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How much time should I devote to self care?

In this blog I explore the concept of self care – what it means and how much time you need to consciously devote to active self care per day: it is probably less than you think!

What do I mean by self care?

In basic terms, self care refers to ‘looking after oneself’. Some people really struggle with the basics of this and once external factors such as poverty have been eliminated, good basic self care correlates to good mental health.

People struggling with depression can find it really difficult to undertake tasks such as getting out of bed in the morning or getting themselves to work.

People with anxiety can struggle with focusing, controlling their thoughts and feelings and in holding onto a thinking mind.

And people who are dealing with eating disorders can struggle to eat for healthy reasons using food to suppress difficult feelings (obesity) or retain an illusion of control over the body (anorexia).

And people who struggle with bulimia can struggle to ingest ‘bite size chunks of life’, instead feeling flooded by others and eventually having to vomit it al out.

These are all real and serious mental health problems and psychotherapy is there to work through what set up these coping patterns and to bit-by-bit help people to better manage their emotions.

The 50 minute hour

Most psychotherapy session are of the duration of what we in the trade call ‘a psychotherapy hour’, which is in fact 50 minutes.

Good psychotherapists stick to the hour and do not overrun as this is unhelpful for the client – it demonstrates poor boundaries and a lack of self care on the part of the therapist.

Over time, clients must learn to keep the therapy and their therapist ‘alive’ between sessions; they must learn to bridge the gap from one session to the next. This means internalising their psychotherapist and thereby holding themselves in mind outside of the therapy room in the way their therapist does. This is where the shift happens from dealing with the presenting crisis (depression, anxiety etc.) to more sophisticated methods of self care.

Psychotherapy is not enough, but it is essential

It is not enough to simply attend therapy and then expect miracles to happen- they won’t.

By bridging the gap between sessions, clients hold themselves in mind and can become curious about what else would be helpful to them in living calmer, more fulfilling lives.

At first bad habits may get dropped – staying up late on work nights, drinking a glass of wine or two every evening, eating junk food – and then a shift can occur to an active engagement with good habits.

These are in addition to living a calm and ordinary life and are constitute self care that is aimed at good mental and emotional health (arguably good physical health too).

Examples may include yoga, meditation, dancing, singing, walking, swimming, meeting friends for connected conversation and so on. The list is virtually endless providing whatever you engage in is mindful (you are present with what you are doing) and leads to sustainable and enduring good feelings afterwards.

Can you spare 4% of your day?

Imagine if all it really took was 4% of your day to make an enduring and significant difference to how you felt and felt about yourself? Well, this is arguably a good figure (and achievable figure) to aim for and guess what? It is only one hour of your day!

So, on days when you are not in therapy, how about spending one hour actively self caring by mindfully engaging with an activity (or activities) that makes you feel alive, positive, brings you into you body and sets you up for the day?

Dedicating one hour per day to self care is a good way of bridging the gap between sessions and in devoting the weekly therapy hour to active self care on the other six.

 

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

 

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

Why is Netflix’s Squid Game so popular?

Space: The Final Frontier of Manic Defence

Do Psychotherapists Need to Love Their Clients?

Unexpressed emotions will never die

What is the purpose of intimate relationships?

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What makes Psychotherapy Different?

“The Patient who will not suffer pain fails to suffer pleasure.” Wilfred Bion 1970.

I’ve been a therapist for over ten years now and one of the things I love about the job is how demanding it is of me to stay awake and stay alive. The training never stops and development is always a work in progress.

After many years of various work and an enduring interest in self-development and study, encompassing Eastern thoughts and practices and various experiential group experiences, I started my formal Psychotherapy training in 2008 and finished in 2014. However, what I didn’t realise was that this was the beginning much more than the end of something.

What makes Psychotherapy so important to me is that it requires one to become a psychotherapist rather than to do psychotherapy. The non-behavioural psychotherapeutic interaction is not one where I teach someone strategies, but one where I seek to on a sustained, regular and meaningful way to contact another human being, always in service of them and focusing on them but using my own present being to help make sense and bring to awareness what is going for them. I do this with all that I have available my mind, my senses, my bodily feelings, my intuition, to try and get a felt sense of what things are like for them.

Jonathon Shedler, the American Psychotherapist and researcher, says “don’t ask what model your therapist practises but how much therapy they have had.”

For me this is what makes psychotherapy truly interesting, of course learning about different theories of the mind and the way it functions and disfunctions is hugely important but it is in our own therapy that we truly learn the ‘praxis’, (practice) of psychotherapy. This involves being challenged to reflect deeply on our own internal processes, our own avoidance and defence mechanisms all human difficulties are on a spectrum and that if we look deeply enough all of us can relate to our patients through our own reflecting selves.

 

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

 

Paul Salvage is Psychodynamic Psychotherapist trained to work with adolescents from 16-25 and adults across a wide range of specialisms including depression, anxiety, family issues, self awareness and relationship difficulties. He currently works with individuals in our private practice in Hove.

 

Further reading by Paul Salvage –

What’s wrong with good advice?

Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy 

Analytic Therapy for Addictions

Loss

Post Natal Depression in Mothers & Fathers

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‘The Wisdom of Trauma’ a film by Gabor Maté – A Critical Review

Both the name, Gabor Maté, and the word, trauma, have become synonymous and ubiquitous in recent years.

Dr. Maté is a Hungarian born physician and author of ‘In The Realm of The Hungry Ghosts’, which was first published back in 2008 and offered a compassionate and insightful understanding of addiction as a response to trauma. Since then Dr Maté has steadily risen to fame as an addiction and trauma expert. He has now released a documentary film entitled ‘The Wisdom of Trauma’, which was brought to my attention by a couple of my clients. I decided to watch it.

The film follows Dr Maté on his journey of defining trauma, most specifically, childhood developmental trauma (CPTSD) and covers his work and learnings from treating street addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

As a mental health professional and clinician, I am all in favour of any well-researched productions that aim to highlight the impact of CPTSD, educate the masses and ideally bring about change at a societal level in how we conceptualise trauma and treatment. I therefore had high hopes for Dr Maté’s oeuvre. Sadly, as the film progressed, I because increasingly uneasy with the content and was ultimately left with the impression that the film was more about glorifying Dr Maté and his self-professed ‘new’ trauma informed approach to treating trauma, than a piece of work aimed at bringing together the teachings and learnings of many clinicians over the years on whose shoulders Dr Maté, like the rest of us, stand (see Alan Shore, Babette Rothschild, Pat Ogden, Steven Porges, Antonio Damasio, Daniel Siegel to name a few).

There is a powerful sequence in the film filmed in a prison where Fritzi Horstman, founder of the Compassion Prison Project, undertakes some meaningful work with inmates based on the ACE principles (see Adverse Childhood Experiences study 1995 – 1997, conducted by Kaiser Permanente). The work of the Compassion Prison Project is clearly meaningful, research based and healing, however, the link between this project and Gabor Maté remained at best utterly unclear and secondly, there was no reference to the original ACE study and the importance of it so viewers were left in the dark around context and thus perhaps invited to imagine that this was somehow connected to Dr Mate. To be clear, the ACE study has nothing to do with Dr Maté.

As the film progresses, Dr Maté moves into sharing his experiences of healing through the use of psychedelics, namely Ayahuasca, with footage shown of a ceremony taking place in Peru. The study of psychedelics and their possible use in treating mental health problems is in its absolute infancy and the research being conducted is done so in strictly controlled environments where participants combine the use of medical doses of psychedelics with psychotherapy – no mention was made of this. Whilst promising in specific clinical settings (as opposed to the Peruvian rain forest) and for specific applications, psychedelics can potentially do more harm than good,
particularly for patients with weak egos or personality disorders. There also remain valid questions about the long-term benefits of psychedelics in treating trauma, with most studies showing that symptoms tend to return over time once psychedelic use was suspended (generally 6 months to a year).

There is then a sequence wherein a man in his early 50’s with a stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis appears to enter into remission through therapy with Dr Maté with the implied cause of his previously terminal illness being put down to trauma. I am a clinician who profoundly believes in the body-mind connection as have many more learned clinicians before me (see Winnicott and psyche-soma integration), however, whilst our emotions are experienced through the body and the ACE study has shown correlation between adverse childhood experiences and illness,
correlation is not the same as causation.

Finally, there are numerous sequences where Dr Maté is conducting his own brand of ‘trauma informed therapy’ which he suggests is in some way unique and the way to heal trauma. And yet again, trauma informed therapy is neither a new phenomenon nor something that has been invented by Dr Maté; indeed, any well-trained and experienced psychotherapist who works with trauma (and we all do), should be educated in understanding the presentation and defensive structures around CPTSD.

The message of the documentary – a trauma informed approach to healing society as a whole – is a positive one and yet despite his profile, I was disappointed to see how Dr Maté fails to engage and influence policy makers, educators, physicians and mental health professionals and actively seems to undermine his own message through an irresponsible focus on psychedelics, terminal illness being healed through trauma talk-therapy and a guru-esque approach to practicing his own therapeutic approach.

The sad reality of relational trauma is that it occurred in relationship and so can only be treated and worked through in relationship. And working through is not necessarily the same as ‘healing’.  Good psychotherapy is painful and slow and the main reason it takes time is because the traumatised part of the patient (client) needs to overcome resistance and form a dependent relationship on their therapist; thus the client dictates the speed of therapy.

The Wisdom of Trauma seemed to me to subscribe to an all too common narrative of recent years – there is a ‘fix’ for everything and it can be quick. This is not my experience of working with trauma and nor is it that of my clients, many whom learn to live with their trauma rather than somehow leave it behind. Perhaps a better title would have simple been: ‘The Wisdom of Gabor Maté’ as the documentary was essentially about him and his views, despite the enormous work in this field undertaken by the likes of Freud, Winnicot, Bowlby etc., all the way through to ordinary
psychotherapists like myself and all my ‘ordinary’ colleagues.

 

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

 

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

‘The Wisdom of Trauma’ a film by Gabor Maté – A Critical Review

Do Psychotherapists Need to Love Their Clients?

Unexpressed emotions will never die

What is the purpose of intimate relationships?

