Put another way, is getting anything less than 100% not acceptable to you, and a trigger for uncomfortable feelings of failure, of not being good enough, of self-criticism, self-doubt and shame? In my experience as a psychotherapist, a personal drive for perfection is often the root cause of distress in many of those seeking therapy….
The 13th century Persian poet Rumi invites us to wait in the unknown in his well known poem Guest House, to wait and see what transformations might occur. This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome…
Nel Tuo Tempo…….In Your Yime The artist Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition ‘Nel Tuo Tempo’ was described as addressing the ‘subjective perception and shared experience’ of a Florentine building. He did this using light, colour and shadow. Some of the twenty exhibits were complex structures, others were more about how we see the building in which the…
It is a process whereby our bodies experience environmental stressors as a threat to our physical survival, thereby releasing stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. This is an essential part of all mammal’s fear or threat response, which has become maladaptive in the modern world, as the threats we experience in modern life often…
The foundation of the paradigm shift in how we now view mental health, or as I prefer to consider to consider my field, emotional distress, is one where the problem is increasingly located in the individual as a disorder, rather than in the environment that the individual finds themselves. The inception of this paradigm in…
Low self-esteem stems from beliefs that we have about ourselves, a negative self-evaluation which is usually rooted in childhood experiences. The way we were spoken to, treated, and made to feel as children has a significant impact on how we see and therefore relate to ourselves later in life. Some of us may also have…
Why are stories so important to us humans? Human beings are the story species. From the earliest mythic hunts retold around tribal fires to the modern-day family evenings spent bingeing on the latest Netflix series, stories have captivated us. And yet, when it comes to our own life story, we are more liable to tell…
(Adapted from a presentation given at the SEA conference November 2022) – (Part two) Speaking of life itself as a movement of becoming. Have we forgotten the isness and replaced it with beingness, an allegedly unified subject of self-consciousness, contained and stuck within a name or a label? Must knowledge be part of it, must…
(Adapted from a presentation given at the SEA conference November 2022) – (Part one) Anne Carson (1998) wrote, “‘Now’ is a gift from the gods and an access onto reality. To address yourself to the moment when Eros glances into your life and to grasp what is happening in your soul at that moment is…
Therapy over the phone and in more recent years on video has been around for a long time, but since the recent pandemic it has become normalised with lots of online therapy platforms emerging and an abundance of “mental health” apps. At Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy we offer both face-to-face and online therapy, and whilst…
We seem to be in a world slipping deeper into seeking safety, transparency and the need for power and control to sanitise life. All as an apparent response and remedy to pain and suffering. A desire for continued uninterrupted happiness and security. We seemingly long for the place where happiness is and will remain, but…
A topic of certain difference, and at times discussion in the field of psychotherapy, is whether we refer to those we treat as ‘clients’ or ‘patients’. Why might this matter? On the face of it, it should arguably matter little to someone attending psychotherapy, as to what the therapist calls them on paper; in the…