Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Online Therapy
01273 921 355

by Leave a Comment

Will counselling save my marriage?

One of the most common questions asked by individuals enquiring about couple’s counselling is whether the process will save their marriage? This is an understandable question and is driven by anxiety in relation to thoughts of a break-up.

The answer to this question is not simple and the variables lie with the two individuals in the couple, rather than with the therapist. Allow me to explain:

If a couple enter into couple therapy with clarity about wanting to work through some difficulties with the goal of continuing with their relationship AND this is reflected in the work then it is likely that the outcome will be a stronger relationship between the two individuals in the couple resulting from improved dialogue and intimacy.

However, this is often simply not the case. At best one partly frequently has ambivalent feelings about staying in the relationship or simply cannot get in touch with whether this is something they want due to the strength of feeling around unresolved issues.

Let us take the example of an affair. This is a fairly common presenting issue with couples who seek out couple counselling. In a typical scenario where one party in the relationship has been unfaithful, the other is likely to be feeling betrayed, hurt, angry and mistrustful.

Until these emotions can be worked through in session (if they can) and the hurt party can both come to terms with the affair, as well as with how both parties in the couple contributed to a loss (or avoidance) of intimacy, the question of whether the marriage can be saved remains a moot point.

Working with a skilled counsellor or psychotherapist can only benefit your relationship in terms of providing you both with a therapeutic relationship and environment in which difficult feelings can be worked through and better dialogue and understanding reached between to two members of the couple.

As painful as it is, sometimes the best outcome for a couple can be that both amicably go their separate ways.

 

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. Online therapy is available.

by Leave a Comment

What are the Benefits of Counselling and Psychotherapy?

Counselling and Psychotherapy can help with a range of issues that we may find difficult overcoming by talking to friends and family. There is a significant difference in talking to a skilled professional outside of your social and family circle, someone who is formally trained and experienced in what they do and understands how to work with psychological issues. I won’t go into the differences between counselling and psychotherapy, as this has been addressed in a separate blog. Rather I will focus on what makes talking therapies so beneficial.

Providing a safe environment

Anyone going through a crisis or wanting to discuss sensitive issues needs to feel heard, validated and understood. The therapy space is one which is designed to create containment, consistency, and safety. Weekly sessions usually at the same day and time, a calm and relaxing setting without distractions, an hour dedicated to you, and a professional who creates an environment conducive of trust and safety are all important aspects of the “talking cure”. These elements comprise what we call the “therapeutic frame”, which underpins and supports the work we do as therapists.

Someone who listens but not just listens

In my opinion, listening skills are highly underestimated. Listening isn’t just about listening, but also about making sure that the other feels heard and understood. Although this is considered a basic and essential skill in any talking therapy, listening takes presence of mind, body, and spirit. It is not as easy as it seems. The last thing anyone wants is a distracted therapist or one who seems they don’t listen or understand what you are telling them. For some it can bring up painful past and present experiences of lack of care, it can also convey a lack of interest and touch on previous abandoning and rejecting experiences. So, to get the basics right is very important!

Getting stuck in

Once you have a place to come where you feel comfortable, at a set time each week, with a person you feel you can trust and speak to without being judged, then the work can begin.

“The work” can be compared to an exploration, excavation, unpicking and un-knotting of the different strands of the issue or issues that you came to talk about and get help with.

This can be sophisticated work of great skill, but also messy and clunky at times. There is much uncertainty about what will be revealed and the paths that you will walk together.

The therapist’s job is to help you keep on track, but also allow for new pathways to be discovered. This is what makes the work interesting, fascinating, and rewarding for both parties. This relationship can be one of collaboration, creation, and deconstruction. None of this is necessarily smooth or easy but knowing ourselves is always ultimately rewarding.

The benefits

All the above is designed to support trust building, lessening isolation, creating space and safety amongst turbulent and uncertain situations, helping individuals regain control over their lives, feel and process difficult feelings, make sense of confusing situations and build or rebuild better relationships with self and others. Other benefits include: increased self-awareness, self-development, psychological and emotional strength and resilience, finding more meaning and purpose in life, making positive changes, and better communication amongst many other things.

On our website you can find more information about our counselling and psychotherapy services and how to contact our team.

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

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara

What makes us choose our career paths?

Antidotes to coercive, controlling and narcissistic behaviour

An in-depth approach to leadership coaching

Demystifying mental health

Women and Anger

by Leave a Comment

What to expect from couples counselling

Starting couple counselling can feel both daunting and anxiety provoking, especially if it something you have not previously undertaken.  Knowing up-front what to expect can reduce some of the anxiety and enable you to focus on what you actually want to get from your sessions.

Your counsellor or psychotherapist should be suitably qualified

You are taking an emotional risk inviting a third party into your relationship and thus it is imperative that they are well trained in working with couples as well as suitably supervised and have membership of either the BACP (in the case of counsellors) or the UKCP (in the case of psychotherapists).

You have the right to enquire about a clinician’s training and experience and you also have the right to make the decision that you do not wish to work with a particular person if you do not feel comfortable enough in their presence.

Your counsellor is not invested in the outcome of your work

Whilst it may sound counter-intuitive, couple counselling or psychotherapy is not about ensuring that a couple stay together. A good therapist will work with you to establish what it is that you as individuals wish to get from the process and then how best to support you and work with you as a couple.

A successful piece of work from the perspective of a couple counsellor or psychotherapist is where a couple are able to, with support, navigate difficult conversations together and reach an outcome where both parties can consider the other’s feelings and experience.