Why ‘Cancel Culture’ is about the inability to tolerate difference

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We have moved! Welcome to our new premises in Lewes


After 5 years of running Lewes’ only dedicated talking therapy clinical space – The Barn, the time has come for us to move on!

From Monday 14 June we are now located at The Hive at 66 High Street in central Lewes.

We are continuing to offer the same high quality of short- and long-term psychotherapy and psychological services from our new location and our valued associates are moving with us.

The new premises offer a number of advantages to our clients as well as us, such as being fully wheelchair accessible and thanks to being located in the heart of the town, adjacent to the castle, there are excellent transport options: Lewes train station is a mere five minutes’ walk, local buses stop just outside the front door and there are two car parks (The Maltings and The Needlemakers) only a stone’s throw away.

Our new consulting room is also located at the rear of the building eliminating road noise (which could be an issue at The Barn) and south facing meaning it is filled with light.  And, as the new room is large, it is suitable for individual, couple and family therapy work.

If you are interested in finding out more but are unsure where to start, then check out our useful search function whereby you can select clinicians by location, as well as by specialism.

Whether an existing client or new, we look forward to welcoming you to our new clinical space in the heart of Lewes.

 

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

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Group Analytic Psychotherapy – the slow open group

The name ‘Slow Open Group’ was adopted to reflect the nature of the psychological process of opening ourselves to our collective experience in our families, culture and social milieu. Slow, because it takes time, Open because people will come and go over time as they do in our lives.

The global pandemic has demonstrated, in a terrible way, the potential harm we are doing to our environment. It has reminded us of our connectiveness with others both at the level of our community and globally. The vaccine and getting it is both a personal act of protection whilst at the same time a civic duty protecting others.

The extraordinary benefits of our connectedness via social media and technology has raised our knowledge of the worldwide suffering from this disease. At the same time we are both informed and sharing in the emotional fallout of so many losses and bewildered at our personal suffering.

Therefore we seek psychotherapy or psychoanalysis in order to understand our emotional reactions; the implicit and explicit meaning of our lives. The implicit, what is going on in our mind and body. The explicit what is happening around us in our world and intimate relationships that triggers influence our responses. The act of choosing to enter therapy is a willingness to begin a journey that will continue throughout our lives.

 

To enquire about group sessions with Thea Beech, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

Thea Beech is a Psychotherapist and Group Analyst. A Member of The Institute of Group Analysis and Registered with the UKCP. She now works in Private Practice after a long career in Healthcare related industries in the UK. She later taught in Universities South Africa on Group Work and Eating Disorders. She has written on Group Analysis and Eating Disorders. She was part of a small team who developed the Centre for Group Analysis in Cape Town. Thea is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Thea Beech

Groups for Mental Health

Group Psychotherapy in a post ‘Pandemic World’

Termination and endings in Psychotherapy

What is Social Unconsciousness?

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The Unconscious Mind

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 mature mind to guide us we rely on adults, siblings or our extended social network to help us grow into mature people. Siblings play an important role in our social development our place in the pecking order can determine how we deal later on with competition, rivalry our reaction to authority, etc. This effect can impact on us throughout our lives. Bringing to the conscious mind these experiences can help with regulation of our emotional responses as adults.

Our unconscious can exercise its influence on us leading to destructive patterns in our relationships with family, friends and work colleagues. This is often the primary motivation for people to seek out psychotherapy.

When we are grown up the experiences of childhood can exhort their influence on us leaving us bewildered at our difficulty in managing our emotional responses in everyday situations. It is as if a shadow is caste over us, we are driven by something beyond our control to act out.

Feelings, emotions and experiences from childhood or the accumulation of a long period of small daily undermining by family dynamics or bullying at school can lead to trauma. When we are traumatised, either by an event or the cumulative effect of oppression, our only escape is to detach. This may result in retreating into a fantasy world or addiction, compulsive behaviour or other psychological defenses in order to survive.

The work with the therapist or group on the unconscious allows us to revisit this hidden material. To experience in a safe environment the painful and disturbing events that triggered a defensive psychological response.

This blog to asks more questions than gives you answers. Its aim is to offer you whatever your age, ethnicity or orientation to consider looking at your own journey with greater understanding. You can follow-up this blog by watching a utube webinar “Three Ways of Connecting With Our Unconscious Mind” by Kirsten Heynisch’s, Clinical Psychologist’s description of accessing the unconscious and working with it. This can inform your work with the process of change in Individual or Group Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

 

To enquire about group sessions with Thea Beach, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Dorothea Beech is a Group Analyst with many years experience working in the UK and overseas.  She worked as A Group Analyst in South Africa as a Lecturer at Cape Town UCT and at Kwa Zulu Natal University in Durban, lecturing on a Masters Program in Group Work.  Her MA in Applied research was on Eating disorders. Her interests are in cultural diversity and trans-generational influences on the individual.  Thea is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Thea Beech

Groups for Mental Health

Group Psychotherapy in a post ‘Pandemic World’

Termination and endings in Psychotherapy

What is Social Unconsciousness?

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The Problem with Change

When people come into therapy it is usually with the wish or hope for something to change. If not, they want help with adapting or stabilising following a major change.

