Well, that went quickly.

I’m sitting here on my son’s final day of childcare for the year in what will almost certainly be the last period of uninterrupted writing (and perhaps thinking) time that I will have for the next few weeks, so I’m doing what I would encourage my clients to do - I’m taking this space and time for me.

I will begin this piece by admitting that I’m feeling a bit tired. 2025 has been a year of incredible ups and downs for me outside of work, and I’m very much happier to be sitting here writing this from my desk at home rather than the hospital bed where I spent far too many weeks at the end of 2024. It feels a little self-indulgent to revisit that memory (not to mention unpleasant), but even the most cursory comparisons between my lead-up to the end of 2024 and 2025 reveal that this year is treating me much better.

Sepsis recovery

This time last year, I was in the very, very early stages of recovering from sepsis with months of strong antibiotics ahead of me, even after weeks of powerful intravenous ones. It was truly a miserable experience. January, February, March and April passed me by in a haze of medication and a PTSD diagnosis. It’s safe to say, I never want to go back to that place again. And here, almost a year on, I’m very fortunate to be able to note that I have not experienced any recurrence of sepsis and am approaching the one-year point from which likelihood of recurrence statistics become much more favourable. However, I did, and still do, struggle with post-sepsis syndrome and an ongoing impact on my physical mobility from the damage done to my foot by the infection that spread from my joints, to my bones and into my bloodstream.

Being chronically unwell is not totally new to me - I have had spondyolysthesis since my teens - however, having it be physically noticeable that I was unwell was. This time last year, I could not leave my house, go upstairs, walk or move around without a wheelchair. It was incredibly frustrating to lose mobility and autonomy in a flash, and the psychological impact will probably always be with me to some degree.

Grateful reflections

The only thing that I wanted when I was in the hospital was to be back with my son. He was 16 months old and a late walker, so he required a great deal of parental input. Then, when I got home, all I wanted was to be able to stand to pick him up, which he solicited constantly. It broke my heart to be unable to do that. Then, once I could do that, I desperately wanted to be able to walk him in his stroller; however, as the weather improved, I became more able to do it for short periods, using the stroller for support. Finally, what I wanted more than anything else was to be able to lift him out of his crib in the night when he cried and wanted comfort. It was the most heartwrenching feeling I’ve ever had to hear him call for me and to be unable to soothe him in the way that he needed.

Now, thankfully, I can do all of these things. Not without pain, not without consequences on my mobility for the next day or even week, but I can do them. And just typing out and recognising these things that I longed for and reflecting on how I do them instinctively now, without the angst I struggled with a year ago, makes me conscious of how the goalposts for the things that we want so very dearly change. And often we don't have the time or the inclination to reflect on just how grateful we are for them coming to pass.

Recognising how far we have come

It has made me think that it would really be useful to have some way of recognising just how far we might have travelled on a recovery journey - either physically or in terms of our mental health, or both - and how much I would have appreciated a structure to remind me of the changes that my healing body was going through. To point out to me how much it had achieved that I could be grateful for - even when there is still so much work to be done. In fact, that’s the point at which I find myself now. Even a year into my recovery, it’s still easy to stumble back into negative thoughts and feelings about why this should have happened and what I’ve missed as a result. I developed health anxiety under my umbrella PTSD diagnosis, and even now, occasionally, I will notice my hypervigilance kick in and start worrying about something that looks or feels like an old symptom that I thought had gone away.

So what better way to encourage reflection, appreciation and recognition than to write it down?

Anyone who knows me will know that I am in a serious, long-term relationship with the written word. I share the same ethos that Joan Didion did:

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

I’m guessing that there are lots of other people out there who feel the same as she did, and I do.

That by giving myself space, time and reverence for my feelings, thoughts and experiences, that I can come to know how I really feel about a thing - because if I rely on my in-the-moment, managing-101-tasks brain to do it, then it will probably struggle - because there are just too many priorities in my busy life vying for my attention at any given time.
Only by making time for myself, my thoughts, my feelings and allowing them to flow privately and freely on paper, can I summon my gratitude, so often buried under the next great want or need.

A workbook for those who are still going through it

So, for myself as much as those of you out there reading this who are also going through something challenging, I have been inspired to create something which will allow us to do just that. I’m going to create a psychotherapeutic workbook that will offer structure, reassurance, accountability and the space for quiet reflection and gratitude as we pass healing milestones and recovery targets.

It’s not a gratitude journal.

It’s a tool for figuring out how you really feel.

It will offer questions, prompts and enquiry into what the events that you’re going through really mean to you, to your past, and crucially to your future. It will encourage you to ask yourself some really difficult questions about why you might think the way you do, and illustrate what the consequences of that might be.