Where children are involved and a couple make the decision to end their relationship (whether driven by one or both member of the couple), the therapist will be considering the needs of the children throughout the process and working with the couple to ensure that the separation is as kind as possible to all concerned.

Impartiality

You can expect your couple counsellor or psychotherapist to be impartial – indeed, this is essential to the work. Your therapist is not there to take sides and their role is to ‘hold’ the couple as an entity, rather than focus on one individual’s needs at the expense of the others.

Session regularity

If you and your counsellor contract to work together then it is likely that this will be weekly initially, possibly moving to fortnightly over time. The process can take time.

 

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. Online therapy is available.

by Leave a Comment

How to prepare for couples counselling

So you have taken the difficult step to go to couple counselling – what do you do now?

Obviously there are a lot of variables when it comes to couples’ attending counselling together. Some couples are both on the same page and have a common goal, albeit they are struggling to reach that goal, whereas others may have very different wants and needs to each other. Your particular circumstances will dictate whether you prepare for your first session as a couple or you take a more individualistic approach.

If you are new to counselling in general and couple counselling specifically, the days and hours leading up to your first session may feel daunting and anxiety provoking. You are likely to worry about both how the session will go and whether or not your counsellor or psychotherapist will be someone you can work with.

On of the most common fears that individuals in a couple have is that the counsellor will ‘side’ with one party in the couple against the other. Indeed, one can go a step further and suggest that secretly this is often a wish that individuals in a couple may have: that the clinician will see things from their point of view and help explain to their partner where they are going wrong. Well, whether a wish or a fear, any couple counsellor who is well trained
is not going to take this position and will work instead to facilitate a dialogue between the couple and to establish the goals of the work.

Unlike open-ended psychotherapy which can go on for many months or years (indeed, it should), couple therapy is very different, in that it is far more goal orientated. The goal(s), however, are to be defined by the couple themselves and if this is unclear then this can often be the first piece of work that is done together.

A couple counsellor is not invested in whether a couple stay together or not. This may sound counter-intuitive, but they will work with the wants and needs of the couple and in couple counselling, whilst break-ups are invariably painful, a ‘good’ break-up can be an as successful a piece of work as where the couple decide to remain in the relationship.

Returning to the question of how best you can prepare for couple counselling, if you are working towards a common goal as a couple then it can be wise and productive to spend some time in advance of the session talking about what you each wish to get from the session(s) as well as what you as a couple wish to get. You will both have individual
needs and the couple as an entity also has needs.

If you are unable to communicate together, or are clearly on very different pages in terms of what you want, then I would suggest you spend some time on your own thinking about what you want to achieve from the work.

Lastly, it is important that you are both comfortable enough working with your couple counsellor. Inviting a third party into your relationship is an intimate act and you need to be sure that the person you are seeing is both qualified to help you as well as someone you both feel you can be honest with. If one of you is too uncomfortable to work with a particular clinician, then there is no point in proceeding with any further appointments.

 

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. Online therapy is available.

by Leave a Comment

What Can Couples Counselling Help With?

Couples Counselling or Couples Therapy can help the couple communicate better, look at past influences on present behaviour and help the individuals within the couple understand themselves and their partner better. Depending on approach to couples therapy, the therapist will either work with the here-and-now issues and provide the couple with tools to better communicate and relate to one another, and/or look at the dynamics stemming from each person’s family of origin and what each brings into their relationship.

In a sense, the role of the therapist is to introduce the individuals in the couple to one another. There are sides of ourselves that might be difficult to show to our partners without the help of a third party who is “looking in” the relationship.

Observation

The couples counsellor acts as an observer of the couples existing communication style, noticing how they interact both verbally and non-verbally. This information assists the therapist and the couple in helping to identify unhelpful patterns and difficulties in getting important messages across. Communication involves speaking, listening and other vital non-verbal cues.

The aim is to achieve greater awareness of how we come across by slowing things down, reflecting on what was said and noticing how things are received by our partner. Patterns of communication usually stem from how we were taught to communicate in our family of origin, therefore what comes naturally may not be what is needed to improve a relationship.

Mediation

Some couples work involves mediation between parties, especially in situations of conflict and impasse. When the couple gets stuck in recurring patterns of behaviour, a skilled third party can assist in calming things down when exchanges get heated, keep track of certain dynamics, and suggest new and different ways of dialogue that are more conducive to conflict resolution. Ideally, in time, mediation is no longer needed and the couple will eventually learn to slow things down themselves and reflect on their style of relating without the help of a professional.

Education

The therapist’s role is also that of an educator in the art of relating and communicating better. People who are very skilled in other areas of their lives can get stuck when it comes to their relationship. There is no shame in being a master communicator in your job but completely fail when it comes to your relationship. This is because there is so much more at stake. The closer we are to someone, the more difficult it is to see things clearly. Some people may feel resistance to coming to couples therapy because they don’t want to be taught to do something that they think they should know themselves. However, a certain degree of humility when it comes to improving your marriage or partnership, can go a long way. Afterall, we are all learning new things all the time.

Final Thoughts

It might feel daunting for couples to talk about the difficulties in their relationship to a total stranger. It can also feel exposing to talk to a stranger about your feelings in front of your partner. However, this very exposure is what enables us to lower our defences and put us in a more receptive and reflective frame of mind. Individuals within a couple often, over the course of their relationship, built walls around themselves as a protection against emotional
hurt and pain. Within a safe space and with a trusted therapist, the couple can hopefully begin to talk about and understand the origins of these feelings. This usually leads to partners getting to know each other better and feeling closer as a result. With more tools and healthier patterns of relating learnt during the sessions, the couple should feel more equipped to continue working on their relationship even after the therapy has ended.

