ANNABELLE PSYCHOLOGY
周泳伶临床心理诊所
clinical psychologists
It’s one of the most disorienting moments we can face in life: being laid off.
Job loss can shake your sense of safety and identity. This guide offers gentle, practical steps to manage the emotional fallout, regain structure, and move forward.
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Understanding self-harm: Why it happens, why it’s hard to stop, how to support someone or yourself
Self-harm is often a way of coping with overwhelming emotions, numbness, or distress, rather than an intent to die. With understanding and the right support, it is possible to break the cycle and build safer ways to cope.
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A compassionate guide to processing the pain, rebuilding routines, and finding steadiness again.
Breakups can feel like your whole world has shifted, and the pain often shows up in your body, thoughts, and daily routines. Explore six gentle, practical ways to move through heartbreak with self-compassion, steadiness, and support.
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The ability to live with grief does not come about by brute forcing yourself to move on.
It comes with a gruelling journey of learning how to make sense, make meaning, redefine yourself or your life, and also discovering ways to soothe and connect with loss.
Grief can feel unpredictable, heavy, and hard to hold. A grief ritual is a small, intentional practice that gives your emotions somewhere to land. From lighting a candle to writing a letter or taking a mindful walk, simple rituals can help you honour what mattered and find steadier ground, one day at a time.
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There’s a kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.
If you’re part of the sandwich generation, you know this well.
The sandwich generation carries a quiet, relentless weight — raising children while caring for ageing parents, juggling responsibilities that never seem to end. This article explores the unspoken guilt, fatigue and loneliness many experience, along with gentle, practical ways to reclaim rest, share the load and seek support. You are not failing; you are human, doing your best in circumstances few truly understand.
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EMDR is a type of therapy that supports people in healing from trauma or emotionally overwhelming experiences. Developed by psychologist Dr Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s, it is now widely recognised for its effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other challenges like anxiety, grief, and phobias.
Instead of talking through a memory in detail, EMDR focuses on helping your brain process it in a different way. During sessions, you’ll briefly bring a distressing memory to mind while engaging in bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements, tapping, or sounds, which alternates between the left and right sides of the body. This process is thought to support the brain’s natural healing, reducing the emotional charge of the memory and making space for healthier beliefs.
When we go through something overwhelming, our brain does not always process it properly. EMDR helps the brain finish that process. With the help of a trained therapist, you gently revisit the memory while using bilateral stimulation. This combination is believed to help rewire how the memory is stored, so it feels less distressing over time. Some researchers suggest that EMDR works in a similar way to REM sleep. That is the part of sleep where your brain naturally sorts through emotions and experiences. Over time, EMDR can reduce emotional distress, shift negative self-beliefs, and build emotional resilience.
EMDR is a great option for anyone who’s still feeling the emotional weight of something that’s happened, whether it was recent or years ago. If something is still affecting your daily life, mood or self-esteem, it might be worth exploring. EMDR is commonly used to support people with:
Trauma, PTSD, and Complex PTSD (c-PTSD) (e.g., accidents, abuse, violence, natural disasters)
Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Phobias
Depression
Grief and Loss
Low Self-esteem or Negative Self-beliefs
Chronic Stress or Burnout
Performance Anxiety (e.g., in work, sports, or the arts)
Attachment and Relationship Difficulties
A lot of people turn to EMDR when they have tried talk therapy but still feel stuck. It offers another way in, especially for experiences that feel hard to put into words.
EMDR typically follows a structured process, but your therapist will go at a pace that feels right for you. Here’s a simple breakdown of what the journey could look like:
Your therapist will get to know your history, current concerns, and what you hope to achieve in therapy.
In this phase, you’ll learn calming and grounding techniques to help manage any strong emotions that arise during the process.
In phase 3, you will focus on a specific memory and identify a few key elements related to the memory:
A vivid image that represents the memory
A negative belief you hold about yourself in relation to it (e.g. “I’m not safe” or “It was my fault”)
Any emotions or physical sensations that come up when you think about it
You will also choose a positive belief you'd like to adopt going forward, such as “I did the best I could” or “I’m safe now.”
While focusing on the memory, you’ll engage in bilateral stimulation (such as eye movements or tapping). This helps the brain process the memory and reduce its emotional intensity.
During this phase, your therapist will help you strengthen a positive belief related to the memory, supporting a more adaptive perspective.
You will be asked to notice how your body feels while thinking about the memory and the positive belief. This helps identify if any physical tension or discomfort remains, as the body can hold onto stress even after the memory feels less upsetting. If discomfort remains, further EMDR processing may be done to resolve it fully.
Each session ends with techniques to help you feel calm and grounded. You’ll also prepare to manage any feelings that arise between sessions.
In the following sessions, your therapist will review your progress, revisit targets if needed, and help you plan the next steps.
Now that we’ve explored how EMDR works, who it may benefit, and what a typical session could look like, you might be wondering how it compares to more traditional forms of therapy. While both EMDR and talk therapy aim to support emotional healing, they differ in how they approach distressing memories and the pathways they use to promote recovery. The following comparison highlights some of the key differences between the two.
