Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Online Therapy
01273 921 355

by Leave a Comment

Parental Alienation and the impact on children

Separation or divorce are painful, difficult and time consuming processes and more so where children are involved. Few couples manage to amicably separate and sadly, this applies to couples who have a child or children together too.

Although it may seem obvious, my experience is that couples who are separating and have children often fail to recognise that they in fact will always have a relationship with each other as parents of the same children. Whether this is openly and maturely acknowledged as in the case of couples who co-parent, or not, as in the extreme case of parental alienation, there remains, nonetheless a relationship.

What is Parental Alienation?

Broadly, parental alienation occurs when a child becomes hostile, fearful and generally unwilling to engage with one parent as a result of the either the psychological manipulation of one parent or, more often, the toxic relationship between both parents. It is extremely damaging to children and can lead to mental health issues including self harm and suicidal ideation.

Parental alienation is on a scale from a parent making negative remarks about the other parent, or one parent ‘forgetting’ their responsibilities on relation to their child (an agreement to pick them up etc.) through to psychological manipulation and control.

The child as centre stage

Whilst the process of separating can be extremely painful and difficult, it is critical that parents find a way to establish a working relationship in co-parenting their child. This starts from the point of agreeing together the narrative they are going to tell their child about the separation through to long-term parenting commitments. The role of psychotherapy. Experienced couple’s psychotherapists are able to work with a couple to move beyond their
grievances and establish a framework within which they will work together to fulfil the same job: raise their child and create emotional stability for them.

The impact of divorce on children

Society and parents tend to enormously underestimate the impact that separation and divorce can have on a child. For children, their entire stability is predicated on the stability of the parental unit and when this gets rocked or shaken to its foundations, the impact on a child can be enormous.

Studies have been undertaken measuring the impact of divorce on children and in many cases the psychological impact can be greater than losing a parent through death. The reason is because, generally, when a child is bereaved, the other parent (along with the broader family and society) enables the child to grieve a very tangible loss. With divorce, and especially where the split is contentious, children often feel they need to ‘pick a side’ and are unable to grieve the loss of the parental unit.

Top tips to focus on when separating and a child or children are involved –

  • Separate out grievances towards each other about the end of the relationship and your job as parents;
  • Agree a narrative that is age appropriate to tell your child about what is happening;
  • Reassure your child that you continue to both be there for them;
  • Avoid displays of conflict in front of your child;
  • Recognise that you NEED to put your child first and that all children want two parents and would prefer their parents to stay together;
  • Allow and facilitate the grieving process for your child.

 

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

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?

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

by Leave a Comment

Why there’s nothing as infuriating as Anger Management

Throughout my career as a Psychotherapist, particularly when working with statutory services, I have often been asked to provide, ‘Anger Management’. Now I do understand that some people desperately need help with their anger and that it often has destructive effects on them and their relationships. However, what was, (its much less heard of these days), called anger management often consisted of cognitive techniques to control anger, breathing exercises, counting backwards etc, and while these may help a few people they don’t really touch the surface for most. The appeal is in a simplistic idea of control, the idea that we can simply choose which emotions to feel.

Once a certain point of anger has been reached rational thought has gone and telling someone to just control their anger is a bit like saying to someone with depression, “hey bud, don’t be sad’.

The psychodynamic approach along with all exploratory therapeutic approaches, seeks to understand the hurt behind the anger, attempting to address the root rather than the surface ‘symptom’.

The root of anger is very individual, each person has their reason to be angry and an analytic approach seeks to understand the reasons, meaning and purpose of an individual’s anger, helping them feel understood.

Anger and Depression

Anger is often part of a complex set of internal feelings and conflicts and is felt to be a bad feeling and sought to be repressed, setting up feelings of guilt and self-criticism. The hurt behind the anger often relates to a personal sense of wounding, rejection and loss. Anger is sometimes directed inwardly towards the self and this is causal factor in depression.

This sense of internal rejection, which of course can come from very real experiences of feeling let down or rejected and while sometimes may be due to genuinely abusive experiences can also be due to a care givers unavoidable unavailability. For instance, if a caregiver themselves suffers a depression, the feeling of the child can be one of personal hurt and rejection, leading to a painful feeling of unwanted-ness, self-loathing and externalised or internalised anger.

However, it can be very hard to be angry at someone one needs or is dependent on, powerful guilt and/or anxiety can be stirred up about these aggressive feelings towards someone loved, with a feeling that these feelings may damage the loved person and therefore the anger has to be split off and directed elsewhere. Splitting is an age old defence mechanism, alive and well in todays world, whichever side of any given debate you can be sure that many on either side will be using that debate to project their bad feelings onto the others over theirs.

The ability to tolerate both angry and loving feelings (ambivalence) towards a loved person is hard and Psychotherapy aims to create a safe non-judgmental space where these feelings and conflicts can be expressed through words, easing the need to either split them off or act them out.