 

Kevin Collins is a UKCP registered Psychotherapeutic Counsellor with an academic background in the field of literature and linguistics. He worked for many years in education – in schools and university. Kevin is available at our Lewes Practice.

 

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

 

Further reading by Kevin Collins –

Facing the Green-Eyed Monster

When it comes to parenting, are you a builder or a gardener?

I never thought my son would watch pornography

Care for a dance?

Name that tune

 

by Leave a Comment

Making Sense of our Multiple Selves

How many people are you? Personally, I know I’m quite a few and always will be.

Some years ago at a conference on ways of treating trauma a speaker was challenged from the audience to define what ‘mental health’ was. She paused for a moment and then replied that a mentally healthy person was ‘comfortable with self, comfortable with others’.

I admired the way she met this challenging question with a clear definition that describes a state of true wellbeing. At the same time I wondered, which ‘self’ are we referring to here?

Being in Relationship

Underlying that speaker’s definition of mental health is the notion of relationship and the recognition that to be a person is to always be in relationship with others and, most especially, with ourselves. In fact this learning how to be with ourselves is a process intricately linked to how we come to be ‘our selves’ in early development through relationships with our primary caregivers and other family members.

This notion that each of us appears to have multiple selves – or at least multiple parts of our ‘self’ – chimes with the reported experience of most people. This sense can be most acute when we face a life situation where we cannot decide on something, as though different parts of us are conflicting with each other to determine what is best for us as a ‘whole’ self.

The Parent, Adult & Child Model of the Self

A radical and deceptively simple idea for accounting for our different selves first emerged in the 1960s in the modality of Transactional Analysis (TA) (1) . This proposed that we naturally relate to ourselves and to others through a constant interplay between three different ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

We first learn how to be from our close observation of the all-powerful others we meet in infancy.

We borrow aspects of how they behave towards us and incorporate these into our own way of being. This has been termed our ‘Parent’ ego state, of which we can have many different ‘borrowings’ from the authoritative figures of our early years. Borrowing these parental ways of being is useful when it allows us to provide ourselves with parental comfort and structure to safely navigate the world, such as soothing ourselves by rubbing a bruised knee or remembering to stop and hold hands at the kerb. This becomes unhelpful when any borrowed forms of the parenting we received prevent us fully accepting and loving ourselves.

We also learn by actively storing as separate ‘Child’ ego states within us our earliest intense aspects of previous emotional experiences and imaginings about the world. By replaying these old experiences in different situations, they give us guiding models for expressing our innermost impulses or adapting in order to successfully maintain relationships with others. This is less helpful to us when previous fears overwhelm us in the present or we over adapt to the demands of others at the expense of our own needs.

Our third and probably most common way of being is to operate in the here and now – or our ‘Adult’ ego state – where we use our accumulated knowledge of the world to solve daily challenges and get our needs met. Problems can arise when our ability to function in the moment is compromised by us bringing our more unhelpful Parent or Child ways of being into our present.

Making sense of our multiple selves

So when we face times in our lives when we do become ‘uncomfortable’ or worse, it can be instructive to use this powerfully simplified model to explore how aspects of our Parent, Adult or Child ego states might now be limiting our capacity to live well.

TA Psychotherapy

Part of the process of TA Psychotherapy is to focus with compassion on how our borrowed and previous selves continue to serve us and to explore with care and curiosity those aspects of ourselves that are now no longer helping us to change or grow. For example, we might identify the origins of self-critical voices and practise liberating new nurturing parts of ourselves. Or we might explore those moments in our lives when we seem to be suddenly incapacitated by childhood vulnerabilities and work to resolve why this is so.

To return to our speaker, if the definition of mental health is indeed to be ‘comfortable with self, comfortable with others’, then I would like to suggest that the vitally important process towards this healthy state is of one of ‘compassion for self, compassion for others’, a process that TA and many other forms of psychotherapy can very effectively support.

 

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

Chris Horton is a registered member of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and a psychotherapeutic counsellor with experience in a diverse range of occupational settings. He works with individuals (young people/adults) in private practice.  He is available at our Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Chris Horton –

Let’s not go round again – how we repeat ourselves!

How are you?

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

 

Resources – 

(1) Berne, E. (1961). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. New
York: Grove Press. 

 

by Leave a Comment

Antidotes to Coercive, Controlling and Narcissistic Behaviour

There have been many more articles written on Narcissism in recent times, as it seems to be the age we are living in.

Narcissistic political, organisational, and religious leaders who lack accountability, manipulate information, and deny any wrongdoing has become a normal phenomenon across the world. This is not a new problem – narcissists have always existed and will continue to do so. In fact, every one of us has some degree of it, which is not necessarily a bad thing. A healthy degree of self-belief and self-confidence is in fact necessary. Narcissism of a more problematic kind exists on a spectrum, ranging from higher- than-usual degree of self-centredness to a deluded idea of omnipotence and specialness.

These characteristics are problematic because when the focus is on oneself only, the other simply becomes a means to an end, rather than a relationship between two human beings with differing needs. Clearly, relationships with narcissists can be very difficult. Unless the other is a good reflection of the narcissistic self and helps sustain their self-image, then the relationship will go smoothly. In fact, it can feel good to be a part of this ‘narcissistic bubble’. However, if the person disagrees, has their own opinion, or wants to assert their difference, then things can quickly take a turn for the worse.

