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The cost of hiding your vulnerability: why emotional strength begins with openness

We can get confusing mixed messages when it comes to understanding vulnerability. Some people tell us that it’s vital to show our vulnerable side in our relationships, though for reasons that often seem less than clear to us. Whereas our typical response to vulnerability might more realistically be to run away as fast as we can. How can these opposing views make sense?

In this article we’re going to look at how we’ve historically been conditioned to view and deal with vulnerability, what our unconscious motivations might be, and the impact on our lives and relationships. We’ll end by reframing vulnerability in a way that might serve us more usefully.

The Illusion of Strength: Why We Learn to Hide Our Real Selves

From infancy onwards we receive unconscious messaging that we should aim to be strong and capable in the world, that this is the route to success and happiness. This in itself doesn’t seem an unreasonable strategy, right?

However, it turns out that this messaging is fundamentally flawed. This seemingly positive goal can make us work desperately hard to be seen as strong and invulnerable above all else. An additional consequence is that we unconsciously believe that being authentically ourselves is less important than the strong persona we present to the world – outer appearance over inner reality.

This develops into an ever-widening gap between the invulnerable version of us which strives to show no problems or flaws, and the real, inner us who lurks inside, feeling unwanted and unworthy. This is at the heart of our fear of being vulnerable – that this deeper part of us, which we have worked so hard to hide, will be seen and condemned. The illusion we try to create about being strong is not only a façade, at least in part, but it also fails to make us truly strong. Instead, it weakens us by making us scared of who we actually might be.

Wired to Protect: How Evolution Made Vulnerability Feel Dangerous

There is a further reason we avoid vulnerability. Humans have survived and evolved partly through successfully  avoiding existential harm – a survival response which comes from a more primitive environment when humans were hunted by bigger and more dangerous predators. In this sense, vulnerability can be associated with feeling existentially threatened, producing a powerful desire to escape.

And being a hypersocial species, we have always been deeply fearful of rejection by our tribe or social group. In more primitive times, this could equate to death. In our times, the threat is really more of a conditioning pressure, though it can feel existential. These reasons combine to help explain why we are likely to have powerful instincts to get away from vulnerable feelings at any cost.

And yet, if we don’t examine and come to understand these feelings, the impact can be negative and significant.

The Hidden Cost of Invulnerability: Disconnection, Anxiety, and Loneliness

The cost of us walking around the world presenting a strong and invulnerable persona can profoundly affect how we experience ourselves and our relationships. As a significant part of us is potentially hidden, it prevents the people we are in relationships with getting a full picture of who we are. In fact, the deeper and truer parts of us, which we’ve rejected and kept inside, unseen and unheard, are surely the very parts that make us who we are, and are the very parts that others want to see and connect with.

This keeping ourselves locked away can therefore create distance and disconnection from others, with the negative consequences of us feeling misunderstood and even isolated, potentially leading to issues such as social anxiety, depression, and feeling disconnected from our own lives. As profoundly social beings we need connection with others, just as we need food to survive.

The disconnection goes further because being disconnected from our own experience means we can lack self-understanding and reject hearing or learning from our experience. This can leave us struggling to deal with life’s problems or knowing how to make ourselves happy.

Reframing Vulnerability: A Path to Connection, Courage, and Self-Knowledge

Contrary to striving for an illusory defence of strength, we can reframe vulnerability as the route to getting to know ourselves at a deeper and more authentic level. Through opening to our own inner and vulnerable experiences we are able to access more vital parts of ourselves. This enables developing strength in being who we really are, gives us access to self-knowledge, and enables deeper and more meaningful connections to ourselves and others.

However, bearing in mind that we’ve spent much of our lives avoiding vulnerability, we will inevitably come up against our own deep-rooted patterns of avoidance and conditioned messaging to turn back to familiar safety – even when we know that the old ways are not working. It is for this reason that psychotherapy aims to create the conditions where you feel able to connect with your own experience step-by-step and allow your vulnerable feelings to unfold. This process aims to help you engage and prosper from experiencing the deep value of your own vulnerability.

To return to the title of this article, perhaps the question isn’t: do you want to feel vulnerable? But instead: can you afford not to?

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Thad Hickman, please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

Thad is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor and a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). He works long-term with individuals in our Lewes and Brighton and Hove practices.

 

Further reading by Thad Hickman

Is life dragging you into unwanted change?

What is the role of creativity in psychotherapy?

No space to be heard?

Does your life story make sense?

When something has to change

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Interdependence: between independence and dependence

Why interdependence is a healthy middle ground for mental and emotional wellness

How often do you hear people encouraging others to be ‘independent’ and ‘self-reliant’? Maybe you’ve even been that person trying to motivate someone to ‘stand on your own two feet’ and ‘try not to lean on others’.

Sentiments like this might be expressed when there seems to be an extreme level of dependence. Looking to others to always meet our needs can be familiar and comfortable, but it can also prevent personal growth and foster feelings of inadequacy. Even if we have legitimate needs that require us to depend on others, being informed and making your own choices can greatly enhance the experience of relying on other people.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the concept of independence. The Cambridge dictionary defines it as ‘the ability to live your life without being helped or influenced by other people.’ While the idea of not needing others can be appealing, especially when trust has been broken or past relationships have let us down, excessive independence can lead to isolation, stress, and burnout. Though we all benefit from achieving success on our own at times, we may start to feel alone if we neglect to build and maintain healthy relationships.

Finding a balance between dependence and independence can be challenging, but the concept of interdependence offers a healthy middle ground.

Interdependence: no man is an island

We know, from both observation and scientific research, that no living thing on Earth can exist in complete isolation. Bees need flowers for pollen, plants rely on bees for pollination, soil requires plants for microbial health, and plants need soil for nutrients… and so on.

Interdependence describes a balanced, healthy reliance on others without total dependence and with give and take. It allows for stepping away and coming back together with trust and mutual respect. The 17th-century poet John Donne famously said, ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ His words emphasise the significance of our connection to others and the world around us.

The psychiatrist Donald Winnicott echoed this in his work with parents and infants, stating, ‘There is no such thing as an infant, meaning, of course, that whenever one finds an infant, one finds maternal care, and without maternal care there would be no infant.’ Winnicott highlighted the ideal bond between mother and child, suggesting that they cannot conceptually exist without each other. He believed this connection shapes the future relational experiences of the infant.

John Bowlby, the psychiatrist who pioneered attachment theory, also spoke to this, explaining that early relationships teach us how to form secure bonds later in life. A ‘secure base’ in relationships enables us to explore the world safely, with a stable place to return to when things become difficult, or we need rest and connection. This can be harder to develop in adulthood if it was not established in childhood.

Despite what can seem to be an emphasis on independence in our society, many social care and mental health services recognise the importance of relationships and connection in healing trauma and fostering fulfilling lives. One example of this in relation to interdependence is in therapeutic communities, designed for individuals often living with emotional distress and severe mental health challenges. These communities emphasise relational treatment, and the repair of early relational trauma through the experience of being with, doing with and, often, living with others. This, sometimes complex and difficult therapeutic process, creates space for belonging, connection and hope as members navigate conflict and care for one another through careful boundary setting and reflection. It offers an opportunity to relearn the value of healthy, supportive relationships.

I’ve witnessed first hand, in my work, how people can transform when they move from an isolated, independent, or dependent state to one of interdependence. Through this shift, individuals learn to establish and maintain boundaries, while fostering mutually supportive relationships and a sense of belonging. This approach can also be applied to social groups, workplaces, and families. Workplaces can even cultivate a resilient and secure workforce by nurturing a culture of interdependence.

Reflecting on your own relationship with independence and dependence

It can be helpful to reflect on your own patterns of independence and dependence by considering these questions:

  • Do you allow others to help you, and can you ask for help?
  • Do you prioritise helping others over helping yourself?
  • How do you cope when others are not around?
  • How could you cultivate more interdependent relationships in your life?
  • What do you offer others, and what do you truly need from them?