It’s going to be a way to access a therapeutic conversation directed by me, and delivered by you. You’re going to have the space and occasion to follow a difficult thought or feeling down a road and understand why you might have acted or be acting the way you do, and what you might be able to do to change that, if that’s what you seek.

I’m excited to offer this to you

And to myself - I know that if I had accessed a tool like this from the darkness and isolation of my physical and mental health challenges over the last year, that it would have brought me structure, a feeling of reassurance, and peace in knowing that I was paying myself and my process the due attention needed to come out the other side in the best place possible. I want to frame it so that it helps many people - the grieving, those healing and adapting to physical challenges, the new parents whose lives have changed unrecognisably, those struggling with enormous decisions, those on a mental health journey - basically anyone who has healing to do in some way, to take care of themselves and support their future wellbeing.

2026 is my year of publishing

In all honesty, I’m unlikely to get much time to sit down with this idea until January, and I find that hard. I’m full of inspiration and thoughts about what to put into this workbook in order to make it as useful and impactful as I can. And I know that I’m also reaching the tail end of my second edit of Confidential Grief*, which will be published in a few months. Clearly, I like to have a full plate.

But in the interim, I’m going to try to stay present and focus on the immediate, as I enjoy this end-of-year period with my son that I so wanted and needed this time last year.

And as I tuck him into bed on Christmas Eve, I will try to remember that previous me would have considered present-day me to be the luckiest person alive.

I must make sure I write that down...

Joyeuses fêtes
Laura x

*Confidential Grief is my latest book due for publication in early 2026. To be updated upon its release and other offerings from me, you can subscribe to my mailing list.

This year, my partner and I have decided to gift each other the same thing; we have purchased Oura rings with a year’s subscription to their health app to devote some energy to the project of feeling as physically well as we possibly can in 2026.

2025 - Sepsis, PTSD and losing mobility

This is off the back of a very difficult end to 2024, where I was gravely ill and hospitalised with septic shock and the ongoing impact of sepsis. It has taken me all of 2025 to return to the point where I can do many of the things that I ended 2024 with. I was on intravenous antibiotics for some weeks, followed by an incredible cocktail of medicines upon discharge from the hospital, and unfortunately, I went on to develop PTSD and health anxiety as a result of my experience.

Last year, I was lucky to spend Christmas at home with my partner and baby, but I was severely weakened by my infection and had lost the ability to walk. I was in a wheelchair for some months and then on crutches for longer. I have only really regained the ability to “walk” in the last few months, and my energy levels have begun to return to normal (though what is normal with a toddler remains to be seen!).

I remain impaired physically and cannot walk for long periods without pain. I can’t participate in exercise or sport the way I used to, and driving long distances can be difficult. My life has been profoundly changed, and so have those of my partner and child. I mention all of this to contextualise my decision to go “all-in” on this innovative health tracking device and focus so much attention on my wellbeing in 2026.

What impact on mental health?

It wouldn’t be like me to only focus on physical health, for without my brain, I am lost, and with everything that it went through over the last year, I am keen to treat it kindly and do my best to support it. Working through the PTSD of post-sepsis syndrome was difficult, and the health anxiety that came with it has now, thankfully, been processed. But I’m really interested in how this health data impacts how I feel about myself. Will it marry with the scores that Oura gives me? Will I be able to tie good mental health to certain outputs and make feeling good feel more predictable? Will having so much data at my fingertips mean that I pore over the numbers and obsess over metrics? Time will tell.

Tracking my wellbeing

I’ve had my Oura ring for a week now and have been wearing it comfortably without noticing it in my everyday tasks - bar showering or bathing my son. For me, this element is important because for health monitoring to really become something that I integrate into my routine, I’m the kind of person who really needs to not notice it. As someone who doesn’t usually wear a watch, this is where the jewellery format of this tracker piqued my interest. If I can forget that I’m doing something good for myself (until I reap the benefits), so much the better.

I’ve already had some sleep readings and activity readings that make the act of living feel a little more gamified. As a former avid gamer, I really enjoy being scored and feeling challenged to improve my numbers - so for a person who is extremely competitive with themselves, this works well! However, I can see that if our personality has a tendency to focus on this kind of data with a negative lens (i.e. our inner critic takes hold and uses this data as a means of admonishing us for our shortcomings), then I can see that this level of information could potentially be problematic.

Interaction with health anxiety

One of the principal concerns with sepsis is that the infection that has become blood-borne will have travelled to major organs, including the heart, and have begun to damage the tissues there. As I have a family history of heart issues, this is something that concerned me greatly, so the combination of this pre-awareness, coupled with the vulnerability of the situation and the worry that swirled around me in the hospital, eventually manifested in some overdeveloped concerns in my brain once I was back home and convalescing.