It is a paradox that change is such a constant in our lives. As we age our bodies inevitably change and if nothing else this makes living itself a profoundly transitional experience.

Changes in our lives can come in many forms. For example, there are key developmental milestones at various life stages – adolescence and mid-life are perhaps the most discussed of these.

Significant events in life can also impact and bring about profound change in ourselves. These changes always involve beginnings and losses and can lead to crisis. Crisis too can bring about change. Even positive changes – like getting married or starting a new job for example – are often cited as highly stressful, so societally we very much recognise the equation of change and crisis.

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have had huge influences in how we might understand changes and crises in life stages and events.

For example, Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst, coined the term ‘midlife crisis’ in his 1965 paper (1). Jaques wrote about how this crisis repeats earlier intense transitions from adolescence and infancy and explored what he saw as a tendency for the individual to lose or discover creativity as a response to this life-stage.

And it is largely due to Winnicott’s seminal work (2) that we understand the level of intense feelings that typifies adolescent transitions, when the young person is caught in a fraught conflict between childhood and adulthood.
In psychotherapy we think about therapeutic change, meaning an internal change for the better. I think most people come into therapy welcoming this idea of inner change and certainly those who are assessed as being suitable for psychotherapy will partly be so on the basis that they recognise the need for some internal change.

Initially in therapy, changes are often experienced as positive. Being heard and supported and gaining insight generally increases confidence and a sense of self. At the same time people can find quite that more negative feelings towards themselves seem less extreme. These changes are important and real. However, deeper changes that take place in therapy, in my experience, are not always so welcomed. This is partly because of the disruptive nature of change and its relationship to crisis.

Undergoing the kinds of powerful changes that therapy can offer can feel destabilising and bewildering. As mentioned earlier, change always involves loss of some kind. What might need to be given up may be experienced – consciously or more often unconsciously – as vital to the person’s sense of self. Even unwanted aspects to one’s psyche and behaviour are still familiar and what is known is experienced as safe, even when it is also recognised as harmful and self-limiting.

While we might recognise the likelihood, even perhaps inevitability of crisis in change, experiencing this in therapy can, for some people, feel understandably counter-intuitive.

Many people who come through therapy find a way of tolerating and working through these unsettling if not disturbing experiences of therapeutic change. But some become too frightened or overwhelmed and may then leave suddenly.

In my experience, those who stay are able, with the support and help of the therapist, to recalibrate and restabilise – much as after major life stages and events. As things settle, they can then experience and enjoy the positive benefits of the internal work and changes they have undertaken. However, inevitably and necessarily, in time the problematic process of change will be repeated.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Claire Barnes, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.

 

Further reading by Claire Barnes –

What is it like being in a Psychotherapy Group? Case study – Joe

Silences in Therapy

Sibling Rivalry – Part 1

Sibling Rivalry – Park 2

What is loneliness?

 

References – 

Death and the Mid-Life Crisis. Elliott Jaques, 1965
Contemporary Concepts of Adolescent Development and their Implications for Higher Education, from Playing and Reality. Winnicott, 1971

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Relax: Watching people using their hands

Stuck at home I don’t always want to chat with friends and family or listen to any more news, podcasts or watch TV drama or read a book. Yet I want to be taken out of myself. I want to be elsewhere and with my own thoughts at the same time.

Being engaged in an activity that uses our hands is recognised as having therapeutic benefits. During the privations of Covid-19 lockdowns making and baking have become popular. You can find numerous examples of famous faces presenting the results on social media. For example, the Olympic diver Tom Daley says he took up knitting to help him relax and he has knitted clothes for his husband and child. Finding no knitting patterns for men’s swimwear he adapted a pattern for bikini bottoms and produced a pair of crocheted speedos for himself.

There is also a therapeutic effect when we watch someone else using their hands. Think about the close-ups on hands in cooking programmes. Might this satisfaction in watching be something to do with mirror neurones. Discovered in the 1990s, mirror neurones fire in the brain of observers whilst watching or listening to another person performing an activity. The neurones that fire in the brain of the person performing the activity are mirrored in the observer. That is, the same neurones fire in the brain of the observer. It seems we can experience what another is experiencing at the same time. This has led to research investigating the role of mirror neurones in how empathy operates and how we learn.

Whilst watching the gardener raking the Zen garden in this video clip, I find I can sense his body movements, almost feel the weight of the rake and the resistance and flow of the gravel. And then I watch it again. I can be there in that garden and at the same time sitting at home relaxing into my own thoughts and imagination.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Angela Rogers, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Angela Rogers is an Integrative Psychotherapeutic counsellor working with individuals and couples in Hove.

 

Further reading by Angela Rogers –

What is Andropause and what happens to men when their testosterone levels decline?

Am I cracking up or is it my hormones? Pre-menstrual Dysphoric and the importance of tracking sysmptons

Viagra for women? Medical treatment for women’s sexual problems focuses on the brain rather than the genitals

New Year’s Resolutions – Why change might be so difficult?

Viagra: Some ups and downs of the little blue pill

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What is Transactional Analysis?

Transactional Analysis (TA) is a widely recognised form of modern counselling and psychotherapy, originally conceived by Eric Berne in the 1950’s and which is now used not only in therapy but also in education and organisational training and consultancy.