The answers to these questions may surprise you. You might find that some of your behaviours are rooted in deeper beliefs you have or experiences from the past. You might also identify areas where you want to make changes. If these questions stir up feelings of uncertainty or discomfort, it could be helpful to explore them further, whether on your own or, in the spirit of interdependence, with the support of others, to better understand and navigate these challenges.

 

Kirsty Toal is an experienced psychotherapist with a decade spent offering therapy, training and clinical supervision in a variety of settings. Kirsty offers short- and long-term psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy to adults, in person in Lewes and online.

 

Further reading by Kirsty Toal

Understanding and managing the ‘green eyed-monster’

To be creative as an adult

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Why staying in your chair is the key to being a good psychotherapist

When working with trainees and supervisees, I frequently refer to the need for a psychotherapist to ‘stay in their chair’. Let me explain.

Psychotherapy is a relationship. It is a very intimate and unique relationship between the clinician and their patient, which is principally about the needs of the patient. This, however, does not mean that the psychotherapist acquiesces to every whim or request a patient may have. On the contrary.

The key to any successful relationship, whether a friendship, a romantic relationship or a parent-child relationship, is that there are clear boundaries. Often, if not always, when a patient comes into therapy it is because they have grown up in an environment where the boundaries were poor, inappropriate or non-existent. In other words, they grew up with relational deficiencies.

Poor boundaries create a psychological and at times physical environment, where there ceases to be a differentiation between self and other. This is often referred to as a merger. Where children grew up with a parent or parents with poor boundaries, the experience can be hugely impactful on their psychological and emotional development and, in attachment language, leads to insecure or disorganised attachment styles. In simple terms, it makes it very difficult for these individuals, once adults, to have healthy boundaries in two-person relationships; they are either at the mercy of the other, or conversely, make everything about themselves and fail to recognise the needs of the other.

As a psychotherapist with fifteen years of experience, I have yet to meet a single patient who crossed my threshold, who did not have issues with relationships and thus had attachment damage. It’s the work.

One of the primary roles of the psychotherapeutic relationship is to have a caring, loving relationship with the patient, that is in their best interests. It therefore is boundaried by definition.

One of the tenets of working as a psychotherapist is that it is always in the best interest of the patient for the clinician to hold the boundaries. Even if the patient pushes against these – and they will. Just as it is a parent’s role to hold the boundary with their child and hold their best interests in mind, since they cannot.

So, now we are coming to the meaning of ‘stay in your chair’ which I mean both literally and figuratively. Put simply it means stay in your role and hold the boundaries, because without boundaries, the psychotherapy ends.

Patients who have not grown up with clear and supportive boundaries will unconsciously try and recreate a familiar dynamic, generally stemming from their childhood, in the psychotherapy. Us clinicians refer to this as transference, which is a form of projection from the patient onto the clinician. The difference between projection and transference is that the role of the psychotherapist is to think about and understand the projection onto them, and within this to recognise the relational blueprint of the patient and whom the psychotherapist represents for the patient. In simple terms, the patient will attempt to ‘play out’ the most influential relational patterns from their childhood with their psychotherapist. And if this is not caught and thought about, then the therapy simply becomes a repeat of the patient’s childhood experience.

Whether a patient attacks or seduces, our role is to stay in our chair – to remain consistent and constant and to hold the boundaries. Patients will invariably ‘act out’, which is to say that they will embody and play out dynamics that are counter-productive to the therapy, but familiar to them. Our role as a clinician is to survive these acting outs and to protect the therapy at all costs, Sadly, the concept of psychotherapy has become increasingly diluted in the UK, in part due to a lack of differentiation between counselling and psychotherapy and a general ‘race to the bottom’ amongst training institutions. The result is that therapists increasingly have no concept of ‘staying in their chair’ and either move towards the patient when seduced into a collusion, or back away and abandon when attacked.

Lastly, this is not to say that as psychotherapists we should accept or ‘put up with’ attacks from patients. On the contrary, the boundaries are there to protect us too, and if a patient verbally attacks and cannot return to think alongside their therapist, then they may simply be unsuitable for the work, which is also a boundaried position to hold.

 

Mark Vahrmeyer is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist working in private practice in Hove and Lewes, East Sussex. He is trained in relational psychotherapy and uses an integrative approach of psychodynamic, attachment and body psychotherapy to facilitate change with clients.

 

Further reading by Mark Vahrmeyer –

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Is starting psychotherapy a good New Year’s resolution?

Twixtmas – surviving that dreaded time between Christmas and New Year

How to minimise Christmas stress if you are hosting

How do you get self esteem?

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Understanding and managing the ‘green-eyed monster’

As a psychotherapist, I sometimes encounter individuals struggling with the unsettling emotion of envy. While we might visualise the ‘green-eyed monster’ and make light of it, it can sometimes grow into a significant problem.

The socio-economic context 

Many of us face anxieties over whether what we have is enough. Today, even those who once felt financially secure are becoming more mindful of their spending, while those with more limited resources are stretched beyond their means, often to the point of poverty. Amidst this, we’re constantly bombarded with messages that we need more, the latest, and to seek some kind of perfection, especially from social media. This pursuit can leave us feeling dissatisfied, anxious, lacking, and often envious of others who seem to have what we desire.

The roots and impact of envy 

At its worst, envy can manifest as anger, resentment, and hatred towards others. It projects our unmet needs onto those who seem to have everything. This can lead to feelings of injustice, unworthiness, and resentment, fuelling negative beliefs about ourselves. It can be particularly confusing and distressing if we feel envy towards those we love, admire and care for.

These feelings often correlate with our childhood experiences of having our needs met. Envy, in its most basic form, reflects the mother and baby dynamic. Melanie Klein, a prominent psychoanalyst, described infant envy as a painful and powerful emotion marked by fury and hatred, where the mother has what the baby wants (care and nourishment), but it is not always instantly available so feels withheld from the baby.

Envy in mythology

Even the Greek goddess Aphrodite was envious of Psyche, a mortal whose incredible beauty shook Aphrodite’s sense of self. In hatred, she sent her son Eros to kill Psyche, but he fell in love with her instead. Aphrodite’s envy fuelled continuing efforts to cause Psyche great suffering in order to restore her own status and sense of superiority.

Envy and jealousy

It’s important to distinguish between envy and jealousy. Envy usually involves two people, while jealousy involves three and often relates to a baby’s desire to be the favoured one in a family unit, sometimes wanting to come between two parents. While both can be destructive, jealousy can be more helpful as it relates to our need for relationships and self-connection. Aphrodite likely experienced jealousy and loss as well as envy when her son favoured Psyche over her.

Envy and narcissism

Those deeply wounded and lacking in their upbringing may develop a false persona, seeking status and power to feel valuable, which can be deemed narcissistic.

Encountering someone with higher status can disturb their sense of self, creating immense fear and anxiety. They may blame the other person for their misery, viewing them as something to be hated. We all carry narcissistic wounds from early life when care might have been lacking or delayed, even if it was usually satisfactory. When our sense of self is threatened, we become vulnerable to envy, and this can happen
to all of us.

Managing envy

Understanding and managing envy can help emotional wellbeing. Chronic envy feels unbearable, and those affected often go to great lengths to relieve the pain. Many people find relief in religion, spiritual beliefs or community to feel valuable and worthy. There are many ways to foster a secure sense of self, usually involving
building healthy relationships with others and the self.

In therapy, through exploring self-awareness, understanding emotions, and examining relationships, you can begin to ease overwhelming feelings of envy. Envy can sometimes be unconsciously projected onto the therapist, as well as others, creating complex dynamics. This not unusual and building an understanding of these projections can address underlying feelings of inadequacy and deprivation. Everyone has a unique experience of envy, and everyone will find their own way of understanding what it means to them.

