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Really Useful Conversations

Conversations can change and even save lives - are you talking about the things that really matter? Conversations matter!

We have worked with literally thousands of managers, from team leader to Board level, in a wide range of industries, from media to manufacturing, the fire service to refuse collection, since February 2000. Providing a range of online, self study, blended learning packages or interactive, participative training in groups, we receive excellent feedback on our style and approach. Each of our clients

is different and as such, each of the interventions provided has been different - all with one common theme - to make a positive difference. Whether running a management programme for 320 store managers for a major high street retailer or providing one to one coaching for a television producer moving roles, we invest every effort in making the experience a positive, enjoyable, worthwhile and valuable one - ensuring a good return on our client's investment. Our style is practical, pragmatic, down to earth and people can walk away from the training and directly apply it to their management role. Most of our business comes from recommendations and referrals, repeat business as HR professionals move on and take us with them. Drop me a line for a no obligation discovery call - conversations can change organisations, develop relationships and save lives.

15/06/2026

Today is the start of Men’s Health Week and I’ve no doubt there’ll be plenty of talk about prostate cancer and getting checked, the stats around heart disease and no doubt men’s mental health - all topics very worthy of discussion but I’d like us to also talk about how last year an estimated 1.5 million men experienced domestic abuse.

The patriarchy harms men too and so many men won’t describe themselves as victims, even more won’t tell anyone what’s happening, some will present with anxiety, depression, alcohol use, relationship difficulties or suicidal thoughts long before anyone asks about abuse.

The question isn’t always whether men are telling us.

Sometimes the question is whether we’re hearing what they’re already telling us, but not understanding it?

At the Male Domestic Abuse Conference in Liverpool earlier this year, we heard from many different people about their own personal experience, the fabulous Richard Spencer was one, and we heard from some great researchers too, and I think most people would be surprised if they took a moment to simply scratch the surface and recognise the reality of the situation.

So this week this is my conversation.

Why not start by catching up with Richard Spencer’s story - and notice the police response when they first arrived at his home! That will also give you a clue as to why this is a bigger issue than you might think.

14/06/2026

One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that it’s rarely the last thing that tips us over the edge.

It’s not the scratched car or the dog getting out, it’s not the awkward conversation at work or the forgotten birthday card or the washing machine breaking down.

Those things are often just the final drop into a bucket that was already dangerously full and what we are seeing is the reaction to the last thing - but we don’t see EVERY thing that was already in the bucket.

The grief.

The worry.

The sleepless nights.

The caring responsibilities.

The hormonal shifts.

The financial pressures.

The difficult decisions.

The emotional load of holding everything together for everyone else.

The relationship tensions we’ve been trying to navigate.

The behaviours we’ve been excusing, managing or putting up with for far too long.

Sometimes people say to me, “We never saw it coming” and I wonder how often the cause was actually a hundred things ago.

A hundred worries, a hundred responsibilities, a hundred compromises ago, a hundred times someone said, “I’m fine” and pushed through, when what they really needed was to stop and put something down.

How often is it functional freeze?

The person still rocking up regularly, still performing, still smiling, still getting things done but carrying far more than anyone realises, including themselves?

That’s why isn’t really about face masks, scented candles or bubble baths but a reminder to regularly lay things down before the bucket reaches overflowing point.

It’s about making time for the people who lift you up, the activities that calm your nervous system, the hobbies you’ve forgotten you enjoy. The walks, coffees, books, laughter, music, gardening, crafting, swimming, pottering, sitting in the sunshine, dog walking, sleeping or whatever lightens the load.

Not because you’ve earned it because self-care is not a reward, but because you need it, because if we only ever add things to the bucket and never take anything out, eventually something has to give.

So today, please ask yourself what you can put down that you’ve been carrying too long and what can you pick up that does you good?

Your bucket doesn’t need to be empty, life means it probably never will, but it shouldn’t always be close to overflowing either.

It’s folks - have a restful one x

11/06/2026

Today we begin the rollout of all three tiers of Dual Risk training with a local authority that has made su***de prevention a priority within its Domestic Abuse Strategy.