Developing health anxiety - even for a relatively short period, such as I experienced - was exhausting and very consuming. Fuelled by the fact that I had not recognised the grave nature of my symptoms and the shock at my diagnosis and urgent hospitalisation, did some work to undermine my confidence in my body and in my ability to recognise when it was in danger. Essentially, this and living through a deeply traumatising hospitalisation and a great deal of physical pain made me the ideal candidate for this kind of suffering.

How Oura is helping me to push back on anxious thoughts

I’m very lucky to be able to say that I am no longer struggling with this. Over time, my confidence in myself returned, and as my health improved, my belief that I would be okay eclipsed the fears that I might not. One of the ways that I decided to put data to good use in support of this recovery is to have a device do the work of monitoring my well-being for me. At the time, I began to use my old Fitbit Charge to track my heart rate. I have experienced periods of having an irregular heartbeat several times in my life, and there has usually been a precipitating factor linked with it, so when I started to notice a few off-beats, I decided that I needed something less subjective to monitor my heart whilst I waited for an appointment with my doctor.

The act of giving the task of monitoring to an unemotional, unbiased machine, such as the Fitbit or Oura ring, means that I can delegate the task of paying attention to it, and for me, it is the burden of noticing, which can feel so weighty. I cannot - naturally - always trust myself to be an unemotional, unbiased reader of my own data. But I can trust these devices to do so (to a degree, I would always advocate that a medical professional would be the ideal data interpreter, but they can be difficult to come by), and they are available at any time to respond to my needs, truly what a brain with an anxious propensity can benefit from.

So does this mean guaranteed good mental health in 2026?

Here’s hoping for a better twelve months to come in terms of both physical and mental health in 2026. I’m going to be rounding off my year with some good intentions and plans in place for supporting myself the best I can. I’m going into the new year with more information, more confidence in my body’s ability to heal, and more awareness of how profound the mind-body link impacts us deeply. I’ll be checking in with my own mental health needs as the year progresses and being sure to maintain my journaling practice, which is the cornerstone of how I proactively take care of how I think and feel. I'm going to dive into my Oura data when it feels right to, and use it to encourage me to build positive physical habits, including significant periods of rest, which can be hard to come by as the parent of a toddler, to support my brain to be the most well it can be, whilst also being kind to myself.

What are you planning for yourself in 2026? Perhaps now is the time to note your intentions? Will you be investing in a device? Journalling? Going to therapy?

Let me know in the comments.
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• This is an unbiased and unsponsored article which has received no remuneration for the mention of the products of brands therein - all opinions are authentically my own.  I include my referral code here if you would like to try Oura 4 with a 10% discount.

End-of-year expense

As we approach an expensive time of year for everyone - be that in increased heating costs, travel costs or celebrating end-of-year holidays, I, like everyone else, look at my own income as a self-employed person and try to calculate what I’m going to need for the coming months, and whether what I have coming in is going to comfortably meet what I anticipate going out.

Since the arrival of my child two and a half years ago, I have seen my personal outgoings do little else but increase, naturally, and I pay greater attention than ever to my household’s finances to ensure that we can have the kind of lifestyle that we want.

Some years, I have to admit that with health crises and some unexpected periods of being unwell and unable to work, it's all felt a little too close for comfort. However, as someone who came from humble beginnings, I am pleased to have been able to draw on that experience in shaping my expenses according to my situation. I know that I’m not alone in this.

A quiet time

If I look at my diary for the rest of 2025, honestly, it looks a little sparse. I know this is not because people have stopped thinking, feeling, or suffering, sadly. Sometimes it is because the end of the year is a busy time and people are travelling or seeing friends or family in the spaces when they aren’t working or doing their usual routines, and I get that. I do it too.
Some people are cutting back on sessions or letting me know they’ll be able to return to our work in the new year or early spring 2026, when their finances feel more predictable and they can commit to this investment in themselves. Again, totally relatable.

And the message that I have replied to them with, that I am hoping to convey to you and, perhaps above all, to myself, is that this is fine. More than fine. Normal. Expected. Essential.

Because, as much as I see many mental health organisations and practitioners rightly reminding us that counselling and therapy are essentials that we should consider akin to heating, water, and even pension contributions, the fact of the matter is that this year, perhaps more than many years in recent memory, people are struggling. People are having trouble feeding themselves and paying their rent. In this economy, it’s easier and easier to think of the talking therapies as an unnecessary expense to be able to cut back on.

The hungry gap (psychologically speaking)

If I may reassure any counselling clients out there reading this that the only acceptable answer from me or another private therapist is that this is no problem whatsoever, and it is absolutely, completely, wholly the decision of the person paying for the service and that I respect it. I'm not here to dissuade someone from making a decision that is probably a) difficult and b) possibly feels stigmatised (by our culture, not by therapy, I should add).

