Panic attacks can be terrifying and debilitating. They can feel as if you are going to die and like you have lost control of your body. While nobody has literally died from a panic attack, feeling out of control and overcome by fear and anxiety can be one of the most unpleasant experiences. It causes…
In this age of jettisoning the past and continually embracing the new, the answer to the question of how psychotherapy works has remained largely unchanged since the days of Freud. Modern enquiry and comprehension brings the capacity to understand what happens in the brain as a result of effective analysis, psychotherapy, or indeed, good enough…
Grief is often referred to in the context of intense feelings experienced with the loss of a loved one. The loss we experience is often caused through death. Grief is, therefore, synonymous with bereavement. This, however, is nowhere near the whole story. In order to know how to grieve, we need to understand grief. When we are told that someone…
We all use the word ‘personality’ in everyday language. We might use it to describe how we experience another person (“She has a nice personality.”) We use it to describe elements of how a person may behave, in the case of personality traits. And sometimes we use it interchangeably with the word ‘character’ to describe…
I have written in depth about the differences in counselling and psychotherapy – the work and the training of the clinician. So, for the sake of this blog, I will treat the terms as interchangeable, even though they employ vastly differing depths of work and skill. How does counselling work? This question often comes up…
I am sometimes asked, “What is transference?” Some patients are strongly negative towards the idea (of how they understand) the concept. A blog seems like a good opportunity to de-mystify this term and emphasise its importance to psychotherapy and to psychodynamic and psychoanalytic counselling. Freud Again! The notion of transference dates back to Freud. He…
When learning to be dependent is necessary ‘Dependence’ is a term that can carry negative connotations. To be ‘dependent’ might imply that we are unable to function alone and that we are unable to be the agent of our own life. It can also be interpreted as subscribing to outdated ideologies of male/female gender roles…
The term ‘Boarding School Syndrome’ is one that was brought to public consciousness by Jungian analyst Professor Joy Schaverian around a decade ago. Since then, it has gained significant traction as a model for explaining the often seen experiences and symptoms of adults who were sent away to boarding school as children. Specifically, it is…
Narcissism is a Freudian term that has become perhaps more ubiquitous in the social lexicon than any other derived from psychoanalysis. It is a term that seems to define a generation in the eyes of the media – the Millennials, and one that we use disparagingly to describe celebrities before following them via social media,…
At a recent clinical supervision session in Lewes, my supervisor and I were discussing the realities of being in a long-term relationship. By long-term, we were thinking about decades, rather than months or years, and in this context, we were together considering what individuals must accept about a long-term relationship and thus about themselves. It…
The word ‘mind’ is one that most folks use quite regularly and comfortably. Us psychotherapists use it more often than most. However, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has actually seen a mind. So, what is a mind, and why should we grow one? Those of you who follow us know that at Brighton…
While stigma around mental health issues remains an issue, there is an increasing willingness to talk about mental health issues both in the media and in society as a whole. Even if much of that talk centres around the woefully inadequate state provisions for mental health support and treatment, to some extent, the debate is…