 

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 makes Psychotherapy Different?

What’s wrong with good advice?

Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy 

Analytic Therapy for Addictions

Loss

by 2 Comments

I Never Thought My Son Would Watch Pornography

It was a decade ago that was listening to the radio when I heard this line being spoken for the first time by a mother who was describing the time the police came to her house to enquire after certain pornographic material which had been downloaded using the family IP address. She described the early morning raid by the police, the taking away of the family computers, the suspicion hanging over her husband – until it was discovered that it was the couple’s 14-year-old son who had viewed the material in a curiosity-driven trawl through multiple pornographic internet sites.

That may have been the first time I came across that line, but I have heard it many times since in the intervening period as I have moved into work supporting young boys and men in their efforts to free themselves from their addiction to online pornography.

Pornography and the Adolescent Brain

There has been considerable research in recent years into the effects of consistent use of pornography on the adolescent brain and, indeed, on the brain in general. To summarise a complicated process briefly, the plasticity of the adolescent brain (with all brains, actually), combined with a leaning towards hyper-arousal when it comes to matters of sex, leaves the teenage child prone to a vulnerability of dependence, which can be frightening in its speed and grip. The reward centre of the brain is hard-wired to be stimulated and demanding when certain things connected to the propagation of the species are on offer. Food and drink come to mind – but sex is important, too. As a species, we need to have sex to survive.

For the young adolescent, perhaps still some years away from a sexual encounter with a real person, the online world offers instead a kaleidoscope of sexual experiences at the touch of a button. In the secrecy of their bedrooms they are free to explore material that would have been unimaginable (certainly illegal to print) just a few decades ago. The brain does not know the difference between a computer and a real person. It just knows that its owner is excited sexually. Its reward centre is activated, and it releases that precious drop of dopamine, which will prove to be both curse and blessing, the first step on the road to addiction. To put it bluntly, for the child, it feels good – and the brain will begin to lay out the neural pathways which will make it easier to access that feeling in the future. As in all things – from football to depression – the brain gets better at what it practices.

As the boy becomes more habituated to the use of the pornography, so it becomes more difficult to achieve the level of arousal that was easily done on first viewing. In essence, the brain is developing a level of tolerance. The user has to find newer forms of stimulation – generally much riskier, more challenging sites – in order to satisfy the brain’s demands and to receive that precious dopamine hit. It becomes more difficult to focus on one item. The user will begin to hop from site to site in an effort to find the ‘best bits’; the whole purpose will become about gratification, generally marked by masturbation, which once achieved, is the signal for the whole cycle to start again. It all feels so natural. There are no drugs involved – apart from the delicious ones supplied by the brain. The parts of the body that react are doing so naturally. What can be wrong with something that feels so right?

Boys and not girls

The research on girls’ use of pornography is scant, but what does exist points to their usage as being considerably lower, and less frequent, compared with that of boys, something supported by anecdotal dealings with young people. Although many young girls (estimates suggest as high as 40%) will have viewed pornography, this is more likely to be out of curiosity rather than habitual usage. This might be partly cultural, partly to do with the way arousal works and develops in adolescents, partly to do with the interest in internet activity shown by girls generally (interestingly, figures in gaming addiction, a process which ‘piggy-backs’ on to the reward system, has similar figures in favour of boys’ dependency), and significantly to do with the type of pornography available, which is overwhelmingly produced for the gratification of men, with women in the role of the passive provider. Even the dominatrix – which alludes to a degree of power for the female – is a male construction, designed to gratify male desires. Given this context, it is no surprise that even into adulthood, the vast majority of pornography is consumed by men.

Meanwhile, in the real world

At the young man develops, they will want to practise their sexuality in the world around them. The difficulty for them is that their brains, accustomed now to being aroused by digital sexual-stimulus, will already have an idea of what sex looks and feels like, how their partner should behave and, significantly, they will already have internalised an idea that sex is something that involves their gratification. The notion that giving pleasure to others might be a fulfilling part of sexual engagement is something that is beyond their experience – even though their experience in some respects is a considerable distance ahead of where it might be in a non-digitalised world. For the habituated user of online pornography, it can be very difficult to come to terms with the fact that the person within their arms has feelings and desires which are unlikely to conform to those who have aroused their senses online. The online world will often present an exaggerated view of sexuality: breasts and penises are larger; bodies are firmer; all imperfections (and hair) are removed. For the habituated user, it can be very difficult to achieve any kind of arousal, and desire is lost – only to be found again back in the online world, where the brain, comfortable, primed and ready, can once again be gratified.

There is another difficulty that habitual users have to face. Their online experience will have normalised certain aspects of sexual behaviour that in the real world would be considered shocking or taboo. Even on the blandest pornographic sites freely available to all, one will find countless ‘sex with my stepmother/ sister/ etc’ as titles. It is as though it is the most normal, routine practice in the world. There really are no boundaries.