That said, my suggestions for those who feel the need to cancel private therapy in times of financial hardship would be:

• If it can be, let a lull in therapy be temporary - coming back to anything after a break is usually difficult, and it makes sense that coming back to counselling, the requirement to be reflective, vulnerable, and honest, can feel that much harder to access after a long break from your work. If you can get back to therapy sooner rather than later, there is a chance that your therapy will be that much fresher and more present in your mind to pick up on (with whomsoever that therapist might be).

• If you can, keep your work going to some degree - whether that be making sure that you block out some cost-free time for self-care, self-reflection, a walk to give yourself some solitude and thinking space, a journalling practice to keep your reflections deep and useful, or simply making sure you listen to some music or get the chance to read a few chapters of a comfort book over the busy end of year period. There is so much going on at this time, it’s important not to neglect ourselves.

Let me know your thoughts

I hope that therapists and clients alike find these reflections useful. Money and therapy are famously uncomfortable bedfellows, so if you have any comments, please do share them. I’m always delighted to talk more about the role of money in therapy, as my specialist training with The Trauma of Money betrays!

A happy problem

Last month marked the end of some years of psychotherapy for two of my longest-standing clients. We celebrated the end of this part of their process and parted company for now, knowing that they were leaving this period of sessions as quite different people from those that I had met several years ago.
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It is a bittersweet moment for the therapist, as we counsellors know that our own redundancy is the ultimate goal we are working towards with some of our clients. It is, however, enormously positive to see these individuals doing with ease some of the things that they had struggled to verbalise even twelve months ago, and what a privilege it has been for me to witness.

And so, these celebrations leave me with my own problem to solve: two free spaces in my diary.
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Back to advertising

To remedy the situation, I took myself to one of the advertising platforms that I have previously used in my career as a private therapist, and reactivated my profile on Counselling Directory. And whilst browsing some of the functionality that I have not been privy to in my long absence as their customer, I happened upon some profiles of old colleagues and acquaintances with whom I have not spoken for years.

I was delighted to see that they were still practicing, as with some it has been more than a decade since we’d had cause to speak, but interestingly I noticed that my professional interest went further than simply noticing what modalities they were working in now (it is usual for therapists to evolve with their training over the years and sometimes they can change they way that they work quite markedly). But I also noticed that some individuals had participated in some trainings that I myself would like to explore further, and I noticed how much clinical availability some of them were offering - for example, twelve-hour clinic days, five days per week (!!).

Jealousy strikes

I have to admit there was a little part of me that felt simultaneously envious - jealous even - of the amount of time that they were able to devote to their practice, and in a couple of instances, a little intimidated by just how much training some of them had done over the last decade.

By contrast, some of my personal experiences of the last eight years have greatly impacted my ability to do many of the things that I would like to do with my career. There are numerous trainings that impress and interest me that I have not yet been able to plan into my diary. There are books unread on both my Kindle and my Audible accounts, and honestly, I am sometimes lucky to get to a couple of podcasts and articles over the course of a week, around the edges of client sessions, business admin, writing, and, of course, my personal life.

So when I had my moment of professional insecurity, dare I say even professional jealousy, I had to take a moment to breathe.

Reflecting on my why

I needed a moment to think about the reasons why those things haven’t all yet been possible for me, and to alleviate any self-blame or guilt that I might put upon myself for this momentary sense of lack. I had to remind myself of all that I have achieved over these eight years: moving to a new country, surviving bouts of serious illness, becoming a parent, and managing my own matrescence. Thankfully, this is a much more forgiving lens through which to see myself when I reflect on why I might not yet have those extra letters next to my name, or be able to open my clinic as much as a version of me from the past might have liked to.

There is a great lesson in all of this about acceptance.

Comparison is normal

Sometimes it is uncomfortable to see and hear how our peers and colleagues are doing, and it is natural to compare ourselves. But it is not necessary to use this information to punish or blame ourselves for our differences. As I so often hear in the parenting podcasts that I listen to these days:

All feelings are welcome, all behaviour is not.

And I think aptly, this applies not just to my toddler tantruming over me giving them the wrong colour cup, but also to our own thought behaviours. It is so important that we might catch our thoughts being unkind to ourselves. To acknowledge this, and instead offer ourselves the compassion and understanding that we would so quickly give to a loved one.

Life skills to carry forward

It’s important that we all learn to put in place thought behaviours that support, encourage, and reassure those insecure parts of self that surface from time to time. We all need skills that allow us to take care of those parts that still need soothing occasionally. Those parts that counsellors and therapists still have too.

Just like a toddler.
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