RED DOOR Counselling: Group Counselling for women going through divorce in Hong Kong.
RED DOOR has been running The Iron Fairies – an English-language therapeutic support group for women going through divorce – for the past 9 years. The group meets in person twice a month at our office in Central.
Whether you are leaving a difficult marriage or have simply agreed to part ways, the impact on your mental and physical wellbeing can be overwhelming at times. This should not be underestimated or ignored. Going through a relationship breakdown, separation, or divorce can be one of the most emotionally challenging periods of your life.
We understand that this can be an extremely isolating time, and you may need to talk openly about the fragile circumstances you are facing. Support groups provide a safe and confidential space to express your feelings without judgement. Attending these groups can help alleviate feelings of isolation and loneliness associated with divorce.
The group is lead by an experienced counsellor who works as a marriage counsellor, individual counsellor, family therapist, divorce coach, and parental coordinator.
Cost – HKD 300 per session you attend. Please bring cash when you come
Frequency – Iron Fairies runs 2 x a month, usually on one Monday night and one Fridya night. The latest schedule is at the end of this page.
Time – THe group runs 6:30-8pm
Location: RED DOOR Counselling , Unit 301, 3rd Floor, SunWise Building, 112-114 Wellington Street, Central
Added value: , The Iron Fairies has a WhatsApp group for women who have attended a session in person. You can only join the WhatsApp group after meeting Angela in person or attending a session.
Please note: You must have made the decision to divorce before joining The Iron Fairies.
Upcoming sessions
Session dates and outlines
Monday 13 October 2025 – Grief created by divorce – structured group
Friday 24 October 2025 – structured group topic – representing yourself in court
Monday 10 November 2025 – unstructured group – general catch up
Friday 27 November 2025 – structured group – setting goals for today and beyond
Monday 8 December 2025 – unstructured group – potential Christmas celebration
Divorce can be a challenging and emotional process for everyone involved—especially for children. One of the often overlooked but deeply damaging issues that can arise during and after divorce is parental alienation. Understanding what it is, why it’s harmful, and what you can do about it is crucial for protecting your child’s well-being and maintaining healthy relationships.
What is Parental Alienation?
Parental alienation occurs when one parent, whether intentionally or unintentionally, influences a child to reject or distance themselves from the other parent. This can happen through harmful behaviours such as bad-mouthing the other parent, restricting contact, or fuelling negative feelings towards them. This creates a conflict of loyalty that the child must unfairly navigate.
It may manifest as the child refusing to spend time with the targeted parent, rejecting their messages or gifts, or expressing unfounded suspicions or hatred. It is developmentally important that a child has the opportunity to build a relationship with both parents.
While some disagreements during divorce are normal, parental alienation involves manipulative tactics that distort the child’s perception of the other parent, often to the benefit of the alienating parent.
Why Is Parental Alienation Harmful?
The effects of parental alienation are profoundly damaging—for both the child and the targeted parent:
Emotional Trauma: Children subjected to parental alienation may experience confusion, guilt, depression, or anxiety. They often feel torn between their parents and may suffer identity issues.
Damaged Parent-Child Relationship: The targeted parent’s relationship with the child can deteriorate, leading to feelings of loss, rejection, and helplessness.
Long-term Effects: Parental alienation can impact a child’s ability to form healthy relationships in the future, fostering distrust or difficulties in trusting others. Children coerced into manipulation through triangulation may also face issues with co-dependency in their own romantic relationships.
Academic Impact: The emotional challenges at home can lead to social withdrawal at school and impair the child’s academic performance.
Additionally, parental alienation can escalate conflict, prolong legal battles, and create a toxic environment detrimental to the child’s development. It costs parents financially and harms the child’s mental health.
What Can You Do About Parental Alienation?
If you suspect or know that parental alienation is happening, here are some steps you can take:
Recognise the Signs Be alert to behaviours such as your child refusing contact without valid reasons, parroting negative comments about you, or being manipulated into rejecting you. Keep track of any changes in your child’s attitude or behaviour.
Maintain Communication with Your Child Keep open, honest, and age-appropriate conversations. Reassure your child of your love and support, and encourage them to share their feelings freely. Even if they refuse to see you, keep the door open with cards or small gestures.
Seek Professional Help A family therapist or mental health professional experienced in parental alienation can work with your child and help you address the situation. Requesting family therapy as part of the divorce process may benefit everyone. Collaborating with your ex-partner — with the child’s best interests at heart — is often helpful.
Refrain from Bad-Mouthing the Other Parent Avoid speaking negatively about the other parent in front of your child. Instead, promote a positive relationship and emphasise that they are loved by both parents. Be particularly sensitive if you inadvertently ask your child to pick sides—that’s unfair. Your child is entitled to both a mum and a dad, and they should not feel forced to choose one to feel secure.
Document Incidents Keep records of any concerning behaviours, communications, or instances of alienation. This documentation can be useful if legal intervention becomes necessary.
Consult Legal Professionals If parental alienation affects custody arrangements or the child’s safety, consult a solicitor specialising in family law. Courts can sometimes order counselling, supervised visitation, or other measures to protect the child’s best interests.
Prioritise the Child’s Well-Being Above all, focus on your child’s emotional health. Create an environment of love, stability, and open communication wherever possible. Remember, in divorce, strive to be the best parent you can be.
I often advise parents to imagine their child, in the future, telling their partner about the story of their childhood. Consider how they might say, “The thing I most admired about my mum is ________,” or “Even when things got tough, I respect that my dad did ________.” How would you feel if your child believed you turned them against their other parent just to protect your feelings?
Final Thoughts
Parental alienation is a serious issue that can have lasting effects on a child’s mental health and family relationships. Recognizing the signs and taking proactive steps can help preserve the bond between children and their targeted parent. Remember, seeking help from professionals and keeping the child’s best interests at heart are key to overcoming these challenges.
If you’re facing parental alienation, know that support is available. You don’t have to navigate this difficult situation alone—reach out to legal and mental health professionals to help you and your child through this process.
Divorce is often an emotionally challenging process. For some, it can become even more complicated when financial abuse is involved. Financial abuse is a form of control and manipulation that can leave victims drained, confused, and vulnerable—making the divorce process even more difficult. It may have existed throughout the marriage or only surfaced during separation. Unfortunately, many women in Hong Kong struggle to fund their divorce due to financially abusive behaviors by their ex-partners. Knowing what steps to take is essential.
