Wildwood Counselling & Supervision

“It’s not about getting the feeling out of the mind, or hiding it, but about experiencing it with acceptance.”
— Carl Rogers

A lot of people come to counselling thinking the goal is to stop feeling the way they feel.

They might want the anxiety to go, the anger to calm down, the sadness to lift, or the constant overthinking to stop. That makes sense. When something feels uncomfortable, the natural reaction is to try and get rid of it as quickly as possible.

We learn early on to push feelings down, distract ourselves, stay busy, or tell ourselves to get on with things. Sometimes that works for a while. But the more we try to force feelings away, the more they tend to show up in other ways. Tension, frustration, low mood, feeling overwhelmed, or that sense that something isn’t right even when you can’t explain why.

Something people often find strange about counselling at first is that the focus isn’t always on getting rid of those feelings straight away. Instead, it’s about making space to notice them, understand them, and allow them to be there without immediately judging yourself for having them.

That doesn’t mean liking how you feel.
It doesn’t mean giving up.
It doesn’t mean staying stuck.

It means recognising that your reactions usually make sense in the context of your life, even if they don’t feel helpful right now. When you stop fighting yourself quite so hard, there’s often more room to understand what’s really going on underneath.

Sometimes anxiety is covering fear.
Sometimes anger is covering hurt.
Sometimes feeling numb is the only way you learned to cope with something that felt too much at the time.

When those experiences are given space instead of being pushed away, people often find that things begin to shift on their own. Not because they forced change, but because they allowed themselves to see what was already there.

In counselling, I see the work as creating that kind of space. Somewhere you don’t have to hide how you feel, and you don’t have to pretend everything is fine. Just somewhere you can be honest about your experience, without being told you should be different.

Sometimes change doesn’t come from trying harder to control your mind.
Sometimes it comes from being able to sit with yourself
without turning away.