 

Kirsty Toal is an experienced psychotherapist with a decade spent offering therapy, training and clinical supervision in a variety of settings. Kirsty offers short- and long-term psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy to adults, in person in Lewes and online.

 

Further reading by Kirsty Toal – 

To be creative as an adult

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Why do we repeat past failures again and again?

All of us make mistakes; we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.

But some past failures or mistakes have a habit of being repeated time and time again. These could be work related, like promising yourself that you’ll hand in an assignment ahead of time, only to leave everything to the last minute and deliver something below your best.

Alternatively, patterns of failure can repeat in more serious ways, such as making poor financial decisions like overspending or getting into debt. They can repeat in behaviours like isolating yourself from those who care for you in a time of need. They can repeat in romantic endeavours, such as continually dating people who treat you badly.

Repeating past failures has the potential to provide endless frustration, confusion, and suffering. And on the surface, it seems completely counterintuitive and unhelpful; why would anyone want to relive their failures or traumas?

It’s possible that these repeated behaviours are not random mistakes that we temporarily forget we’ve learned, but actually our unconscious mind’s way of trying to overcome and solve unresolved problems from the past.

To try to understand this further, I turn to some of the insights presented by Freud’s 1920 paper ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’.

Mastery and control

Freud noted that one reason we repeat past failures is an attempt to gain mastery over an original experience or trauma. So by repeating this event in a new situation, that we’re in control of, it gives us an opportunity to try again in more favourable circumstances. A chance to do better than before and master the experience, as well as feel triumph and pleasure when we survive it.

So, to understand this, let’s revisit the example of the person who leaves their assignment to the last minute. Let’s call him John. It’s possible that John had a painful childhood experience where he’d been criticised or humiliated for failing to meet expectations or perform – perhaps at home or school. These painful emotions and memories are likely to remain unprocessed and alive within him, even when he’s not aware of them. So where there’s an opportunity to re-do this experience and master the feelings associated with it, like with his work assignment, he might unconsciously recreate it through performing poorly.

Process difficult emotions

Building on the idea of mastery, Freud also discovered that sometimes we unconsciously re-create past failures or painful experiences, to give ourselves another chance at understanding the emotions we couldn’t fully process when they first happened. When an event in the present echoes a past trauma, our mind could interpret it as an opportunity to work through what was once too overwhelming to face. Our unconscious mind has a frustrating habit of prioritising resolving past challenges, over helping us to succeed in the
now.

So, going back to John, let’s suggest he struggled to learn to read as a child, making him a target for teasing and criticism from his parents or siblings. Perhaps this continued throughout his schooling, where he didn’t perform well in tests at school. At the time, John may not have had the emotional tools to fully understand or process these experiences, so the pain remained unresolved. Now, as an adult, when faced with a challenging work assignment, John unknowingly finds himself procrastinating, leading to criticism from colleagues or managers for delivering subpar work. This new experience gives him another opportunity to process the emotions he couldn’t manage or understand as a young boy.

Resistance to change

We are all at times resistant to change, even when change is preferable for us. But past experiences, both negative and positive, often seem preferable to new experiences that have the potential to be worse. The expression ‘better the devil you know’ comes to mind. By repeating a past failure, we can reconnect with familiar feelings that make sense to us, rather than expose ourselves to a vulnerable unknown.

To explore this, let’s look at the example of the person who continually seeks partners who treat them badly. Let’s call her Penelope. It’s possible that her early experience was that of being mistreated by her parents some way. Perhaps she never received attention from her father or had a mother that criticised her a lot. So when Penelope has an opportunity for connection in later life, she might seek similar relationships with others, who are likely to treat her in the same way. Despite being painful, recreating these past relationships, where she’s criticised or ignored, feels familiar and safer than being treated with kindness or respect.

Self-destructiveness

Whilst we’re all naturally driven to seek pleasure, survival and creativity, there’s also a counterforce pulling us in the opposite direction, towards aggression, destruction and self-sabotage. Depending on our temperament and past experiences, some of us have a larger capacity for self-destruction than others, which can cause us to repeat behaviours that harm us and those around us.

Let’s link this back to Penelope. We all want and need people in our lives that love and care about us. But with her parental experience growing up, she didn’t get this feeling. Being criticised and ignored became her understanding of normal and safe. This might have caused her to take on the belief that she didn’t deserve to have others care about her. So when she’s in a situation where she needs support and care, she pushes others away, re-enacting her experience with her family in a self-sabotaging way.

Breaking the cycle

Unfortunately, repeating past failures is rarely a good strategy for stopping these cycles from happening again. It could be seen as an outdated method our brains use to cope with unprocessed and overwhelming past experiences. However, there are ways to break the cycle, one being long-term psychotherapy.

The work of psychotherapy is to identify these negative patterns of behaviour and look to understand what is being repeated and why it’s unresolved. Through processing these memories and emotions in a safe environment, within a reliable therapeutic relationship, we can attempt to build self-awareness, stop repeating the past and create a future where more healthy choices are possible.

 

Joseph Bailey is a psychodynamic psychotherapist, offering analytic therapy to individual adults in Brighton and Hove. He is registered with both the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Joseph is available at our Brighton & Hove Practice and online.

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How to minimise Christmas stress if you’re hosting

Christmas can be an emotionally challenging and difficult time for many of us. There is such expectation on how Christmas ‘should’ be, yet like the weather, it often fails to deliver on the ‘winter wonderland’ scenes on the TV adverts. For so many of us our family experience often falls far short of the loving idyllic family reunions depicted in those same snowy adverts. And if you are hosting, this can bring with it an added pressure to deliver the ‘perfect Christmas’.

There is lots of advice available on how best to organise yourself practically in advance in the big day, such as food prep hacks. However, I wonder if there is another way of not only coping but getting something from the day for yourself?

Think about your own needs first

An example that I often use in clinical practice when illustrating to patients how it is vital that they think of their own needs, is the pre-flight safety briefing that happens before a plane takes off.

Anyone who has flown has sat through at least one of these and there is a particular point in the briefing where the cabin crew explain what you should do if the cabin loses pressure, the oxygen masks drop down and you are travelling with a dependent. The correct approach is to attend to your own mask first and then your dependent, however, it is surprising how many people think that they should help their dependent fit their mask first, before attending to their own. Why is it this way around? Because if you try and help your dependent first and have not tended to your own needs, there will be two people in distress rather than one. And yet for so many of us the inclination is to ignore our own needs and attend to those of others.

Applying the same logic to Christmas, before deciding whom to invite and having any conversations with family and friends about the day itself, first think about your own wants and needs. What are your physical limitations and needs? What can you and can’t you do? How many people can you host without feeling overwhelmed? Who’s company do you enjoy and who is draining? What do you want to get from the day?

The next step is to think about what is negotiable and what is a firm boundary. For example, it may be that you are willing to cater for an additional number of people if you have help or support from others with cooking. Or, it may be that you are willing to tolerate the presence of someone you find contentious, if another member of the family assures you that they will help you manage that person. However, a firm boundary may be that you have a certain time by when you request everybody leaves (stated in advance).

Wants versus needs

The nature of Christmas combined with the pressure to host, can often mean that any consideration of what you may want from the day gets lost and the focus shifts to being one of ‘surviving the day’. What if it does not have to be like this? What if you could take some time to calmly consider how you would like not only to ‘host’ the day and cater for everybody, but to play an active role in creating the day that you would like? In other words, what if you were to value your own needs as much as you value everybody else’s?

Hosting does not mean sacrificing yourself

Consider how you do not need to sacrifice yourself in order to host an event for others. People who are worth being in relationship with (and therefore arguably worth spending Christmas with), should be people who are interested in your wellbeing and needs and will therefore be open to hearing about not only what you can and can’t offer on the day, but also what you would like from it. If they aren’t, then perhaps question whether they are really wanting to celebrate with you as a person, or are simply making use of what you can provide.