What Is Financial Abuse?
Financial abuse occurs when one partner uses money or financial resources to exert power and control over the other. During divorce, these tactics can escalate, hindering the victim’s ability to achieve financial independence or protect their assets.
Common tactics of financial abuse include:
Withholding money or access to funds to prevent one party from leaving or maintaining control
Controlling all financial decisions, even after separation
Stealing, hiding, or manipulating assets
Refusing to pay shared debts or expenses
Sabotaging credit scores or financial opportunities to limit future borrowing or employment options
Using money demands as leverage in family matters—e.g., withholding access to children unless paid for holidays or other demands
Recognizing the Signs of Financial Abuse During Separation or Divorce
Be alert for these warning signs:
Sudden changes in access to bank accounts or funds
Neglect or refusal to pay shared bills
Lack of awareness about joint financial details
Manipulation or withholding of financial information
Feeling intimidated or threatened regarding money matters
Demands for financial arrangements tied to child care or visitation
Awareness of these signs is the first step toward taking action and protecting yourself.
How to Protect Yourself During Divorce — 10 Essential Considerations
If you suspect or know you are experiencing financial abuse, consider these steps to safeguard your financial well-being:
1. Gather Financial Documentation Start collecting all relevant records—bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, property deeds, loan documents—as early as possible. Store copies securely, in a safe physical location or encrypted digital storage inaccessible to your partner.
2. Open Personal Financial Accounts If you share accounts, consider opening your own bank and credit accounts. This helps establish your own financial independence.
3. Seek Legal Advice Consult with a lawyer experienced in divorce and financial abuse cases. A knowledgeable lawyer can guide you on protecting assets, understanding your legal rights, and pursuing remedies if abuse occurs.
4. Develop a Safety Plan If you feel threatened or unsafe, create a safety plan that includes emergency contacts, a safe place to stay, and steps to take if your situation escalates. Never hesitate to prioritize your safety and that of your children.
5. Document Everything Keep detailed records of agreements and communications with your ex-partner. Save emails, texts, or messages threatening your finances or demanding inappropriate arrangements. Share these with your lawyer, especially if protective orders are necessary.
6. Secure Your Financial Future Work with legal counsel to ensure a fair division of assets and debts. Engage a financial advisor to understand your financial standing and plan ahead. Consider consulting a career coach or counselor about building a side income or expanding your vocational skills to foster long-term independence.
7. Limit Shared Access Change passwords and restrict access to shared accounts. Avoid sharing sensitive financial information unless absolutely necessary, especially during legal proceedings.
8. Consider Protective Orders In cases of coercion or control, requesting a protective order can provide legal safeguards. While lawyer fees may seem high, they often offer the best approach to balancing your needs and securing your rights.
9. Focus on Your Future Despite the difficulties, actively work toward a new, secure future for yourself and your family. Support from legal professionals, support organizations, and mental health counselors can make this journey more manageable.
10. Seek Support Divorce is tough, and facing it alone makes it harder. Reach out to friends, family, or support groups. In Hong Kong, RED DOOR’s Iron Fairies offers therapeutic support specifically for women going through divorce, helping them find healing and empowerment. For more about Iron Fairies, check out the related blog links below.
About the author: Angela Watkins is a counsellor and psychologist working out of RED DOOR Counselling Hong Kong. Angela runs the Iron Fairies, Hong Kong’s therapeutic support group for women going through divorce.
Having a pet is a wonderful experience. They become beloved members of our families and bring joy and companionship into our lives. Unfortunately, like all living beings, pets will someday pass away. Sometimes, we need to end their suffering; at other times, they simply grow old. Loss can be especially painful if your pet dies suddenly in an accident.
The death of any pet—regardless of how it occurs—is deeply painful. It’s important to acknowledge your loss, out of respect for both yourself and your beloved companion.
Here are six recommendations to help you heal from the pain you experience when a pet dies:
1. Recognize and Respect Your Feelings
The loss of a cherished animal companion is significant. Allow yourself to feel sad. Cry if you need to. Don’t rush through your grief. Be wary of well-meaning but dismissive comments like, “Get over it— it was just a dog/cat.” Remember, your pet was a loved family member. Grief often comes in waves—initially intense and overwhelming, gradually softening over time. Years later, unexpected waves of sadness may still wash over you.
2. Talk About It
Don’t keep your feelings bottled up or feel guilty about sharing your sorrow. Friends and family can provide invaluable support during this time. Even if you don’t fully understand someone’s grief, showing empathy is meaningful. If a friend has lost a pet, offer your support and listen compassionately.
3. Memorialize Your Pet
Create a small memorial to honor your pet. Share photos, stories, and memories. This act of remembrance helps maintain a connection with your beloved animal, especially during the painful days following their passing. You might also write a letter expressing gratitude and love, which can be especially helpful for children. Writing provides a creative outlet for sadness and reinforces that your pet’s memory continues to live on. For children, drawing pictures of their pet or even receiving a letter from their pet can be comforting. I remember when my young child struggled with the sudden loss of our dog, Milo—I even wrote a humorous “letter from Milo” about his adventures in heaven, which brought smiles and comfort.
4. Practice Rituals
Engage in rituals to honor your pet. In Chinese tradition, during the Hungry Ghost Festival, people burn paper models of comforts like clothes, cars, or gadgets to support their loved ones in the afterlife. You can adapt this idea for your pet—drawing or creating paper representations of their favorite toys or foods. For example, I once sent Milo a paper steak to avoid the diet he jokingly “needed” in heaven. These rituals create a sense of ongoing connection and help process grief.
5. Allow Space for Your Grief
Avoid rushing to replace your pet with another right away. Doing so can confuse children and suggest that grief is something to be avoided or that feelings should be suppressed. Instead, when you’re ready, discuss with your family about welcoming another pet—this thoughtful approach ensures everyone is prepared to form a new bond without dismissing the depth of their feelings.
6. Nurture Yourself and Your Family
Losing a pet is often devastating. Be gentle with yourself and your loved ones during this difficult time. Remember, you have lost a dear friend and part of your family. Respect your emotions and honor the love and companionship your pet shared with you.
