OK, so I have got your attention. Let’s delve deeper into this. I am not advocating psychotherapy as a way of getting rich. That would cheapen it, and it would miss the point. Psychotherapy is a profound good in and of itself. It is one of the few places in modern life where you are…
We often speak about ‘moving on’ as if the past were another country that we might simply depart. But we can no more exit our history then we can escape our own shadow; if only it were that easy. We act out our past in the present with varying degrees of conscious awareness over and…
Clinical supervision is a requirement for both trainee and experienced psychotherapists and counsellors. Beyond its regulatory function, it is a central pillar of ethical practice, professional development, and ongoing learning. At its core, supervision is a relational process that supports clinicians in thinking more deeply about their work and about the emotional worlds of their…
Do you often find yourself with a familiar sense that you are getting it wrong? If so, you are far from alone. This chronic feeling of being wrong, or of being in the wrong, can undermine our relationships with others, our work, quality of life, and creativity. It can impact how we experience ourselves when…
‘What Is ‘trauma dumping’? There is a phrase that has become increasingly present in recent years: ‘trauma dumping’. On the surface, it refers to the experience of sharing deeply personal experiences in a way that can feel abrupt or overwhelming, without checking in with or having faith in the listener. What lies beneath this term,…
The problem: insight that doesn’t change feeling Over many years of working as a psychotherapist, I have noticed a recurring moment in the consulting room. A client will pause, often with a mixture of frustration and self-doubt, and say something like: ‘I know all this already. I understand where it comes from. But it still…
A common reason that some people come to therapy is because of difficulties in managing their emotions. We all experience emotions and it is part of being human, but sometimes our emotions can become dysregulated and feel overwhelming, unpredictable, or out of control. We might feel that our emotional response is somewhat out of proportion…
If narcissism has become the cultural diagnosis of our time, psychotherapy remains one of the few places where the concept can be approached without hysteria. In popular culture, narcissism is often treated as a category of person, the narcissist, as though a character style were identical with the whole human being. In clinical work, this…
Narcissism has become a cultural obsession. It is discussed as though it were a new epidemic, a modern pathology spreading through society like a virus. The phrase “age of narcissism” is now so common that it is rarely questioned. Yet when we look closely, a more accurate formulation emerges. It is not that narcissism is…
Most of us make some sort of New Year’s resolution, whether overtly or covertly. The new year can feel like an opportunity to put the past behind us and to start afresh. Whether or not we actively name and own our New Year’s resolutions, most of us can also attest to the best held intentions…
Do you experience anxiety in social situations that can be overwhelming or even debilitating? Is it affecting your social life, work, relationships – your everyday happiness? If so, this article is for you. Asking what the function of your shyness is might seem a strange question – you didn’t choose it, right? Yet exploring the…
There is a lot of discussion about the risks posed by AI ‘therapy’, but there is something else that has been happening online for years, in the context of social media: the increasing volume of real people offering mental health expertise in a way that can easily populate algorithms, occupy thought processes and inform emotional…