When somebody starts therapy sessions with me, an important part of our work is to fully acknowledge and give credit to them for looking for support, even though they may have had some, or all, of the doubts below. It is completely normal to have concerns before starting anything new, and everyone I have worked with has had at least one of the worries below before they started therapy. And as I share at the end, I had some of them myself before I started therapy!

When I first became a mother, I couldn’t believe how so people suddenly became an expert on how I should be mothering my baby, and living my life, and how they assumed I was interested in hearing their (many!) opinions. This blog post describes the framework I work through with mums to help them to understand why people don’t seem to understand how unhelpful this advice is, and how mums can best support themselves in the midst of all of this noise.

When I explore this wish with the mums I work with, it often turns out that there had been signs for a while that they would have benefitted from support, but they wait and hope that with time they’ll somehow feel better. But would you do this if you had an unexplained physical pain? All of the feelings I describe below are painful and unpleasant, and you deserve not to feel this way. I hope this blog will help you to believe that your mental health deserves the same level of care as your physical health.