Angela Watkins is a psychologist and counsellor at RED DOOR Counselling in Hong Kong. Her current clinical work focuses on parenting, family life, parenting SEN children, anxiety, OCD, addiction recovery, career change, stress management and divorce.
Does your mental health and emotional health contribute to living a long happy life?
Most of us know some of the elements that contribute to our physical health and potential longevity such as maintaining healthy weight, managing your cholesterol, regular exercise, and preventative checking for cancers.
Emotional health and physical health are closely intertwined in ways that mainstream medicine is starting to recognise. Part of being healthy will require good emotional mental health.
Making positive choices can contribute to greater longevity, and more enjoyment in life. Conversely, some choices, and conditions unfortunately can take time away, and make time harder for us.
In this article we look at those conditions and behaviours that can give us more time, and also take time from us. We don’t control exactly how much time we have on earth, but we can have some power on our time we have, and how enjoyable that time is.
Losing time – conditions that compromise our ability to live long, fruitful lives.
Our emotional health, and threats to our emotional health, can compromise our longevity. Whilst a psychiatric condition such as stress, depression, anxiety, may have developed because of your circumstances, they are not your fault. However dealing with those conditions becomes your responsibility.
Psychiatric disorders
Serious mental illnesses such as psychosis, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia can leave individuals more prone to suicide, and also more likely to being placed in situations where their physical safety may be compromised. Whilst these conditions are usually quite rare, compared to depression and anxiety, illnesses such a bipolar or schizophrenia disorder appear in about 0.5 of most countries populations [3]. In Hong Kong, documentation of these disorders is not current, but reports as recent as 2017, detail that requests for psychiatric services continues to grow from 187,000 requests in 2011-2012 to 220,000 cases in 2015-2016 [2]. And these numbers predate the COVID pandemic. The COVID pandemic may have exacerbated negative mental health situations for many people in Hong Kong,
The presence of a serious psychiatric disorder adds to the individual, and their family’s’ experience of stress and depression. Additionally, it is difficult to medically treat these conditions so people who are hospitalised may possibly be over medicated, and many of these medications can cause harm to the individual (whilst they are also calming them). Balancing the benefit/cost of psychiatric medications is a complicated situation.
Depression
We use the term “depression” so flippantly we often forget that being depressed for some people is a long term, severe illness which robs them of all enjoyment, and sometimes leads individuals to thoughts of death. Depression affects about 3% of the population of Hong Kong [2].
Unfortunately, around 1000 people choose to take their lives in Hong Kong every year (1) . All of these deaths are tragedies. Its worth noting that, on average, 20% of the suicides in Hong Kong are people over the age of 65 years of age, and about 13% are individuals under 24 years of age. We need to take depression in individuals seriously and provide comprehensive treatment, especially for these more vulnerable populations.
Depression can lead to a fast death, but it can also contribute to a slow death. For individuals with persistent and severe depression some of the aspects of their depressive experience will affect their physical health to the extent that this can influence their physical health and possibly length of life, even in the absence of suicidal ideation or tendencies.
Such behaviours include lethargy, especially long periods, in bed, poor eating habits (both too much and too little) and the impact of poor self-care and hygiene. These are common elements of depression and maintain depression, and have negative impact on blood pressure, metabolism, movement and overall physical health.
People who are persistently depressed need help. The condition of depression is corrosive and controlling over the thought patterns of those trapped in this situation. Some depressed people seem think that they will wake up one day and be motivated to feel better. They are simply waiting for motivation to “kick in”. This is not what happens. Recovery from depression takes work under expert guidance.
Treatment of depression can involve medication, talk therapy, and behavioural interventions. If you have been feeling any of the following symptoms for more than a few weeks, I urge you to contact a counsellor or GP to discuss treatment options.
Symptoms of depression:
Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” feeling mood
Irritability
Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
Excessive fatigue
Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
Difficulty sleeping, early morning awakening, or oversleeping
Changes in appetite or weight
Perpetual feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
Difficulty focusing, remembering, and inability to make decisions
Somatic aches or pains, – headaches, cramps, or digestive problems without a clear physical cause
Feeling physically heavy and moving more slowly
Thoughts of death or suicide, or even just wishing to not be alive anymore.
Stress
Being stressed is a emotional mental health challenge that may affect your longevity and the quality of enjoyment you experience. Being stressed can place undue stress on your heart. Stressful events can be sudden stressful life events such as seeing an accident or the death of a loved one. Sometimes stress is more chronic, an accumulation and persistence of stressful events such as relationship split up, moving house, and a stressful job. A common assessment of stress, Holmes-Rahe-Stress-inventory [4] can help you check if your experience of stress is at such a level that it is likely that you will start experiencing challenges to your physical health.
Unfortunately, those under excessive stress can doubling impact on their physical health through associated compromising lifestyle choices, such a avoidance of exercise, poor diet, poor sleep and self-medication through pills or substances. All of these behaviours make the experience of stress worse, and also threaten the physical health of a person.
Substance addictions
Alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, stimulates, beta blockers – all of these can be dangerous to our physical health. Introducing dangerous levels of toxins into our bodies on a regular basis, can affect the way our body processes these toxins. Additionally, addiction itself, to behaviours and substances traps us in a cycle of shame that can lead to depression. Taking a break from alcohol and other addictive substances can be, literally, lifesaving for many people.
Adding time – choices that can extend life, and the enjoyment of it.
Good help.
Individuals can have a propensity to think to muddle through when they are anxious, stressed or depressed. Something about your lifestyle, thinking processes, or stress levels, is quite possibly prohibiting you from seeing stressful situations realistically. An expert, outside of yourself, can help you see that situation in the way that helps you better process what what has happened, and what can be done. Sometimes individuals who feel down, are stressed, or are self-medicating need to vent, sometimes they need to change.
Consider counselling. Ask your counsellor how they see your current life situation and what you, as a team, can do to alter how you have been feeling. If your counsellor can’t answer this question for you, you are completely entitled, even encouraged, to talk to another counsellor. Counsellor – patient chemistry is an important predictor of positive outcomes.
Dial down your reactivity
Some people are like simmering pots of anger. It doesn’t take much for those pots to boil over. Does this describe you?