It is a theory of personality, behaviour and communication, and draws on tools and methodology from a wide range of psychological disciplines, including humanistic, psychodynamic, person centered and relational therapies.

It is therefore a flexible form of therapy that can be tailored to an individual’s needs to facilitate personal growth and change.

How is Transactional Analysis used in counselling and psychotherapy?

A Transactional Analysis counsellor or psychotherapist has a wide variety of theory to hand including the theory of personality, communication and child development.

Transactional Analysis theory has an emphasis on the therapy being contractual, with a negotiated agreement between the therapist and client on what will be explored in the therapy sessions with a view to an end goal or change. The agreement is not fixed but rather is a dynamic and fluid process where the agreement can be re-negotiated at any time. This enables an active participation, both by the client and the therapist, and an equal partnership which is built on the core values of clear communication, respect, and openness.

Transactional Analysis counselling and psychotherapy can be used for individuals, couples, and groups and for a wide range of issues, including anxiety, depression, bereavement, and other life changing issues.

Some key concepts of Transactional Analysis theory

Transactions– this looks at both the verbal and non-verbal messages we use to communicate with ourselves and others, which can give us an insight to how we think, feel and behave and how we view the world around us.
Unconscious Scripts – this is our life story or ‘script’ that we unconsciously write for ourselves when we are young, uniquely interpreting both internal and external events which influence our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Transactional Analysis can help facilitate exploration of which of our thoughts, feelings or behavior is archaic and no longer serves us, and is therefore having an impact on how we want to live our lives in the ‘here and now’.
Ego States – Ego states theory relates to personality and is linked to which of our thoughts, feelings or behaviour has either been learnt from our caregivers and other significant people in our formative years (Parent ego state), from past experiences in our childhood (Child ego state) and which are direct responses to the ‘here and now’ (Adult ego state). It may be familiar to you that you play different ‘roles’ depending on the situation you are in, such as at work, or with friends or family and switch between these ‘roles’ many times during the day. In Transactional Analysis we see this as switching between ego states.

Transactional Analysis Counselling and Psychotherapy helps facilitate awareness of your life ‘script’ and its link to archaic perceptions and beliefs with exploration of how you would like to live in the ‘here and now’ to have a more fulfilling, enjoyable, and happier life.

 

Louise Herbert is a psychotherapeutic counsellor who is in the final year of specialist training in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy. To get in touch with Louise, please contact us.

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Why all therapists and mental health professionals need therapy now more than ever

I don’t know about you, but I have been riding the Covid-19 emotional roller coaster since March 2020 with very little roadmap, whilst trying to guide those who I work with like “the blind leading the blind”.

I also see my own psychotherapist and supervisers in the exact same boat. They are supposed to know more than me, but actually I get the sense that we are all struggling together.

Nonetheless, as a mental health professional, business owner and with all my family living in different countries, I have been dealing with my own set of challenges as a result of Covid-19, as well as trying to be the best support I can for my clients. I have also felt grateful for the support of a therapist throughout this period and couldn’t imagine a better time to be in therapy other than now.

All helping professionals are going through their own predicaments throughout this crisis whilst trying to help others as well. This can be both rewarding and also incredibly taxing. I noticed feeling more tired than ever at the end of last year – an exhaustion which felt both familiar and entirely new. Self-care has become more important than ever.

We all had to adapt to new working practices and navigate the unknown over past months. This has been both unsettling and reassuring in that most of us have survived and gotten through in our own way. There have been losses for sure and they have taught us that we can survive them too.

Professionals in support roles have been working through the pandemic feeling mostly under-resourced themselves. Under such unusual set of circumstances this can only be expected. It has been humbling.

Having weekly psychotherapy sessions has helped and continues to help me enormously. Therapists need their own therapy now more than ever. If we are to continue to be of help to our clients, first we need to have the support ourselves.

 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch with us.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and clinical Superviser. She works with individuals and couples in Hove and Lewes.

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara

What shapes us?

How Psychotherapy can Help Shape a Better World

Getting the most of your online therapy sessions

How Psychotherapy will be vital in helping people through the Covid-19 crisis

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

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New Year’s Resolutions

In my last blog I wrote about goals for change and linking these to our values. When someone decides to come into therapy it is often because they would like to make changes and it can help to set goals as a means of knowing when these changes have been achieved.

Given this is a time of year when we might have made New Year’s Resolutions it seems quite fitting to talk a little more about setting ourselves goals for change. It is often the case that at the start of the year we have all these wonderful ideas of what we want to achieve and we start off really motivated with all good intentions and then several months in we start to lose heart and give up.

A common goal at this time of year is dry January and this can quite often be successful because its time limited. We know that after a month we can return to our favourite tipple. However, for some this is difficult, particularly in the current situation with the stressors of Covid. Complete abstinence can be too challenging as its very all or nothing. It might be more helpful to consider cutting down and reducing frequency, e.g. limit to just one drink once or twice a week. In this way we can make the goal more achievable. Making our goals for change realistic and time limited is really important for achievement.