Support through relationship

Putting your needs into the mix can feel daunting if it is not something that you are used to doing. And it is generally only possible if we can rely on having an ally, or allies, by our side who are encouraging – this is often our partner or a close friend. If you are in a relationship, talk to your partner about your needs and wants of Christmas well before the day arrives.  Explain to them how you wish to approach hosting Christmas and risk asking for support – emotional as well as practical. This is something you can do with a friend, or friends, too.

It can also be really helpful to agree up front how you will ask for support on the actual day and how you would like your partner or friend(s) to support you. Examples may be anything from starting the day together and connecting, through to specific practical requests. You can demonstrate support for each other throughout the day through small reassuring gestures such as visually checking in with one another or making physical contact.

Reality testing

Christmas is only a day and that is really worth bearing that in mind. However the day goes, the world will keep on turning and in all likelihood, the relationships that matter will still be there for you. The expectations we feel in relation to Christmas are largely in our own head and can therefore be challenged.  By pausing and accepting that there is no such thing as a ‘fairy-tale Christmas’ we can gain a little space to see it for what it is. It does not have to be perfect nor is it likely to be. Is the goal a ‘picture perfect’ Christmas, or one in which you feel like you are connecting with loved ones and friends?

The past is not the present

For many, memories of past Christmases are difficult and they can reappear like ghosts. However, these ghosts need not dominate your experience in the here-and-now. Accept that it is a difficult time for you and know that it is for many others too, be compassionate with the feelings that the season evokes and remember it is only a day. Sometimes we feel strong emotions on particular days that are simply reminders of the past – echoes – and we actually have the power to create something different. The more you are able to anticipate your wants and needs ahead of Christmas, the less likely the ghosts of the past are to appear and dominate the day.

Alcohol generally makes things worse

Nobody is telling you not to drink on Christmas Day. However, if it is a day that evokes sadness or anxiety, alcohol will not improve these feelings for long. Once it wears off, they will be back with a vengeance and accompanied by a hangover. The opposite of using alcohol to self-soothe is to soothe through relationship. Even if you are not in a relationship with another, you are in a relationship with yourself and can hold yourself in mind.

Even if the day feels full and focused on others, it is always possible to take a few minutes out to calm yourself. You can breathe, come back to the here and now and remind yourself –  Christmas is only a day.

Listen to your body

This doesn’t mean act impulsively. It is more about listening for what the vulnerable part of you needs. This may be a hot bath with a good book, a warm drink by the fire, a nice home cooked meal or spending time with a supportive friend. It could also be a long run, or a dance or yoga class. Whatever self-care tool helps you feel well and connected should form part of your preparations for the day and be in place after the day.

 

Mark Vahrmeyer, UKCP Registered, BHP Co-founder is an integrative psychotherapist with a wide range of clinical experience from both the public and private sectors. He currently sees both individuals and couples, primarily for ongoing psychotherapy.  Mark is available at the Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practices.

 

Further reading by Mark Vahrmeyer – 

How do you get self esteem?

Why is psychotherapy generally weekly?

Why we should be disappointed

What is a growth mindset?

Don’t tear down psychological fences until you understand their purpose

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Surviving family festivities: a psychoanalytic journey through the twelve days of Christmas

As the holiday season descends upon us like a glittering, tinsel-laden avalanche, many find themselves navigating the tricky or sometimes treacherous emotional landscape of family gatherings. Fear not, dear reader, for psychoanalytic psychotherapy could offer a guiding star, a beacon of hope to lead you through the holiday chaos to that peaceful Nativity scene, stable and all.

On the first day of Christmas: recognising your inner child

Imagine the family Christmas as a complex psychological drama where every interaction is laden with unconscious meaning. Your mother’s passive-aggressive comment about your table decorations, cooking, Christmas jumper choice – a manifestation of unresolved childhood dynamics? Your father’s awkward attempt at connection and endless ‘dad jokes’ – a deep-seated need for validation?

Psychoanalytic therapy teaches us to unwrap these emotional presents, glimpsing beyond the shiny exterior to try to read or understand the deeper psychological mechanisms at play. Each family member arrives with a lifetime of unprocessed experiences, creating a psychological minefield more intricate than the most complicated Christmas light display.

On the second day of Christmas: projection and family dynamics

Watch as Uncle Bob projects his professional disappointments onto you, criticism masquerading as concern. Your sister’s seemingly innocent comments carry the weight of childhood rivalries. Psychoanalysis aims to help you recognize these projections, transforming you from a passive recipient of family narratives to an active interpreter of emotional scripts.

On the third day of Christmas: the unconscious holiday script

Your family gathering is not just a meal; it’s a carefully choreographed psychological performance. Each member plays a role established decades ago – the peacemaker, the black sheep, the golden child, the wise men, the angels and the shepherds. Psychoanalytic therapy can provide script analysis, helping you identify and grasp the inference in these deeply ingrained patterns.

On the fourth day of Christmas: transference and family interactions

Every interaction becomes a window into your unconscious processes. That tension with your mother… It’s rarely about the overcooked turkey. Is it perhaps related to those early attachment experiences, unresolved conflicts, and deep-seated emotional patterns that have been simmering in the realm of the unconscious since childhood, with a hint of the aroma of boiled sprouts?

On the fifth day of Christmas: breaking defensive mechanisms

Family gatherings trigger our most sophisticated psychological defence mechanisms. Humour becomes a shield, sarcasm a weapon, silence a fortress. Psychoanalysis can help you to recognise these hidden defences, encouraging an authentic emotional engagement beneath the festive veneer.

On the sixth day of Christmas: the unconscious holiday narrative

Your family’s holiday story is more complex than any Netflix drama. Unspoken traumas, generational patterns, and collective family myths create a narrative far more compelling than any Christmas special. Psychoanalytic therapy offers you the opportunity to re-write the director’s cut, helping you illuminate the deeper subtext of the storyline.

On the seventh day of Christmas: emotional archaeology

Each family interaction is an archaeological dig into your psychological landscape. Old wounds, repressed memories, unacknowledged traumas – they all resurface during the holidays. Psychoanalysis can provide the tools to gently excavate these emotional artefacts with as much care and compassion as you employ to slice and serve that extra special Christmas pavlova.

On the eighth day of Christmas: navigating emotional boundaries

Learn to establish psychological boundaries more robust than a gingerbread iced fortress. Psychoanalytic therapy empowers you to differentiate between your emotions and those projected onto you, creating a healthy emotional ecosystem amidst family chaos. A breadcrumb trail through the forest of the unconscious.

On the ninth day of Christmas: understanding repetition compulsion

Why do we find ourselves repeating the same family dynamics year after year? Psychoanalysis can reveal the unconscious drives which compel us to recreate familiar emotional landscapes, even when they’re painful and seemingly unavoidable. An Alka-Seltzer for those undigested issues.

On the tenth day of Christmas: the gift of self-awareness

Your greatest present this Christmas is self-understanding. Addressing and processing the unconscious elements we bury like a tangerine in the toe of our Christmas stocking, Psychoanalytic therapy can transform family gatherings from potential emotional minefields into opportunities for growth, insight and hopefully a family game of Uno that doesn’t descend into World War III.

On the eleventh day of Christmas: integrating the shadow

Embrace the parts of yourself and your family history you’d prefer to keep wrapped up. True healing comes from acknowledgment, not denial. Set a place at the table for all the ghosts of your Christmas’ past.

On the twelfth day of Christmas: transformation

As the holiday dust settles, you may emerge not just surviving, but psychologically transformed. Armed with insights from the psychoanalytic journey, you’ve navigated the complex emotional terrain of family dynamics, Prancer and Dancer would be most impressed!

Remember, dear reader: this Christmas, your most valuable gift is the journey of self-discovery.

 

Shiraz El Showk is a Training Member of the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy (AGIP) and a registered Training member of the UKCP, She is experienced in Psychodynamic counselling and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy work with individuals, on both long and short term basis. Shiraz works from our Brighton and Hove practice, Lewes practice and online.

