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Have you ever felt like an entire day disappeared just waiting for an appointment? Or said yes to an enthusiastic “We must meet for coffee!”—because that’s just what people do—only to spend the next few days (or weeks) dreading it? And heaven help you if the invitation is for months in the future!

While we all experience anxiety at times, many autistic people, myself included, rely on structure and predictability to feel secure. This need for certainty isn’t just a preference—it’s often essential for well-being, and when it’s missing, many autistic people can feel drained of energy, which makes it difficult to focus, relax, or be present in the moment.

Within relationships, it can be hard for a friend or partner to understand why something as seemingly simple as a coffee date feels overwhelming. Likewise, an autistic person may struggle to explain why the uncertainty is so consuming. Cue the frustration of mutual misunderstanding.

So how can you support yourself—or a loved one—when uncertainty feels unbearable?

1. Where possible, reduce the uncertainty

While you can’t eliminate all uncertainty, reducing unnecessary unknowns can make a huge difference.

• Gather details in advance. If an event or appointment is causing stress, ask for specifics—where it will be, how long it will last, is there a dress code, and generally, what to expect.

• Clarify expectations. If a friend suggests meeting up, ask for details early instead of leaving it open-ended. Or, if you prefer, organise the meet-up, and share the details with your friend.

• Create a ‘go-to’ plan. If last-minute changes happen, having a backup plan (such as a familiar café or a shorter meeting time) can provide a sense of control.

2. Use ‘Previewing’ to Ease Anxiety

Previewing—mentally or visually rehearsing an event—can help when preparing for the unknown.

• Research locations online to familiarise yourself with the journey and environment before going.

• Use scripts or templates for common situations, like declining an invitation or requesting accommodations.

Visualise the experience. Walking through an events in your mind can help it feel more predictable.

3. Plan for Recovery Time

• Leave space before and after stressful events. If an appointment or social event takes a lot of mental energy, schedule downtime before and after.

• Use sensory regulation strategies. Weighted blankets, fidget tools, deep pressure, or movement can help with post-event decompression.

• Have a post-event routine. Something predictable, like a favourite meal or quiet activity, can provide a sense of grounding after facing uncertainty.

4. Balance Predictability with Manageable Flexibility

Rigid routines can provide comfort but can also make change feel even more overwhelming. Gradually introducing flexibility in a controlled way can help to build tolerance.

• Start with low-stakes changes. Try something small, like switching up a familiar routine just slightly (e.g., ordering a new side dish alongside your meal at a known restaurant).

• Pair uncertainty with a comfort item. If a new experience is stressful, bring a familiar object, playlist, or person, to help you to stay grounded.

• Use a ‘predictability buffer.’ Instead of forcing spontaneity, set up structured flexibility. For instance, advanced planning for several activities that could be undertaken ‘spontaneously’, thus allowing yourself to retain an element of control.

5. Communicate Needs Clearly

If uncertainty is impacting your relationships, open communication can help to bridge the gap between different ways of processing the world.

Let loved ones know what helps. For instance, “Last-minute plans make me anxious, but I’d love to plan something a week in advance,” gives others a way to support you.

• Explain that uncertainty, not the person, is the challenge. Instead of “I don’t want to go,” try “I find uncertain plans stressful, but I appreciate the invite.”

• Work together to find middle ground. If a partner or friend needs spontaneity, set up a ‘safe’ way to incorporate it, like pre-planning flexible days where changes feel more manageable.

Final Thoughts

Uncertainty is a part of life, but for many autistic people, it can feel all-consuming. Small, intentional changes can help make it more manageable, without forcing yourself (or a loved one) into overwhelm. By reducing unnecessary unknowns, planning for recovery, and introducing flexibility at a comfortable pace, you can create a life with both stability and room for growth.

If uncertainty affects your daily life or relationships, know that you’re not alone. Small adjustments can make a big difference. Try implementing one strategy today, or share this with someone who might benefit. Need further support? Consider speaking with a therapist who understands neurodivergent experiences.

