counselling Archives - Counselling in your Community

Making tax Digital for Counsellors: I’ve now submitted my first quarterly update

Leave a Comment / counselling / Hazel Hill

Making Tax Digital for Counsellors: I’ve Now Submitted My First Quarterly Update Back in March, I wrote about Making Tax Digital for counsellors and psychotherapists and how I was preparing for the changes coming into effect from April 2026. At the time, I had decided that I wanted to continue using my existing Excel spreadsheet […]

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When ‘You’re Too Sensitive’ Becomes Permission to Bully

Leave a Comment / counselling, mental health, relationships / Hazel Hill

When ‘You’re Too Sensitive’ Becomes Permission to Bully Being called ‘too sensitive’ is something many people recognise, often from childhood or family life. Watching I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! this year, I was struck by how quickly that label can shift attention away from behaviour and onto the person experiencing it. stood

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What to expect from your first counselling session – Sheffield

Leave a Comment / counselling / Hazel Hill

What happens in your first counselling session? Many people in Sheffield ask me what a first counselling session is like. It is completely normal to feel unsure or nervous before coming. You might be wondering what you will be asked, what you should say, or even if you are doing the right thing. If you

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Do I need counselling or am I overreacting?

Leave a Comment / Anxiety, counselling, counselling sheffield, mental health / Hazel Hill

Do I need counselling or am I just overreacting? This is one of the most common questions people sit with before they get in touch. ‘Maybe I’m making a fuss.’ ‘Other people have it worse.’ ‘I should be able to deal with this myself.’ I hear this a lot. Reaching out for counselling can feel

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Making Tax Digital for counsellors and psychotherapists 2026

Leave a Comment / counselling, counselling room, counsellor, private practice / Hazel Hill

Making Tax Digital for counsellors and psychotherapists starts in April 2026. If you are anything like me, your first thought might be, ‘How can I do this in a way that suits me, not in a way that suits accounting software?’ This post is for UK counsellors and psychotherapists in private practice who complete Self

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Different Values in Therapy: When a Client’s Views Feel Hard to Sit With

Leave a Comment / counselling, ethical guidelines, Personal perspective, reflection / Hazel Hill

One of the harder parts of counselling is knowing what to do when a client’s values feel very different from our own. Sometimes that difference is political. Sometimes it is about relationships, identity, parenting, religion, class, gender, immigration or social issues. Whatever form it takes, it can stir something strong in the therapist: discomfort, sadness,

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How to use a Thought Review Sheet when anxiety takes over

Leave a Comment / counselling / Hazel Hill

When something upsets us, it can feel as if it just happens. A comment, an email, a look, a silence. And suddenly we are anxious, angry, shut down, tearful, defensive, or all of the above. In those moments, our nervous system is doing its job: protecting us. The trouble is that when we are in

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Winter Solstice Reflection: When the Light Returns

Leave a Comment / counselling / Hazel Hill

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night. In the UK, the exact moment is around 3.03pm GMT. From here, the light returns, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, but it returns. I like that the solstice is both simple and profound. Simple, because it is astronomy. The Earth tilts, the sun

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Do counsellors really need a written contract?

Leave a Comment / counselling / Hazel Hill

When I trained as a counsellor in the early 2000s, the message felt simple. Talk through the contract, note it in your records, and you’re fine. Written contracts were not talked about. We explained boundaries verbally, maybe had some information on a leaflet or website, and that was considered good enough. Fast forward twenty years,

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Reading BACP’s new routes when you have lost senior status

Leave a Comment / counselling / Hazel Hill

If you have read my earlier post, ‘Losing my BACP Accreditation‘’, you will know that I lost my senior accreditation with BACP. In that piece I described what it was like to wake up one day and find that a title I had held for many years had gone. Nothing about my work in the

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