Emotional health is the consequence of being able to regulate your emotions. Peter Attia in his masterpiece book on longevity, Outlive, writes, “90% of male rage is helplessness masquerading as frustration”. If you are quick to anger, tears or frustration, you may benefit from working on emotional regulation.
Regulating your emotion requires an attention to the triggers, forces and thoughts that drive your reactions to circumstances. In counselling we unpack your reactions to dissect what you really experienced and believed about a situation and explore how the lessons you have learnt from your past, and the fears that you have about your future, intersect at the way you choose to react. If you feel as if your emotions are out of control, or can’t even feel emotions any more, counselling is for you.
Adopt flexible perspectives
We can all get trapped in our thought patterns and many times we do not look at situations as flexibly as we could. Cognitive filters are thinking errors that make us look at situations from certain perspectives. We grow into using cognitive filters as a means to, we believe, efficiently assess situations. However filters can become problematic and can make us less happy.
For example, we often compare the worst of ourselves to the best of others. When people compare themselves to other people often, they are often misguided in their assessment of both how “lucky/successful” the other person is, as well as a “how unlucky/unsuccessful” we are. When we enter a situation from a rigid black vs white perspectives we tend to think that only one party can be correct, whilst the other must be wrong. Actually, many situations are much more nuanced that we first appreciate and sometimes focusing on you vs someone else means everyone loses.
Read our attached blog to read more about cognitive filters. Change your thinking – change your life.
In order to overcome cognitive filters we need to capture, review and re-frame our perspectives. In therapy we use cognitive flexibility exercises in order to help clients re-frame their experience in ways that helps them become less reactive, and calmer.
Working to develop more flexible thoughts around situations can help you build a different set of responses to situations. The next time you find yourself reacting problematically to a situation consider some of the questions outlined below. These are some of the questions I use when working with clients on their cognitive flexibility.
Embracing age as a gift
Positive age beliefs serve as a barrier against stress. Being accepting or positive about growing older can affect how contented you are as you grow older. Fixating on your age, negative self talk that you are “over it” of “old and frumpy” will make you feel bad. Think about your self-dialogue as a meal that you consume. If you only feed yourself negative commentary, how can you expect to feel good?
The central tenet of Waldinger and Schulz’s 2023 book, The good life: Lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness, is that good relationships, keep us healthier and happier. Good relationships, friendships and romantic relationships, protect us about the impact of negative events in our lives. Negative events are going to happen. No one completely avoids emotional hardships, what gets us through is the quality of our relationships.
Do you have the relationships you want, or infact need in your life? If not, what can you do to build new and better friendships. Our blog on friendships may help you on this matter.
You can take charge of your future. You don’t have to wait for your mood to improve to engage in change. And you can feel differently, exist differently, and live better (and longer)
About the author. Angela Watkins was named Hong Kong’s best therapist. Angela works with adults and teens to help them build better lives – including relationship recovery, building positive self esteem, overcoming depression, quietening anxiety, getting stuff done, and recovery from trauma. To contact Angela for therapy email Angelaw@reddoor.hk
If you want to read more on the topic of longevity consider reading some of these books:
Attia, P (2023). Outlive: The science and art of longevity. Harmony Books. New York
Gratton, L & Scott, A. (2016) The 100-year life: Living and working the in age of longevity. Bloombury. London.
Greger, M. & Stone, G. (2015). How not to die. Flatiron books.
Levy, B. (2022) Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long and well you live. Harper Collins. Sydney.
Ni, M (2006) Secrets of Longevity
Waldinger, R. & Schulz, M. (2023). The good life: Lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness. Simon & Schuster. New York.
In order to make your relationship last, you need to ensure you have a full emotional piggy bank.
John Gottman, landmark couples counsellor and relationship researcher, studied thousands of couples exploring the difference between happy and unhappy couples. There are some notable differences.
Happy couples engage positively with one another and show interest in each other’s lives. Happy couples are generous in spirit towards towards each other. They try to understand each other’s world. Happy couples spend time together – connecting. When these couples experience conflict they use strategies to stay positive towards each other, see the conflict as an issue for them to resolve (e.g.you and I versus the problem) and work towards resolution.
Unhappy couples don’t do these things.
In couples counselling we often introduce the Gottman concept of the Emotional piggy bank. To help couples better realise the deposits, investments and withdrawals their actions within the marriage represent.
When our relationship’s emotional piggy bank is full, couples able more likely to be able to be generous in spirit towards each other when they encounter tricky situations.
For example. Imagine your partner, John, said he would call you at 3pm to talk about an important topic. The designated time to call comes and goes, with no message or call.
If you have a full emotional piggybank, you might react in such a manner: “I guess that big project John has been worrying about has taken off and he’s lost track of time. I know he cares about me and our issue so I’ll remind him later and we will find a new time to talk”.
Conversely, if your relationship’s emotional piggy bank is running near empty you may have no good will to help you see the situation with generosity. The aggrieved partner in that instance might think: “John did it again. He never cares about anyone by himself. He just expects me to wait by the phone like some loser. Well, not this time!”
An emotional piggy bank needs to run with a healthy balance. You and your partner need to be making deposits, and checking the impact of withdrawals.
How can you make deposits into your relationship’s emotional piggy bank?
The following activities constitute a deposit into your emotional piggy bank:
Giving and receiving affection from each other. Not just sex.
Spending quality time with together doing activities that you both enjoy
Learning about each other’s world.
Performing acts of kindness for each other – even little things like grabbing a coffee for them in the morning, running them a bath, or buying special snacks that they love for your movie night.
Expressing gratitude towards your partner for the kindness and support they provide to you.
Complimenting your partner. Make sure these are authentic and show you have been paying attention. For example, “I really admire the way you acted on your work call. It sounds like your boss is a lot to handle”. Or, “I really like that shirt on you, it goes well with your eyes”.
Keeping promises that you made is important to help your partner know you can be trusted
Apologizing when you have done something wrong.
Giving your partner support when they are having a tough time
You also need to be careful of withdrawals. If you make too many withdrawals or make careless withdrawals from the emotional piggy bank, there may be very little good will in times of crisis.
