Awake Counselling

21/07/2026

Behind every milestone are the people who helped you get there and I want to take a moment to honour mine.

To Caroline Burrows Consulting & Training - you started the spark. It was in your training that I first truly caught the EMDR bug. The excitement I felt in that room has never left me, and everything that followed traces back to that moment. Thank you for lighting that fire.

To Hannah Hawkes, my EMDR Consultant - your guidance, wisdom, and clinical generosity throughout my training and supervision have been invaluable. I could not have reached this milestone without you. If you are looking for an EMDR Consultant, I cannot recommend Hannah highly enough.

To Rachel Moss, my Social Work Supervisor - thank you for holding the broader picture with me, for your insight, your challenge, and your unwavering support throughout this journey. For anyone needing quality Social Work Supervision, Rachel is exceptional.

And to my people - the ones who trusted me with their most difficult experiences and allowed EMDR to be part of their healing. You are the reason this work matters. You always will be.

Certified EMDR Practitioner. What a journey and a privilege. 💖

20/07/2026

I have some exciting news to share. 🎉

I am incredibly proud to announce that I have officially been approved and certified as an EMDR Practitioner by EMDRAA - the EMDR Association of Australia.

This milestone has been a long time coming. It represents my dedication to education, training, supervision, and a genuine love for a therapeutic approach that I have watched change people’s lives - including my own understanding of what healing can look like.

EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing - is one of the most evidence-based, powerful trauma therapies available today. It works differently to talk therapy. It works with the body, with memory, with the nervous system - helping people process experiences that have been stored in ways that continue to cause pain long after the event has passed. The results I have witnessed in the therapy have been nothing short of extraordinary.

I have been offering EMDR as part of my practice at Awake Counselling for some time now - and this certification is the formal recognition of that journey.

If you’ve been curious about EMDR and whether it might be right for you, I’d love to have that conversation. 💖

15/07/2026

14/07/2026

T: Is it True?

Before you say it to yourself or someone else - is it actually true?

One of the most powerful habits we can build is pausing to examine the stories we tell ourselves. Our inner critic is loud, fast, and incredibly convincing. But convincing isn’t the same as accurate.

‘I’m a failure.’ Is that true? All of the time? In every area? Or is that a feeling dressed up as a fact?

In therapy, we call this cognitive distortion - when the brain takes a feeling and presents it as objective reality. The thought feels true, so we treat it as true. And the more we repeat it, the more wired in it becomes.

The first step isn’t to replace the thought with something positive. It’s simply to ask: wait - is this actually true? That one question creates just enough space to start seeing more clearly.

Your thoughts are not facts. They’re data. And data can be examined. 💙

07/07/2026

H: Is it Helpful?

Something can be true and still not be worth saying - to yourself or to someone else.

This is the one that stops a lot of people in their tracks. Because we’ve been taught that honesty is always the right move. And it often is. But helpful honesty sounds different to weaponised honesty. It sounds different to the kind of truth we use to keep ourselves small.

‘I’ve always been bad at this.’ Maybe true. But is rehearsing that story helping you move forward, or keeping you stuck?

In ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - we ask whether a thought or behaviour is workable. Does it help you move toward the life and the person you want to be? Or does it pull you away from it?

Helpful doesn’t mean comfortable. Sometimes the most helpful thing is hard to say or hard to hear. But there’s a difference between hard-and-growth-oriented and hard-and-just-painful.

Ask yourself: is what I’m about to think, say, or do actually helping anyone here - including me? 💙

30/06/2026

I: Is it Inspiring?

Words have weight. The ones we speak out loud, and especially the ones we speak silently to ourselves.

We don’t often think about whether our words inspire - we think about whether they’re accurate, whether they’re fair, whether they need to be said. But inspiration is worth considering too. Because language shapes how we see ourselves and each other. It opens possibilities or it closes them.

When you speak to a child, you’re careful about this. You know that what you say lands differently, that it sticks, that it can build someone up or chip away at them. But somewhere along the way, most of us stopped extending that same care to the voice inside our own head.

What if your self-talk was something you could be inspired by? Not toxic positivity - not pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. But a voice that says: this is hard, and I believe you can get through it. A voice that sounds less like a critic and more like a mentor.

You get to choose - slowly, imperfectly, with practice - what that voice sounds like. 💙

23/06/2026

N: Is it Necessary?

Not everything that crosses our mind needs to come out of our mouth. And not every thought that arrives deserves a seat at the table.

This one is about discernment - one of the quieter, underrated skills in emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say, when to say it, and equally importantly, what to leave unsaid.

In relationships, unnecessary words are often where the damage happens. The comment that didn’t need to be made. The criticism delivered in the wrong moment. The oversharing that came from anxiety rather than genuine connection.

And in our internal world - the same applies. Not every anxious thought needs to be followed. Not every self-critical story needs to be engaged with. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is notice a thought, acknowledge it, and consciously choose not to give it airtime.

Necessary doesn’t mean silent. It means intentional. It means asking: does this need to be here right now? Does this serve something real?

Less noise. More meaning. 💙