The gold is to be found – always – in the very last place one would ever think to look. The worst thing about you. The bit you don’t want anyone to know, even yourself.

There’s a saying that an optimist is someone who knows how bad things are, and a pessimist is someone who’s still finding out. That sums up a truth about the process of healing.

I used to think that I had a superpower: my ability to turn off my feelings, and stay calm and unruffled when other people were freaking out. Later, it began to dawn on me that there was a cost to having my superpower.

“Ten years ago, if you’d told me I’d be sitting here talking to you, I would have laughed in your face!” As counsellors we hear a lot of this, because we live in a culture where it’s shameful to be vulnerable. We all suffer from it.

There is a Japanese tradition that something can be more beautiful after it has been broken. I believe that this has considerable significance for counselling.

As we enter young adulthood, most of us decide who and what we are – we form a sense of who we are. Twenty years later, however, many people find themselves questioning those choices, maybe for the first time.

For many, counselling can seem like an unattractive idea. What surprises many clients, however, is that counselling can be deeply absorbing and even – whisper it – enjoyable.