Steve, one of my counselling tutors had a saying that has stuck with me; "who wrote the shoulds?".

The truth is we all write our own shoulds and shouldn'ts. We all learn that it's not ok to do this, and we ought to be doing that. Usually these instructions come from our parents – "children should be seen and not heard", "you shouldn't be so upset about that", "you should finish all the food on your plate, think of all those starving children!" or from teachers "behave, be quiet, stand to attention" etc...

Of course the blame game doesn't usually work as our parents were usually doing their best and using what they were taught.

Shoulds are all around us, they come, I believe, in three categories. Firstly, there is the law that should be obeyed, although many have campaigned against unjust laws (slavery, women's votes and the poll tax come to mind.) Then there are our moral laws, sometimes with a religious element. However, these are flexible and open to debate (the current debate over homosexuality in the Anglican Church) and change over time.

Then we come to the shoulds that we impose upon ourselves and those around us. Often they are used as a moral stick to hit ourselves with, a way to be unkind to ourselves and prove that we are 'bad' (which satisfies what we have been told at sometime in our lives and unfortunately we believe at a deep level.)

Using counselling you can review your 'shoulds' and see which ones are useful to you and help you live a happy contented life, and which ones riddle you with inappropriate guilt and lead to sleepless nights. This type of should usually create a high level of expectation on yourself and is then projected onto others, so you are constantly left feeling let down, anxious and stressed.

If you would like to know more about 'shoulds' and how counselling and therapy in general can work and you live in Stockport, Cheshire or Greater Manchester please call us at Calm Minds in Bramhall – 0161 439 7773.