In psychotherapy there is a lot of focus on patients coming to therapy – the start. Prospective patients will often mull over starting psychotherapy for a long time and it is not infrequent that they have “false starts” where they perhaps research a therapist, only to abandon the process in favour of some less confronting…
It is possible that we have never had as much information and as many opinions available as we have now. We can seek guidance, knowledge and understanding with incredible ease. We can also find ourselves subject to an often confusing volume of opinions. How do we develop and maintain our sense of self, with our…
Hope in uncertain times As an Arab-British woman of Iraqi descent with an Iranian name, whose childhood homes were both Lebanon and the UK, hope is hard to find in these times. Emily Dickinson created an evocative metaphor for hope, ‘That thing with feathers’, described as perching within the soul, a presence that ‘sings the…
Have you ever been struggling with a difficult emotion or experience and tried to share it with someone, only to be told to ‘be positive’ or ‘look on the bright side’? And though it may have seemed helpful or kind on one level, did it leave you feeling shut down and unseen? Even angry? This…
It might be a cliché: the psychotherapist who says ‘tell me about your dreams’. However, dreams are a useful tool many psychotherapists welcome into therapeutic work, inviting the unconscious mind of the client to step forward. Dreams can provide powerful and impactful material as part of the therapeutic process. Dreams in psychoanalysis In the early…
The psychic life of categorisation We live in a moment saturated with the language of categories. Societal hierarchies sort humans into columns of belonging and threat. Political discourse strips complex differences, lives, experiences and humanity into slogans. Social media rewards the most reductive version of any argument. In each of these arenas, something is happening…
Sometimes we can get pulled into relationships that are confusing and painful, and yet at the same time we are drawn to stay in them, almost in an addictive way. These relationships often follow a cycle of pain and hurt, which is followed by periods of kindness and loving attention. This cycle of pain and…
The algorithmic gaze In the crowded space of social media, our self-esteem can become symbiotically linked to the algorithmic gaze, where metrics really matter. Perhaps it is particularly pertinent at a time when we are questioning the potential harms of too much screen time and what lies beneath our compulsion to scroll. Where do we…
When emotions feel disproportionately intense People often come to therapy because something in the present feels unexpectedly intense and unsafe. A wave of anxiety engulfs us. Shame flares up where none seems warranted. A familiar sense of collapse, anger, or fear takes hold before there is time to think. Cognitively, many people can see that…
The concept of thinking might sound straightforward and instinctive. In many situations, particularly with practical matters, such as working out the best route to get to work or deciding what colour to paint your child’s bedroom, it could be as simple as going into problem-solving mode, doing some research, and making a decision. However, when…
I have previously reflected on the compulsive use of pornography and explored some of the origins of such a compulsion from an individual perspective. Here, I want to consider some relational aspects of the experience of compulsive use of pornography. We are relational beings and our sense of self develops through relations with others. The…
But it was so long ago! When remembering a traumatic event feels as frightening as, or even more frightening than, living it. People often come to therapy with an awareness of past challenging events impacting their current lives. It is common to feel frightened and unable to think about those events when they have been…
The rise of one-sided relationships is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. We are seeing it in the growing phenomenon of intimate relationships with chatbots. We are seeing it in the rise of misogyny, more recently exposed in Louis Theroux’s latest documentary on the manosphere where men who want relationships with women entirely on their own…
In a previous article, we explored what parental burnout is, why it develops, and why it is not a personal failure. But how can parents find some relief? Parental burnout is not a fixed state. It is the result of a prolonged mismatch between demands and available resources. Shifting that balance can help reduce exhaustion,…
Why the “perfect other” is never a person, and never love. Back in 2014 I wrote a piece entitled Porn addiction: the crack cocaine of sex addiction. And whilst I stand by what I wrote, the landscape has since changed considerably. Pornography, particularly in its modern forms, can hijack arousal, hollow out desire, and train…
Parenting is demanding. Most parents expect to feel tired, stretched, and occasionally overwhelmed. What many do not expect is a level of exhaustion that feels constant, emotionally draining, and hard to recover from, even with rest or time away. This experience is recognised in psychological research as parental burnout. It can feel like a character…
OK, so I have got your attention. Let’s delve deeper into this. I am not advocating psychotherapy as a way of getting rich. That would cheapen it, and it would miss the point. Psychotherapy is a profound good in and of itself. It is one of the few places in modern life where you are…
We often speak about ‘moving on’ as if the past were another country that we might simply depart. But we can no more exit our history then we can escape our own shadow; if only it were that easy. We act out our past in the present with varying degrees of conscious awareness over and…
People rarely join cults because of a lack of education, intelligence or judgement. Many individuals who end up in such groups are highly educated professionals with no shortage of resources. Despite claims that ‘anyone’ could join a cult, clinical experience suggests otherwise. People who are gradually seduced into cults – always initially masked as something…
How our brain changes in psychotherapy Many of the things we want in life can now be found very quickly and without struggle. When we think about emotional change, it can be seductive to believe that the same rules should apply; meet with a therapist, take away some quick answers and leave a new person….