of becoming unhealthy. How many times in our ‘normal’ lives have we questioned our relationship with food or alcohol? How many times have we chosen to stay off alcohol or go on a diet or do exercise in order to control the concerned behaviour? It is this lack of control that determines addiction as a learned behaviour.

When working with addiction we use the behavioural approach. That is to say addiction is a learned behaviour that gets out of control. Recovery is regaining that control either through abstinence or re-creating a healthy relationship with an old behaviour.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

This week at Counselling Connections we turn our attention to self- harm. The word can describe anything from smoking and drinking to eating disorders, from picking at one’s skin or pulling one’s hair out, to cutting with a knife or blade. There’s a lot of it about and while deaths do occur with self- harm, these are usually accidental rather than suicide attempts. There is a general misconception that self- harm is attention seeking. In our experience those of you who self- harm go to great lengths to cover it up. It is generally a very private act, evoking guilt and shame in the sufferer following the initial relief.

We know that those of you who self-harm are trying to deal with incredible emotional pain.  We would like to help you to understand how it has come about that you deal with emotion in this way. Pinpointing the triggers that cause you to harm yourself is key is helping you to overcome your problem.  It has become your way of coping and communicating intense negative emotion and can present itself as an option where there is a history of trauma/abuse. A child who suffers sexual abuse in silence, for example, does not understand and is not able to cope with the feelings arising in him relating to his experience. Anger, shame, guilt, confusion to name but a few. These are frightening emotions when experienced at an intense level. The situation can be further complicated by the silence surrounding abuse, leaving the child with no outlet for how he feels. So he stores it all up inside. Is it any wonder then that he looks for any way he can to release it? It is completely understandable but we can show you a better way.

Those of you who cut will know that diverting your attention to the act of cutting helps to minimise the emotional pain. However you will also admit that the relief is temporary and the feelings you were escaping are still there afterwards coupled with the physical pain of the cut. As adults we have more options than the child in us had. We can seek help and learn a new set of coping skills so that when we feel the urge to cut or self- harm in any way, we can replace it with something more positive. Learning to name emotions and express them with another person is a much healthier way of working through and getting past old hurts. We are not meant to be socially and emotionally isolated. Sharing hurts helps us to deal with them. If you have suffered abuse as a child, you owe it to the child who was you to get the help you need, as you would do if it were a child you know in the here and now. That child, like every child, deserves to be listened to and understood rather than judged and hurt some more.

Here at Counselling Connections this week one event that stopped everyone in their tracks for a few minutes was a shower of hailstones. It was Tuesday afternoon and the weather was following a pattern which is normal enough for our little island on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean; we had sunny spells and scattered showers. This has become a well worn phrase for the men and women of the met office as they try to prepare us for what kind of weather the day might bring. The afternoon in question was following this well worn path, sunny and warm one minute and raining the next; nice soft rain mostly.

In a sudden change the clouds quickly became much darker. Then the heavens opened in a ferocious hail storm and even in our fine, solid old building it became hard to hear for the noise of the hail on the roof. It was quite a scene and we stopped what we were doing and looked out and listened to the falling hail. It being a June day in Ireland the sun appeared again within minutes and the streets quickly began to dry. So much so that we decided to take a break then and there and trust that the sunshine would last long enough for us to enjoy a walk around the block.

We love the seasons here and the different weather it brings and we like to play around with what it might be analogous with in our inner lives. Things that we normally don’t stop to notice because we are too busy with our day to day lives are our stock and trade here in Counselling Connections. Then we did stop and notice; we were walking along beside the river that runs past the end of our garden when we noticed that the runoff from the recent hail shower was causing a blockage as the water passed under a small, low-lying bridge. There was a grid there to catch leaves or branches or anything else that might float along.

Examining blockages and going about clearing them up are another of our specialties here. We got to talking about how we can get blocked up in life and in particular how memories can seem to become dammed in this way. Major life events, traumas even, like the larger branches caught in river can fail to pass quietly along with the flow of our memories. They can become stuck and block the flow of other memories behind them. How we remember things and how we later recall them are a big part of therapy. This is doubly so in the case where the therapy is about dealing with trauma.

In what can feel like real moments of revelation during therapy we can successfully come to terms with difficult memories. This can then leave us feeling like we are becoming more open to new experiences. Then we can suddenly experience a whole different set of memories. It seems that our focus on one particular memory or event has taken so much concentration that we failed to notice or to focus on other, perhaps happier ongoing events in our lives. We had become stuck and our memories and the emotions attached with them had become blocked.

By talking about memories and emotions and maybe even getting past our fear and re-experiencing them we facilitate the discharge of these events. They are then free to flow away and no longer cause us to feel blocked up and unable to fully experience our inner self and day to day life. This process is facilitated by slowly recalling and working through life events. There can be storms along the way. A bit like our unpredictable weather we can go through life experiencing both scattered showers and sunny spells. And if there is a bit of a flood after a particularly heavy fall well then a chance to talk it all through in therapy can help to let it drain away.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

Here in Counselling Connections this week we were trying to put the right words on a sort of unsettled feeling that we were picking up. It was one of those things that is hard to pin down; a sense that there was something happening that may even have been influencing the mood of the whole town. It was turning out to be an up and down kind of week and we wondered what it might be that was causing this elusive but perceptible effect. Well we got our answer in a vibrant and joyful exhibition of playfulness.

