When working with couples I am often struck by how much they love each other! This may sound surprising – by definition the couples I see in my practice have come to me because their relationship is in trouble. However I rarely see couples who say they no longer love each other. In my experience…
New, ongoing adult psychotherapy group starting in Autumn 2019 A new, ongoing adult psychotherapy group is due to start in the Autumn – a mixed gender group held at the Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Practice in Hove on Saturday mornings. This group will be guided by group-analytic principles and hold similar aims to psychoanalytic psychotherapy….
Contrary to its intention, praise does not always make a child feel good. Whilst we might typically think of praise as a gift, it is technically an evaluative judgement on the other person (e.g. “you’re a good girl” or “you’re a brilliant artist”), which for some children can be experienced as threatening or even dysregulating…
You might have seen EMDR being spoken about in the media a fair bit recently. Many famous people have been speaking out about how it has helped them with psychological difficulties, most often past traumas, but what actually is it? EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It was developed in 1987 by American…
Freud believed personality and behaviour come from the unique interaction of conflicting psychological forces that operate on different levels of awareness: the preconscious, conscious and unconscious. He believed these play an important role in behaviour. During therapy, we tap into our unconscious mind to discover more. How Therapy Works Therapy is often referred to as…
Dramatherapy is one of a group of therapies which are called Creative Arts Therapies, along with Music therapy and Art therapy. Today I am going to explore one aspect of Dramatherapy. We usually come to therapy to talk. Dramatherapy has the capacity to go beyond the talking because it is creative. Dramatherapy becomes useful in…
The phenomenon of parental ‘blocked care’ is a term coined by Clinical Psychologists Dan Hughes and Jonathon Baylin and Psychiatrist Dan Siegal. It represents a central feature of the Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) approach to treating children and young people with a history of developmental trauma and attachment disruption. Neuroscience research into the areas of…
Social unconsciousness is a term used by Earl Hopper to describe the effect of living in a world where we are connected by our common histories, culture and social, political and economic environment. But how does this affect us? With so much taking place in our ever-changing world, this has a place in our experiences…
When it comes to therapy, the therapist you choose can be the difference between getting the most out of your therapy and getting nothing out of your therapy. Having a therapist whom you feel comfortable opening up ensures you can talk about your issues in a safe space enabling you to overcome challenges faster. Brett…
When most people hear the words ‘mental health’ perhaps what they are most likely to think of is mental difficulties, or mental ill-health. I always think it’s such a shame that ‘mental health’ has these negative connotations, whereas just the word ‘health’ doesn’t seem to. I am a big believer in being proactive about mental…
When do you think these difficulties started? It is important to recognise when things began to change. On the other hand you might realise that to some extent it has always been like this but it is only now that you recognise that. Think back to the time when things began to change what else…
Following on from the post featuring Andrew Robinson’s photographs of the rooms at Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy, I want to think about the objects in the room in which therapy takes place. “Both room and house are psychological diagrams that guide writers and poets in their analysis of intimacy.” (Bachelard, 1958/1994:38). This implies we have…