Disadvantaged Parents

It would be easy to be judgemental with parents whose children become habituated to online pornography. But there are a number of reasons for their ignorance and then denial regarding the habits of their sons. Firstly, unless they have used pornography themselves, they will have no idea how much is available – unfiltered, free and without the requirement of age verification – at a simple click of a button. It is hardly their fault that they just don’t know what they don’t know. Secondly, as pornography and issues more widely to do with sex are practised in areas of secrecy, there is often a barrier of shame which makes any non-judgemental discussion of the subject impossible for parents and children. Thirdly, and linked to the former point, the image of their children that many parents carry in heads often allows no room for an activity they themselves would find abhorrent. It is why so often when parents come to see me with their sons, they are in a state of shock. It is not unusual for them to apologise for the fact that their son is in this position, claiming plaintively that they ‘never thought their son would be using pornography.’

As youngsters become men

Unfortunately, many adult men who have to deal with addiction to pornography fail to do so until they are much older. Many of the clients I have worked with on the issue have endured many years of habitual use before being forced to seek help by circumstance rather than because they see it as a problem. It might be to with failed relationships; it might be because of worries to do with their increasingly poor sexual performance in real relationships – often manifested in low mood, anxiety or depression; or it might be that their sexualised treatment of a partner or friend is not appropriate for one reason or another and they feel a strong sense of shame. This last is perhaps worth highlighting as it has been the topic of national debate recently.

One of the dangers facing habitual users of online pornography is that they must deal with a blurring of the lines between what is real and what is imagined. Of course, we all do this to some extent when we watch a television show: we are adept at sorting what lies either side of that line between the real and the imaginary. But these television shows are not tapping into the reward centre in our brains; they are not linked to our areas of desire, gratification and reward as is the sexual instinct. On top of this, for many young people, they will have no experience outside of their online practices to guide them as to what is appropriate or not. They haven’t yet learned what is normal. If they make a mistake in this area, they could be left with a legacy of shame and regret – or much worse if their actions pass into illegality.

What can parents do?

My advice to parents is always very clear on this. Before you do anything else, contact your internet provider to make sure your controls are locked down – and never share your passwords with your children, or even enter a code when the child is in the same room. It is another story, but never underestimate the ingenuity of young people for discovering their parents’ passwords! Then talk to your child. Be curious. Take a parental interest in their internet history – not in a judgmental way, but one which seeks to understand what is going on for that young person. If your son is using pornography habitually, seek support for yourself and for them. Do not ignore it, for in any number of cases it will not go away. Research indicates that those who become addicted to online pornography are likely to be prone to low mood and depression, not surprising given that they may well be living a kind of double life, a part of which exists in a place of secrecy and shame. Those last two bedfellows are hardly the harbingers of happy, fulfilled lives.

 

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 –

Why is it hard to make decisions?

Communication, communication, communication

by Leave a Comment

Care for a Dance?

The considerable volume of writing on relationships is littered with metaphors to explore the intricate connections between people. Most frequent might be images of journeys (‘we had come to a crossroads – an obstacle’, ‘it always seems uphill’); of chemistry (‘I felt the spark had gone’; of sport (‘out of my league.’ ‘own goals’); even, of war (‘battles, bombs and victories’). There are many such in the lexicon, each proving useful in examining particular aspects of the emotional engine of relationships.

Dance as Metaphor

One of the most useful metaphor in working with couples is dance. It is an analogy which allows many of the complexities of a couple relationship to be examined. We might think about the negotiated ‘choreography’ – the way in which the individuals move symbolically in relation to each other and how distance and closeness might change according to the dance being played out. Or we could consider aspects of control, of who wants to take the lead (or give it up) and what this tells us about the relationship overall.

You do not need to be an expert on dance to understand that being in the moment and moving with some other person in the same space is going to take a degree of synchronicity. At times it will require that one leads as the other follows. And, inevitably, in keeping all things in balance, there will some testing periods in maintaining a consistent distance between the two protagonists, particularly as the music undergoes a change of dynamic. What seemed quite manageable in one context, can feel overwhelming in another.

What’s Your Role?

The roles agreed by the dancing couple are contracted quite consciously, but within a relationship that negotiation is often unconscious. As skills and desires change or grow, so the individuals might feel uncomfortable in their prescribed role – no matter how happy they might have been in that role previously. In the initial stages, one partner might have been happy to cede control, to allow themselves to be led and to enjoy the feeling of a protective and guiding presence. However, what once felt protective, might now feel smothering; what once felt guiding, might now feel controlling; where once we were happy to follow, now we want to lead. Understanding and making conscious these roles is important in avoiding resentment and anger.