Authored by Karen Morris, Relationship Specialist

“Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage,” says the old song. Yet, just as a horse and carriage need a bridle to move in harmony, love and marriage require something just as vital: conscious commitment. This often-overlooked connection is what transforms fleeting emotions into a lasting, meaningful bond.

The Honeymoon Phase: A Beautiful Beginning

Every relationship starts with a spark—the honeymoon phase. This early stage feels effortless and magical, marked by a symbiotic, reactive dynamic where both partners idolize each other. But during this time, we often view our partner through a rose-tinted lens, focusing only on their most lovable traits.

While these feelings are wonderful, they are not sustainable. Why? Because relationships cannot thrive on partial truths. You and your partner are so much more than your adorable quirks; you are fully complex individuals with strengths, vulnerabilities, and room to grow.

Conscious Commitment: The Key to Long-Term Love

What keeps love and marriage thriving after the honeymoon fades? The answer, in my opinion, is conscious commitment; the deliberate choice to see and accept your partner for who they truly are – flaws, challenges, and all.

Conscious commitment is not about avoiding conflict or pretending everything is perfect. Instead, it creates a safe, supportive space where you can navigate challenges, make meaningful changes, and request them from each other in ways that honour your bond.

This is where Imago Therapy can help. By fostering conscious growth, it equips couples with tools to communicate effectively, deepen their connection, and create a partnership rooted in mutual respect and understanding.

Forgiveness: The Missing Piece

Love has inspired countless songs – stories of passion, heartbreak, and longing. But where are the songs about forgiveness? Outside of church hymns, it is rare to hear forgiveness celebrated, even though it is a cornerstone of lasting relationships.

Declaring love is easy, but forgiveness? That is hard. How many times have we pledged unconditional love, only to find it tested – whether through minor irritations or painful betrayals? Forgiveness does not come naturally, for many of us, it is a choice we make, time and again.

Forgiveness vs. Harm: Setting Boundaries

Forgiveness is not about excusing toxic or abusive behaviour.
It is important to recognize that we can inflict deep wounds unintentionally. For instance, by frequently criticizing, shaming, or blaming, our partner, we could undermine their sense of safety, whilst missing our own need for growth, and their need for an apology.
True forgiveness is only possible in a relationship where both partners commit to growth and mutual care. Forgiveness is not about erasing the past but rather choosing a future where healing and connection are possible. It requires grace, compassion, and a willingness to move forward together.

Love, Growth, and Endurance

Love and marriage may begin with romance, but they endure through intentional choices. By embracing conscious commitment, offering forgiveness, and seeking personal and relational growth, couples can build a bond that lasts a lifetime.

If you are ready to move from reactivity to intentionality in your relationship, Imago Therapy offers a pathway to a deeper connection. It is not about perfection, it is about learning, growing, and choosing to love every day.

Ready to Strengthen Your Relationship?

Whether you are navigating challenges or seeking to deepen your connection, conscious commitment can transform your relationship. If you would like to explore how Imago Therapy can support your journey toward lasting love and intentional growth, get in touch.

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Over the years, I have noticed that couples who struggle in couples therapy have similar unhelpful beliefs in common. I hope that this post will help you to identify, and address, beliefs that might undermine your therapy, thus increasing the likelihood that you both get the outcomes that you want.

Myth no. 1  Showing up to sessions will be enough for my relationship to change.

My observations:

The work that you do in a session, will show up between sessions, in your conscious decisions to change, as individuals and as a couple. For instance, you may choose to replace reactivity and arguments with curiosity and calm discussions.

Top tip no. 1

To get the most out of couples therapy, be prepared to reflect and do the work between sessions; this may require you to stretch beyond your comfort zone.

Myth no. 2  Couples therapy is about offloading my negative thoughts and feelings about my partner.

My observations:

It is tempting to believe this, especially if you are now at breaking point.  However, Imago Therapy emphasises safe communication.  This means avoiding communication that is deliberately hurtful to your partner, and typically, I will invite you to avoid blame, shame or criticism.

