Ciara Kilduff is a counsellor and psychotherapist, who has been seeing clients in Blanchardstown, Dublin 15 and in South Dublin. In recent times through her work, Ciara has become aware during times of recession that there has been an increasing number of people struggling with a range of issues including depression, anxiety, stress, financial difficulty, family issues among other things. Ciara has spoken on stress especially on the run into Christmas where money issues, increased expenditure higher bills and family issues increase stress levels during the holiday season. Which in turn results in people not having the happy carefree break over the Christmas Season that is often portrayed. A small bit of stress for all of us is manageable and not a big deal, often being a motivator. Over a longer period stress could cause problems to your physical symptoms stomach ache, headaches, fatigue, muscle pain. The Psychological effects that stress has on us we tend to forget or don't acknowledge but could affect are day to day coping ability, confidence, our ability to make decisions. We possible become irritability, angry, sad or depressed. Which lead to us often overeating or under eating, outbursts, and maybe increaased drug or alcohal use or social withdrawal. There are ways to manage stress, like sleeping well, exercising or talking to someone you trust.

How many of us are feeling disappointed at our appearance coming into summer time? How many of us had great intentions to get fit and lose weight before the summer?  How much of the language we use each day  with ourselves contribute to us not achieving our potiental? and how do we move forward from here.

Many people start to feel a bit down as summer approaches especially when the sun starts to come out has it has in recent times and reminds us that summer and the holidays are on there way because we feel that we aren’t the size we want it to be.