The narcissistic character will do everything they can to maintain a good image of him/herself, which often involves projecting anything that is perceived as bad onto the other.

This is usually paired up with an inability to take responsibility, emotional immaturity, and the portrayal of a false sense of self-confidence. The key here is that the person is operating from a self that is idealised, inflated and false, rather than a real self which incorporates good and bad aspects, and is realistic about its limitations.

Deep down, the narcissist feels vulnerable but will do all it takes to protect themselves from this feeling. Unfortunately, people with a strong narcissistic disposition will prey on the vulnerable, using them to achieve their own gains, project uncomfortable feelings onto them, attack, undermine, and belittle them.

At this point you might be asking yourself “why would anyone choose to be in a relationship this bad?” Those in a relationship with a narcissist can go from feeling very special to feeling persecuted, manipulated, intruded upon, and objectified. A typical example would be a situation of domestic violence. It is usually very hard to leave because one is either kept in fear or hopes for the return to a time when things “felt really good”.

The Antidote

Building up self-esteem and self-confidence is an important aspect of making healthy relationship choices. We all have self-doubt, but excessive self-doubt leads to a vulnerability to manipulation and control. A healthy degree of self-belief and self-esteem can help in asserting needs and act as a protective mechanism against self-doubt that can feel paralyzing in the face of coercive, manipulative and controlling behaviour. It also sends a strong message out that your mind is your own and you are not vulnerable to control.

Setting strong boundaries is another vital antidote. Taking more ownership of your physical and psychological space, sending the message that you will not be intruded upon without consequences, and reasserting your boundaries again and again will go a long way towards self-protection. If this isn’t respected, then trusted others may need to become involved in helping you create a strong self-protective shield around you. In the extreme case of violent intrusions, criminal and abusive behaviour, reporting the crime might be the only way to set those boundaries. Even in less severe cases of manipulation and intrusion, it is going to be helpful to set strong boundaries and stick with them.

Don’t be seduced by an illusion of specialness. There are different ways to feel special – are you being seen and respected for who you really are, or because you conform with who the other wants you to be? Do you feel valued or seen for your own virtues, feelings and thinking? Are you being encouraged to be who you are, even if you disagree with them? Do you feel you can be different, separate, do your own thing? Are you often put down, belittled, or told that you are no good?

Psychotherapy can help with assertion, boundary setting and improving self-esteem. Most importantly, it is a space to examine the motivation for relationship choices and unhealthy beliefs about self and others.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Superviser and Tavistock Certified Executive Coach. Sam has recently been interviewed by Talk beliefs on the harmful impact that cults have on children, drawing from her personal and professional experience. See the link to Sam’s interview.

Further reading by Sam Jahara

An in-depth approach to leadership coaching

Demystifying mental health

Women and Anger

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

Fear and hope in the time of Covid – part 2

by Leave a Comment

The Importance of Generosity and Forgiveness in a Hostile World

As human beings we have evolved to connect. However sophisticated we have become over time though, our capacities for clear communication are enduringly mired in complication. Our inclinations are tilted toward a negativity bias whereby, when in doubt we will tend to assume the worst of an(other)s intent. One negative comment will more often make a far greater impression upon us than ten positive ones. To assume the worst may be our default position but cultivating a degree of generosity in interpreting the remarks of others may be a calling to our better selves. At the particular cultural moment that we find ourselves in this seems particularly pertinent.

We live in the same society as people with whom we don’t get along and with whom we don’t share the same views. When we are unable to listen respectfully (and generously) to those whose views might differ from our own we are in danger of confining ourselves to the trenches of tribalism. It is hard to avoid or ignore the increasingly polarising and toxic nature of current debate. This new reality may well have something to do with a loss of faith and trust in our institutions, religious, political and social and a subsequent (if subtle) loss of meaning. The postmodern era has accelerated this mistrust with its defining suspicion of all grand narratives. Into the breach we have witnessed the exponential rise of social media, dramatically increasing our abilities to connect but doing little to expand our capacities to communicate effectively and compassionately.

The impact of social media on communication

In fact social media may actively diminish our communication skills, pulling us, as it does away from face to face encounters. When you don’t have to meet the person with whom you are in disagreement, it is far easier to dehumanise them….to reduce, diminish and wilfully misunderstand them. When we don’t have to encounter someone, face to face, we don’t need to consider the impact we might have on them and their lives. From the comfort of the echo chamber there is far more scope for righteousness and outrage and far less for generosity and nuanced understanding.

In the age of social media, the boundaries between private and public language have collapsed. This is problematic in many ways, some of which we may not yet even be aware of. When the line between public and private is breached so too is the significant matter of context. When we lose context we also lose sight of the matter of intent. In the minefield of  todays identity politics these things matter, holding people to account in the court of social media for an expression of the “wrong view” is no justice at all. We all know something of the experience of misrepresentation or misinterpretation in our online communications…albeit more often with others within our own group. How many of us have taken exception or offence to a text message without even stopping to question whether any was actually intended?

We are more than our google history

In a fast changing and increasingly atomised world we need more than ever to find ways of getting along with each other. Of talking and listening generously and respectfully, the absence of which simply takes us one treacherous step closer to a moral abyss. We build confidence in our relationships when we encounter each other  face to face through personal interaction. This is the baseline from which generosity can flourish. It is harder to be generous when we fear abuse and it is so much easier to be unkind when there is no attempt to meet. We must not confuse knowing someone with knowing their google history.