Some behaviours that harm your relationships emotional piggy bank including:
Insults and disrespectful comments
Criticism of your partner
Avoiding engaging with your partner
Neglecting your partner
Brushing of your partner’s kind gestures
Ignoring the emotional impact of your behaviour
Shouting or Scolding
Lying to your partner
Gossiping about or slandering your partner to others
Breaking promises you made to your partner
Please note: Aggression of any type – this is much only a withdrawal, this is a threat to the safety of people in your relationships.
What can you do to change the dynamic and build a better emotional piggy bank?
Respond rather than react
Do you find that you react to situations, rather than respond calmly. Often this is because of the manner you interpret situations? Do you later feel ashamed that you over reacted to a situation? Before you react to your partners actions stop and think what response would you later be proud of, versus reactions that you might regret. A counsellor can help you understand your reactive patterns and learn to interpret situations in a more cognitively flexible manner.
Appraise your level of investment
Many couples do not spend enough time with each other, and the emotional piggy bank is empty because they neglect each other, or the relationship becomes focused on day to day functionality, rather than fun or connection.
Are you spending enough time with your partner focused on each other, rather than the kids or an exhaustive to-do list?
A good relationship is an active rather than passive activity. Stop thinking this is the relationship you have, and start taking the action to make it the relationship you want. Firstly, acknowledge that you could be kinder towards each other and start to think of what this might look like. Secondly, think about securing some time to spend together, once a week, or at least once a month.
Spend time getting to know each other
Great relationships are, at their core, great friendships. Remember back to the beginning of your relationship. You probably spent a lot of time asking questions about your partner, and were thirsty for knowledge about how they interpret the world. This curiosity often diminishes with time, to the detriment of your relationship. Be curious again.
When was the last time you sat down and spent time learning about your partners world. If you don’t know what to ask, the list below is a great place to start.
Practice preferences
People have preferences. Some people like to receive gifts. Other prefer to spend time together. Do you know how your partner likes to receive love? People often give love in the manner that they, personally would like to receive it, rather than checking what their partner wants. This misunderstanding can mean that your kind actions are not
The two following quiz links might help you better understand how your partner wants to receive love, and the type of apology they like to receive. So many people get caught up waiting for the “right” apology, it might be helpful for you to know what your partner thinks are the components of a good apology.
About the author. Angela Watkins is a counsellor for individuals and couples working in Hong Kong. If you’d like to improve your romantic relationship consider working with Angela or other members of the RED DOOR team. Contact angelaw@reddoor.hk
Feeling stressed at work from time to time is a normal experience throughout our working career. Experiencing some stress is useful in building our capacity to deal with challenges, learn new skills, improve resilience, and solve problems. Indeed, without some element of healthy stress, we risk becoming demotivated and disengaged in our job responsibilities. However, experiencing work-stress that is severe and over a long period of time can drastically overwhelm our ability to cope and lead to burnout.
Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion. It is a harmful and serious condition caused by the body’s response to prolonged chronic stressors in the workplace. Globally, burnout cases continue to rise with debilitating and far-reaching impacts felt by companies and governments, as well as individual sufferers, their families, friends and work colleagues.
Some of these signs and symptoms can include the following:
Persistent sense of being overwhelmed
Feeling utterly depleted, useless, trapped or defeated
Feeling isolated and alone
Excessive fatigue
Thoughts of hopelessness or cynicism
Irritability
Procrastination, difficulty focusing and taking longer to complete tasks
Perpetual self-doubt
Burnout is impossible to simply ‘snap out’ of. As a condition that develops over a period of prolonged exposure to workplace stress, sufferers need time and support to embark on the road to recovery – from recognising the problem, addressing issues, developing healthy coping strategies, building resilience in order to recover and get back on track.
Companies play an important role in avoiding burnout risk by building healthy workplaces and cultures, with well-designed jobs and structures to match employees’ needs, but where gaps emerge, individuals can benefit from understanding and managing resilience against stress.
If you or are tracking low on the resilience continuum and experiencing burnout, what treatments are available? Treatments can include talk therapy and medical interventions, often including anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications, but there needs to also be change in workplace structures, job-design, or culture that caused the source of stress. There is no “one-size-fits-all” plan for treatment. It may take some trial and error to find the treatment that works best.
How do you cope if you are experience burnout?
Burnout is caused by the persistent experience of stress without being able to cope. Implementing stress management techniques will be of help to treat your burnout. Common aspects of a stress management plan include the following.
Challenging your thinking filters
Whilst some work experiences invariably include some toxic practices and/or people, sometimes our experience of stress is created by our personal perceptions of a situation. For example, if you hold onto black and white thinking you will be prone to judge yourself and others more in stressful situations. If you tend to filter information and feedback you may feel, unjustly, negatively about yourself when mistakes occur. For a full assessment of your thinking filters read our RED DOOR blog on this topic.
Mindfulness helps to develop greater personal awareness. Its practice teaches individuals to be more aware of their thought processes and reactions in the present moment. So instead of racing ahead in a negative thought cycle a person is more likely to be able to think in a more removed manner, noticing patterns in their reactions and being able to view situations in terms of their typical reactions and the potential costs and benefits of those reactions in the past. This ‘mindful overview” promotes understanding of being in charge of one own emotions and behaviours. To find out more about mindfulness see one of our blogs on this topic, attached below.
The perception that we do not have enough time to do the work we have to do, creates stress. The art of managing the activities, priorities and sequencing of events in our lives can be taught. If you feel that you are not utilizing your time as well as you could, consider reading books on this topic or talking to a performance coach to help you better set your priorities.
Emotional regulation and support
If you are feeling overwhelmed and emotional you need to consider how you can better regulate volatile or oppressive emotions. The best way to do this is to talk to someone about how you are feeling. The more experienced and qualified that person is to help you disseminate your emotions the better. Consider counselling. A good counsellor can help you process some of your emotional experiences, understand your responsibilities and build resilience to deal with challenging circumstances.
Avoid addictive distractions
When we are stressed, we may become prone to self-medicating or distracting ourselves from our stress. Occasionally those distractions can actually maintain our experience of stress, or create new stresses for us to have to deal with. For example, alcohol is well recognized as a depressant. Paradoxically people often engage in drinking, to excess, to numb their stress. However over time alcohol robs us of our ability to produce dopamine efficiently, making us depressed.