 

Further reading by Shiraz El Showk –

Parents – the ghosts and angels of our past

Is an AI therapist as good as a human one?

What is the unconscious? (part one)

Why is three the magic number? Third spaces, secure bases and creative living (part two)

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What is the role of creativity in psychotherapy?

In this article, I discuss creativity as foundational to being human, how it enables an emotionally and psychologically fulfilling life, and its relationship with psychotherapy.

Everyday creativity

When we think of creativity we tend to think of world-renowned artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, Mozart. This, however, is a very narrow interpretation of creativity and perhaps illustrates an unfortunate common belief: that only a select few people are creative. This is simply not true. Though not everyone follows the path of the professional artist, all humans are nevertheless creative. This is powerfully illustrated by observing children at play, where curiosity and imaginative make-believe are both instinctive and joyful.

As we develop into adults, however, our relationship with creativity changes. Instead of playing inside a castle we’ve made out of bedsheets, our creativity often focuses on more practical issues, such as ideas for dinner using what’s in the fridge, how to find a holiday in the sun we can afford, how to deal with a friend we’ve fallen out with. This means that we spend much of the day using what we might call ‘everyday creativity’ to navigate the problems and opportunities we encounter.

And yet, even though we rely on this intrinsic creative ability, we often don’t see the crucial role it plays in getting us through the day and its influence on our fulfilment in life, which in turn often means we don’t fully explore our creative potential.

Self-understanding

To respond creatively in a way that enables us to thrive, we first need to understand ourselves: our experience, our needs, our problems. For example, how to make sense of challenging experiences we’ve tried hard to hide from ourselves? The confusing difficulty with an important relationship? Issues we repeatedly struggle with?

Without this self-understanding, we can try to respond creatively, but as we don’t know what need we’re trying to fulfil and we don’t know how we’ve been going wrong to date, we’re likely to keep trying new solutions which don’t make us feel better.

This has the mistaken side-effect of making us believe that our creativity doesn’t provide the answers we need.

Creativity enabled

But if we develop self-knowledge, our innate creativity can start to work better for us and get our needs met. For example, we might start creatively exploring deeper questions such as childhood trauma. This in turn could change our relationship with the trauma and its impact on our lives now. Or we might come to understand what we’re not happy about in a long-term relationship and creatively explore ways of improving or changing that relationship.

How therapy can help

Psychotherapy embraces creativity in two fundamental ways. Firstly, it aims to help you understand yourself better – to connect with your authentic, creative self. This is the inherent part of you that makes you you, and enables you to respond to life in ways that are aligned with what you believe or feel to be true.

Secondly, psychotherapy develops creativity through its own creative process: where you learn to explore and be open to your own internal world of experience, thoughts, and feelings. And you learn to be open to new possibilities within yourself, developing into a new self-understanding.

It is from here that deeper resources of creativity often come online: seeing experiences and relationships in fresh ways, being more open to emerging experience, responding spontaneously to the moment, being less held back by habitual fears and more prepared to try something new.

The potential impact

The impact of being more tuned into and aware of your own experience and more connected to your creative self are significant and multiple. You will likely be more resilient to problems you encounter, know more about what is and isn’t working for you, and trust and listen to your own internal creative responses. This can positively affect your relationships, your own mental health and wellbeing, and your own fulfilment in life as you positively engage with the creative process of personal change and growth.

What’s the takeaway?

Psychotherapy aims to help you establish and deepen a connection with your creative self which enables you to be more you, to use your own powerful and innate creative resources, which in turn enables you to respond to life in a way that better meets your needs.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Thad Hickman, please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

Thad is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor and a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). He works long-term with individuals in our Lewes and Brighton and Hove practices.

 

Further reading by Thad Hickman – 

No space to be heard?

Does your life story make sense?

When something has to change

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In support of vulnerability

What does vulnerability mean to you? Is it part of being human, something to acknowledge and embrace, or do you find ourselves shying away from it?

Vulnerability is part of what connects us to others. By being open, revealing something of ourselves and seeing that in others, we build connections. It’s not a given and we all have to feel that it’s appropriate to be open and vulnerable. We can all think of a time when we have been vulnerable, and it has felt challenging.  Whether we felt physically or emotionally unsafe, we know that it is something that we wouldn’t chose to return to and might find it hard to think about.

When it is hard to be vulnerable

From an early age we know what it is to feel vulnerable, because we depend on others for our safety and wellbeing. These formative relationships are how we develop a sense of how we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Do we learn that we connect through being vulnerable, or that is it is to be avoided? Are we able to feel safe, when we feel vulnerable, or does it feel that being vulnerable isn’t possible or acceptable? Being vulnerable and it not feeling safe or acceptable, builds the sense that it is best avoided. The fear of being vulnerable, stops us.

The case for vulnerability

The awareness that we build relationships with others through vulnerability means that finding it hard to express our vulnerability can impact our capacity to connect. Do we let people see us or are we wary and therefore feel less connected? Building trust between people is about the interplay between them, allowing openness when it feels safe. By understanding that we can be vulnerable, we can build closer and deeper connections to others. We can be open with them, and they with us.

Being vulnerable in relation to others is about being able to share our emotions. When we have developed a sense that being vulnerable isn’t possible how do our emotions get expressed? Do we hold them in, deny their existence, hope that they go dormant, or act them out through behaviour? Holding on to our emotions, in effect a defence against feeling vulnerable, is challenging. It is hard to feel full of emotion and feel unable to express it. At this point vulnerability feels impossible, however desirable it might be.

Being able to express one’s emotions and form deeper connections with others can feel beyond the realms of possibility. It can be desirable, yet unthinkable, leaving the feeling that one is stuck in a pattern that repeats throughout life. The development of the capacity to be vulnerable is part of how these patterns can be challenged. Old habits and ways of being can shift, and one can feel able to experience both one’s own emotions and those of others.

Being vulnerable in psychotherapy

In talking therapy there is an understanding that one is going to be exploring emotions and that this can bring with it strong feelings of being vulnerable. The challenge that this presents is understood and as therapists it is about building a working relationship with a client that can make being vulnerable possible. The therapeutic relationship is one in which vulnerability is always possible, and that the thoughts that make it feel difficult can be explored. The therapist is not only bringing their knowledge and experience to the relationship, but is also invested in the individual.

 

David Work is a BACP registered psychotherapist working with adults, offering long term individual psychotherapy. He works with individuals in Hove . To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with David , please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Further reading by David Work –

Trauma and the use of pornography

Reflections on bereavement

Compulsive use of pornography

Mental health in retirement

Subjective perception, shared experience

In support of being average

 

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Trauma and the use of pornography

I explored the use of pornography and its presence in society in previous blog. In thinking about pornography, there is the question of why some people might become habitual users. What part might childhood trauma play in the development of compulsive use of pornography?

Trauma, attachment and anxiety

The experience of trauma in formative years can have a marked impact on the individual when they become sexually active and might be using pornography. Trauma can take various forms and can lead to feelings of difficulty expressing emotions and in forming close relationships.

The connection between trauma and the difficulty in forming close relationships, originates in how the child who experiences trauma is related to. The experience that the caregivers are not able to hear and support the child in expressing and exploring their emotions, shapes the child’s sense of the bond that exists between them. When this bond, or attachment, is not good and secure, the child feels that they are not worthy of care, love and attention and of being ‘attached’. This is when they learn that close relations are not reliable and so are to be avoided. In the sexually active adult, the expression of this may well be that sexual intimacy feels difficult.

The vulnerability that is present when being sexually intimate can feel overwhelming and make such encounters difficult, if not impossible. The desire is there, but the anxiety that it induces makes it something to be avoided.

Pornography: the reliable relationship

Looking at the adult who has experienced trauma in childhood and finds close relationships difficult, how might we conceptualise their relationship with pornography? Against the background of trauma and the resulting poor attachment do we seek out reliable relationships? Looking for something that meets the need for sexual intimacy, yet doesn’t have associated anxiety about that comes with closeness?

