No, I am not addressing this to women caught in the age old story of young women fearing the passing of time and the urgency of finding a partner to start a family, although this is an important fact of life. I am thinking of what questions we might need to ask ourselves before we…
What a job it is to raise a child! So full of difficulty, so many moving parts in the process, so much resourcefulness and energy required. Then, just when the parent takes breath to admire their creation, off goes the young adult – at times with barely a backward glance. The parents are left behind…
Separation or divorce are painful, difficult and time consuming processes and more so where children are involved. Few couples manage to amicably separate and sadly, this applies to couples who have a child or children together too. Although it may seem obvious, my experience is that couples who are separating and have children often fail…
This last year of global pandemic has been a time of massive disruption to almost everyone. With it has come disconnection in various forms and the challenge of reconnecting at points when restrictions have lifted. Children and young people have faced their own particular challenges with school closures preventing contact with peers and friends, in…
How do we bring to mind what is unconscious? Is it important to make this journey? These two questions are central to the therapeutic process of psychological therapy. When we are young we depend on our primary carer’s usually our parents, to hold and contain our emotional needs. In childhood, none of us have a…
Our capacity for intimacy as adults is widely understood to be shaped by our early relational experiences. Theorists from diverse orientations emphasise the link between early attachment patterns and subsequent adult love relationships. When our formative experience is one of loving reciprocity with our caregivers, our abilities to give and receive love freely and fully…
Executive functions are the cognitive skills we use to control and regulate our thoughts, emotions and actions to achieve goals. These three main areas of executive function work together: Self-control/ inhibition – the ability to resist doing something distracting/ tempting in order to do what’s needed to complete a given task, helping us to pay…
The family is our first social group. It is the crucible in which our passions are born and our capacities to love and to live are shaped – and misshaped. The family imbues its members with its own specific culture, habits and attitudes. As an organism, it too is shaped by the cultural moment and…
Children, like all of us, encounter loss in their lives, temporary and permanent. They may lose a treasured possession, a loved one who dies, a parent who leaves or is imprisoned, a friend who moves away, or a valued teacher in the transition between year groups or schools. Some are unlucky enough to lose their…
Stress is caused by an existing stress-causing factor or stressor. Stress can be ‘routine’, related to everyday activities or ‘sudden’, brought about by a change or transition, or ‘traumatic’, in relation to an overwhelming event. During stressful events our adrenal glands release adrenaline, a hormone which activates the sympathetic nervous system, our body’s defence mechanism…
When children feel helpless, angry, or scared for long periods of time, it can be remembered in their bodies. This is particularly so in the case of trauma, whereby specific (trauma-implicated) body parts may start to feel somewhat disconnected to the rest of the body (e.g. headaches, neck pain, stomach aches, back spasms, etc.). Body…
One of the most frequently asked questions put to me in clinic, is why some children do not respond to traditional reward/punishment based behavioural strategies. The answer is simple – because, contrary to popular opinion, these strategies do not work for all children in all situations. This is because the ability to make a mental…