Time distractions such a gambling and gaming can become problems because they create new problems such a financial problems or cutting us off from face to face social time with friends and family, which may help us mediate our experience of stress.
Build social support
Social supports – friends and family help us navigate tough times. In our RED DOOR research of the experience of stress among lawyers in Hong Kong, many of our senior lawyers managed their stress by talking to friends or family. The quality of these relationships is important. Do you have the quantity or quality of friends that you need. Recent (2022/2023) observations in our clinic highlighted that people in Hong Kong may benefit from building new friendships. As adults we sometimes are unsure how to build new friends. If this describes your experience then, consider reading our blog on this topic.
When we are stressed we often call into behaviours that compromise our health status. When we are under pressure these healthy behaviours protect us. Maintaining an exercise regime, eating well, and sleeping well (at least 8-10 hours) will help your body deal with stress hormones, and allow you to heal after the pressure has lifted.
Communication patterns
Poor communication can place a lot of pressure on your and those that you need to communicate with. When communication is unclear you can end up guessing what another person wants from you (perhaps incorrectly). It is difficult to work in organisations that tolerate vague or inauthentic communications. What can you do?
Learn to communicate effectively and assertively. There are many books on this topic that you could explore. Assertive communication involves being confident (not aggressive) in your messaging, acting rationally as an adult, being respectful to others in the communication and being clear about what you can, and cannot do. There are a number of Instagram accounts celebrating understanding corporate culture and how to express yourself effectively. Checkout @loewhaley to gain some insights.
Ultilise relaxation techniques
A range of relaxation techniques can help lower your experience of stress. You can use apps such a calm to find guided relaxation exercises, or go to a yoga class. You can also consider incorporating 15 minutes of colouring into your daily routine to reduce some of your experience of stress. Remember this practice needs to be regular, even daily, to help.
Consider anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications
Many clients are hesitant to take up medications for treatment due to concerns about becoming dependent, potential negative side-effects, and stigma. It is not an easy decision to undertake. Talk to your GP about these medications to see if you can explore some of these fears. If you have tried behavioural and psychological approaches with no success, you might need to consider medications to start help reduce your experience of stress just enough that those behavioural or psychological techniques can start to gain traction.
Burnout is no joke. If you find yourself completely exhausted it is time for a change, and the most effective type of change is going to involve exploring your responses to and relationship with stress. You can feel better.
About the author: Angela Watkins is the head counsellor at RED DOOR Counselling. She offers individual counselling to adults, including those working through workplace topics such as conflict resolution, moving from good to great, burnout, and career change contemplation.
It is natural to be concerned if your teen is engaging in self-harming behaviours such as cutting or burning themselves.
Harming oneself is considered is a serious mental health issue in itself. Self-harm is also often a component of other psychological mental health issues such as clinical depression, dissociative disorders, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Self-harming as a practice usually starts in the mid teen years, and mayvcontinue for years, if therapy or treatment is not successful.
People who have a history of self-harm sometimes may also develop suicidal ideation (contemplating suicide), although this is not always the case.
Potential causes of self-harming practices can include traumatic events including child abuse, stressors such as bullying, family tensions and living under the perception of extreme pressure. The teen considering harming themselves, may feel lonely, out of control, invisible, and overcome with a deep sense of self-loathing. They are quite likely to have over reactive emotions, to the extent that their reactions can sometimes seem extreme, or such that they seem numb, from previously feeling worries too strongly.
The teenage years can typically be a period of emotional sensitivity which is why self-harming behaviours may emerge at this time. Children who are extremely sensitive, prone to lashing out, have poor impulse control or hold catastrophic perspectives, are more prone to pursue behaviours such as self-harm.
The desire to cut is often in response to emotional situations or the thoughts attached to those situations. The world seems too much, too painful, too difficult. Cutting can be an act of externalising the experience of internal pain, remind the teen that they are alive, or even a punishment for behaviours they judged as shameful. When we treat such teens in therapy, we try to help teens deal with their situation and their emotions, and gain back a sense of emotional regulation, essentially an ability to manage their oversensitive emotions.
Understanding and regulating emotion can be taught. Therapists aim to teach their clients to observe and correctly label emotions, developing emotional literacy. It is important to change the channel internally. Teens can be taught to utilise a non-judgmental internal dialogue to learn to respond to emotionally charged situations in a different manner than they have in the past.
Typical reassurances that parents may engage such as telling kids to stop, calm down, model themselves after another person, exercise more, or “try to get over it/forget about it”, typically do not work well with emotionally oversensitive people. This is because these teens need to first learn how to understand their personal relationships with the world, before assurances and suggestions may make any impact.
Therapy techniques such as DBT (Dialectic Behaviour Therapy) and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) can be effective treatment options for teens who are emotionally charged. These therapies are often data based, and help teens learn to read their own patterns of thoughts and behaviours through emotional monitoring, thought logs, and response adjustments. A simplified version of this process is described below.
Emotional monitoring can be taught to both children and adults. There are many tools to help people correctly identify and label emotions. Physical experiences such as tension, butterflies in the stomach, headache, clenched jaw are also detailed. Correctly helping identify the expression and experience of an emotion helps the client associate particular thoughts patterns associated with those emotions, or simply help them notice that they feel emotions they thought they had “lost”. Many teens confuse feeling anxious with feeling angry and hence respond by lashing out, rather than behaviours that may help them calm down.
Thought patterns are essential to associate with certain emotions. These thought patterns may have been learnt over many years and may include catastrophising (this is the worst thing ever!) , negative comparisons (She is so cool, I am such a loser) , mind reading ee my blog on common thinking errors). By catching these thoughts in action. Essentially people are taught to catch these thinking patterns and reflect upon them from alternative perspectives. They may be asked to keep a log of negative events and how they felt about those events so that they can be discussed in terms of creating a more rational perspective on the situation being reviewed.
For example, a bad event will be compared with other events to help the client understand its relative importance. A particular teen may consider getting a “C” grade on a test a major tragedy. That teen could be asked to asked to rate it out of ten, and gives it a seven, the therapist might ask what would be a 10. Typically, a score of 10 may be allocated to a severely traumatic event such as death of a loved one. The therapist then asks, what would be a 9? A nine might be chronic illness or injury. The process continues, and the therapist will ask, “Does getting a C still represent a seven out of ten?” Usually using such perspective tools helps client’s better rate the bad event into a more realistic context.
