Stop 'should-ing' all over yourself!

​This famous phrase comes courtesy of Albert Ellis, a founder of cognitive approaches to therapy. Ask any counsellor, and there’s a good chance that they’ll say that the most common theme in counselling is how hard we can be on ourselves – driven by an ever-present nagging expectation that ‘we should know/do better’. Far too often we fall into the trap of equating disappointment with failure. Often the problem isn’t what we are or are not doing, but the gap between what we’re doing and what we expect of ourselves.