self-awareness – Iain Douglas Stewart

My procrastination

By Iain 24 November 2021Reflections, The MissionNo Comments

Procrastination is a tricky beast. To anyone watching it may look like I don't care about anything, and I'm being lazy. But in reality, I'm crippled by indecision. I don't know what to do next. There are so many things I want to do, things I want to start, things I want to finish, things I want to carry on…

L3CiCS Counselling Agency Assignment

By Iain 29 June 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

The purpose of this assignment is to choose a counselling agency and research how it operates. I have chosen Off The Record. I chose this organisation because there was once a place in Southampton that offered a similar service that I visited when I was a troubled teenage to get some help. It helped me greatly, more than I realised…

L3CiCS Counselling Theory and Self-Awareness Assignment

By Iain 26 June 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

The purpose of this assignment is to show how learning about counselling theory and applying it to your own life can promote and increase self-awareness, by deepening the understanding of your own personality, history and relationships. This will be a very personal journey through my counselling studies so far, and hopefully a good reflection of what I have learned about…

L3CiCS Reflective Diary – 25th June 2020

By Iain 25 June 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

So that’s that then. Last night I got an email from the college saying that our internal and external assessments have been submitted to the CPCAB for a calculated grade. Our tutor had already told us that we would all pass. Now that our final grade is being calculated, between a pass and a fail, there is no need to…

L3CiCS Reflective Diary – 29th May 2020

By Iain 29 May 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week we are looking at limits of proficiency, and my reflections on them. There are many ethical considerations to take into account when considering your own limits of proficiency. The type of client is one, for example, as a child would require a different approach to an adult seeking therapy. Personally, I would like to gain experience with as…

L3CiCS Reflective Diary – 8th May 2020

By Iain 8 May 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week in lockdown, I am working on self-awareness and how it contributes to the ability to empathise with others. Empathy is a kind of emotional imagination; it is the ability to map the knowledge of your own feelings to those of someone else in order to gain a deeper understanding of how those emotions influenced their mental state, their…

L3CiCS Reflective Diary – 10th April 2020

By Iain 10 April 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

Research is an interesting aspect of counselling and psychotherapy, and I think it is very important. It is essentially a sphere of knowledge that exists parallel to your own body of knowledge as a person and as a counsellor, and overlaps in places. Research, or “finding out what works” has created talking therapies and its different modalities and theories, and…

L3CiCS Reflective Diary – 3rd April 2020

By Iain 3 April 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week we looked at common mental health problems and possible reasons for their incidence in society. Mental health problems could be seen as skewed rules that people are trying to live their lives by. These abstract rules are mostly developed alongside the organism as it grows and learns to navigate this world we live in. These self-created rules form…

Three years ago, today

By Iain 10 February 2020Books, Reflections, The MissionNo Comments

Or yesterday, I forget. Whichever day it was, three years ago I was going to kill myself. I've come a long way, baby. Far enough? Not yet. We still have a ways to go. But still, considering the progress that I have made, it's unreal. Compare the person I was back then to the person I am now and I…

The “Lewis becoming an adult” thing

By Iain 6 February 2020Reflections, Site Related, The Mission, VideogamesNo Comments

This is going to be hard to write without sounding jaded, or bitter, but I'm going to try. My nephew, Lewis, turned 18 recently. He's Jane's sister's first-born, and I've known him all his life. I don't know where to start with how I feel about my perspective on all this, so forgive me if it seems disjointed. So, as…