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

 

by Leave a Comment

Let’s not go round again – How we repeat ourselves!

Earworm

Have you ever had a song go round and round in your head for longer than you’d like? I certainly have. It’s a common enough experience for which in recent years the term ‘earworm’ has been coined. More academically, it’s known through American Psychological Association research as Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), defined as ‘the spontaneous recall and repeating of a tune in one’s mind’. 

A persistent earworm of mine belongs to a radio staple of my youth: the Scottish funk group Average White Band’s disco hit, ‘Let’s Go Round Again’. 

If you’re unfamiliar with it I hesitate to recommend you listen, lest I pass its catchy stickiness to you. But in the song the singer returns from unspecified travels to entreat a former lover to reconnect with him in the way they were and so ‘turn back the hands of time’. Mining a commonly held nostalgia for revisiting the passionate phases of former loves, I think the song’s sentiment succeeds most through its appeal to the very human need for repetition in relationship.

Repetition compulsion

Just over 100 years ago in Freud’s essay, Beyond The Pleasure Principle , he outlined long observed patterns of behaviour in his many patients as manifestations of a ‘compulsion to repeat’. He cites a case study of a little boy who created a game of regularly throwing and retrieving from his cot a favoured reel on a piece of string. He would throw it out to a word meaning ‘gone’, then retrieve it with a joyful sound meaning ‘there’. Within the context of the family, Freud offers the interpretation that the child’s invented game of disappearance and return was a way ‘to revenge himself on his mother for going away from him’. 

He goes on to speculate that children repeat unpleasant experiences in order to gain some kind of mastery over them and then observes that many of his adult patients show behavioural repetitions resulting in misfortunes ‘for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences’.

Psychological games

Later in the 1960s an analysand of one of Freud’s followers developed this notion of repetition in human behaviour, identifying common relationship patterns in those reported by his own patients. He named these patterns psychological ‘games’: repeated transactions played out of conscious awareness by both parties in a relationship. Eric Berne’s ‘Games People Play’ (1964) became a 60s best seller and is a founding text in the development of the modality of Transactional Analysis.

In essence, Berne extended Freud’s earlier insights to suggest that each of us in infancy develops a repertoire of repetitive behaviours that we use to protect ourselves. The proposal is that at a deeply unconscious level we seek relationships with others who will allow us to repeat roles and situations that for us confirm fundamental beliefs about ourselves and other people, in order to keep ourselves safe.

Whenever we encounter relationship issues in our lives, it can often seem as though our difficulties take the form of repeated patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The process of psychotherapy can support us with self inquiry into the types of repeated behaviours we favoured when small, with a view to us breaking our adult patterns. It can help us pose the interlinked questions, ‘How might I be different with myself, so I might be different with others?’

In the penultimate verse of Let’s Go Round Again, the lover sings, ‘Baby, I know that you think I will be different now. Inside of me nothing has changed. So, I’m asking you again, please.’ And of course, the prerequisite for repetition is for nothing to change inside. 

I like to think the old lover he is addressing greets the singer warmly but invites him this time into a different kind of relationship, where they can both explore new ways of being together that don’t leave them going round and round.

 

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

Chris Horton is a registered member of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and a psychotherapeutic counsellor with experience in a diverse range of occupational settings. He works with individuals (young people/adults) in private practice.  He is available at our Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Chris Horton

How are you?

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

 

References – 

1 Jakubowski, Kelly; Finkel, Sebastian; Stewart, Lauren; Müllensiefen, Daniel (2017) Dissecting an Earworm:

2 Melodic Features and Song Popularity Predict Involuntary Musical Imagery,

3 Freud, S (2015) Beyond the Pleasure Principal, Dover Thrift Editions 

4 Berne, E. (1964) Games people play: The psychology of human relationships. New York: Ballantine. 

by Leave a Comment

An In-Depth Approach to Leadership Coaching

Coaching in organisations has become increasingly popular over the past 20 years as workplaces become less hierarchical and organisations seek a more sophisticated approach to leadership.  The more recent shift linked to the pandemic has sped-up changes already on the horizon. 

Leaders are feeling an increasing sense of pressure and responsibility, alongside a collective shift towards a more balanced life. The two positions are difficult to reconcile leading to more pressure on the leadership as employees demand more empathy and flexibility, alongside added pressures on organisations linked to global uncertainty, supply chain issues and political instability.

We are living in times where things are constantly shifting and adapting quickly is a must. We want better relationships and a better work-life balance. Technology is connecting and isolating us at the same time – online meetings demonstrates this paradox well. Those in positions of leadership require an ever more empathic and sophisticated approach to their role, alongside being one-step ahead in an already fast-moving world. 

The Role of Leadership Coaching 

The role of Leadership Coaching is to be alongside leaders through these challenging times. An exploration of the challenges and opportunities within a person’s role requires more than a behavioural and goal-oriented approach. A more psychological approach to leadership coaching requires a coach who can think ‘outside the box’ and work with what lies beneath the surface. This entails understanding what motivates and drives the client, the demands of the organisation, the story behind the client’s career choices or trajectory, their resources and pitfalls.

An exploration of the story behind an individual’s career choice and understanding of their relationships at work speaks volumes. This exercise can be very interesting for both coach and coachee and lead further understanding some of the issues at hand. Given that success is linked to relationships – to self, others and the organisation – exploring these is an essential aspect of leadership coaching.  