That matters.

For the third year running, more victims of domestic abuse have died by suspected su***de than have been killed by a current or former partner.

Today we start with “Recognise” - a session designed for people who may not see domestic abuse or su***de prevention as part of their role, but who come into contact with people every day and can very much play a part in a community approach.

- Customer service teams
- Community workers
- Volunteers
- Faith leaders
- Library staff
- GP Receptionists
- Pharmacy staff
- Opticians
- Childcare settings and more.

The aim is not to turn people into domestic abuse specialists or su***de intervention practitioners, in fact the aim is much simpler than that.

Notice. Engage. Refer.

Notice when something doesn’t feel right.

Engage with empathy and kindness

Refer people to the right support or flag your concern

As I keep saying, awareness is only the start, we need people to be aware but we then need them to know what to DO.

Todays 45 minute session is about helping people recognise the risk sooner and know what to do next.

If you’d like to understand more about the growing evidence linking domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de risk, my White Paper is available free to download from my website.

🧡 Being known to services doesn’t automatically mean being safe and recognising the risk sooner, then taking action, could make all the difference between life and death 🧡

10/06/2026

My research is taking me to some unexpected places at the moment. The latest stop is “Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There”.

It’s a book about habituation. The idea that we stop noticing things we’ve seen so often they become part of the background and the more I read, the more I wonder how much this matters in the work I’m doing around domestic abuse and su***de.

What do we stop seeing because it’s become familiar?

What warning signs have become normalised?

What assumptions are we making because we’ve seen a situation a hundred times before?

For me, reducing deaths by su***de following domestic abuse isn’t just about understanding domestic abuse, su***de prevention, policing, healthcare or safeguarding in isolation - it’s about understanding human behaviour.

How people think, how professionals think, how systems think and sometimes how all of us miss what was right in front of us.

It’s about asking why a male victim isn’t recognised because domestic abuse is still assumed to happen one way.

Why abuse in a same-sex relationship can be missed because it doesn’t fit the picture in our heads.

Why someone can be known to services, yet their risk remains unseen.

Why we can look directly at a situation and still not see what is really happening.

Every report, conversation, research paper and book seems to add another piece to the puzzle and I am LOVING this stage of the journey.

The more I dig, the more convinced I become that if we want different outcomes, we need to learn to look wider, look deeper… and look again. 📚

09/06/2026

Studying the Highway Code does not make you any better at driving through a snowstorm into a freezing headwind.

✅ You can know every rule on the page.

🛑 You can understand every road sign.

🗺️ You can have the best map in the world but then the car starts to slide and suddenly you’re trying to remember something you once read about steering into the skid.

Or was it steering away from it? 🤔

You vaguely remember the advice, because you know you’ve seen it somewhere before, there was even a diagram, but the problem is, you’ve never actually had to do it and now the road has disappeared, your heart is racing and there isn’t time to stop and read the manual!

That’s the difference between awareness and competence.

Awareness tells us what we should do.

Training helps us practise what to do when the pressure is on.

It’s the same in su***de prevention and domestic abuse.

Guidance, toolkits and awareness resources are important as they help us understand the issue but when you’re sitting opposite a real person in real distress, trying to make sense of fear, trauma, coercive control, hopelessness or su***de risk, knowing the theory is only part of the picture.

What helps in that moment is confidence, judgement, nervous system control, skill which came from hands on exposure and practice.

The ability to think, adapt and respond when the conversation doesn’t follow the script because knowing it and doing it are two very different things and when the stakes are high, that difference matters.

If you’d like to explore why domestic abuse and su***de risk require more than awareness alone, pop along to the website and grab a copy of “Closing the Gap: Su***de Prevention in Domestic Abuse Contexts.”

08/06/2026

RANT ALERT - feel free to scroll on by ...

I've spent the last few weeks reading reports from HMIC, HMICFRS, the College of Policing, AAFDA and others, looking at the growing evidence linking domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de and one thing keeps striking me.

We are getting much better at recognising the issue.

We know coercive control matters.