Another common goal for this time of year is to get fit and start exercising. To start with when we are motivated it goes well. It’s the trying to keep it up that’s difficult. Part of the battle is finding what exercise you enjoy. There’s no point pushing yourself to do something you don’t like. Often when people think of exercise they think they have to do something cardio related. However, there are lots of low impact workouts that are good forms of exercise, such as walking, yoga and pilates. Whatever choice you make its important to start small and build up. It’s the achievement that helps to maintain the motivation. So the first week or two you might aim to exercise for 20 minutes twice a week and then the third week, 3 times per week. Once you have comfortably achieved the first goal you set another, building on the first to push yourself that little bit further. All the time holding in mind where you want to be and this is where it can be useful to link goals to your values. In this example its values around physical well being and of course exercise is also great for our mental health.

Losing weight or eating healthier is another very common goal for people to set themselves at this time of year. And again is another that can be difficult to maintain. So rather than push yourself to go on a really restrictive diet or to cut out entire food groups consider aiming for a ‘better’ diet. Try reducing unhealthy food groups, reducing treats, and swapping to more healthy options. It can be more helpful to aim to eat healthily for 75% of the time or to eat healthily in the week and let yourself indulge a little at weekends. Again, it’s about trying to set more realistic goals for yourself. For example if your norm is to eat half a packet of biscuits with your cup of tea to allow yourself just 2 biscuits rather than going for complete abstinence.

Thinking about setting the right goals is really important and if you don’t achieve them, that’s o.k. There’s no such thing as a failed goal. If you don’t achieve your goal then there is still useful information – ask yourself why wasn’t I able to achieve this? What got in the way? What is the learning from this? What can I do differently next time? Are there any supports available to me to assist in this? Often we don’t achieve our goals because they are too big and need to be broken down further.

None of this is rocket science but we all to easily forget the basics. We can impose high expectations on ourselves and then become disheartened when we don’t achieve them. Our self critical voice kicks in and this can have a negative impact on our mood. Given the difficulties we are all facing currently its even more important to be kind to ourselves and realistic of what we can and can’t achieve.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Rebecca Mead, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Rebecca Mead is an accredited, registered and experienced Psychotherapist offering Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) to individuals adults.  Rebecca is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Rebecca Mead –

Making Changes

Social Connections

Back to ‘Bace’ics

Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) explained

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What is Schema Therapy?

Schema Therapy (ST) is a flexible and comprehensive approach to therapy that focuses on understanding you as a person. It provides a helpful framework for us to make sense of some of the difficulties you might be experiencing. These might be difficulties with how you feel, your thought patterns, relationships, unhelpful behaviours, or a general dissatisfaction with your life.

ST was developed in the 1980s by psychologist Jeffrey Young and can be understood as an integrative model that draws on a number of therapeutic approaches, including cognitive behavioural (CBT), psychodynamic, gestalt, and person-centred.

CBT has a strong evidence base and because of this tends to be the treatment of choice for many common difficulties such as anxiety and depression; when delivering ST, I would be able to work with you to incorporate many of the effective components of CBT to support with the changes you make. In addition, ST goes deeper and puts more of an emphasis on understanding the links between childhood experiences and the development of patterns in thinking, feeling and behaving.

ST asserts that it is our schemas that link our past to our present. In ST, a schema can be understood as a deeply held belief which is often out of our conscious awareness. Schemas affect how we think, feel, and behave, and are sometimes described as our blueprints or software. They help us to make sense of the world, and are the patterns that run throughout our life. A goal of schema therapy is to help you to become more aware of your schemas and then to provide you with tools to change on an intellectual, emotional and behavioural level.

Another important part of ST is the focus on emotional needs. ST believes that schemas develop from experiences when our emotional needs were not met. One of the overarching goals of ST is to help you to develop an awareness of these needs and, over the course of therapy, develop a variety of ways of meeting them.

What happens in schema therapy?
In the early sessions of ST, we would work together to build an understanding of your current problems and how they developed. A crucial element of this is making links between your early life experiences and your current problems. The process of therapy is active, and, right from the start we would use different therapeutic techniques. These can be divided into: (i) emotion focussed strategies that aim to connect you with the emotional level of your experience, and include imagery and chair work; (ii) cognitive techniques that aim to promote flexible and compassionate thinking; and (iii) behavioural techniques that help you to challenge fears and break behavioural patterns.

What I like about schema therapy?
I really like the comprehensiveness and flexibility of ST. It provides a framework for understanding how we function on a deeper level and helps us to spot the common thinking and behavioural traps that we can all fall into. As a therapist I can be creative and draw on a number of proven techniques that aim to address problems on a variety of levels. ST also encourages therapists to play an active role in the therapy and to bring an authentic and open approach to the therapeutic relationship. This can help create a genuine connection, which is often the foundation for lasting change.

 

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

 

Dr John Burns  is an experienced Consultant Clinical Psychologist registered with the British Psychological Society, Health and Care Professions Council, and the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies.  He is available at our Brighton & Hove Practice.