When the dance gets difficult

When the dance flows, it feels effortless – but it can feel hectic. So much change, so much required – and on the hoof! It feels overwhelming at times – and may even make us think that giving up dancing altogether might be the answer. Perhaps we need a re-set – one where we would do well to remember that dance – like relationships generally – is one of the most natural, most primal of human activities. Our oldest human ancestors would have swayed in time to the beat of a drum – and they would have moved symbolically in likewise rhythm with family, friends and partners.

Learning to accommodate change – or doomed to repetition

The threat to us is not from the dance itself – after all, we well know how joyful and life enhancing it can be. The real threat is change. As the inner worlds of the protagonists seek to find meaning and expression, so the relationship plays out and the couple move around each other – closing and distancing, leading and following, taking and ceding – in a figurative dance within which both participants are testing and exploring their worlds. Change is likely – but it will not necessarily be synchronised. And neither will it necessarily be well communicated. Toes will be stepped on; profanities will be muttered. We may even believe that, with another partner, our dancing would be so much better. And so, we do that: we choose another partner. We begin another dance – closing and distancing, leading and following, taking and ceding – our inner selves being acted out repetitively until we learn to better understand ourselves and how we relate to the people around us – until we learn how to dance better!

 

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 –

Name that Tune

I never thought my son would be addicted to pornography

Why is it hard to make decisions?

Communication, communication, communication

by Leave a Comment

Name That Tune

How can an old parlour game help us reflect on the way we communicate? Quite a lot it would seem.

Many of us will have played the game where we tap out the rhythm of a tune or song and ask our partner to guess the name of the piece. The challenge for the person doing the listening is that they have to use only limited information (the rhythm) to piece together something much more complicated in its whole. It is a different story for the person tapping out the rhythm. For them, the whole tune is in their head and it seems obvious that what they are hearing (in their head), is also what is being heard by the recipient.

In a study using the game to explore expectations in communication, over 90% of the people tapping the tune expected the recipient to guess correctly – some admitting to be dumbfounded that their recipients could not understand them. Sadly, this expectation was not matched by the results, where only 14% of recipients managed to guess the tune correctly. Imagine the frustration on both sides!

The fact that the large majority (over 9 in 10) of the tappers (as we will call them), felt they had supplied all the information required for their message to be understood, makes a useful reminder of the difference between the message we think we are communicating and the meaning that is created by the recipient. It is interesting that in the study of the exercise referred to above, the recipients did not just say they didn’t know the answer – over 8 in 10 of them named a tune they were sure was correct even though it was often some distance from the one in the head of the tapper. In other words, they created a meaning from the message which was quite different from the one being communicated by the tapper – which, of course, led to even more frustration: ‘How could you possibly misunderstand that? It’s so obvious!’ Worryingly, when it comes to communication, what seems just so obvious to us, can lead to confusion or misunderstanding for those on the receiving end.

The tapping game might also make us reflect on just how limited words can be when it comes to communicating the thoughts and feelings we carry. Like the complex melody, much of the nuance may be lost without access to the pitch, timbre and colours which make up the detail. As humans, we are meaning-seeking creatures. If there are gaps in our understanding, we will fill them in an effort to make sense. But in those fillers, we often go awry – gloriously so in many cases, which is why metaphor and symbolism can be such fun – but awry, nonetheless.

It takes a lot of work to be really understood and a great deal more to understand fully. But when we feel anger or frustration at others for not getting our message, or when we deal with similar feelings when our friends or partners never seem to appreciate our understanding, we would do well to remember that the gap between what is being communicated and what is being understood is considerably wider than what might at first appear.

 

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 –

I never thought my son would be addicted to pornography

Why is it hard to make decisions?

Communication, communication, communication

by Leave a Comment

Is a Therapy Group Right for Me? Am I Right for a Therapy Group?

Are you finding it hard to know if group therapy is what you need or want? Below, I outline a few of considerations that might be helpful when thinking about joining a group.

Considering a Therapy Group?
You may have had a group suggested to you or know someone who is in or has been in a group. Perhaps you are aware of difficulties arising for you in groups and want to explore these further. And/or maybe you have had individual therapy in the past or recently and feel you have explored what you needed to in that work.

Whatever has led you to think about joining a therapy group, the idea is likely to feel a new and unknown prospect for you.

Group Therapy and ‘Real Life’
Group Therapy is often described as being closer to ‘real life’ than individual therapy. The other people in the group are not there in a professional role and although the group therapy culture is one of respect and support, members are also encouraged to respond and relate in authentic and spontaneous ways to each other. For some people this is off-putting but for others this is an attractive proposition and seen as a way of more directly experiencing some of the relationship dynamics they might have struggled with in the past or present.

The constant mirroring in groups between members offers ongoing feedback (what happens in groups: mirroring). Many people find this helps them develop a stronger idea of who they are in relation to others. If you are aware that you struggle with your sense of self or identity you will likely benefit from being in a therapy group where you can experience feedback from others as well as observe for yourself your similarities and differences.

