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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
What is ‘Manifesting’ and The Law of Attraction? Recently a client, somewhat younger than me, described a phenomenon they called “Manifesting”. They felt excited and disappointed in themselves in equal measure that they seemed to be failing in using this ‘secret’ method of working with ‘the universe’ to bring them whatever their heart desired. Curious,…
What a difference a year makes. For all of us the world is an inconceivably different place to a year ago. Not only are we all living with greater uncertainty, we have all had to enormously adapt to living, socialising, relating working, and not least, having therapy in a different way. Almost exactly a year…