Once thought patterns and perspectives have been regularly assessed cognitive reframing and discourse can be utilised to create a new set of responses. For example in the case given previously, a teen who performs badly on a test, and may have self-harmed as a punishment of perceived poor performance, can learn to talk themselves about the realistic importance of each grade, the steps that they can take to explain or overcome poor grades, ways to study better. Different behaviours, not cutting or self-harming.
During this whole process (which is greatly simplified here), very little judgement is given regarding the actual self-harming behaviour. That behaviour is attached to a range of emotions and thoughts. Instead of challenging the self-harm behaviour directly, and potentially driving the behaviour underground or increasing feelings of shame around that behaviour, we recommend addressing the root of the problem, and learn better emotional regulation. Emotional regulation, hopefully, leads to a better long- term solution, less shame, and more resilience.
If you have a teen who is self-harming please consider counselling for them immediately. The earlier you start to challenge the underlying emotions, the better.
About the author: Angela Watkins is a counsellor and psychologist working with teens and adults in Hong Kong. To contact Angela email angelaw@reddoor.hk or send a whatsapp to +852-93785428.
Social skills help individuals interact effectively with one another. We communicate our needs, wants and perspectives through verbal speech as well as non-verbal cues (gestures, facial expressions, and body positioning).
There are many benefits that are associated with having strong social skills. There are also potential negative implications of having skills that are underdeveloped or impaired.
The upside:
For those lucky enough to have developed strong social skills you will find that your mental health is protected, or even boosted, because of at least three potential benefits.
Effective communication benefits.
Being in possession of good social skills often translates to being seen as having good communication capabilities. This is more in reference to being aware of certain nuances in situations rather than possessing expansive linguistic skills. Being a clear, recipient-focused communicator helps you manage situations more efficiently. For example, a person with good social skills may telephone a colleague over a misunderstanding rather than writing a lengthy email clarifying their perspective which, many of us know from experience, can often make a tense situation worse, rather than better. Not only do you avoid dodging a communication faux pas, but you are seen by managers as a solution-focused-problem-solver. Success leads to more success.
Attracting opportunities.
Everyone benefits from being liked and having strong social skills makes this more likely. The opposite is also true, poor social skills makes it harder for you to get people to like you. When people like you, doors to opportunities are opened. People remember to bring you chances to succeed when they encounter them. People vouch for you when asked. This positive impact effects subjective assessments such as school and job interviews.
Stronger coping mechanisms.
A major psychological benefit of having good social skills is that you are more likely to be able to access and utilise social support as a buffer against work and life stress. Not only will you be able to make more friends, the relationships are likely to be fairer and focused around reciprocally meeting of each other’s needs. When the chips are down, friends are more likely to offer support. Social support is an essential component of any stress management regime.
The downside:
Just as having good social skills can have benefits in terms of mental health protection, creating opportunities, and building a positive perception of you, an impairment to social skills can have just the opposite effect.
Even when we are adults, we may resist supporting a person who we believe to be a braggart, or is overly critical, or doesn’t like to share praise. It’s hard to always have the perfect social skills. Nobody is perfect, but these skills certainly help rather than hinder in our work and personal relationships in adulthood.
As children, social skills are even more essential. Those with poor social skills are more likely to find making friends difficult, to have relationships which may be unfair to one party (i.e. being friends with someone who bullies you), and isolates key adults from offering support when they see some kids struggling. Social skills are essential life skills.
For those with weaker social skills, such as autisitc individuals, intervention is essential. Those who live with autism often find reading and responding to social cues, as well as maintaining friendships, very challenging.
As a parent of such a young adult, I’m reminded that even with extensive training, even the keenest autistic individual sometimes doesn’t get it. Recently, despite her best intentions, our teen demonstrated she misses what is the socially acceptable way to respond to some situation. I recall the time we experienced a death of a pet, and my autistic teen responded in a way that seemed peculiar.
The death of a hamster.
When, Pablo our 3-year-old hamster, transitioned to that big hamster-wheel in the sky, my neuro-typical 10 year-old wept inconsolably. In comparison, our autistic teen smiled. Smiling at death is not an expected, or perhaps an acceptable, response. The teen spent a good part of her free time that day creating a “condolence” card for her sister. She effusively presented the card to her little shocked little sister saying, “I’m so sorry Pablo is gone”. And then she reached out and hugged her little sister, until the little one was suffocating and spluttered, “Enough cuddling, you need to stop!” It turned out that our teen with autism, had been smiling, because she understood how to respond in an appropriate manner – with the card, and this, paradoxically, made her smile.
So there was a situation, which started and ended with poor social skills, but in the middle, there was a moment of magic.
If you believe your child needs social skills training contact Angela at our link below to learn about out SOCIAL SATURDAYS programme at RED DOOR.
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About the Author – Angela Watkins is a counsellor and psychologist working out of the RED DOOR Counselling practice in Hong Kong. Angela helps SEN families build current and future plans in support of their SEN children, helps families learn to cope with the special circumstances that occur as the parent or the sibling of a child with special needs. Together with her SEN clients she builds customised plans that help them accentuate their positive traits, and overcome specific challenges. Angela is a SEN parent herself, and understands both professionally and personally that different is NOT less, and we all benefit by identifying find our own version of awesome.
Note about this article. This article was first posted in 2017 and has been edited a number of times since. The latest version of this article was edited in February 2025.
Divorce will change you. Some of the changes will be completely out of your control, especially in the early, chaotic days of a split. As you adjust to the process of divorce you have increasing opportunity to take more charge of some of the change that comes with divorce, riding the tides of change towards a new you, that is stronger, and maybe better than the one who started the divorce process. Would it feel better to know that you can come out of the process stronger than you went into the process?
Academic research on divorce indicates that whilst most people find the process of divorce difficult, they feel they become better versions of themselves after divorce.
Here are some of the waves of change that you may surf to your advantage during the divorce process.