Finally, it is vital for leaders to have a place to discuss their anxieties, worries, and fears. Leaders must learn to know their vulnerabilities, and not deny or bury them. Facing and understanding these emotions is what leads to change. It is also through exploration that these anxieties and fears begin to lessen, and the client can start to focus their energies on more creative pursuits rather than constantly firefighting.

With space for reflection, a better understanding of one own emotions and relationships, and energies freed up for more important tasks and creativity, work starts to become more enjoyable. With better self-awareness leaders can enjoy their role and stand in uncertainty with more confidence. 

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and Tavistock Certified Coach. She coaches individuals and groups in organisations as well as those who are self-employed or run their own business.

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara

Demystifying mental health

Women and Anger

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

Fear and hope in the time of Covid – part 2

The Pandemic and the Emerging Mental Health Epidemic

by Leave a Comment

Thinking about origins

Where do you come from?

It’s a question that many of us will have either asked, or been asked. What do we actually mean when we ask that of someone? Are we merely searching for a reference point as a means of friendly inquiry, or are we seeking something else?

When we think about identity and ask who we are, we often consider where we came from. What it is about our experience of our formative years spent in certain places that defines us? It could be a deep sense of belonging based on familial and cultural familiarity, or conversely, a desire to be separate and distant from a place, which has little resonance with us. In asking the question are we implying that there is something to be revealed in our sense of origin?

Origin as a point of reference

When we ask about origins we are looking for reference points, but also are we asking to be shown a version of the self based on regionally derived ideas? Whilst saying that we have predefined notions of identity isn’t comfortable to think of, we can often hold these as a way of making sense of origin in someone’s identity. No one wants to think in terms of ‘stereotypes’, but we might hold these as a way of giving a sense that we can relate to one another. What is important is that we can move beyond fixed notions and be curious about who we meet.

Origin and identity

For the individual the sense of origin and place easily become part of our sense of who we are. To say that you come from somewhere can say a lot about you, without having to elaborate. Strong local identities can be defining, whether this is desirable or not. This thought, that origin can be defining, is especially apparent when we relocate. Are we suddenly exposed? Does it raise the thought that we might allow our origin to actually define oneself in a way that isn’t authentically who we are? It could be that our origin is a means of holding onto our sense of self when we might not feel able to define ourselves otherwise.

Over time our relationship with our origins can change as we age and develop our own identity. What role does our historic origin play in our thoughts of where we are from? Is it a place that we romanticise, miss or hold with positive regard? Is it somewhere that we choose to keep a distance from? Do we feel the need to celebrate, defend or denigrate it? The relationship over time speaks of the influence of origin and brings up thoughts of what it is to ‘belong’.

For some the sense of origin is a complex mix of influences. The experience of migration and change impact a sense of being able to clearly answer where one is from. This displacement and sense of loss can be highlighted in the inquiry about one’s origins. Here we are challenged to explore what it is like to not have a simple answer. Can we think about loss and hold a sense of richness based on a diverse sense of origin, or is the loss harder to bear? Has migration made it hard to place oneself and make sense of ones own identity?

Questions around identity and origin are often present in everyday life. Working with a psychotherapist can help in developing a better sense of self and our identity when we question our origins.

 

David Work is a BACP registered psychotherapist working with adults, offering long term individual psychotherapy. He works with individuals in Hove and Lewes.

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

 

Further reading by David Work –

Bridging Political divides

Save? Edit? Delete?

Football, psychotherapy and engaging with male clients

When Home and Work merge

by Leave a Comment

“I’m interested in therapy but isn’t it a bit self-indulgent?”

Some of the people I see exploring whether to begin therapy, often express doubts as to whether their troubles are significant enough. I often hear the refrain – “nothing that bad has happened to me, maybe I’m just being self-indulgent, or isn’t this all a bit naval gazing?.” 

I think simplified, what the client is really saying is; “Am I justified in feeling this pain and am I worthy of this attention ? ” 

This blog will look at how therapy can help us incorporate our painful experiences as part of a fuller engagement with ourselves, the people in our lives (our relationships) and as a different approach to living

The Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein who was interested in early development, theorised that a key early and ongoing development task is the sad but necessary realisation that others are different and separate from us, with their own needs rather than as extensions of our own. This confronts us with the loss of what we hope and want the other person to be, but if we are able to face and mourn this loss, we can move onto to a more realistic and more liveable life. When the disappointments by the other are too great, or conversely, the other attempts to be everything for us, this task is all the harder. 

Voltaire, the French philosopher and writer, in his novel ‘Candide’, tells the story of a group of travellers who have suffered various trials and tribulations. On hearing of a murder at the Ottoman court they pass an old man peacefully tending his garden. They ask the old man about the trouble at the court and he replies that he doesn’t know anything about it, since he doesn’t keep up with the affairs there. Rather he tends calmly to his own small holding. Voltaire used this example to put forward the idea that in order to live a ‘good life’, we should not overly concern ourselves with worldly affairs, but find a task we can attend to, that leaves us satisfied but tired at the end of the day. 

In my therapy practice I relate to this, not in the sense that we should ignore politics or activism, I think these are important, but in the sense that I regularly experience how clients want to engage me in their ‘rages against the machine’, with different viewpoints and perspectives.  What I often find is that, smuggled into these arguments are parts of themselves they find difficult, or are unable, to face: the bad one is the other one over there – and if only they thought like me, the world would be fine. 