On a walk up to the town we could hear a commotion outside the library and as we got closer it became clear what was happening. Four young ladies from a local school joined together in carefree dance, loudly singing the birdie song with uncontained joy. It was lovely to see the effect of their happiness spreading to passing pedestrians and motorists alike. It was good also to get the answer to our own little mystery. The feeling we were getting in our work was an end of term atmosphere that seemed to be catching. School’s out for summer.

We have noticed before at different time the cyclical nature of our work and how the turn of the seasons seems to affect us twenty first century folk more than you might expect. A big part of the cycle of the year that we have all grown up with is the academic year and it seems that at this time we expect things to be coming to an end. For some of our clients this means beginning to talk about ending their own personal therapy. This may in part be influenced by this external factor of a general feeling of coming to the end of a cycle.

For some it is more a time to pause to reflect, to consider and evaluate where they are going in life and to wonder again how their therapy is proceeding. It is good to ask questions and to keep asking them. Questions like, can my trauma be healed? Or, can therapy help to fix my problems? We ask how we can overcome the grief at the loss of a loved one. Or whether counselling can help with our relationships. Summer is coming, our thoughts turn to holidays, it is a time to rest, to pause and to thing about taking a break form the stresses of day to day living. This is another of those stopping off points, a marker in the cycle of the turning of the year.

A good therapy in our view will fit in with these natural cycles. Sometimes this might mean taking a break to return at a later stage. More often it will involve a pause to reflect, to summarise where we’ve come from and to consider what might be next. If it is part of the academic year cycle we might regard this time of year as a graduation; a time to take a bow and to celebrate the achievements we have made to date. These are personal milestones, advances which can be shared with loved ones. We too can, with a little luck, share in the joy which our local students and students of all ages and of all subjects get to feel at this time of year.

Counselling Connections Dundalk.

What a historic few weeks we have had with the Royal wedding, the visits of Queen Elizabeth the second and President Obama with his First Lady, Michelle to Ireland. It has been interesting to watch and hear the reaction of ordinary people to each of these events and it poses the question of what these occasions mean for us who happen not to be influential world leaders or royalty. It appears a large majority of us were attracted to watching the royal wedding and the royal visit. So what is in it for us that holds our attention?

Domhnall Casey, Dublin Psychoanalyst, writes in the Sunday independent (22^nd May 2011) of how our childhood fantasies are played out in our fascination with royalty. He says “it has nothing to do with a desire to be ruled by a king or queen but everything to do with childhood fantasies . . . representing an enchanting make-believe world that we all grew up in”. We are all familiar with the hero in the prince who rescues Snow White. Of course he was not a commoner but happens to be a wealthy prince. We also see examples of how the rescue role is reversed, where the princess frees the prince from a witch’s spell. Fairytales like ‘The princess and the Frog’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’…of course the frog and the beast both turn out to be (wealthy) princes as well. We all love a happy ever after and almost expect it in fairytales, films and books. This can leave us expecting the same from life and relationships and sometimes leaving us reeling in disappointment when it doesn’t materialise.

And so we turn out attention to modern day royalty where Kate Middleton, essentially a commoner, (albeit a wealthy one), gets to marry her prince. Of course we expected that she would be pleasing to the eye: it wouldn’t satisfy the fantasy if she wasn’t pretty. Most little girls love to dress up in princess clothes and tiaras and plastic jewels. In the unconscious mind of the girl is a desire to be a princess in her own right and to look for a guy who will treat her like one! How fabulous it is to actually see it for real, with a real princess dress and a real diamond tiara. It is like a fairy tale come true and we seem to have a need to believe that that’s possible amidst the drudgery. Pictures of Kate Middleton doing her shopping in the local supermarket a few days after her wedding evoked an interesting reaction among the public. It didn’t ‘look’ right. She challenged our fantasy and our idea of what a real princess is….someone that doesn’t do her own shopping for a start!

This idea of prince and princess, hero and heroine can be extended to include the Obamas who appear to have a perfect marriage and also retain such a powerful position in the world. Is it any wonder then that we want to claim them as our own? For the people of Moneygall and indeed Ireland, it seems to suggest that we all have the potential to assume positions of power in the world and happy ever after in our partner relationships. Modern day ‘fairy tales’ too seem to bring us nearer to having royalty within our personal grasp, even if it’s by marriage. In ‘Shrek’, an ogre finally gets to marry Princess Fiona who behind her aesthetic beauty has a lot in common with Shrek in that she is part ogre too.

For those of us in relationships it is probable that we can identify with the likes of Shrek and Fiona. Maybe this is a more realistic union, owing to the fact that neither party are perfect but together their union works. For us ordinary people struggling in relationships, it is important to be aware of what our expectation of our partner is. We are unlikely to be aware of it but deep in our psyche we have fantasies of being princes and princesses and of achieving the perfect union. No relationship is ideal by virtue of our being human. It is only with knowing and accepting the darker side of our self and of our partner that relationships become real and loving. A new kind of fairy tale perhaps with a different kind of grown up happy ending.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk, Co Louth.