Pornography could be seen to meet that need. It is intimate, yet it is impersonal. One can be sexually potent, engaged and satisfied without the anxiety that closeness brings. Pornography becomes the reliable and safe relationship. It meets the demands of libidinous urges, without demanding more of the individual. The use of
pornography also relates with the feelings of low self-esteem, that this might be the only form of sexual interaction that the individual deserves. Feelings of guilt, shame and unworthiness all get acted out in the use of pornography. It is secretive, private, personal and can controlled by the user. Pornography ultimately becomes the way in which anxiety is managed.

Psychotherapy and pornography

When thinking about the compulsive use of pornography from a therapeutic perspective, we are considering both the idea that its use can be a choice, but also exploring the origins of the compulsion. Can we be curious about what has happened in the past? How experiences that might have been traumatic and disruptive to the attachment to others, shaped the relationship with pornography. The capacity to imagine oneself as someone who can make choices around the use of pornography and feel more able to be form intimate relationships. All of this is present when working with the compulsion to use pornography and in helping the client to change their relationship with it.

 

David Work is a BACP registered psychotherapist working with adults, offering long term individual psychotherapy. He works with individuals in Hove . To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with David , please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Further reading by David Work –

Reflections on bereavement

Compulsive use of pornography

Mental health in retirement

Subjective perception, shared experience

In support of being average

Collective grief

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What is transference and why is it important?

Transference is a complicated process and concept. This article attempts to describe it in simple terms, focussing on a basic understanding and highlighting why it is felt to be so important in analytic psychotherapies. I will end by thinking about how it can emerge and be used in both individual and group therapy.

What are the origins of transference?

The idea of ‘transference’ arose through Freud’s discovery that his patients projected early feelings about their parents onto him in the therapeutic work. Since Freud’s time, there have been developments in the field, furthering our understanding and recognising the complexity of the concept of transference, counter-transference and other similar processes. For the purposes of this article, I will not be exploring these later developments.

What is transference?

The fundamental meaning of transference can be found in the word. We ‘transfer’ feelings from an early relationship or experience onto someone or something in the present.

One way of thinking about transference is that it is one of the levels on which we all communicate with each other. Transference goes on all the time and between everyone.

Why is transference important in therapy?

It is thought that our transferences date back to childhood and adolescence. These early experiences are internalised and unconsciously become repeated in adulthood.

These unconscious ways of relating and communicating drive our more problematic life patterns. Our relationships (and therefore relationship problems) are thought to be shaped by our transferences. So, in psychotherapy, particularly in analytic approaches, working with the transference is a key part of the therapeutic process. The therapist will be very curious from the outset about what transference or transferences the patient/client is experiencing towards them.

Part of the therapist’s task is to think beyond which figure from the past is being transferred onto them, but also the dynamic and feeling associated with this past relationship. For example, perhaps they are experienced as an angry father, or a depressed mother, or a disapproving mother, or a withdrawn father.

In individual therapy, where there are only two people in the relationship, the focus is on the patient/client’s transference towards the therapist. The nature of the therapeutic process (the therapist offering care and attention, and holding more power) means the transference feelings elicited often originate with one or both parents. However, the therapist can also stand-in for sibling relationships, early friendships and other important relationships from the past (for example teachers or grandparents).

In individual therapy the transference can be explored in detail and depth. If the relationship with the therapist feels safe enough, the patient/client can allow early feelings to emerge powerfully in the therapy, exposing past experiences that might be buried and so elucidating unconscious ways that past relationships continue to be repeated.

In group therapy, the therapist, who is also called the conductor, is likely to be experienced as an important ‘transference figure’ in the group. Like individual therapists, they will tend to receive transference feelings drawn from parental experiences though, again, not necessarily so. Group members will also have transference feelings towards each other. These often seem to be drawn from sibling relationships or other early peer relationships but can also be from past parental experiences.

Group members can also experience transferences to what is called the total group situation. This means the group as a whole, including structural aspects such as the setting, boundaries etc. The group can be experienced as powerfully reminiscent of the family or classroom or other early groups. These transferences to the total group situation at times can be shared by the whole group.

Groups offer a multitude of transference feelings that are likely to be aroused in a simultaneous and complex way. Transferences to the therapist/conductor, the group and other group members can reveal the complexity of roles in the person’s early life. This means not just their individual relationship to early figures but what was also experienced as relationships and communications between others such as parents, siblings etc. In other words, re-experiencing the original family and other early group relationships. In this way, groups provide rich multi- dimensionality for understanding the complex network of internalised relationships and dynamics that can become unconsciously re-enacted in adulthood.

Conclusion

Unlike many other ways of relating, transference is usually unconscious at the point it is being experienced. However, being able to experience and reflect, such as in therapy, can allow us to become aware of our transferences. Through this work we can become increasingly familiar with them and how they shape our patterns and difficulties. This can have a therapeutic and potentially transformative effect on our lives and our relationships.

 

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.  She also offers couples therapy at BHP.

 

Further reading by Claire Barnes

What happens in groups: free-floating discussion

It’s not me… it’s us!

What are the benefits of a twice weekly therapy group?

Understanding feelings of guilt

A new psychotherapy group

The process of joining a therapy group

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What is self-care?

Sometimes it is much easier to recognise the signs of lack of self-care in other people, than it is to see it in ourselves. What do we mean by self-care? The expression sounds self-explanatory, but do we know what it involves?

Most people recognise signs of depletion when they begin losing energy, passion and creativity. Signs of stress generally manifest in the body in the form of colds, flu and tiredness.  There might be a lack of engagement with life or even depression.

Things begin to feel dull or quickly overwhelming.

Physical self-care

Attending to our bodies is usually the easiest way to begin self-caring. Body and mind are invariably interlinked, therefore if something isn’t right in our bodies it is a sign that it demands our attention. Paying attention and getting to the bottom of things isn’t a linear process. Whether medical intervention is required or not, it does not change the fact that our body is going through something which needs to heal.

Listening to our bodies requires presence, discipline, and willingness. It is worth investing time and effort in finding out what our body needs and what is best for it.

Emotional self-care

The link between stress and physical illness is estimated at 75-90% depending on the source, which is why attending to our emotional well-being is vital in the treatment of many physical conditions. Movement or lack thereof is mostly dictated by thoughts and feelings. Our bodies constantly react and respond to emotional and
mental stimulus. How we interact with over- and under-stimulation is often the key to how we live, and as a result, to how we feel. Learning emotional self-care entails learning to pay close attention to our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Many of our emotional responses are unconscious and therefore making them conscious helps us understand what we are responding or reacting to and make more informed choices.

Self-care in relationships

Relationships are both fulfilling and challenging because we interpret the world and place ourselves in it through the approval and acceptance of others. Loving and being loved is vital for human beings because we depend on it for our survival. The balance between attending to self and attending to others is something which we learn early in life and consolidate throughout adulthood. When the balance is ‘off’ we can end up losing ourselves by placing too much value on relationships, or not valuing enough the relationships which are most vital to us. We live in a complex web of give and take, constantly negotiating or prioritising our needs and the needs of others. Giving or taking too much or too little says something about ourselves and determines how we feel.

Spiritual self-care

I use spirituality as a broad term for anything which looks beyond our immediate need for survival and safety, towards higher meaning, purpose, and fulfilment. These aren’t distractions or entertainment, but activities which enhance our emotional, psychological, and physical relationship with ourselves and other people. It is also ultimately about relationship to self and our place in the world. Some people find this through spending time in nature, physical activities, and/or religious and spiritual practices. Spirituality is deeply personal and something we all should care about because meaning and purpose is what makes life worthwhile.

In summary, true self-care is about engaging with ourselves on a physical, emotional and spiritual level and managing our personal boundaries within the relationships which matter to us. Psychotherapy can be a place to learn to self-care on a deep level and hopefully create an imprint which is sustainable in the long-term.