What often lies behind these projections, are painful feelings of despair, hopelessness, insecurities, personal failure, upset, grief, rejection and so on. 

I try to carefully and tactfully sense what is behind these things, and the defenses or shames against feeling them, and try to create a safe enough space where these grievances and pains can be heard, allowing air to the wounds. Allowing, over time, a sad but realistic acceptance of the wounds, limits and realities of ourselves and perhaps the human condition. Rather then than therapy being self indulgent, perhaps it is one the best things we can do for the world, by trying to understand ourselves so that we don’t project our own hurts and conflicts outwards. This is why in therapy I will always be thinking about, and trying to help you understand what is happening inside of yourself, using myself as an instrument to understand what is happening between us, utilising the self awareness I’ve gained through my own work on myself, to help you understand and accept yourself more fully. 

In his book, Voltaire argues that the melancholic position is the only one from which we – any of us who have suffered disappointments, broken hearts, loss, (all adults that I know) – can ever truly live. He contests that we cannot escape suffering, since to some degree, the world is a brutal and cruel place to live. Perhaps rather than getting lost in despair or raging about this, what we can do, is to cultivate our inner worlds, pulling up the weeds, planting, feeling, exploring. Not trying to rid ourselves of the pain or anxieties of life, or the world, but to learn – as sad as it is – to try and accept that these are part of the human condition. That after we have loved and lost, battled our own minds, tried to find the magical other, and failed, that perhaps the best way forward is to attend modestly and honestly to our own human natures, to its wild thorny ways, to our own sometimes unkind and cruel ways, and to do our best to be honest about these, rather than defend against them, driving them underground. To cultivate what we can, humility, acceptance, forgiveness and grace. Like tending a garden, the work is never complete.

 

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. Online therapy is available.

by Leave a Comment

Some thoughts on becoming (part two) …

“‘This – is now my way – where is yours?’ Thus did I answer those who asked me ‘the way’. For the way – it doth not exist!”

(Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

Nietzsche (1961) conceives of people as a process of becoming and thus creative and transformative in nature. Nietzsche (1973) calls us to focus on facing up to the realities of the world, develop a loving relationship to ourselves; our dynamic and multiple forces, sometimes conflicting (our passions and paradoxes), and take responsibility for the creation of them and our lives.  He uses the idea of our spirit being akin to a process of metamorphosis. Firstly, carrying the heavy weight that life has thrown at us, like a camel. But he calls us to consider and recognise the spirit of the lion within us too. Coining the will to power, not so much about taming, integrating or balancing these forces but more to do with inviting and using power, passion and assertion to guide the active forces and create. He promotes the body as the self; the place from which the will to power is generated.

He argued, once we accept and bear that which has been given to us we must also make space for freedom’s possibility and  “seize the right to” new values (p.55).  Understanding the significance of power and passions, embracing risk, uncertainty, impermanence and the importance of falling in the process of becoming and transformation.  Equally he invites us to consider the rejection of conformity, duty and obligation as a necessary part of the process in decentering and freeing the self. To perhaps see it as a movement. I am free to come and go, to feel the comfort of belonging but also to recognise it is limiting and never stationary.

Therapy can sometimes feel like a space whereby you can/ might begin to navigate this, with another.  Discovering, perhaps, through paying attention to how affects and intensities traverse and move through the body, and how we can learn from them. Investigating what has been difficult, whilst also considering what our greatest desires are, and aiming our flight towards them.

Existential therapy can be a way to approach this. Van Deurzen (2002) analogised the role of an existential therapist with an art tutor, one which may support the client to reach towards a sense of perspective and begin to create a more detailed picture of their past, present and possible desires for the future world. Understanding the patterns and burdens in which we have been carrying and acting out from and perhaps begin to hold them more lightly.  So that we might feel more able to be in relationship with the forever present, fluid and creative spaciousness where phenomena emerges. The creative space where things move, fluctuate and are impermanent,  thus always full of possibility and potential.

Perhaps a good place to start is by considering desire as a guiding light in these explorations. Tell me, what is your greatest desire?

This blog follows on from part one.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna, 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 – 

Some thoughts on becoming (part one) …

What is the Menopause? (part two)

What is the Menopause? (part one)

Some existential musings from the sea

References:
  • van Deurzen (2002) Existential Counselling & Psychotherapy in Practice. London: Sage
  • Nietzsche, F (1973) The Will to Power in Science, Nature, Society and Art, New York: Random House. 
  • Nietzsche, F (1961) Thus Spoke Zarathustra. trans. R.J. Hollingdale ( Harmondsworth: Penguin).

by 2 Comments

How are you?

How are you at just sitting down quietly by yourself? 

Some years ago I completed a mindfulness meditation course and first encountered the philosopher Pascal‘s assertion that, ‘all the misfortunes of men derive from one single thing, which is their inability to be at ease in a room’. Our teacher suggested Pascal referred to the harm caused due to our periodic inability to tolerate the sheer intensity of thoughts and feelings that can rise within us, when no distractions are available. 

Having worked through meditation guidance books at earlier times in my life, I found attending this formal course was an enriching way to discover that engaging in mindful meditation could be a useful aspect of my own wellbeing.

The paradox of mindfulness – ostensibly sitting alone not ‘doing’ anything – is that it’s an active practice, requiring our presence in the moment and making it a regular habit in order to be effective. The health benefits of mindful meditation have been increasingly suggested in numerous research studies. 

