Wishing You Well

04/09/2026

This month I’ve written about the kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being on your own, but from feeling emotionally untouched even when you’re surrounded by people.

Loneliness doesn’t only appear when life is quiet or empty, sometimes it shows up in relationships, families, workplaces - places where you’re physically close to others but still feel unseen. It’s the experience of being present but not quite reached... included, but not met... spoken to, but not understood.

If you’ve felt that echo, it’s more common - and more human - than you might think.

You can read the full reflection here:

A counsellor’s reflection on unseen feelings, relational gaps, and the ache beneath loneliness

30/08/2026

Your stress response is not a personality trait - it’s a nervous system strategy. It’s shaped by your history, your wiring, your environment, and what your body has learned keeps you safe. Many people have one dominant response, but it’s also common to move between them depending on the situation, the relationship, or your level of depletion.

Stress responses can be activated in moments such as:
- conflict or tension
- being asked a direct question
- feeling evaluated or observed
- sudden change or uncertainty
- relational disconnection
- overwhelm or sensory overload
- situations that echo past experiences
- moments where your needs feel invisible or dismissed

These responses are automatic; they happen before you think and they happen because your system is trying to protect you.

Fight is often misunderstood as anger. It can also look like urgency, over‑explaining, defensiveness, or trying to “fix” something quickly. It appears when you feel cornered, you fear losing control, you sense injustice or threat, you’re trying to regain stability

Flight is not just running away - it can be mental escape; overthinking, planning, avoiding, staying busy. It appears when you feel overwhelmed, you fear failure, you sense relational tension, you need distance to feel safe.

Freeze is when the system slows down. You feel stuck, blank, disconnected, or unable to act. It appears when the situation feels too big, you fear making the wrong move, you feel exposed or scrutinised, your system is overloaded

Fawn (Appease) is people‑pleasing, smoothing, accommodating, minimising your needs. It appears when you fear conflict, you fear disappointing someone, you feel responsible for others’ emotions, you learned that harmony equals safety

Counselling doesn’t try to “remove” your stress responses, it helps you understand them, soften them, and build new pathways that feel safer and more supportive. Stress responses are not flaws, they are adaptations and they can become less overwhelming and more manageable.

See www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information.

22/08/2026

There are seasons in life where you realise you’ve outgrown old versions of yourself; ways of coping, ways of relating, ways of surviving that once made perfect sense but no longer fit. And it can feel disorienting - like you’re standing between chapters, no longer who you were, not yet who you’re becoming.

This in between space often shows up in the body first:
- a restlessness you can’t explain
- a sense of being “done” with something you haven’t named yet
- tension around decisions that used to feel easy
- a pull toward change mixed with fear of letting go
- emotional responses that feel unfamiliar or surprising

Outgrowing an old self isn’t a failure, it’s a sign of growth, but it can feel uncomfortable because the nervous system likes what’s familiar - even when the familiar is no longer supportive.

Counselling can help you make sense of this transition, it offers a place to explore who you’re becoming without rushing the process, a place to understand the parts of you that are ready to soften, shift, or be released and a place to meet the emerging version of yourself with compassion rather than pressure.

You’re allowed to evolve and allowed to change your mind, your boundaries, your needs, your direction, and you’re allowed to grow beyond what once felt like home. The in‑between is not a mistake - it’s a doorway.

See www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information.

15/08/2026

Sensitivity is often misunderstood; imagined as fragility or overwhelm or being “too much,” - yet sensitivity is simply a way of processing the world; deeply, thoroughly, and with a nervous system that notices what others pass by. Sensitive people don’t just feel more, they perceive more, picking up tone and nuance and shifts in energy, sensing the emotional undercurrents in a room and the beauty in small things - this is not weakness but attunement.

Softness is what allows that attunement to stay open; sensitivity is how you take in the world and softness is how you move through it without losing yourself. Together they form a gentle strength - a way of relating that is intuitive, compassionate, and profoundly human, even in a world that often praises hardness, speed and grit.

Softness is the courage to feel deeply, to cry when something hurts, to pause when the world demands momentum, to speak gently in a moment that could easily turn sharp. It is the strength to stay open when you’ve been wounded, to offer compassion when you’re tired, to forgive yourself for not being perfect, and to remember that healing doesn’t come from force but from tenderness.

Sensitivity becomes a strength when it’s allowed to exist without apology, when it isn’t rushed or criticised or forced into a pace that doesn’t fit, when it’s understood as a trait that brings depth, intuition, connection and meaning. Softness becomes a strength when it’s recognised as a way of being that honours your nervous system rather than pushing it beyond what it can hold.

Counselling offers a space where both sensitivity and softness can breathe, where you can show up without needing to perform or protect, where your nervous system can be understood rather than judged, where overwhelm can be soothed and boundaries explored, and where you can begin to build a life that doesn’t require you to harden or shrink yourself.

If you’ve ever been told you’re “too sensitive,” it might simply mean you’re tuned in... and you are allowed to be soft, you are allowed to be strong in ways the world doesn’t always recognise, and you are allowed to take up space exactly as you are.

See www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information.