Sam Jahara is a UKCP registered Psychotherapist, Supervisor and Executive Coach. She is also the co-founder of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy. Sam works with individuals and couples from Hove and Lewes.

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara –

What is love? (part two)

Radical self care as an antidote to overwhelm

The adult survivor of neglect and abuse – lifelong considerations

There are no shortcuts to growth

5 good reasons to be in therapy

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What is love? (part two)

Transference

Love is the unconscious expression of longings, desires and hopes onto a person who ‘fits’ because of who they are and who you are to them. This mutuality of hoped for experiences, combined with sexual attraction, results in a powerful combination of emotions and physical desire which we call falling in love. In simple terms, transference is a repetition of old feelings, desires and fantasies onto someone in our present life. Therefore, love will always have a transferential element to it.

We fall in love not only with the other person but also with what they mirror back to us about ourselves. Lovers mimic many of the early experiences of mother and baby, such as the loving gaze, facial expressions, sounds and touch, as we once again experience the bond in which we felt loved and safe. If we didn’t, then the longing is for the experience we never had.

Lovers merge as they become highly attuned to one another in a natural process of forming an attachment bond. The other becomes the most important person in our world and we become completely immersed and preoccupied with them. This goes back to how humans live, survive and procreate, and therefore the process of forming a bond becomes the most powerful drive. This is why love can be so intoxicating, all-consuming and painful at the same time. The early stages of falling in love are fragile. Both parties are open, vulnerable and full of hope. But because of such fragility, there is a parallel experience of being out of control and deep uncertainty. Will this feeling last? Will they keep loving me, being attracted to me? Am I a loveable person? Can I hold their interest? Etc. These are questions about potential loss, and fear of disappointment and hurt.

Falling in love and loving

The initial stages of a relationship often start with an idealisation of the other, followed by gradually getting to know the other for who they really are, rather than the idealised version. This process of getting to know each other takes a long time and is more realistic.

Partners will either stay together or separate based on their compatibility, life circumstances and desire to continue the relationship.

Over time, love grows, changes or dies, depending on many factors at play in relationships. How we were loved and taught to love in childhood will have a major impact in our adult relationships. And whilst upbringing and attachment style matter a great deal, how we grow and develop in adulthood carries a lot of weight in how we do relationships. For instance, someone may come from a family which was dysfunctional and decide that they do not want to repeat this dysfunctionality in their lives. They are determined to work on the relationship with their partner and their children, as opposed to sleepwalking into repeating their family history.

Loving is intentional. The decision to stay in a relationship needs to be made again and again throughout its life cycle.

Loving more than one person

Fortunately, or unfortunately, love does not constrain itself to our social rules of marriage, monogamy and ideas of romance. It is possible to fall in love and be attracted to more than one person or multiple people, either in succession or at the same time. The capacity for multiple types of love, or loving more than one person at once, can also be linked to the family environment and upbringing. Some children grow up with multiple attachment bonds, whilst others grow up with one or two primary carers. Parents, extended family and siblings all influence our capacity to form bonds and love. The beliefs and values we grow up with also impact our view of multiple love bonds and the extent to which we will allow ourselves to love more than one person at once.

Love in long-term relationships

Helping love to continue and flourish in long-term relationships can be a challenge. It requires ongoing effort and intention. Couples need to cultivate positive habits that nurture the bond they have. Everyone does this differently and some unfortunately not at all. As couples drift apart and become habitual in their way of relating, the relationship can die a slow death.

Sex and non-monogamy

Sex and sexuality can be used as expressions of our aliveness and our relationship with self and other. The ability to feel pleasure and desire says a lot about our ability to engage with life and our capacity to feel alive. Partners may differ in their sexual preferences, levels of desire (for one another and other people), and capacity for pleasure.

As partners levels of desire and preferences change over time, they must navigate these changes within the relationship and find new and creative ways of living a sexually and emotionally satisfying life. Some couples choose to open their relationship and experiment either alone or together with other people. Although affairs continue to be treated as taboo, humans have always found ways of meeting their sexual and emotional needs
through illicit or open extramarital relationships. There are many and complex reasons for engaging in sex outside committed relationships. This can range from a step towards leaving an unhappy marriage/partnership or wanting to inject life into one which has become stagnant.

Falling in love, being in love and learning to love

Whichever of the three phases you are experiencing or wanting to experience right now, couples or individual psychotherapy can be a good place to explore these feelings. Some of the common reasons people seek relationship therapy are:

  • Beginning a new relationship and not wanting to repeat old patterns.
  • To explore early family relationships which impact present ones.
  • Marriage counselling or couples therapy to help couples who are struggling to communicate and/or keep their relationship alive.
  • To discuss non-monogamy and explore differences in sexual preferences and levels of desire.
  • To discuss life transitions and their impact on relating.
  • To learn to love, stay in love or even fall in love.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Clinical Superviser, Leadership Coach and BHP Co-founder. She works with individuals and couples in Lewes and Hove.

Further reading by Sam Jahara –

Radical self care as an antidote to overwhelm

The adult survivor of neglect and abuse – lifelong considerations

There are no shortcuts to growth

5 good reasons to be in therapy

The psychological impact on children who grow up in cults

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Emotions: hardwired tools from our evolutionary past

Since the dawn of humanity, emotions have been integral to our survival, guiding our ancestors* through a world filled with imminent threats. Fear prompted quick reactions to danger, joy encouraged behaviours that strengthened social bonds, and disgust helped prevent contact with harmful substances.

These primitive emotional responses are hardwired into our brains, offering rapid, instinctual reactions to our environment. While these responses remain invaluable in critical situations, such as encountering a wild animal or reacting to sudden threats like fires, modern challenges often involve complex social and personal dynamics. These can include managing academic demands, coping with interpersonal conflict, navigating work-related stress, dealing with health issues, and striving for personal growth amidst societal pressures.

When triggered by modern challenges, our innate emotional responses can make us feel unequipped and overwhelmed. Viewing these reactions as abnormal only amplifies our distress. It is essential to recognise their natural and instinctive nature. By understanding their manifestation in our brain and body, and recognising their intended functions, we can learn to accept, welcome, and use them.

Far from being flaws, emotions help us cope and take necessary action to address the challenges we face.

Let’s delve deeper into each emotion and explore its practical applications:

FEAR

Fear initiates a series of neurological events, primarily engaging the amygdala, the brain’s fear centre. This activation orchestrates physiological changes, preparing the body for fight-or-flight responses to optimise survival chances. This mechanism is observed across species, underscoring its fundamental role in ensuring survival in threatening situations.

Consider a scenario from prehistoric times, where early humans encountered a predatory animal while hunting. In such moments, fear would surge through their bodies, prompting quick instinctual responses enabling them to confront the danger or flee to safety. This instinctual reaction allows for rapid assessment and adaptive actions to maximise survival chances. Over time, these innate survival mechanisms would have been refined through natural selection, contributing to the evolutionary success of early human populations.

Today, fear, when experienced moderately, can foster adaptive behaviours and resilience in navigating life’s challenges. The urgency and attention to detail prompted by anxiety can lead to increased preparation, alertness, focus, organisation, and productivity. These factors empower individuals to effectively respond to situations and achieve success in reaching their goals.

Implementable strategies: When facing fear, evaluate the reality of the threat and distinguish between immediate threats and potential future concerns. Determine if the fear relates to a current, tangible problem or abstract scenario. Practise calming techniques like mindfulness exercises, grounding techniques, or guided visualisation to manage the fight-or-flight response and navigate stress. These practices can cultivate a sense of security, enabling fear to serve as a tool for cautious, informed decision-making rather than an overwhelming obstacle.

ANGER

Anger indicates perceived violations of personal boundaries or unfair treatment. It serves as a signal for issues requiring attention or resolution and may prompt assertive behaviours aimed at defending one’s rights to gain recognition and respect.