Whether you're ready to start or just want to explore your options, we’re here to help. If there’s something in your past that still weighs on you, EMDR could be a powerful way to move forward. Feel free to get in touch with us to learn more or book a consultation.
It feels like the world has been split into “before” and “after”. Nothing is easy. Nothing makes sense.
When a loved one passes by suicide, the grief that follows is complex. It brings pain, confusion, and often a sense of unfinishedness, like pages were ripped out of a book you weren’t done reading.
You might be asking questions no one can answer. Or feeling emotions that seem to contradict each other: sadness, guilt, anger, even relief, and then guilt again for feeling relief. It’s common. And it doesn’t make you a bad person. Or a bad friend, partner, or sibling.
Grieving after suicide is different. Let’s talk about how to survive it, piece by piece.
You may notice your emotions shifting rapidly. Shock, regret, rage, deep sorrow, numbness. Grief after suicide rarely feels linear.
This is partly because suicide loss carries what we call disenfranchised grief, which is grief that isn’t always openly acknowledged. People don’t know what to say. They avoid the topic altogether. That silence can make you feel even more alone in your pain.
It helps to name what you’re feeling, even just to yourself.
“I’m furious and I miss them.”
“I feel guilty, even though I know it’s not my fault.”
These are complex truths, and they can coexist.
After suicide, the mind often goes into detective mode: Was there a clue I missed? Was there something I could have done?
This kind of thinking is natural. It’s a way our brain tries to regain control after something that feels senseless.
But suicide is almost never the result of a single moment, or a single failure. It’s often the culmination of prolonged internal distress that the person may have hidden well. Hindsight can make things look clearer than they ever were at the time.
Guilt and responsibility are heavy burdens to carry but they’re not the same as truth. Acknowledge the desire to believe that you could have done more. But remind yourself it is not realistic.
Grief has a way of isolating us. You may feel like no one could possibly understand, or that it’s easier to stay quiet. But staying connected, even in small ways, is protective.
Talk to someone who can sit with your pain without rushing to fix it. It may be a friend, a therapist, or someone in a support group who’s walked this road too.
If words are hard, you can start with presence. Sit beside someone. Share a cup of tea. Let yourself be around people who make space for you as you are.
When someone dies by suicide, there is often no goodbye, no closure. You might be left with unsaid words or unresolved hurt.
Creating your own rituals can help bridge that gap. You might write a letter, light a candle, revisit a shared place, or do something they once loved doing. These are ways of continuing bonds, something grief researchers have found can help the healing process.
Remembering the whole person, their humour, their kindness, their struggles, can help shift your focus from how they died to how they lived.
Grief doesn’t just affect your thoughts. It can show up physically. Fatigue, heaviness in your chest, disrupted sleep or appetite changes.
It’s okay to rest more. To eat simple meals. To let yourself do less.
Some people find movement helpful, like short walks, stretches, even just stepping outside for a few minutes. Others find comfort in breathing exercises or grounding techniques (like naming what you see, hear, and feel in the present).
Caring for your body while grieving isn’t about “fixing” anything. It’s about creating small moments of safety, or “normalcy”.
Sometimes, especially with traumatic or sudden loss, the pain can tip into despair. You might find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts you didn’t expect, or a numbness that feels frightening.
If this happens, please reach out. Call a helpline. Speak to a psychologist. Let someone know that it’s too much right now.
You don’t have to wait until you're “really struggling”. There’s no threshold of suffering you need to meet before you ask for support.
You may not believe this now, but the pain won’t always feel this raw. Over time, many people find that their relationship with the loss changes.
You may begin to remember with more warmth than pain. You may speak their name again. You may laugh without guilt. These are not signs you’ve “moved on”. They’re signs you’re learning to live alongside the loss.
Grief is not something to “get over”. It’s something you live with. And in that living, you can still find joy, meaning and connection.
If you’ve lost a loved one to suicide and are struggling to cope, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
You are surviving something deeply painful. And you deserve care through it. Let us know if you need a listening ear.
Music can be comforting, especially when they resonate with our pain and suffering. Countless singers and songwriters have written songs reminding us that we are not alone, even in the darkness.
We couldn’t possibly give you 10 songs about feeling alone or wanting to not be alive, and not give you another 10 songs with messages about fighting these feelings. From a variety of genres, we hope you enjoy our curated list!
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“Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of
the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”
- Nick Cave
“Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.” - Nick Cave
Feelings of helplessness is prevalent when it comes to trying to comfort someone in grief. From our psychologists, here are things to say (and not to) when someone you know is in grief.
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“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than walk alone in the light.”
- Helen Keller
When someone you care about is struggling with their mental health, the “right” words can feel hard to find. You may worry about saying the wrong thing, or feel pressure to fix what they’re going through. This guide shares 10 simple, supportive phrases you can use to show up with care, validate their experience, and offer steady encouragement, without judgement or forcing solutions.
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