We know psychological abuse causes harm.

We know domestic abuse and su***de risk are connected.

We know people can become trapped, isolated, overwhelmed and hopeless.

We know all of this - and that's valuable and that's progress.

The same thing has happened in lots of other areas too - su***de awareness, mental health awareness, menopause awareness, obesity awareness, in fact we have never talked about these issues more openly, yet ...

People are still dying by su***de.
Mental health services are overwhelmed.
One in five UK adults now lives with diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Need I go on?

All of this is making me cross because I think we are still confusing awareness and actual behaviour change.

Awareness tells us there is a problem but it doesn't automatically tell us what to do about it.

It's a bit like being told your garden isn't attracting bees.

You get a report explaining why bees matter.

You get recommendations to make your garden more bee-friendly.

You are taught that bees like pretty flowers.

Brilliant.

But eventually you're standing in front of a patch of bare soil asking:-

"Right then... what flowers?"
"Where do I plant them?"
"When should I plant them?"
"How many do I need?"
"Where can I get them from?"
"How deep do the roots need to be planted?"
"How do I attract the bees HERE and NOW?"

That's where I think many practitioners find themselves.

We know domestic abuse and su***de are connected but do people actually know "What do I actually do differently tomorrow morning?"

After a lot of reading, I'm increasingly convinced that we're becoming very good at explaining what the problem is but the next challenge is helping people understand how to respond to it.

That's the gap I've been exploring through my work on Dual Risk and in my white paper:- Closing the Gap: Su***de Prevention in Domestic Abuse Contexts.

Recognising there are no bees in the garden is only the start - at some point somebody has to pick up a trowel and plant healthy blooms.

Let me know if you'd like my white paper?

07/06/2026

If you’ve not been following me for long, you may not know that every Sunday I post a little reminder about . It’s something I started more than ten years ago during a particularly turbulent period of my life and, wherever possible, I’ve kept the tradition going ever since.

Let’s be honest, most of us already know what we should be doing for our health and wellbeing. We know we need rest, we know we need boundaries, we know we need connection, we know we need to “take time out to sharpen the saw” - again the problem isn’t usually a lack of knowledge or awareness, the problem is that we’re busy life-ing.

❣️ We’re caring for parents, children, partners and friends.

❣️ We’re trying to do meaningful work, navigate the menopause, sort our finances, keep the fridge full.

❣️ We’re worrying about money, politics, world events and things that matter deeply to us.

Often we don’t even realise how much we’re carrying because we’ve become so used to carrying it but as Bessel van der Kolk famously wrote, ‘the body keeps the score’ and I know mine certainly does.

If I’m honest, my stress bucket is pretty full at the moment. On a personal level the last 18 months have brought more than their fair share of loss, change and responsibility with losing both my parents, navigating grief, dealing with the legals, the coroner, the finances and now clearing their house - which means there are little reminders everywhere.

Yesterday it was my old Christmas sack.

Nothing dramatic.

Just a Christmas sack with my name on it, in my Mum’s handwriting but that was enough, because when our bucket is already close to overflowing, it doesn’t take much.

A memory, a photograph, one cross word.

Milk spilled, lights all on red, trying to get the duvet back inside the quilt cover, a torn bin bag, an inconsiderate driver.

An interview rejection, a refused application, stuff that normally we would ride and recover from easily, and sometimes it’s the smallest things that tip us over the edge.

That’s why still matters to me.

It’s my weekly reminder to stop, take a breath, think about me and my state, avoiding obligation where possible and making time to do what needs to be done in sorting through the previous week or setting myself up for the one ahead.

So that’s me for today, how does Self-Care Sunday look for you?

05/06/2026

One of the things I’ve learned over the 30 years of delivering training is that “one size does NOT fit all”.

🥸 Some people simply need help to recognise the signs.

😎 Some need the confidence to respond when concerns arise.

🤓Others need the practical skills to safely navigate complex, high-risk situations.

That’s why the Dual Risk training is available in three tiers:

Recognise

Awareness sessions that help people spot the often-hidden links between domestic abuse, coercive control and su***de risk. Whether a GP receptionist or a school teacher - you might be the one to raise the alarm.

