About Elly

I’m so honoured you’re here and I’d like to help

Due to personal circumstances, my website will soon be transferred to a new owner. I hope that you find something of use to you in the meantime. I trust that the new owner will maintain its integrity.

I wish you well.

My name is Elly. I am the founder and author (oh… and webmaster!) of this site chockful of relationship help and mental health advice.

I am Dutch, but I lived in the UK for 33 years – hence I write in British English (just in case you wonder about my dodgy spelling if you’re from the USA, for example).

Maybe you’re visiting this page because you want to start your own therapy website or blog.

Or, perhaps, you’ve landed here because life is tough for you right now.

In case of the latter – hang on in there. I know that you were born not just to survive but to thrive, and I want you to hold on to that belief – every single day. And I’m hoping to help you feel better soon with my writing.

I’m aiming to increase your knowledge, awareness and understanding of the psychology of human relationships. That will help you feel stronger in the face of your difficulties (we all have those!).

I hope to empower you to be bold and courageously make the necessary changes to enable you to overcome your problems, be that relationship issues, depression, anxiety, excessive anger or trauma.

I aim to create the most helpful articles I can – based on my 24 years of experience as a professional (relationship) counsellor/therapist.

I sincerely hope that the information in my articles will contribute to your happiness and contentment in your intimate couple relationship(s).

Welcome, regardless of your gender

Where possible, I intend to use ‘they’ and ‘them’ instead of ‘he’ and ‘she’ in my articles. Instead of ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’, I use ‘partner’.

In my articles about marriage, I use ‘partner’ and ‘spouse’ with occasionally ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. In some, though, I may focus on a specific gender.

I’d like you to feel seen, accepted and welcomed, regardless of gender.

Please bear with me, though. I’m still working through my articles to implement that intent.

What qualifies me to write these articles?

On leaving college I qualified as a pharmacy technician. Thereafter I became a surgery nurse working with family doctors. And, after my move to the UK, I became an Operating Theatre Technician.

I retrained (again!) and became a professional counsellor…

I qualified as a RELATE counsellor, working with individuals and couples for 24 years. I received additional training in dealing with domestic violence, addictions, grief counselling and counselling young people. I mentored new counsellors and was a representative on the local executive committee.
I took additional courses at the Open University: Biology, Brain and Behaviour, and Death, Dying and Bereavement.
I qualified as an NLP Practitioner with the ‘father of NLP’: Richard Bandler and UK renowned hypnotherapist Paul McKenna.
Lastly, I gained the Human Givens Postgraduate Diploma accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). This qualification allowed me to get rapid results in treating people with conditions such as depression and anxiety, and particularly trauma.
I was a trauma specialist (see what TRiM is on marchonstress.com) with a large UK county police service for 12 years (see Certificate of Merit).
I was a school counsellor at Mayfield Grammar School for 11 years (counselling 11 – 18 year-olds) and in private practice for 22 years. I also provided a counselling service in a doctor’s surgery for 2 years.
Until I remigrated to the Netherlands (and became a publisher), I was an Accredited Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). I now work near-enough full-time on this site.
I also have the benefit of life experience and the wisdom that comes with age.

In 2021, I qualified as a yoga teacher (Yoga Teacher Training with Brett Larking).

My commitment to accessibility

I aim to do what I – a band of one – can to make my site accessible to as many visitors as possible.

To try and achieve that:

I have installed the ReadSpeaker button, typically only seen on websites of major brands and public service sites.
I have installed large fonts with colours contrasting against the background as per advice.
I do my best to write useful alt tags (descriptions of images).
I aim to write meaningful headlines and subheaders.
I write short sentences (well… that was my intention!) and paragraphs to make reading and scanning easy.

I hope to continue improving my site to make it a pleasure to visit for all.

One of the spontaneous testimonials I received

A great article with a huge amount of knowledge. I have experienced this and its not a nice position to be in. The hardest part was facing my children. Years on, I took it as a learning and now writing a PhD on my life experience from a place of survival on the outside to transformation through education. Thank you for a very insightful and heart touching truthful and real article.

Wishes to remain anonymous

CLICK HERE for testimonials and here for my LinkedIn profile.

Front cover magazine Human Givens — “Traumatic incidents: a new way to help police cope Elly Prior adds a human givens twist to a programme to help police help their colleagues handle trauma.”

Front cover magazine Counselling at Work — “Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) at Kent Police Elly Prior explains how a military model has been adapted for the police.”

My values

My values are kindness, empathy, integrity, loyalty, fairness, openness, self-awareness, personal growth and second, third and sometimes many more chances.

Do I screw up? Of course, I do! Don’t we all. :-) That’s life and I’m learning and making changes as I go along.

I understand that I, like everyone else, unconsciously absorb dodgy beliefs from the culture I grew up in. No matter how thoughtful, well-meaning, helpful and caring I aim to be, I accept that I harbour subconscious prejudicial assumptions.

I can only reassure you that I actively scan myself looking for such beliefs in my thoughts and communications.

And for me – black lives matter.

Organisations I support

I’ll be a proud volunteer on the communications team at the 2020 Invictus Games in The Hague.

Banner: screenshot 2020 Invictus games in The Hague

I support the Afghan Children’s Mobile Circus, Avaaz.org, INclusion and Zidisha (person-to-person micro-loans). It’s my way of paying it forward to organisations that make a difference in the world.

Oh, and I use Ecosia.org’s search engine…

Circular photo of woman tending to seedlings. Text: You search the web, we plant trees. Ecosia is like any other search engine, with one major difference: we use our profits to plant trees. — Click to open in a new tab and add the Ecosia extension to your Chrome browser

Going through a difficult time?

However tough things are for you right now, there are always things to be grateful for. To get some inspiration, please do watch this video to the end…

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
Nelson Mandela

Feedback from a visitor

“…we are in the unenviable position of having a far better grasp of the situation than any therapist is likely to have.”

My thoughts on that

That is probably true!

However, as a client, you won’t know the therapist’s circumstances other than what they decide to share with you.

No therapist can truly know what it’s like to be in your particular situation. How can we? The human condition and experience are too diverse.

I truly appreciate that when you’re going through a tough time, you can feel desperately alone with it all. I’ve been in that place too!

However, as therapists, we do have the skills to not let that stand in the way of offering you the best counselling service we can.

We let you explain – in detail – what life is like for you. We check with you every step of the way that we’ve understood what you’ve told us. Only then do we work on a plan and decide together how counselling can help you in achieving your goals.

I know that no article, however long, can begin to address your particular situation in detail. However, I hope there’s enough for you to leave, at the very least, with a nugget of information you may not before have thought about or understood.

In need of counselling, therapy or coaching?

Possibly you were hoping I could help you with your problems. I’m so very sorry that, unfortunately, I’m unable to be there for you personally. Please, click here to read more about why this is.

I am focusing all my energy on making as much information freely available here on my site to help as many people as possible.

I can’t tell you how satisfying it feels to be able to reach soooo many people through my articles. In the past, my professional organisation allowed me to counsel a maximum of 20 people a week!

Although I can’t help you personally, I certainly can point you in the right direction. You can connect with a professional, relationship therapist (a fee-based service), who will take all the time it needs to really ‘get you’, and support and guide you.

Here is my sincerest wish for you…

May the stars carry your sadness away. May the flowers fill your heart with beauty. May hope forever wipe away your tears, and above all, may your silence make you strong.Chief Dan George

Do remember, though, that your silence may not necessarily be golden. I, therefore, hope that you do find someone you can really trust so that you can open your heart and share your troubles.