It is remarkable how a confidential psychotherapy or counselling conversation helps to open up questions and worries that someone may have kept to themselves for years. Sometimes, in just a few sessions you see someone open up about themselves in … Read More
Question: How do you judge when might be the right time to explore psychotherapy or counselling? Answer: I think often you can have an idea that there is something going on, or that something is wrong, and have the sense … Read More
In my work I sometimes find myself exploring the fronts that people have developed, the shells they have built around themselves, possibly from the very beginning, the sense they have learned and developed that for their own protection things must … Read More
I spent last Sunday at a seminar revisiting one of the Laing and Esterson cases, the Danzig’s, from : Sanity, Madness and the Family. It is always valuable to go over a case history. But, a question that I have … Read More
Broadly speaking, in codependent relationships, one person’s help supports (enables) the other’s underachievement, irresponsibility, and immaturity while making the helper feel better about themselves. Left unchecked, in codependent relationships, a pattern of relating develops in which one person becomes the … Read More
People can be surprised by the idea that psychotherapy is work. They can see it as something lighter than work, surely talking can’t be work? It can take time to appreciate the kind of work that this is. For example, … Read More
Sooner or later we all come to grief, but how are we supposed to make sense of our experience? J Worden has written eloquently about bereavement, and here I have summarised some of his ideas. Just as the body needs … Read More
In the mourning process the mind works through all of the connections that made up the relationship. You go over a myriad of memories and associations of the lost person stitch by stitch. It is both conscious and an unconscious … Read More
Sometimes problems come unforeseen and create tensions that if left unchecked become more complicated and create uncomfortable levels of anxiety. Something may go wrong in a relationship, or bad health might strike us or a loved one, something happens that … Read More
We tend to live in patterns. We find ways of living that work for us and stick by them until we are forced to change often because of circumstances beyond our control. In some cases we may try to keep … Read More