The Spark Blog
Category: couples and individuals
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Parents & the Post-Summer Struggle
As Scottish schools head back for a new term and summer holidays end, many parents will be left with the same troubling question: after time off with my family, why do I feel further apart from my partner? This is a common query posed to our counsellors in the weeks after the school holidays. We…
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Early Mental Health and Adulthood
If you are interested in ‘what makes people tick’ you cannot help but have noticed the mass of TV programmes focused on the development of humans from childhood to adulthood. From The Secret Lives of 4 Year Olds to Bringing up Baby they examine how early mental health in children shapes the adults they subsequently…
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Relationship Breakdowns & Lawyers
Entrepreneur Stephen Moore blogs about supporting the work of The Spark, relationship breakdowns and working with lawyers. The trauma of relationship breakdowns Relationship breakdowns are traumatic for all involved and all of us know someone who has suffered as a result. Counselling and guidance can come from friends and family but, as in most spheres…
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Literally Searching for Answers
Every day we pose thousands of difficult questions about many of life’s most challenging issues. But in 21st-century society, we do not put them to close friends, scientists, professional counsellors or medical professionals. We put them to Google. That’s right – we ask the world’s most famous and dominant search engine how to sort out…
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The Taboo of Men’s Mental Health
Great strides have been made in recent years in the promotion and awareness of men’s physical health and wellbeing. Multiple forms of cancer and the likes of heart and lung disease amongst men have started to lose their taboo status. Consequently, the discussion of such topics is more commonplace. Work is still to be done…
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What Does Debt Do to Relationships?
These days it is easy to become immune to the scale of the statistics quoted by news programmes, websites and in the media. Those concerning debt are a prime example. Consider this: according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in 2015 1.25m adults and 312,000 children were destitute in the UK. That is 1.56m…
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Counselling from the Perspective of a Counsellor
The Spark counsellor Cathie lifts the lid in this blog on what counselling is like from her perspective as a counsellor. Many people may avoid counselling because of a lack of understanding and information on what it is and what it can help them achieve. In this blog Cathie looks at some common misconceptions about…
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5 Ways to Good Mental Health
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics in 2015, nearly 10 million adults in the UK are diagnosed with a mental illness each year. That equates to nearly 1 in 4 people, with anxiety and depression making up the majority of cases. The impact of poor mental health Mental illness can be debilitating…
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Something Feels Wrong in our Relationship…
That sense that something is not right in a relationship – with our partner, kids, family or colleagues – often comes with a real difficulty in working out what it is. We can cause ourselves more upset and unhappiness by running over endless possibilities in our minds, tiptoeing around each other or just plain ignoring…
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