It is not uncommon to come to a point in life where the certainties of the past no longer seem to work for us. It can be an unsettling and disorienting experience. Suddenly, for whatever set of reasons, perhaps a … Read More
Often people will describe living with difficult feelings. They might not have them all of the time, but they experience feelings that recur and that make their lives difficult. These might be feelings of anxiety, fear, stress, loneliness or anger. … Read More
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
Betrayal is one of the toughest things to live with. The terrible feeling that you have been let down in the most fundamental way by someone you trusted and felt entirely secure with. It is a truly awful thing, a … Read More
We tend to repeat the way we live, work, and love, so we find our lives circling round different versions of the same outcomes and problems. How do we manage to step back and take a fresh look at things … Read More