As I mentioned in our last session - I simply think you're brilliant.

I've been in a talking therapy, I've done CBT before and they both had their positives but neither actually helped me overcome certain issues. I think what is so different about the sessions with you and what I appreciate the most is that we don't just talk about things or don't just discuss mechanisms and how some behaviours work and try to do some exercises for it - you actually make me think.

You create a safe, secure environment and encourage reflection and developing own ways and ideas on how to progress and make changes and that's amazing. Thanks to your patience, ability to not judge, you taking time to acknowledge and validate my emotions and experiences I felt able to finally, truly open up about a lot of things and move on from them.

Most of my life I have been scared to admit certain things because I worried about what others would say... Even though these days you hear everywhere that ' it's okay to not be okay ', you still get negative feedback and reactions if you say you are, in fact, not okay. In our sessions it is actually, genuinely okay to not be okay and I know it doesn't define me, it doesn't make me a bad person or an unfixable problem. In sessions with you, I can talk freely and I won't be criticised, I won't be called a drama queen, I won't be told that I'm overreacting and I won't be looked at funny - mainly because you can't see me haha but you know what I mean!

I finally feel listened to and accepted and the two most significant things this helped me deal with are my drinking and understanding the extent of the trauma I have experienced in life so far. Being able to admit my addiction to alcohol and learning about underlying cause of it has definitely allowed me to make progress and quit it for about six months. Understanding that my upbringing has been quite dysfunctional is allowing me to finally change how my relationships with others work, how I behave in them, how I view them.

I keep learning more and more about myself and I finally feel that I am actually growing, identifying my needs and working on setting boundaries in order to have those needs met.

If there is one thing that I think could be done differently, it's that I need to try and reflect more in-between our sessions.....