Changing the “We” to “Me”
Married couples are often identify, and are identified, as a unit. If your marriage ends, are you still who you were? Many individuals find understanding who they are, even what they like, very difficult as a single individual. Much of this journey of self understanding may be long overdue and difficult because, for years, individuals may have neglected their own needs in order to be “the best partner they can be” in order to support their romantic partner’s needs or ambitions. When they marriage is declared to be over, you need to move your focus back to who you are, and who you could become.
Start with some of the basics. What do you like? What do you not like? List out your favourite foods, from your favourite things to do? Ask yourself, are these really your favourite things and activities or are your choices a reflection of who you have been in your relationship? If you don’t know your favourites, don’t be discouraged. It simply means that the exploration of finding out who you are, and who you want to be, might be a little more complicated. I advise you to consider a couple of sessions with an experienced divorce coach or counsellor who can help you find a path back to you you use to be, and who you’d might like to become.
Remember, you get to write the narrative of who you will be now. The process of defining what you would like to represent, what you would like to achieve, even what you would like to avoid or stop will lay out the first step, knowing where you want to be. Then we just need to start thinking further about how to get you there.
Write down for yourself:
1)What do I stand for? 2 What do I like about myself. 3) W are my key values and how can I live by them (this is where a counsellor can really help) and 4). What practices or attributes about myself would I like to leave behind?
Grieve
Spend some time allowing yourself to grieve. The end of the hope you had in the relationship. Grieve for the image of the family that you feel you once had.
Its okay to miss the “picture perfect” image you once held of your marriage and your family. It is especially hard when the internet if flooded with images of families celebrating happy times together. Please remember that many of those snapshots are not a real reflection of what is going on within those families.
Whilst you are entitled to your grief, try not to stay trapped in it. You can start to romanticize how things were, and how things “should be”. We tend to hold on to outdated stereotypes of marriage and family. There are many types of families and you need to start focusing on making the new version of your family into something that is healthy, robust, and rewarding. If you get too stuck in your grief for what you think you have lost, you may forget to build something new, different, and rewarding in a way that works for you as you evolve.
People miss the sense of belonging that family helped them feel. They forget that often that feeling of belonging came at at cost, or that the sense of belonging was fleeting. You can create a feeling of belonging again, you just need to start by letting go of the image of a “idealised marriage” or “perfect family” that you were holding on to.
Start something new
Many individuals may have taken a career break inside their marriage and as a consequence, feel out of practice in the world of work and with modern technological skills required to be part of the modern work force. Much of our identity is associated with our role as “stay at home parent”. Even if you want to remain a stay at home parent, I would advise you to start to learn something new as part of the divorce process. Not only can you update your academic knowledge, learning any new key skill will give you opportunities to meet new people, and regain confidence.
Embracing a new exciting change may feel unsettling as well as positive. That is normal. Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes. You don’t need to consider a change of career or taking on a full academic degree, consider taking up a new hobby, or a practical course, even changing some of your daily habits.
Taking care of yourself
Learn how to take care of yourself. Start by learning to talk to yourself kindly. For some individuals, critical acrimony has become familiar territory within their imploding and increasingly hostile marriage. Start by practicing being kind to yourself.
Every day, look at yourself in the mirror and say something kind to yourself. Stop the litany of “You should”, or “You didn’t” internal commentary. Start congratulating yourself for keeping your cool each day. Praise yourself when you complete a challenging task, even if it was replying to a rude email with a polite response.
Complete the phrase, “If I loved someone a lot I would do ________, _______ and ________, for them” Now consider doing those activities for yourself.
Build strong networks
Friendships and contacts are essential to help you navigate divorce. It is quite possible at the beginning of the divorce process that you had very few, many no friends who are divorced. Meeting other divorced parents and individuals will save you a lot of leg work, and provide, hopefully a few good shoulders to cry on during tough times.
Good friends help you get through divorce. Great friends become your family during, and after.
One group that, if you can find, will make a significant difference is a divorce support group. Support groups for individuals going through divorce help normalize some of the process, remove feelings of isolation, help you handle your feelings of shame or regret. If you are in Hong Kong, you can join the Iron Fairies. Information about the Iron Fairies is in one of the links below (See becoming a groupie).
Understand what you can and cannot change
This is a life lesson that is one of the toughest to accept in life, and from divorce. You can’t turn back time. Sometimes your ex-partner will become exactly the type of parent you would have liked them to be before you had to start to divorce. They may have been fairly absent before the divorce was decided and then, because of teh process they are seemingly in contention for “parent-of-the-year”. This can be very confusing. This may even tempt you to contemplate reconciliation.
You can’t change the past, the affairs, the hurtful words, the resentment. You can work to forgive that behaviour, so that it doesn’t keep you trapped in your anger. Letting go of the pain is a gift that you give yourself. You and your partner could, undoubtedly, have been better people before and during your divorce, but you don’t have to hold onto that if it doesn’t suit you.
Let go of your preferred divorce narrative
It can feel very important that others know that this divorce was “not your fault”, that your partner was to blame for the breakdown of your marriage. You won’t get to control all the messaging around the breakdown of your marriage, so please be prepared that some people may have a completely different view of the breakdown of your marriage than you would like them to have. Whilst you have the right to try to challenge this, within safe and sane parameters, it will be most healthy for you to appreciate that you won’t always get to control the story that is told. What is important is the values that you continue to live everyday.
What is comforting is that that most often, lies become apparent eventually. Please appreciate that this can take several years.
Consider your relationship with yourself and intimacy
Your marriage may have been your main source of touch and reassurance. If it breaks down you may want to consider how you could get your physical needs met. One mistake would be to jump into a new relationship very quickly. Its okay to have needs, think about how you could get those met without returning to your ex, or running into a new relationship before you are ready.
Divorce will change you. It may feel as if it could even break you. You can survive this emotional journey, and even possibly become the best version of you, you were scared to become inside of your marriage.
About the Author.
Angela Watkins is a counsellor and psychologist who has spent the past 9 years guiding people through the emotional journey of divorce. In Hong Kong, Angela leads the Iron Fairies, a therapeutic support group for women going through divorce. For information about counselling with Angela and the Iron Fairies contact her at Angelaw@reddoor.hk.
Other blogs you may find interesting regarding the process of divorce:
If you want to find out more about group therapy whilst going through divorce, and the Iron Fairies therapeutic support group:
Start your Red Door Journey 