Group members tend towards being supportive to each other but do, when the group is working well, offer a realistic mix of positive and challenging responses to each other. Some people who feel particularly fragile in the face of less positive feedback from others can find this too threatening a prospect.

Is this the right time for a group?
If, for example, you have had a very recent trauma or bereavement you may feel you need some more focussed one to one help on your individual circumstances and a group may not therefore be the place at this stage for you. However, this might not feel clear cut and the group therapist would be able to explore this with you. They might even be able to offer to work with you individually over your recent experiences until you feel ready for a group.

Groups and Belonging
Group therapy can be particularly helpful for people who have conflicts around belonging. This might relate to their family history, perhaps feeling they were always outside the family for different reasons, or it might connect to other aspects of their history or identities. Groups give a powerful sense of belonging. Once you join a group you are always part of it. Even after people leave, they are remembered as part of the group’s history. Groups also allow members to move in and out of experiences of outsider and insider-ness. This can offer experiences of, and help understand, relationships to belonging.

Isolation and shame
Like issues around belonging, groups can be particularly helpful for those who feel trapped by feelings of shame and alienation (shame). Most people find an immediate relief in a therapy group when they start to share their worst feelings and thoughts. The chances are always likely that at least someone in the group (and very often the majority) will feel similarly. Usually new members find that shameful thoughts, feelings or experiences become quickly normalised by the rest of the group.

For some though, the idea of making public what feels shameful is too big a step. Some people might benefit from seeing an individual therapist first where they can ‘test out’ their secret feelings, if the idea of speaking in a group feels too frightening.

Some feelings of isolation are easier to dispense with than others. Being in a group does not necessarily stop the individual having these feelings, and indeed the public nature of the group can heighten them. However, it is this very nature of group therapy that creates an opportunity to directly understand and address these difficulties.

The Therapy Group as Alternative Family System
Being in a group can feel like being in a family. Group members can start to represent family members to each other.
Families have their own ‘systems’, but the group creates an alternative (generally more benign and authentic) system which challenges the unconscious assumptions of members’ family systems.

This aspect of groups includes the opportunity to explore dynamics from past and present with siblings (Sibling Rivalry Part 1 and 2). Group members can often feel strong sibling-like feelings towards each other.
People who have had difficult family dynamics growing up, in my experience, gain a lot from the way the therapy group offers this alternative family system and allows explorations of sibling relationships.

What if you don’t like Groups…
If you do not like groups and the idea of being in a group scares you, you may, understandably, not want to join one. However, this might well be why a group could be the right kind of therapy for you. I explored this in more depth in another blog called ‘if you don’t like groups, could it be time to join one‘.

Commitment and Ambivalence
Joining a group requires making a commitment from the outset. Most group therapists will ask that you agree to a minimum of between 6 months and a year. This is an important requirement because someone arriving and leaving quickly can disrupt the group. So, I end this piece with the first question you perhaps need to ask yourself – can you practically make this commitment at this time.

This is a different question than having mixed feelings or ambivalence which is very normal and common when thinking about joining a group.

If you are not sure about whether you can or want to make the commitment, the group therapist can explore your uncertainty with you and help you decide.

Summary
This piece touches on some of the different considerations about joining a therapy group. I have not covered all aspects but focussed on those dilemmas and considerations that, have come to light most often in my experience of helping people think about joining a therapy group.

 

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

The Problem with Change

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

Silences in Therapy

Sibling Rivalry – Part 1

Sibling Rivalry – Park 2

by Leave a Comment

Do Psychotherapists Need to Love Their Clients?

Freud is an extraordinary and greatly misunderstood individual (and mental health practitioner).  Many believe we have ‘evolved’ beyond his ‘outdated’ theories and indeed, there are views and  theories of his that are no longer literally relevant. However, to dismiss him on this basis is myopic and superficial in that Freud’s writing has taken us to where we are today in the world of  psychotherapy; and so many of his theories are increasingly becoming ‘evidenced’ through technology and our understanding of brain plasticity and the need for relationship to grow a mind.  So, with this in mind, I shall now start my piece with a Freud quote: 

‘Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love’ Freud, S. (1906) correspondence with  Jung. 

What is love? 

The first question that must be considered in Freud’s statement is the question of what love is? 

Clearly Freud is not talking about Eros, or erotic love; he is referring to Agape, love towards fellow human beings. However, I believe Freud is saying something significantly more profound and more important: By using the terminology ‘love’ Freud is drawing a comparison to the role of the analyst (or psychotherapist) in the transference – the role of the parent who has let the child in the client down. 

Parents should love their children and most do. However, loving a child is complex as it means to allow and encourage that child to have their own experience – emotional and psychological – separate to the parent. It is about being able to encourage and tolerate difference and then celebrate it in own’s child. 

