Magic Hands : Calm Minds - Counselling, Reiki and Bowen

19/06/2026

Whether you need physical healing, emotional support or both, I offer single treatments or a combination to help you feel the way you wish you felt.

💜 I am a fully qualified Emotional Therapeutic Counsellor, CBT practitioner and Bowen Therapist, as well as a trainer for the Academy of Emotional Therapeutic Counselling and a practitioner in CBT for insomnia.

💜 I work online and from my clinic in Coleford, Gloucestershire; and I look forward to exploring the possibilities of these amazing therapies with you.

🗓 If you would like to book some emotional or physical therapy, or have any questions, you can get in touch via email at [email protected] or phone 07974 203480

18/06/2026

Yes, please do!

💜 Most of my work comes from referrals and recommendations and I'm always delighted when a client recommends me to someone they know.

💜 You can pick up a card or leaflet from the clinic, or send them the link to my website or my page.

💜 Potential counselling clients can also find me listed on welldoing.com and the therapist's directories at emotionaltherapeuticcounselling.org.uk or nationalcounsellingsociety.org.

17/06/2026

Physical space and emotional space are not necessarily the same thing.

✨ If you are an introvert like me then you probably like being by yourself and it's important to you to have time by yourself sometimes.

✨ If you're an extrovert then you want to be in a big group so it's not so important for you to have time by yourself, but you might still want it some of the time. Just because you're normally the life and soul of the party doesn't mean you have to be every single time. But the more you are inclined to be the life and soul of the party the more people are going to struggle to understand if if you do need to be by yourself for a little while. So you need to be able to explain that to people.

📌 If emotional space and physical space are different, so it's not enough to just be emotionally on your own, say with headphones on, you have to be physically separate from other humans, you need to explain that as well.

✨ If you're with people who don't think like that and you're trying to shut yourself away, they're going to think you're sulking or not speaking to them or something, and they're going to be either upset or concerned. Far from leaving you on your own they're going to be saying 'What's the matter? Come and talk to me!' and really annoying you because you need to be by yourself.

✨ So you need to know how much emotional space you need and how much physical space you need, and you need to explain to your companion humans how that is and have some way of showing that you need to be by yourself occasionally, and that this is one of those times. OR that you need to be in a group, so actually 'much as I love you, there's only three of you, it's not enough, I need to go out and have a party. It's not because I don't want to spend time with you, and it's not because I'm having an affair, it's because I need to be in a big group of people right now. Three people isn't big enough.'

💜 If you understand that and you can explain it calmly and sensitively and tolerantly to your partner and family using good communication skills, then you are more likely to be living harmoniously with them than if you can't.

16/06/2026

The first thing you need to know in order to get the right amount of personal space is how much space you need.

🤔 Do you need to be physically on your own to get emotional alone space or is it enough to be in a room with other people but sitting reading a book, or with headphones on listening to some music?

💜 How does it work for you? (Let me know in the comments)

🤔 And how does that relate to what others need? Obviously if you're going to be living harmoniously with other humans it's not just about what you want, you've got to consider them as well.

15/06/2026

Today I want to talk about personal space.

🤔 What do I mean by personal space? It's about having the right amount of space for yourself but also understanding what the needs of the people around you are.

💜 If you crave a lot of emotional space then you'll like being by yourself and if you're tired or not feeling well, you'll probably want to curl up with a blanket and a book, and maybe some chocolate, and be on your own.

💜 But there are people in the world who actually would much rather be in a big group.

✨ If you're sharing your living space with people who have the other preference to you, whether that's for a lot of space or very little, they're going to find it difficult to understand what your needs are - particularly if you don't tell them.

Come back tomorrow for more on personal space and how to get the right amount for you.

13/06/2026

This workshop is being run by a friend of mine - something I'm sure many of us could benefit from!

12/06/2026

Self talk is the voice in your head that talks to you throughout your day.

