An emotionally regulated employee is an efficient employee.
Look after your staff because you care about them, or for entirely selfish reasons. Either way, it pays.
Mindfulness is the best tool I know for understanding ourselves, and for looking after ourselves better. Once a month I sit with your team. People stop, notice what is really going on for them, and leave with something they can use that same afternoon. Therapist-led, plain-spoken, light on theory.
One hour a month, up to 12 people, on site or online. £250 a session, six-month minimum.
Insight is the easy part.
The capable people I work with are rarely confused about their stress. They can name every symptom and explain where it comes from. Colleagues see them as calm and capable. Friends come to them for advice.
And privately, nothing has shifted.
Understanding stress and living differently with it are two separate skills. The second is built through practice, a little and often. That is why this runs once a month for six months, rather than as a single day everyone has forgotten by Friday.
Notice. That is all, to begin with.
Most of us have a tape running a paper's width outside awareness, shaping our mood and behaviour all day. It sounds something like this:
- "They'll think I'm not up to this."true once, out of date
- "I should have finished that by now."holding it in mind
- "I wonder how my boss will take it."planning turned overthinking
Some of it was true once. Most of it is out of date. Mindfulness is the practice of hearing the tape clearly, so it stops quietly running the day.
Think of stress like the weather. Mindfulness leaves the rain where it is. It builds a house with clear windows, so you can watch the storm without getting soaked, and in time see the clouds gathering before the first drop falls.
One everyday pattern each month.
This is how the six months usually run. I shape each session around what your team brings into the room on the day.
The chattery mind
Learning to notice thoughts and feelings without having to act on them straight away.
Your own signs
The early signals your body gives under pressure, which look different in every person.
Planning or overthinking
Planning has a direction and an end. Overthinking tries to make an uncertain future certain.
Holding things in mind
The task itself is rarely the stress. Carrying it around unfinished is what clogs us up.
How you speak to yourself
One client told me, "I'd be arrested if I spoke to other people the way I speak to myself."
A steady spine
Clear boundaries between work and home, and a reference point that holds on sunny, cloudy and stormy days.
The relationship in the room is the work.
In therapy, it is the relationship that lets people reach what they are really thinking and feeling. A group works the same way. A recording can guide your breathing. A therapist in the room notices the quiet person at the end of the table, and the joke that lands a little too close to home.
I think of it as a cookbook with no recipes. The ingredients of stress are the same for everyone; the way they combine is unique to each person. I bring the ingredients. Each person builds a recipe that fits their life.
Luke Brownlee-Williams
BACP Accredited counsellor, psychotherapist and clinical supervisor. MBACP (Accred) 00668921.
Fifteen years in practice, and roughly twenty-five people a week who are still in the room with me.
Gloucestershire, Bristol and online.
Six months gives you a trend, not a feeling.
Three short questions at the start of each session, the same three at the end. After each one, whoever booked it gets a one-page note: the shift in the room and the themes that came up, anonymised, nobody identifiable.
Over six sessions, you see the trend for yourself.
Simple and fixed.
I have two places for a January start, and I'm confirming both by 31 October.
- Session
- One hour, once a month
- Group
- Up to 12 people
- Where
- On site or online
- Fee
- £250 a session
- Contract
- Six-month minimum (£1,500), then rolling monthly
- Area
- Gloucestershire, Bristol and online
Start with a conversation.
Tell me about your team and I will tell you honestly whether a monthly hour is the right fit.