Children who have been let down – neglected, abused or abandoned – have learnt that their survival depends on ‘keeping their parent happy’ – they sacrifice their own separateness and own experience in order to hold on to a parent. This is not a child who is ‘loved’. But a child who is owned. 

Love therefore in Freud’s sense of the word is about true empathy – to be able to understand and accept another’s experience without becoming threatened by it, without collapsing and without colluding with it. And without sacrificing our own experience. 

Does loving a client mean accepting their behaviour? 

Behaviour, when driven unconsciously by effect (emotion) is termed ‘acting out’ and ‘acting out’ is mindless. Furthermore it is an attack on the therapy and an attack on the therapist. 

Much like a good parent will have empathy for a child’s fear of the dentist, or a child’s desire for sweets placed next to the till, this does not mean that the child gets what they want – the avoidance of the dental appointment or the indulgence of sweets. A ‘good enough’ parent is able to empathise with the child’s feelings but withstand their demands. In short, a parent’s job is to hold their child in mind and advocate for their best interests rather than the child’s self interests (or their  own self interests). 

Is Psychoanalysis in essence the same as a Person-Centred Approach? 

Now we have established what Freud probably means by love, we can consider whether the analytical approach is in essence the same as a person-centred approach – one of unconditional positive regard. Is this not love? 

To a point it is, however, in my view (and that of analytically minded clinicians) the person-centred approach leaves the whole idea of ‘the unconscious’ just there – in the unconscious: in other words it does not exist. What you see is what you get.

Without working with the unconscious and in the transference, a clinician cannot really ‘love’ their client as they are oblivious to the drives and projections that are paying out in the room – the meaning behind the strength of emotion from the client. And they remain oblivious to whom they represent for the client and thus where the loss or trauma resides relationally. 

An analytical clinician will work to understand whom the client is projecting onto them – the transference – and will work within the context of that to provide the client with a different experience of relationship 

Evicting the bad parent 

We all ‘internalise’ our parents – working models of how we experienced them. If this process of internalisation goes ‘well enough’ then we can draw on a solid sense of sense that is supportive of us taking up space in the world and in other relationships: we can bear our inner world However, if it goes awry somehow, then that working model can be punitive, critical and unsupportive and we avoid contact with our inner world at all costs. The process of analytical therapy is to ‘evict’ the bad  parent and offer the client an alternative object (person) to introject through the consistent therapeutic relationship. 

How to ‘love’ our clients 

Loving our clients is a hard thing to do not because they are unlikable or unlovable, but because it  means consistently offering the client a different experience of relationship that they will be unconsciously trying to sabotage in subtle ways. Freud also spoke of our fear of change and suggested that in order to mitigate against change, going forward we always seek to replicate the past. Abused and neglected children feel unconsciously ‘safe’ in abusive and neglectful relationships as then the ‘world makes sense’ and they can simply use their old defensive  mechanisms to carry on surviving. They also don’t need to feel vulnerable. 

Loving a client means holding appropriate boundaries, offering them support and understanding whilst resisting either being seduced or offended by attacks. And as with real life evictions, the internal parents will protest and fight back to stay put. 

Ultimately loving our clients means to hold them in mind in ways they never were – their best interest rather than self interests. 

 

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 –

What is the purpose of intimate relationships?

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

The Phenomenon of ‘Manifesting – The Law of Attraction’ and the inability to tolerate reality

Why does the difference between counselling and psychotherapy matter?

Love in the time of Covid

by Leave a Comment

Are our emotions shaped by our relationships?

This particularly influences us during infancy, childhood and adolescence.  These early experiences can be activated if they have led to the development of unhelpful defenses.  The lack of attunement in parental relationships can result in an infant developing an unhealthy attachment style, divorced from reality in the form of fantasy or withdrawal and detachment.  This initially protects the infant from the pain, emotion and feelings.  Later due to the blocking of the ability to connect emotionally the protector becomes the persecutor.

A chaotic attachment experience can impact on vital neurological developmental pathways leading to permanent damage to later functional performance. Hence the recent research on childhood services from pregnancy to five years of age. 

If a “good enough” environment is NOT available for one reason or another during a person’s childhood there will be aspects of this early experience that appear to act at an unconscious level, a shadow of the early object relationship. This can be brought into consciousness and worked with in the therapeutic process.   Forming a trusting relationship with a therapist or a stable relationship within a group to hold and contain feelings and emotions to be internalized, made sense of in order to be restored. However, we must not conflate this process by apportioning blame on the parent but as a means of unfolding the neurological pathways that block the capacity for integration.  This is re-experienced in the therapeutic alliance as an imago of the infant / child with an immature mind as the “unthought known”     

Our brain and therefore our mind can remain adaptable throughout our lives and given the right support can  make a conscious decision with a mature mind not that of the infant /child.  A similar process occurs in trauma.  It can respond making the shifts necessary to live a valued and happy life.

 

To enquire about group sessions with Thea Beech, 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

Group Analytic Psychotherapy – the slow open group

It is never too late!