🤔 Is it friendly and supportive, or does it continually put you down and tell you you're a disgrace?

💜 If the latter, this video may help.

Self talk is the voice in your head that talks to you throughout yo...

11/06/2026

I talk about spectrums a lot in my counselling and physical therapy work and what they basically all come down to is the quest for balance in all things.

🌈 Whether we’re talking about physical health or emotional, there’s a spectrum involved...

We’ve all heard about people ‘being on a spectrum’ and the term is usually used to describe people with differences such as autism, OCD and dyslexia. But actually I believe we’re all on one – or more accurately, we’re all on loads of spectrums. I talk about spectrums a lot in my counsell...

10/06/2026

💜 As well as being tolerant of other people, you also need to be tolerant of yourself.

🤔 A lot of us, particularly but not exclusively women, spend a lot of time criticising ourselves. So we'll say 'I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning.' 'That makes me a bad person. How could I have been so stupid as to forget to pick up the dry cleaning.'

📌 It doesn't make you stupid. It means you forgot. Forgetting is ok.

😩 Beating yourself up about it doesn't help. If you sit there for the next 3 hours thinking 'oh God, I'm a terrible person because I forgot the dry cleaning. Now I'm going to have to go another time.' 'Oh my God, and what if I need the dry cleaning in the meantime?' You're making yourself miserable and you're giving yourself a lot of stress.

🤷‍♀️ If you just go 'Oh, I forgot the dry cleaning. Damn. Oh well, never mind I'll go tomorrow.'
Now the issue is over, you're tranquil, you can move on with your life.

📌 If you're not tolerant of yourself that actually makes you quite difficult to live with. So your relationships with other humans are going to be hampered by a lack of tolerance for yourself.

I think Tolerance is a fundamental factor in living harmoniously with other humans but it's also a fundamental factor in living harmoniously with yourself.

💜 Given that you are the one human who will be there from the moment of your birth to the moment of your death, I think it's quite important that we can live harmoniously with that one human even if we can't manage it with anyone else. We can become hermits and live in isolated cottages in the middle of nowhere and never engage with another human, people do that. But you're still going to have to engage with yourself.

📌 If you would like some help with developing tolerance, take a look at my posts from last week.

09/06/2026

💜 Tolerance is not about saying that's ok, but it is about understanding that whatever somebody else does, they have a reason for it that seems to them to be good.

🤷‍♀️ It may actually be good. It's just that you don't know the information that makes it good.

So for example, one of my Facebook friends had a note left on her car windscreen during one of the lockdowns saying 'I've seen you go out, every day, you're not in uniform so it's obviously not an essential journey, you are breaking the lockdown rules, you are part of the problem and you have been reported.'

🤔 Now that person is a nurse. She'd been told not to wear her uniform to travel to and from work because of the risk of cross-contamination. So the person leaving that note had leapt to a massive conclusion which was completely unjustified because they didn't have the necessary information to prevent them doing that.

They also, for reasons best known to themselves, felt that it was appropriate for them to take that into their own hands and to leave that highly critical and judgemental note. Whether they did actually report them as well I don't know. But if they did, again they will have thought that was an appropriate thing for them to do.

🤯 That's possibly difficult to understand. You may be listening to this thinking 'well, absolutely right, they should have challenged her.' Or you might be thinking 'what on Earth... why would they be so petty and small minded?'

📌 Whichever you think, that's ok. Tolerance means you're allowed to think whatever it is that you think.

What you're not allowed to do is hurt other people through it.

And that's where dysfunctional relationships come in and why tolerance is so important.

💜 Because if I'm tolerant of you, that helps me. Equally you need to be tolerant of me back, because we're not always going to agree on what we each do. We're different individuals with different beliefs, different values, different hobbies, different interests, different circumstances.
So what I will think is justifiable and reasonable is not necessarily what you will think justifiable and reasonable.

Tolerance works both ways.

More on this tomorrow...