The session will be a place where you and your partner can share what is true for each of you.

You will each be responsible for what you say, and how you say it, but you will NOT be responsible for the way that your words are received.

Top tip no. 2 

Go into therapy with a willingness to learn how to hear your partner, communicate so that you can be heard, and validate each other’s experiences.

Myth no. 3  Couples counselling is for times of crisis.

My observations:

Yes and no!

Again, this belief is understandable, especially as psychotherapy is generally viewed as a form of crisis intervention.

Whilst it is often sought during times of crises, such as an affair, couples counselling is suitable for times of relative calm, for instance, if you want to deepen your understanding of issues that you may have worked on in the past.

Whatever stage you are at in your relationship, Imago Therapy will help you to uncover and address the impact of your childhood experiences on your beliefs about relationships, whilst crafting a shared vision of your future.  For some couples, this future will be a shared one, for others, couples counselling will support them through the process of an amicable break-up.

Top tip no. 3

Couples counselling seems to be more successful if a couple still likes or loves each other, or is genuinely open to rediscovering their love.

I specialise in working with couples who want to build a conscious, loving relationship, if you would like to discuss how I can help you, feel free to get in touch.

Authored by Karen Morris, Relationship Specialist

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

Relationships aren’t always easy.  Even couples who love each other deeply, can struggle with misunderstandings, drift apart, or struggle with unhelpful patterns.  If you want to improve your communication skills, heal past wounds, and deepen your understanding of each other, Imago Relationship Therapy could help.

What is Imago Relationship Therapy? 
Imago Therapy is a form of couples therapy that was created by Dr Harville Hendrix and his wife, Dr Helen Hunt.  The process helps partners to explore and resolve the influence of past experiences on them, and how they are showing up in the relationship.

Key Benefits of Imago Therapy:

• Increased sense of security
• Developing empathy and compassion for each other
• Supports healing from unresolved issues
• Strengthening connection, trust, and communication

How Imago Therapy Can Help Your Relationship  
This approach can help you and your partner to address and move past conflicts, whilst building a safe and supportive relationship.

• Reconnect and Feel Heard Imago Dialoguing process encourages couples to commit to honest, thoughtful communication, and to active listening.  This process leads to the validating experience of feeling seen, heard, and understood.

• Resolving Past Wounds: One of the beliefs of Imago Therapy is that we unconsciously choose our partners to help us to address unfinished issues from our childhood.  Imago Therapy provides a safe space for the both of you to explore unresolved issues, and heal old wounds, and this builds trust and emotional closeness.

• Breaking Negative Patterns: Whether you’re facing communication challenges, or trust issues, Imago Therapy equips you with the tools and insights needed to transform recurring negative interactions into loving and supportive interactions.

• Build Lasting Skill If you and your partner are committed to learning and applying the principles of Imago Therapy, you will develop communication skills that can last a life time; enabling you both to get the love that you want.

Is Imago Therapy Right For You?

Consider Imago Therapy if:

• You both want to improve your communication and mutual understanding
• The same issues keep coming up and you feel stuck
• You are both ready to work on your relationship, together

Take The Next Step

If you are ready for deeper connection and greater fulfilment in your relationship, contact me today.

Photo by Justin Follis on Unsplash

As adults we, mainly, see ourselves as being in control of our lives and our destinies right? But have you ever found yourself – sounding, behaving or thinking just like your mother or some other person from your past? Could it be that we are not entirely as ‘free’ as we think? For some people, these similarities are helpful, but for others it can be a source of difficulties both internally with ‘self talk’ and in relationships with others.

I am interested in the transmission of messages and ways of being across families, and Transactional Analysis enables us to explore these in therapy. Children are believed to form an unconscious life plan, or ‘script’, based on their experiences. When it is formed, the plan has a protective function. Later it may not be so useful, and an individual can feel trapped in unproductive patterns of thinking, feeling or behaving. For instance, a child’s nightly rituals might have kept the monsters at bay, however, as an adult, those same rituals might feel like compulsions, more limiting than protective.