The Unconscious Mind

Groups for Mental Health

Group Psychotherapy in a post ‘Pandemic World’

 

by Leave a Comment

What The Role of the Therapist in Therapy Groups?

This piece is part of a series offering thoughts on the experience of being in a therapy group. It may be helpful to read if you are thinking about joining a group or running groups or if you are already in a group. 

When I am discussing with someone about joining a group, a common question is often around my role as therapist in the group.  Below I outline different aspects of the group therapist’s role as I see it. 

Dynamic Administrator

One important aspect of role of the therapist is to take care of the administration of the group. This includes managing boundaries and making decisions that maintain the group as a safe therapeutic space. This is called Dynamic Administration. 

This role includes assessing and deciding who will be in the group and establishing a physically safe and uninterrupted space for the group to meet in. It also includes setting out and maintaining boundaries for the group to keep it operating safely, consistently, and therapeutically.  

Group Preparation

The group therapist will also help the individual prepare for joining a group. As part of this, they will invite the potential member to speculate what kinds of experiences could be helpful, and what might feel more challenging, in the group. This can sometimes be a general discussion but is particularly useful when based on what the therapist and individual already know about their history – especially their history of groups. (see How important are our groups?)

The Group Therapist in the Group

One of the things I always say, in response to questions about how I will be in the group, is that I follow the group rather than lead it. This rejection of the role of group ‘leader’ is central to group analysis and its democratic principles. Instead of being called a leader, the therapist in Group Analysis is called a conductor. 

In group analysis, the therapist as is viewed as another member of the group. This does not mean they are not present in the role of therapist but more that the task of therapy is also shared with the group. 

The therapist as another member also refers to the concept of a network that all the members create together through their communications and relationships in the group – consciously and unconsciously. The group therapist is a part of this network and influences it – and is influenced by it – like every other member. 

Although they are a member of the group the conductor is very much there as a therapist and not a patient. So, they will act in similar ways to a therapist in individual work. They will not – or very rarely – disclose personal information and their focus is on the therapeutic needs of the group and the individuals in the group. 

My experience as the group therapist or conductor is that I move in and out of different positions in the group process. Sometimes I feel very central and very much a part of discussions, other times I am more in an observer’s role. When I speak it can sometimes be to the group as a whole or other times to an individual or individuals in the group.

As a group develops and becomes more used to working therapeutically together, I find how I take up my role often changes as well. What the group might want from me at the very start is often different as time shifts. And these changes can also take place from session to session. Individuals also might need or want different things from me as they do from other members, and this changes as well. 

Summary

This is a brief account of the role of the group therapist or group conductor, but I hope it has been able to give a flavour of what it might be like in a therapy group in relation to the therapist. I have described three aspects of the group therapist’s role – dynamic administration, preparing the individual joining a group, and the role of conductor in the group. 

 

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

The Problem with Change

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

Silences in Therapy

Sibling Rivalry – Part 1

by Leave a Comment

Avoidance in therapy as the axe for the frozen seas between us

In this blog I will briefly discuss avoidant attachment strategies and how what can look like independence is actually a sort of suit of armour designed to protect and hide a locked box of vulnerability and need, preventing mutual dependency and intimacy.

The person who has developed the avoidant strategy has done so in order to cope with a lack of understanding and attunement to their needs from their caregivers, and have therefore had to deny their needs to themselves and make the decision (unconsciously) to repress or bury these needs and create an equilibrium for themselves where the pain, disappointments and griefs of these unmet needs are locked away. They can often find alternative ways to feel good about themselves and compensate for the shame of the disappointments and low self-esteem that they feel as a result of this lack of attunement. These alternative strategies can lead them to developing their intelligence as a way to circumvent their feelings and they are often very successful in their field of work. The problem of course is in their relationships, sometimes their relationship with themselves or parts of themselves.

The strategy seeks to enable them to have self-worth while keeping painful feelings of rejection at bay, they have found others unreliable and can therefore only trust themselves. They create an image of themselves that appears independent and strong but comes at the cost of denigrating others, especially those that are more comfortable with the parts of themselves that seek mutual reliance and inter-dependence on others. In extreme forms these others can stir up painful feelings of envy and hatred although these feelings too are disavowed. A calm state of coolness is sought that numbs any sort of emotional aliveness. However, this defence is often a fragile one and when a crisis occurs as it always does at some time or other in life then these defences can shatter, leaving the person distraught and desperate, unable to manage or deal with the emotions that now can’t be neutralized. Suicide can be one tragic outcome.

Brett Kahr, a British Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, discusses the pain of this strategy which can be handed down generationally: – “Although many people inflict horrific cruelty upon their partners, the vast majority cause pain as a result of emotional unavailability, fuelled by avoidant attachment structures.”

