Mindful OT Blog

  Mindful Occupational Therapy Practice delivers personalised online therapy sessions. It’s an holistic therapy for mental health management, chronic pain & fatigue management and supporting mental, physical & emotional wellbeing. I’ve been working behind the scenes to slowly build up my practice and as we begin the new year of 2025, I feel now is the right time for me to put myself and my new venture fully out there. I love the work I do, I’ve got many years of clinical experience in the NHS and worked with many wonderful clients along the way, enabling me the true honour of standing in their shoes as best I can, learning from them, understanding them, hearing them, seeing them, validating their experiences……I hope I may continue this journey, doing what inspires me & supporting people in their recovery pathway towards living their lives more fully….   here’s a description of what my Practice is all about:   It’s a creative integration of Occupati...

  I’m writing this from a personal perspective, where I’ve had to manage a period of burnout following challenging life events. It was a slowish, steady journey of moving towards a place where the light shone through for me again. I became my own Occupational Therapist & Mindfulness Practitioner for a time, a holistic therapy for mental health, emotional and physical wellbeing. It was key for me to start by embracing the importance of validation - of actually recognising my signs of burnout and symptoms for what they were.   A bit about my experience of burnout When our lives turned upside down following a sudden family bereavement, I’d initially held a tenuous belief & hope that I’d be able to manage it all - that I’d somehow be able to support my grieving teenagers, deal with my own complex grief reaction, manage my recent new work role, look after my wellbeing as best I could, manage the range of other demands that were already beginning to feel overwhelmin...

  Introducing me – the ‘Occupational Therapist & Mindfulness Practitioner’ So, I began the initial steps of setting up my Mindful Occupational Therapy Practice around early spring of 2024, with my expertise in fatigue management, pain management, managing stress & burnout, managing mental & emotional wellbeing (following a long clinical career in the NHS). It’s been a slow process…..It’s now autumn 2024, and I’m wanting to share a bit about my personal story – the part it played in setting up my (online) Independent Practice, and the authenticity it’s given me in what I’m delivering. Here’s what my practice is all about………… .. It’s a creative integration of Occupational Therapy & Mindfulness, underpinned by my intention of supporting people to learn & understand more about themselves, their pain, their fatigue, their stress, the challenges for their mental health & emotional wellbeing.   By learning more about ourselves we can support a great...

  Here I’m writing about the role of self-compassion & why I consider it be so valuable for supporting us in living with challenges of fatigue, pain, chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, feeling overwhelmed, mental health challenges, and life in general. Working in occupational therapy mental health and fatigue & pain services, I’ve found it to be an ever present concept where I find myself weaving it into & through my sessions…..holding space, gently guiding, moving alongside, supporting people with slowly, gently building self-compassion into their lives…..   Often starting with bringing a gentle curiosity to the notion of self-compassion, most people I start working with generally reflect on how they tend to show little kindness to themselves, often acknowledging feeling lazy when they have to take time out to rest, or feeling selfish if they put themselves first in any way. It’s so hard when pain, stress, fatigue, mental & emotional health challenges jus...