09/08/2026

Feeling untethered means losing contact with your inner anchor - that sense of steadiness, clarity, and self‑connection you usually rely on. It’s a subtle emotional drift, where you feel slightly off‑centre, not quite yourself, or as though something inside has come loose. This can happen after a moment that felt unexpected, misattuned, or destabilising, leaving your nervous system searching for ground again.

Feeling untethered can show up as:
- moving through the day on autopilot
- difficulty making decisions
- feeling emotionally distant or disconnected
- losing touch with intuition
- questioning your inner signals
- feeling “between selves” or “between chapters”

For many people, especially highly sensitive persons (HSPs), this state can arise after experiences such as sudden relational shifts, unexpected feedback, moments of feeling unseen, transitions, endings, or times of overwhelm. Even in professional contexts, when something lands in a way you didn’t anticipate, your system can pull back to protect you, creating that drifting, unanchored feeling.

Untethering can impact self-esteem by activating familiar inner narratives:
- self‑blame (“I must have caused this.”)
- over‑responsibility (“It’s on me to fix the moment.”)
- shame (“Something about me made this happen.”)

These responses aren’t character flaws - they’re learned strategies for making sense of destabilising experiences. When the ground feels shaky, the mind often tries to create certainty by turning inward and taking the weight.

Counselling offers a steady relational space to explore what felt destabilising, soften the self‑blame, reconnect with your inner signals, rebuild self‑trust, and gently re‑anchor. The tether does return - often stronger, clearer, and more self‑defined than before.

See www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information.

01/08/2026

This months reflection explores the way our feelings guide us toward different kinds of connection, and what this reveals about our emotional needs.

Different emotions awaken different needs.

When we’re happy, our system opens. Joy reaches outward - toward the people who feel expansive, energising, familiar. These are our connection needs: to share, to celebrate, to feel part of something.

When we’re sad, our system contracts. We look for the relationships that feel steady, attuned, and safe. These are our safety needs: to be held gently, to be understood, to land somewhere without being rushed.

Listening to these shifts - and honouring them - is part of caring for yourself with more compassion and clarity.

Different emotions, different needs - all of them valid and all of them human.

A counsellor’s reflection on emotional states, relational pulls, and the needs beneath them

24/07/2026

Many of us carry a tension between what we feel we should do and what we genuinely want. The part shaped by duty, responsibility, reliability, and expectation… and the part shaped by desire, longing, authenticity, and truth.

Duty often comes from conditioning; family roles, attachment patterns, cultural messages, or old survival strategies. Desire comes from the deeper self; the place that knows what feels alive, meaningful, or congruent.

Exploring this tension in counselling enables duty to soften, as you understand where it came from and whether it still serves you, and desire becomes clearer as you reconnect with what you genuinely want, not what you’ve been taught to want. Internal permission grows as you learn to honour your needs without guilt and boundaries strengthen so you can hold responsibility without losing yourself.

It isn’t about abandoning responsibility but integrating a way of living that respects both parts without self‑betrayal. It’s about letting desire have a voice again, so life feels lived from the inside out.

Where does “should” pull you?
Where does “want” call you?
And what might change if both were allowed to matter?

See www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information.

18/07/2026

When life feels heavy, you don’t have to hold it all on your own. There are moments when grief lingers in the background… when unease follows you from task to task…when your chest tightens under the weight of everything…or when you feel stuck, unseen, or simply worn down by the pace of life.

You may be navigating change, moving through a transition, healing old hurts, or trying to make sense of emotions that feel overwhelming. Counselling offers a steady, confidential space to pause - to breathe, to feel, and to gently reconnect with yourself and what matters most.

I offer grounded, professional support in Exeter and online. Together, we’ll explore what clarity, connection, and emotional steadiness might look like for you.

In our sessions, you’ll find space to:
• Speak freely, without judgement
• Understand patterns and reconnect with your inner strength
• Feel truly heard, valued, and supported as you find your way forward.

You are worthy of care.

See: www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information

13/07/2026

Self‑sabotage often shows up in the small, subtle moments where you pull away from the very thing you say you want - not because you’re lazy or unmotivated, but because a deeper part of you is trying to stay safe.

It might look like delaying something meaningful, or choosing the familiar discomfort over the unfamiliar possibility, or talking yourself out of an opportunity you’ve worked hard for. Sometimes it shows up in relationships too - in the ways you suppress your needs, minimise your feelings, or step back just as something begins to matter.

These patterns often form in response to past experiences; times when visibility, success, change, or emotional intimacy felt risky - your nervous system remembers, even when your mind says you’re ready. Often there’s a pause - a moment like a hand hovering near a door handle - where part of you wants to move forward, and another part pulls back. That pause isn’t failure; it’s protection.

Counselling can help by slowing these patterns down, it offers a space to explore what the protective part of you is afraid of, and to understand the old story it’s still carrying. Together, we explore the beliefs, fears, and expectations that keep you returning to familiar patterns. With compassion and curiosity, you can begin to build new ways of responding, ones that support growth rather than block it.

Change doesn’t come from pushing harder, it comes from understanding yourself more deeply and meeting your resistance with kindness rather than criticism.

See www.wishing-you-well.co.uk or https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/406729/sabrina-evans/ for more information.