Pioneers such as Jon Kabat-Zinn have taught how cultivating a focused awareness of our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations increases our capacity to tolerate their extremes. 

More recently the psychiatrist Dan Siegel has developed his ‘Wheel of Awareness’ practice: a structured meditation session inviting us to develop both awareness and compassion for ourselves that we then extend to our personal relationships, wider humanity and all life in our natural world.

Just as many have found meditation a valuable resource at particular times of stress or crisis in their lives, so psychotherapy has taken its place as an important activity that addresses the challenges we face in seeking to be at ease with ourselves. 

And for this activity we might turn to the insight of another giant of French thought, Montaigne, who wrote, ‘The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.’

In the therapeutic process we move beyond sitting with ourselves into a particular kind of beneficial relationship. The therapy room offers us a space where we can enlist the full attention of another person – a trained therapist – who is professionally committed to helping us explore those aspects of ourselves that can be hardest to uncover and often too painful to encounter by ourselves. 

And just as meditation is called a ‘practice’, so psychotherapy is often referred to as ‘the work’ in an acknowledgement of the purposeful regularity of this process of deeply supported self-examination.  

If the goal of mindfulness is to achieve a greater sense of wellbeing though cultivated awareness, it seems to me the aim of psychotherapy is to help us truly know not who, but as Montaigne suggests, how we are in the world. Only by understanding much more about how we have come to think, feel and act in the way we do can we begin to understand how we might choose to be different.

 

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

Chris Horton is a registered member of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and a psychotherapeutic counsellor with experience in a diverse range of occupational settings. He works with individuals (young people/adults) in private practice.  He is available at our Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Chris Horton

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

by Leave a Comment

Some thoughts on becoming (part one) …

“First we are written and then we write.”  These words resound in my head daily. Helene Cixous, the speaker of those words, was immediately given special and spacial status in my lived experience. Her words speaking to the many dynamic forces that seemingly make up my lived experience including past, present and some yet to be birthed influences.

Her words help me understand the paradox and tensions in which I/we continually live; that of our essential solitude and our inescapable connection to the world,  the continual uncertainty we must create from and our responsibility to do so.  They inspire me to recognise that only I can be responsible for what I make of my life as opposed to holding others responsible.  This can sometimes shower me with a sense of liberation and at other times the opposite feeling of hopelessness.

Discovering a way to navigate our existence and relationships, amongst the many prevailing tensions can be hard sometimes. It might often feel difficult to not externalise, to blame others as responsible for what is happening or happened. There is an obvious morass of disparity, privilege and injustice everywhere. We can feel filled up by tragedy, dread and despair and often feel unable to loosen the grip of injustice, loss and fear and welcome uncertainty, ambiguity and difference.

Existential therapy talks of facticity, that which we are born and thrown into and which influences and shapes us and our surroundings. It is much of how we textually create our encounters with ourselves and the world. Some can be heavy forces, which we often feel powerless to when responding. Others we can utilise creatively to conduct and perhaps flow in the rhythm in which we move; cultivating the soil we traverse through more easily.

Merleau-ponty (1964, p. 116) posits,

“We must abandon the fundamental prejudice according to which the psyche is that which is accessible only to myself and cannot be seen from outside …My consciousness is turned primarily toward the world, turned towards things; it is above all a relation to the world.” 

Sartre (2003) also tells us about this relationship to the world, amongst many other things, when he discusses how the gaze of the other objectifies us in a position, a role to perform, calling us to be for the other. The gaze of the other interrupts our inherent freedom, consequently we might deprive ourselves of our existence as a being-for-itself and instead learn to insincerely self-identify as a being-in-itself. Sartre argues that if we look to the other to give us definition we are living in bad faith.  By not bearing the responsibility of what we are we are denying our freedom.

Sartre (1961) conveys,

“We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.”  

Sartre highlights a paradox; we are discovered by the encounter with Other but it is us who creates our meaning.

These paradoxes, contradictions and tensions are complex and not linear. There is a continual impermanence, uncertainty, negotiation and relationship revealed and expressed via affects and intensities, within and without.  We are neither fixed nor congruent but always in passage and in motion.

We are called to create, enchant and become captivated. To remember the “heavy burden of the growing soul” (Elliot, 1964) and perhaps keep cultivating the yet unknown soil in which we breathe. To cease neither enrapturing and traversing the other nor becoming captivated and transformed by them. Perhaps, as Cixous writes,  “… to find in myself the possibility of the unexpected.” (p.39).

Part two of this blog can be found here.

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Susanna, 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 – 

Some thoughts on becoming (part one)

What is the Menopause? (part two)

What is the Menopause? (part one)

Some existential musings from the sea

Nietzsche and the body

 

References:

  • Ciscoux, H. (1992).  On writing. In coming to writing and other essays. London: Harvard University Press  (pp. 1- 58).
  • Eliot. T.S. (1964) Animula. In Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright,
  • 1936, by Harcourt, Brace & World Inc.
  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964) The child’s relations with others. In: Cobb, William, translator; Merleau-Ponty, M., editor. The primacy of perception. Evanston: Northwestern University Press; 1964.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul (1961) Preface to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”. In Fanon, Frantz (1925–1961). The wretched of the earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ISBN 9780140224542. OCLC 12480619.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul (2003). Being and Nothingness. Hazel E. Barnes (trans.). London: Routledge.

Hove Clinic
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.

Copyright © 2022