By Joel Harris — Kintsugi Hope Youth Coordinator.

After slowly coming out of Covid 19 restrictions towards the end of summer, we are now in October and restrictions are back… 6 months after the beginning of a national lockdown, and just when we felt things were getting better, we hear of more lockdown measures everyday.

The new recent guidelines allowing youth groups to meet up with a maximum of 15 young people don’t seem to tie up with hundreds of teenagers heading back to school, and there is a mixture of emotions from youth leaders across the country. …

Carolina Mountford — Speaks about Eating Disorders.

“Carolina Mountford lived with eating disorders and other common co-morbidities such as depression for 15 years beginning in her early teens. She has now been free from eating disorders for 17 years and is passionate about communicating a message of hope to everyone suffering that total freedom is possible. Carolina travels the UK delivering talks and workshops on various aspects of mental health and mental illness whilst raising awareness of and helping to end the stigma so often associated with these. Carolina read psychology at Exeter University, has done several counselling courses and…

How do you say goodbye to someone you love who doesn’t seem to care about whether you are there or not? How do you say goodbye to that someone when he or she does not seem to appreciate or reciprocate the emotions and feelings of sadness that naturally develop through the realisation of the irreversible upcoming separation from them?

How do you say a final goodbye to someone you love dearly, and when on the one hand you want them to stay, and on the other hand you are desperate for them to be whole again, and to be free…

“Take a seat please Mr Regan” …. I’m back at Kings College Hospital. I have spent many days here waiting to see the consultant who asks me about my physical and mental health.

I am eventually given an iPad and required to fill in a standard survey whose aim it is to show how I am doing. Since my wife isn’t here, the temptation not to be as honest as I should is very real.

Then comes the long wait. I do not know when I will be called. Instead of the usual panic that would typically fill up my…

Of all the subjects that we talk about in the Kintsugi programme, I personally find self-acceptance one of the hardest to grapple with.

Self-acceptance is often defined as ‘being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and having a feeling of satisfaction with yourself, despite any deficiencies or choices you’ve made in the past’.

But, with all that I know about myself, how can I possibly live in a place of self-acceptance?

My mind often lurks in a dingy corner of gloom that says, ‘if people really knew me, then they wouldn’t love me” and so accepting one’s self can become…

Forgiveness is generally defined by psychologists as a “conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve it.” It implies an intentional ‘mindset’ towards letting go of the hurt and shift our focus from it in order to move on. Forgiveness is in essence an abstract concept expected to be applied to various practical life situations, hence why it is so difficult to understand and controversial in its application.

Forgiving means that we don’t dwell on the specifics of an offense in words, thoughts…

What is perfectionism? In psychology, perfectionism is defined as a personality trait according to which one strives for flawlessness and sets high performance standards. It is accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.

When I was a lot younger, I perceived perfectionism to be something positive. Looking at the definition above we might all see why. A personality trait of someone who strives for flawlessness, while setting high performance standards… how could that be negative? My understanding of this was that a perfectionist was super hard-working and high achieving, and while having such high standards, should and would…

We are made for relationships, for connection and to be in community with one another. This isn’t always easy but it’s reassuring to know that whatever we have been through, others have gone through similar things too. It is comforting to know we are not on our own and to remember we have more in common than we realise. We all have doubts, fears and worries wherever we live in the world, however young or old we are, whatever we do for a living, whether we have great faith or no faith; we all share these common human traits.

One…