Books, Articles, Reflections and Recovery-Focused Writing
This page shares my developing writing, reflections, articles, and future publications connected to counselling, addiction recovery, mental health, personal growth, and whole-person healing.
Alongside my therapeutic work, I am developing a series of books exploring addiction, recovery, counselling, parts work, attachment, relationships, spirituality, and the personal journey from pain towards meaning.
These books are still in progress, and I do not intend to publish them until the full series has been written and shaped with care. In the meantime, I will share articles and reflections on related themes, including why people seek counselling, addiction and recovery, shame, trauma, emotional distress, mental health, relationships, and deeper healing.
My writing draws from my own personal journey, my recovery, my training, and what I have witnessed through counselling, psychotherapy, and working alongside others as they find their way through difficult times.
The Light Within Series
The working title for this developing body of work is The Light Within Series. It reflects the belief that even when people feel lost, ashamed, overwhelmed, or disconnected, there is still something within them that can move towards healing, growth, and meaning.
The series combines personal reflection, professional insight, and accessible therapeutic ideas. It explores addiction not simply as something to stop, but as something often rooted in pain, stress, shame, unmet needs, nervous system dysregulation, attachment wounds, and protective parts of the self.
Book 1: The Personal Journey
Possible title:
The Light Within Me
From Childhood Stress and Addiction to Becoming a Psychotherapist
This first book is planned as a memoir. It will tell the human story behind my work, including childhood stress, farm life in Scotland, shyness, restlessness, travel, early drinking, addiction, mental health struggles, recovery, training, and becoming a therapist.
At its heart, this book is about finding meaning through healing and helping others.
Book 2: The Psychology of Addiction
Possible title:
Why We Escape
Understanding Addiction, Shame, and the Parts That Try to Protect Us
This book will explore addiction through a compassionate psychological lens. It will look at why people may turn to alcohol, drugs, sex, food, gambling, avoidance, or other patterns as a way of coping with emotional pain.
Themes may include shame, secrecy, childhood stress, nervous system dysregulation, trauma, attachment wounds, and IFS-informed ideas such as protective parts, firefighters, managers, and exiles.
The central message is that recovery is not about punishment or willpower alone. It is about understanding, compassion, reconnection, and learning new ways to relate to ourselves.
Book 3: Counselling Through the Lens of Parts
Possible title:
The Parts Within Us
A Gentle Introduction to IFS-Informed Therapy
This book will offer an accessible introduction to parts work and IFS-informed therapy. It will explore why people often feel conflicted inside, and how different parts may carry fear, anger, anxiety, avoidance, shame, addiction, or wounded child experiences.
It will also introduce Self energy, the 8 Cs of Self, inner critics, protective parts, and how we can relate to ourselves with more curiosity, compassion, and care.
Book 4: The Therapist’s Journey
Possible title:
Becoming the Therapist
Lessons from Recovery, Counselling, and the Human Heart
This reflective book will explore the journey of becoming a therapist, especially through lived experience, recovery, humility, and ongoing self-awareness.
It may be relevant for trainee counsellors, new therapists, people considering therapy training, those in recovery who want to help others, and therapists interested in the wounded healer archetype.
Themes may include boundaries, supervision, countertransference, relational depth, compassion, and the difference between helping and rescuing.
Book 5: Addiction, Attachment and Relationships
Possible title:
The Relationships We Repeat
Attachment, Addiction, and the Search for Love
This book will explore the connection between addiction, attachment, intimacy, shame, and relationship patterns.
It will look at anxious, avoidant, and disorganised attachment styles, fear of abandonment, fear of engulfment, emotional regulation, rupture, repair, and the longing for healthier love.
Many people seek counselling because they find themselves repeating painful relationship patterns. This book will explore how recovery can also involve learning to relate differently — to ourselves and to others.
Book 6: Healing Practices
Possible title:
Small Practices for Deep Healing
IFS, EMDR, Mindfulness, Hypnotherapy and Nervous System Tools
This practical book is planned as a reflective workbook-style resource. It will include gentle tools and exercises for emotional regulation, self-awareness, grounding, parts work, inner child healing, self-compassion, and recovery.
Practices may include grounding exercises, parts check-ins, journaling prompts, safe place imagery, EMDR preparation tools, hypnotherapy-style visualisations, nervous system regulation, and recovery reflections.
Book 7: The Light Within Workbook
Seven Pathways for Recovery, Reflection, and Self-Leadership
This practical workbook brings together the key themes of the series into guided reflections, exercises, and healing practices. It explores seven pathways — body, mind, emotions, parts, relationships, meaning, and self-leadership — offering gentle tools for recovery, personal growth, and deeper self-understanding.
Articles and Reflections
While the book series is being developed, this page will also include shorter articles and reflections on themes such as addiction and emotional pain, shame and secrecy, mental health, anxiety, trauma-informed recovery, parts work, relationships, attachment, mind-body wellbeing, spirituality, meaning, and the role of compassion in change.
These articles will be written for people seeking support, those interested in recovery, and anyone curious about counselling, psychotherapy, addiction, emotional healing, and personal transformation.
A Personal and Professional Journey
The writing shared here is both personal and professional.
It is shaped by my own journey, my recovery, my training, my work as a counsellor and psychotherapist, and what I have witnessed in others who have faced pain, addiction, shame, trauma, anxiety, loss, and emotional struggle.
Again and again, I have seen that people are more than their symptoms, more than their past, and more than the coping strategies they once needed to survive.
Healing is possible.
Recovery is possible.
A meaningful life is possible.