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Nietzsche and the body

Here I reflect, a little,  on a few of Nietzsche’s words on and as the body. These reflections are not conclusive or comprehensive. The only agenda is inspired by Nietzsche,  to perhaps stimulate the reader’s curiosity and desire to experiment and explore.  Please do read my previous article – ‘Why read Nietzsche?‘

“The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.” (1)

Nietzsche felt many philosophers, including Plato and Descartes, failed to grasp the significance of the corporeal nature of human beings and the pivotal role of affect.

In much of his writing he explored the impossibility of pure thinking, reminding us that we are embodied thinkers, and our senses and emotions are as much a part of this reasoning as thought, if not more so.

Nietzsche treasured being and walking in nature. In fact, Nietzsche (1967) seemingly suggests physical movement was necessary for a thought to be accepted as plausible when he said –

“Give no credence to a thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely”. (2)

He depicted how the air we breathe, the food we eat, the place we live and what we ingest through reading, writing and talking all have an impact on our physiology and philosophy and vice versa. Nietzsche (1974) even advised:

“Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance?” (3)

Nietzsche wrote a poem called ‘Writing with one’s feet’. It emphasised the principle of embodiment through metaphor and description of the anatomy of his writing.

“Not with my hand alone I write: 
My foot wants to participate.
Firm and free and bold, 
my feet Run across the field – and sheet”(4)

I understand Nietzsche as a passionate defender of the embodied lived experience. His philosophy is one that elevates both known and unknown instincts and drives that interplay with our bodily lived experiences. In fact, Nietzsche seems to suggest the self is the body.

“Behind your thoughts and feelings… there stands a mighty rule, an unknown sage – whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body”(5)

Nietzsche was not defining the body in a conventional way, such as a physical body or a single unit. He viewed it more metaphorically as a collection of corporeal and psychic forces, including emotions and instincts which are in a continual and often conflictual interplay. He saw the self as a plurality of forces, or more precisely a plurality of (relational) affects. These relational affects each express a viewpoint and seek domination.  Affects, for Nietzsche, are dynamically and continually interpreting and creating perspective. (6)

This multiplicity can sometimes create confusion and conflict, especially if one gets stuck in thinking there is  a such a thing as supremacy, or the right way, or the truth. Perhaps the key is to recognise that they all say many things at once. Rather than seeing this multiplicity of meaning and often unknown elements as something to fear, one could be curious and trust there is something to be listened to in all aspects. This exploration and experimentation is something that therapy can be helpful for.  A potential space to sit in the unknown for a while, exploring, experimenting and experiencing,  and see what might emerge.

Perhaps as Nietzsche suggests this very experience of conflicting affect can dislodge the notion that there is one way to be and create an opportunity for us to be guided into new, more fluid and creative ways of becoming. It can show us there are no limits to novel forms and there is always potential for transformation even within the limitations, obstacles and challenges that we may face. It also tells me that the idea of a rational pure thought that can somehow ignore or overcome the influence of emotions, physical sensations and those forces that reside in the unknown or unreflected, is unlikely. For Nietzsche it seems, nothing is, or needs to be, left behind in this often enigmatic embodied endeavour we might call lived experience.

As I conclude I feel a pressure to tie this short piece up into a nice and neat bow, so that it feels complete and reassuring somehow. However, I also feel the desire to swim. Perhaps the former would be missing the entire point of Nietzsche and the latter highlights his case in point.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna Petitpierre, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Susanna Petitpierre, BACP Registered, is an experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor, providing long and short term counselling. Her approach is primarily grounded in existential therapy and she works with individuals.  Susanna is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Susanna Petitpierre

Why read Nietzsche?

Magnificent Monsters

Death Anxiety

A consideration of some vital notions connected to Existential Therapies

 

References – 

1) Nietzsche, F. (1883/2010) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Ed. B Chapko),Ebook.

2) Nietzsche, F. (1967) Ecce Homo, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967

3) Nietzsche, F. (1882/1974), The Gay science. With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. W Kaufmann, New York: Random House

4) Nietzsche, F. (1882/1974), The Gay science. With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. W Kaufmann, New York: Random House

5) Nietzsche, F. (1883/2010) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Ed. B Chapko), Ebook.

6) Bazzano, M., (2019) Niezsche and Psychotherapy. London: Routeledge.

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Online Bereavement Therapy

Grieving is an emotional, psychological and physical response to losing someone we’re close to. It can be an unsettling experience and many people feel as though something is wrong or missing from their life. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief outline the core emotions as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But there are countless other emotions you may feel as a result of losing someone, which can make it confusing to comprehend. Online bereavement therapy is a popular way to help you deal with loss.

What is Online Bereavement Therapy?

Online bereavement therapy can be beneficial in helping you cope with your loss and come to accept what has happened. You’ll speak with a trained counsellor who has experience in helping people grieve and the issues that surround bereavement.

Since grief is often accompanied by feelings that are similar to depression, it can be all too easy to rely on anti-depressants to heal you. But this can often mask the impact of grief and delay the grieving process, causing more harm than good.

Online therapy will enable you to work through what has happened and come to terms with it. A counsellor can also help you understand that grieving is not a neat process and even after you’ve accepted your loss, you may still have difficult periods occur in the future. Your therapy may last several months or even longer – it all depends on the individual and how they process such events.

How Can Bereavement Therapy Help Me?