In prehistoric times, a member of an early human tribe might have experienced anger when perceiving a threat to their territory or resources. This anger could have prompted assertive actions aimed at establishing dominance and preserving access to vital resources, ensuring the group’s survival.

Today, anger remains a potent indicator of issues necessitating attention or resolution, such as workplace injustices or interpersonal conflicts. Constructive expression of anger and addressing underlying issues can lead to advocacy and positive resolutions, although uncontrolled anger may result in destructive behaviours and strained relationships.

Implementable Strategies: Upon experiencing anger, pause to identify its root cause. Practise constructive communication by using ‘I’ statements to express feelings without assigning blame, and actively listen to the other party’s perspective. This approach fosters healthier resolutions and mutual understanding, transforming anger into a catalyst for positive change.

DISGUST

Disgust acts as a protective mechanism against harmful substances and behaviours, signalling individuals to avoid potential threats to physical or social well-being and safeguarding them from harm.

Consider a scenario from prehistoric times where our ancestors encountered spoiled food or contaminated water sources. The feeling of disgust would deter them from consuming these substances, preserving their health and preventing illness or disease.

In modern society, disgust continues to protect our health and influence our social behaviours. It shapes our perceptions of others and guides our interactions by prompting us to distance ourselves from offensive or inappropriate behaviour, thereby maintaining social norms and upholding cultural values.

Implementable Strategies: Recognise the triggers of your disgust and utilise this awareness to assert your personal boundaries and values. Communicate your boundaries to others clearly and respectfully when necessary.

SADNESS

Sadness is characterised by reduced activity in brain regions associated with reward processing, signalling a need for social support and introspection. The amygdala, refrontal cortex, and insula play pivotal roles in processing sadness, and facilitating adaptive responses to emotional distress. Crying often accompanies sadness, serving as a physiological release by triggering tear production to alleviate emotional tension.

Additionally, crying can function as a form of communication, conveying distress and potentially eliciting support from others. Research suggests that crying may have a cathartic effect, aiding individuals in processing and managing their emotions.

Imagine a scenario in a prehistoric community where a beloved member passes away. The tribe is overwhelmed with profound sadness and grief, mourning the loss of a cherished individual. Recognising the signs of sadness, the tribe comes together to offer support, empathy, and solace to those affected, strengthening bonds of kinship and collective responsibility. Through communal rituals and gatherings, they navigate this period of grief, drawing strength from their unity and fostering resilience and cohesion even in adversity.

Today, sadness continues to serve as a signal of the need for social support and introspection, prompting individuals to seek comfort, assistance and guidance during challenging times. By acknowledging and processing feelings of sadness, individuals can engage in self-reflection and adapt their strategies for survival, ultimately leading to more effective decision-making and increased chances of overcoming adversity.

Implementable Strategies: Recognise sadness as a natural, valid response to loss or disappointment. Seek comfort through healthy means, such as connecting with supportive friends or family, engaging in creative outlets like writing or art, or spending time in nature.

Consider exploring alternative solutions or perspectives that may help alleviate your sadness. This could involve challenging negative thought patterns, seeking professional guidance, or trying new activities that bring you joy.

JOY

Joy, intricately connected with the brain’s reward circuitry, orchestrates behaviours geared towards enhancing overall well-being. Dopaminergic pathways within the brain play a central role in the experience of joy, reinforcing behaviours associated with positive outcomes.

In prehistoric times, successful hunts or bountiful harvests elicited feelings of joy and satisfaction among individuals, strengthening social bonds as they shared their bounty with fellow tribe members. This communal joy fostered cooperation and ensured the collective well-being of the group.

Today, joy remains a driving force in goal pursuit, providing a sense of purpose and meaning. When we find joy in our aspirations—whether career-related, personal, or relational—we are motivated to invest time and effort into achieving them. Sharing joyful experiences strengthens social connections, fosters a sense of belonging, reduces conflicts, and promotes group stability.

Implementable Strategies: Take time to explore sources of genuine happiness and fulfilment in your life, recognising that they may evolve over time. Identify your core values, passions, and sources of joy, consciously prioritising them in your choices to enhance well-being. Additionally, create opportunities for shared experiences of joy with loved ones to deepen bonds and cultivate a greater sense of connection and belonging within your family and social circle.

Emotions are fundamental components of the human experience, woven into the DNA of our species. By understanding their biological mechanisms and functional roles, we gain valuable insight into our own physical experiences, behaviours, and decision-making processes. While some emotions may feel uncomfortable, ignoring or suppressing them can lead to negative consequences such as anxiety, depression, or even physical health problems.

Taking an evolutionary perspective on emotions can shift our view, recognising them as valuable tools for growth rather than obstacles to overcome. By actively understanding and accepting our emotions, we empower ourselves to navigate life’s challenges more effectively. Practices like mindfulness and effective communication help us manage emotions constructively, fostering resilience and positive outcomes.

For those grappling with overwhelming emotions, seeking professional help from a therapist can offer valuable support in developing healthy coping mechanisms and achieving emotional well-being.

 

Lucie Ramet is an experienced Chartered Psychologist and CBT & ACT Therapist offering short and long-term individual support to adolescents (16+) and adults. She works in English and French. She works Mondays and Fridays from our Brighton and Hove practice, She also offers online sessions.

*Ancestors: the people from whom we are descended. When referring to human evolution, “ancestors” specifically refers to hominids, a group of bipedal primates that includes early humans like Homo erectus and Homo habilis.

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Compulsive use of pornography

More people now identify as being compulsive users of pornography that at any other time, due in large part to the ease of access to pornography through online platforms. Such a compulsive use, or ‘addiction’ as it is often termed can have a damaging impact on the individual and those around them. The negative effects on quality of life or general functioning can include guilt, shame, isolation, damaged relationships, reduced performance at work or school, potential job loss and financial expenses. Whilst this list is not exhaustive, it illustrates that like other ‘addictions’, the compulsion to use pornography can be a hugely challenging experience.

Is it all about sexual desire?

Compulsive use of pornography on first examination is easily viewed as an expression of excessive sexual desire. That’s like saying that an alcoholic likes to drink. Meeting the sexual desires of users only partially explains the pattern of behaviour. When it becomes clear that the user has little or no capacity to limit their use of pornography it points to this being more than just sexual desire. What can we consider might be the unconscious motivations behind such behaviour?

Unconscious motivation

The compulsion to use pornography might not have any one clear motivation. It can be claimed that any compulsive behaviour has its origins in a need to manage and regulate difficult emotions. Over time we learn that certain behaviour helps us to negotiate and manage these challenging feelings and through this process of adaptation we find the behaviour gratifying. Pornography is no different and this is where it moves from purely meeting sexual desire into something more rooted in emotional regulation.

The reliable relationship

The origins of the need to manage difficult emotions through compulsive behaviour are rooted in developmental experience. As stated above, the behaviour is the way in which one learns to manage emotions, but also to meet unmet needs. Use of pornography is more obviously a relational activity in that it is about the imagined connection with another individual or individuals. The sexual desires are met, and the need for intimacy with another, but in a way that does not illicit strong anxious responses. Pornography effectively becomes the relationship that feels safe and reliable. There is no emotional demand on the individual and they have a higher degree of control over the relationship.

Can we talk about pornography?

Compulsive users of pornography, like any compulsive behaviour, can find talking about their behaviour difficult. Pornography is no different and has the added challenge that its use can be highly stigmatised and not deemed acceptable. Finding a way to talk about it opens the possibility that the compulsion can be managed and can become a choice. A sensitive, non-judgemental therapist can help the compulsive user to move towards feeling that they have a choice over how and when they use pornography.

 

David Work is a BACP registered psychotherapist working with adults, offering long term individual psychotherapy. He works with individuals in Hove . To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with David , please contact him here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Further reading by David Work –

Mental health in retirement

Subjective perception, shared experience

In support of being average

Collective grief

The challenge of change

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