The Father – Iain Douglas Stewart

Further thoughts on my father’s passing

By Iain March 27, 2025ReflectionsNo Comments

So, my Dad died. As I said in the other post, we weren't close by any stretch of the imagination, the last time I saw him in person was in maybe 1997 or 1998 when I was in my early twenties, the last time I spoke to him on the phone was in 2019 on Jake's birthday (I didn't actually…

James Drysdale Stewart

By Iain February 17, 2025ReflectionsNo Comments

So, on the 14th of February, I received the news that my father had passed away. Now, before I start, please be aware that although he was my father, we were not close. He left our family when my brother and I were very young, and while we did go and stay with him and his new wife for a…

L3CiCS Counselling Theory and Self-Awareness Assignment

By Iain June 26, 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 – 7th February 2020

By Iain February 7, 2020Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week we split up into small groups to discuss how we could use counselling theory to understand our own personal history, and to reflect on what we have learned about the theories so far to help understand events in our life, and our responses to those events. Studying theory has definitely made me fully aware of how the past…

The “Lewis becoming an adult” thing

By Iain February 6, 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…

A letter to myself as a ten year old…

By Iain October 12, 2018EssaysNo Comments

Inspired by a post Nikki wrote on her blog, https://lifeasjustnikki.wordpress.com/2018/10/04/dear-me/, I started this with the intent of writing a letter to my 10 year old self. I was in awe of her raw honesty, and her post really got me thinking about what advice I would give to myself at that age. I started writing but about halfway through I…

What does it for me?

By Iain September 21, 2018The MissionNo Comments

The fear of turning out like my dad.— Iain Douglas Stewart 😙👌 (@Iain_D_Stewart) August 12, 2018 Inspired by this tweet, and powered by a love of self-discovery, I'm going to answer this question honestly and fully, to the best of my ability. It took me a while to get around to it, but as you can see, what fuels me…

L2CiCS: Reflective Diary – 7th March 2018

By Iain March 7, 2018Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week in class we explored endings in counselling. We were asked to reflect on how we feel about endings, and what kind of effects they have on us. Some endings I like. These are usually situations or people or problems that are causing me emotional pain. No-one likes pain. Making the pain stop is nice. Some endings I do…

L2CiCS: Reflective Diary – 21st February 2018

By Iain February 21, 2018Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week we talked about Transactional Analysis a bit more, and were asked to participate in an exercise our tutor has called Know Thyself. Understanding ego-states is a powerful tool towards self-awareness. In this exercise we are to keep a note of which ego-state we are in at different points of the day and asking ourselves some questions. My Parent…

L2CiCS: Reflective Diary – 17th January 2018

By Iain January 17, 2018Qualifications courseworkNo Comments

This week was a bit more abstract and self-exploratory than usual, in that we carried on exploring our understanding of the relationship between our personalities and our helping work by asking ourselves various introspective questions (Unit 5.1), and we also considered the ways in which our life history has impacted on our behaviour and life choices (Unit 5.2). Because of…