Some people find comfort in talking about how they feel, while others may find it difficult to talk about their emotions and withdraw from those around them. Grieving is incredibly tough, but you don’t need to feel as though you’re on your own. Offloading your worries and feelings onto someone else can be beneficial and help you work through the stages of grief.

Online bereavement therapy can help you during this mourning process – you’ll have the support of a trained professional and everything you discuss with them will remain completely confidential. It can help to discuss your loss and identify the emotions you’re feeling, whether it’s sadness, anger, guilt or helplessness.

Your counsellor can also help you in learning to live without the person you’ve lost, something that can be daunting. With the support of a counsellor, you’ll soon realise just how common and natural your responses to grief are which can make these emotions easier to deal with.

If you want to talk to our team, contact us today or take a look at our practitioners.

All the content on this page has been reviewed and vetted by Mark Vahrmeyer UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Supervisor and Co-Founder of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy. For any questions or more information about the subjects discussed on this page please contact us.


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Why ‘Cancel Culture’ is about the inability to tolerate difference

What is Cancel Culture?

This seemingly new trend is one of promoting the ‘cancellation’ of people, brands or television shows as a result of what some (the cancellers) perceive to be some form of offensive comment, remark, view or behaviour. It has surged on social media with various derogatory hashtags, notably #RIP.

A recent high profile ‘celebrity’ who has been on the receiving end of social media trends to have her cancelled is J.K. Rowling for her, views on transgender issues that some find offensive.

Is it that new?

The term may be new and the platforms used may serve to whip up a storm of support against those who some wish to have cancelled, however the concept is by no means new at all. Cancel culture is essentially a form of social banishment whereby in traditional tribal communities one of the most severe punishments would be the banishment from the tribe: to be cast out.

To be cast out of ones tribe would mean more than social death; if not literal death through being vulnerable to attack from predators and other tribes, banishment most certainly meant the death of the sense of belonging, which in psychological terms, could potentially instigate a psychic collapse (going mad).

However, whilst this may seem primitive, historical and anthropological evidence shows that it would be a punishment of last resort and would be handed down by the elders of the tribe – in other words, there would be some form of judicial process in place that sanctioned the banishment.

This is where cancel culture differs profoundly from tribal banishment or ‘being cast out’. It is not a decree from wise elders or some sort of judiciary; it is generally used as an attack against the views, opinions or behaviours of others that some disagree with.

Why does it matter?

Put simply, it matters because there seems to be an ever decreasing array of opinions and voices allowed and cancel culture is an immature way of trying to ‘kill off’ anybody holding views or opinions that may not be comfortable for others to hear.

Feeling offended and causing offence

There is a difference between a person feeling upset or even offended by another’s views and with another trying to purposely hurt a person or group of people. The former is what we may experience when we encounter others and are confronted by a different perspective. The latter is when we encounter sadism.

Sadism is unacceptable and should not be tolerated, however the mark of being an adult is the capacity to tolerate a different perspective and a different mind. Even if we may feel offended.

On mergers and separation

Although separate from its mother, an infant, when born, cannot differentiate between their mother and themselves. In essence they believe that their mother is an extension of them. Of course, in reality, the mother in question is very much as separate entity, at least physically, and thus will eventually fail to meet the needs of her infant. This is extremely frustrating for the infant in question and the mind of the infant concocts an ingenious defence against the pain of separation – a good and a bad mother is created: the infant imagines it is the good mother who meets all their needs and the bad mother who frustrates them. It is a primitive psychological defence called splitting.

Infants split off the bad until through ‘good enough’ parenting they eventually integrate the two mothers and tolerate reality: mother is not part of them and frustrates them as she has a different mind and a different set of needs. However, mostly, she seems to meet their needs so on life goes and importantly, on psychological maturation goes. The child is on the path from mergers to a world where they can be in separate relationships with others and tolerate a different mind.

Why cancel culture is simply splitting by another name

To be unable to contain ones feelings when confronted by a different perspective and thus a different mind shows a lack of psychological maturity. The world is split into ‘good and ‘bad’ like in a child’s fairy tale. Bad must be killed off so good can live happily ever after. This is not how the real world works; it is how cancel culture works.

How does cancel culture relate to psychotherapy?

In essence, psychotherapy is about outgrowing cancel culture. It is about learning to be in a relationship where difference can be tolerated and acknowledged, without this needing to be threatening. For some this means they must learn for the first time to bring their needs ‘into the mix’ – something that can feel really confronting and may bring on fears of rejection and abandonment. For others it may mean the opposite which is to be able to cope with the separateness of their psychotherapist and tolerate this without throwing away ‘all the good’ – without ‘cancelling’ them, if you like.

Being an adult means tolerating the frustrations of the real world and the frustrations of the others who make up the real world. However, if this can be tolerated then real relationships are possible and people can locate substance and meaning thus moving them out of a fear/threat pattern into adult relating patterns.

If you would like to work on your own intolerances and relationships, get in touch with us to discuss whether psychotherapy may be appropriate for you.

 

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

Why does the difference between counselling and psychotherapy matter?

Love in the time of Covid

Why am I feeling more anxious with Covid-19?

Coronavirus Lock-Down – Physical Health Vs Mental Health

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