After a recent therapy marathon – yes, a whole day of therapy, I felt energized and ready to break away from unhelpful aspects of my script. Ready to become an increasingly autonomous woman, individual and yet a part of the whole that is family, society, life.

How about you? Are there aspects of your script that are holding you back? Perhaps the limitations are leading you to feel depressed or maybe excessively anxious? Whatever it is, if you feel ready to live mindfully and on purpose, the life that you design for yourself, and you need a hand, do get in touch.

Have you ever had a snack because you felt bored or depressed, but not particularly hungry? I can relate. However, in Transactional Analysis, we also acknowledge psychological hungers, so take heart, your hunger was real it perhaps didn’t need a yummy snack to hit the spot! The aspects of Psychological Hungers are:

Contact – The need for physical and social contact with others.

Recognition – Being acknowledged by others and feeling that we matter in the world.

Incident – The feeling that life still holds the possibility of pleasant surprises without which, we may feel hopeless and depressed.

Structure – Over the course of a day, a year or a lifetime, we need our time to have
structure and direction.

Stimulus – Not only do we need new things to happen (incidents), we also need them to be interesting and stimulating to our senses.

Sexual – We need to experience passion in our lives! Specifically this can be met through sex, but more generally the source of passion could be anything from art to Zumba…

In other words, as social beings, we need varying levels of intimacy with others. We also need a variety of positive, stimulating things to happen in our lives but with a healthy dose of predictability too. Psychological hunger pangs can also be felt, however, their nature and origins may not always be obvious and we may attempt to satisfy ourselves with ‘junk food’, i.e shopping, or binge tv.

If you feel that a therapeutic relationship could help you to work things out, feel free to get in touch.

Imago Relationship Therapy is a form of couples counselling and is sometimes called marriage guidance.

An Imago Therapist aims to help you and your partner to be the safest version of yourselves, in the sessions and outside.  From a place of safety, it is much easier to reconnect; developing intimacy and love, whilst also addressing difficult issues.

We build safety by committing to the development of a ZERO-NEGATIVE environment. This does not mean that you agree to be silenced; the process requires honesty.  It does mean, that you agree not to blame, shame, or criticize each other and that neither of you uses material from the sessions, against each other.

The main vehicle of Imago Relationship Therapy is the Dialogue Process. Dialoguing can feel difficult at first. Often listening can mean waiting for a pause to give our response, but dialoguing means listening to show your partner that you have heard them. When you speak during dialoguing, you share what is important to you in a way that your partner can hear, safely, and in brief sentences.

Often couples arrive, ready to tell me their point of view, which fits the traditional model of relationship therapy. However, Imago Relationship Therapy is all about you and your partner understanding each other’s perspective, and I will get you dialoguing from day one.

If your marriage needs some help, there is hope, get in touch.

In Imago Relationship Therapy, exits are ways in which we avoid closeness with our partner; affairs are one of many activities that can be described as an exit.

When communication feels difficult or impossible, we may act out our dissatisfactions within our relationships, through exits, instead of discussing them. Whilst an affair or divorce are obvious exits, there are many less obvious ones such as:

Binging on TV

Working long hours – by choice

Non-negotiable trips to the gym

Parenting

Silence

On the surface, these activities seems harmless; we all need to unwind, and necessary; we all need an income, and children need their parents. Imago Therapy helps you to identify your intentions. When engaging in activities that seem to take you away from your relationship, what is really happening? Are you trying to find the pleasure that is missing from your marriage? Could the activity be a welcome distraction from difficulties at home?

Ultimately, exits undermine our relationships by eroding the intimacy between ourselves and our partner. Part of the work of the Imago therapist, is to help you to identify and close your exits and re-commit to building a safe, intimate connection.

Perhaps the ways in which you and your partner have avoided closeness, have left you feeling wounded, or guilty – there is hope.

If you are ready to rebuild your love relationship, and you want some help, get in touch.