Respond

Workshops that build confidence, professional curiosity and practical conversations around risk, knowing what to say and what NOT to say in that intervention. Maybe the practice nurse doing a smear test or a police officer attending an incident - those conversations matter.

Reach In

More in-depth practitioner training focused on navigating su***de risk within the realities and constraints that domestic abuse can create and understanding how to co-create a valuable safety plan when coercion and control block the ‘usual’ routes.

The beauty of a tiered approach is that it allows us to build awareness across an entire community, whilst also developing the specialist skills needed by those working closest to risk.

Preventing harm isn’t the responsibility of one person, one service or one profession - it takes informed communities, confident practitioners and connected systems to stop people falling between the gaps.

If you’d like to understand more about why this matters, you can download my free white paper:

Closing the Gap: Su***de Prevention in Domestic Abuse Contexts.

The more people who recognise what they’re looking at, signposting, stepping in, the more chance we have of preventing what comes next.

04/06/2026

Too often, services, systems and professionals require victim-survivors to choose a door.

We ask “What’s the issue?” so that they can be pointed to the right door, but people don’t experience their lives in neat categories and getting the help that the whole person needs becomes something of a challenge.

🔴 Coercive control can affect mental health
🔴 Mental health can influence su***de risk
🔴 Su***de risk can be shaped by abuse, trauma, loss, fear, shame and hopelessness …

This is exactly why I developed the Dual Risk framework and wrote the white paper “Closing the Gap: Su***de Prevention in Domestic Abuse Contexts” because domestic abuse, mental health and suicidality are often treated as separate issues when, in reality, they can become part of the same story.

Perhaps the better question isn’t “Which door?” but rather “What else might be going on here?”

Until we get better at seeing the connections, we will continue to miss opportunities to intervene earlier, ask better questions and save lives.

If you’d like a copy of the white paper you can download from the Confident Conversations website ☺️

03/06/2026

I went to look for my degree certificate, which I expected was at my parents’ house, because I need it to apply for the Master’s degree I want to do. (I just completed a Trauma-Informed Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control Practitioner programme, which I loved, and as I’m clearly incapable of leaving well alone, I’m now looking at a Master’s degree too. Go me!)

Unfortunately, universities like actual evidence that you graduated before they let you on a programme. Bizarrely they are not happy to simply take your word for it, 😉 so I started rummaging through drawers and cupboards, looking for a piece of paper from nearly 40 years ago. (I know! You thought I was only 27, right?)

I didn’t find the certificate, but I did find this - a photograph taken on my graduation day as we set off from home.

November 1988.

Mum and Dad standing either side of me, looking so young.

In the same drawer I found the graduation programme too, complete with my name inside.

Still no bloody certificate.

As I sat on the floor in their empty house surrounded by paperwork, photographs and memories, maybe a little tear or two, and it struck me that life has a funny way of changing the value of things.

A few months ago, I could have just asked Mum where it was … and right now I’d give anything to be back in that moment, even for just a few minutes.

To see my Mum as she was then.

To hear my Dad’s voice and his dry humour.

To tell that young woman in the middle that stuff won’t always go to plan, but she’ll be stronger than she knows and that there will be joy and heartbreak, success and disappointment, fear and overwhelm, love and loss but despite all of it, she’ll be OK, and will still love learning.

Maybe that’s why I’m still signing up for new qualifications and contemplating a Master’s degree before my age excludes me from the funding - not because I need more letters after my name, but because I’m still curious, still growing and still intent on making a difference.

Didn’t find the certificate though, so if anyone from those days is reading this, here’s an FYI - replacing a degree certificate now costs £60, which feels slightly unfair given I’ve got the photograph of me in cap and gown off Mum’s dining room wall, my name is in the programme and, for the avoidance of doubt, I distinctly remember we all went to Pizzaland afterwards to celebrate.

Surely that counts as evidence?

Wish you were here xx 💔

Address

Golborne

Website

http://www.confidentconversations.co.uk/

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