Therapy takes time and requires an enormous amount of patience and keeping the patient in therapy is no easy task. However if they stay then perhaps the patient can slowly start to develop a more trusting relationship with the therapist, who can attune to them, who doesn’t need them to be other than who they are, who can accept their need for distance and who can digest their sometimes overt, but often covert denigrations, understanding them without retaliating or shaming them but not colluding either, calmly without judgment bringing to awareness what the patient is doing and the fear and pain behind these defences against relatedness.

The Author, Colum McCann, describes the work of literature, and I think his description also describes the therapeutic process.

“The job of literature is to acknowledge the heartbreak of the world and then to share that heartbreak in the hope that somehow you can find a little light, just a little, no matter how damaged and bruised. This light, then, must necessarily acknowledge the darkness. At the same time, it might just lift a portion of the dark, past the curtains, awaken us.”

He goes on to quote Kafka, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

So too must therapy.

 

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

by Leave a Comment

What happens in Group Therapy: Mirroring

In this and other blogs I try and describe and discuss what it is like being in a therapy group. Here, I focus on the phenomenon of mirroring in groups which is an important group analytic concept, process, and experience.

Mirroring and Early Development

To understand why mirroring is important in any therapy, it is helpful to understand its role in early childhood development. Early in life, the baby relies on the care giver/s to provide ‘mirror reactions’ – that is, responses mirroring back their self. An obvious example might be a baby smiles and a parent mirrors back the smile they see the baby making. This helps the infant develop a distinction between ‘what is me’ and ‘what is not me’. In other words, a sense of self. Many of us have not had enough or effective enough mirroring early on in our lives and one of the key therapeutic elements of all talking therapies seems to be the corrective experience of having oneself mirrored back.

The Therapy Group as a Hall of Mirrors

Mirroring is a particularly important experience in group therapy and Foulkes (a founder of group analysis) likened groups to ‘a hall of mirrors’.

In a therapy group, members constantly reflect their responses to each other, while at the same time see themselves reflected, or not, in the behaviours and communications of others. As an individual in the group over time these reflections and reactions help to create a picture of oneself in relationship to others. As Foulkes put it:

A person sees themself, or part of themself – often a repressed part of themself – reflected in the interactions of other group members. They see them reacting in a way they do themselves, or in contrast to their own behaviour. They get to know themselves … by the effect they have upon others and the picture they form of them. 

Foulkes p 110 Therapeutic Group Analysis (my changes from masculine to neutral pronouns)

Vignette

To give a picture of mirroring at play in a group, below is a fictionalised account of a fictional group discussion between 4 members A, B, C, D

A is talking about his childhood and his experience of his disapproving father. B comments that the way A describes his father reminds her of sometimes how he is in the group. A goes quiet.

C says to B that she felt she came in too critically towards A, she often seems to be down on him. B says that A reminds her of her own critical father.

C says she is always much more struck by A’s vulnerability and wonders why B can’t see this. She’s worried now that he’s become silent.

A says he’s remembering last week an argument with his son who was angry he was always on his back. He realises he can be like his father at times.

D points out how C herself had jumped in to defend A. C wonders about it in terms of her own father who she felt was bullied by her mother. C says she envies how B seems to be able to say what she thinks. She always feels she needs to protect the other person.

A recognises he can be disapproving sometimes in the group and in his family. But he has never thought of himself as vulnerable. He feels moved by C’s protection, but it also feels new and strange to him.

In this vignette you can hopefully see the analogy of the hall of mirrors at play. The group members are constantly reacting to each other. The more the group allows openness and spontaneity the more can be revealed.

For example, the members reveal two different aspects of A seen by B and C. A is familiar with one but unaware or in denial of the other. He is moved when his vulnerability is seen but also disconcerted. B and C while having genuine but different responses to A also then recognise the parts of themselves or not that they are seeing in him – and for C what she also sees in B.

Responses to Mirroring

Mirror reactions can reveal ‘truths’ which may then be responded to by the individual in a range of ways. Mirroring in group therapy often operates at a complex and spontaneous level and can go on consciously and unconsciously, verbally and non-verbally. This experience is then hopefully utilised therapeutically by the group and the group therapist.

In my constructed vignette, the group members’ observations and responses are conscious and easy to verbalise. They are all able to make use of their responses to each other and the discussion is constructive and productive. It’s perhaps easy to see how their insights could lead to further therapeutic explorations in relation to past and current relationships. In a live group session however, responses to feedback can be more varied and complex.

“affect, understanding or intuition seen in or associated with others, can reveal truths about the self that may be welcomed, opposed, taken flight from or attacked.

Schlapobersky p 255 From the Couch to the Circle: Group Analytic Psychotherapy in Practice

Some ‘truths’ are deeply unconscious and like in the case of A can feel disconcerting when exposed. Others are harder in other ways to receive and may take time to be utilised, if ever.

Conclusion

The process of mirroring is only one aspect of what goes on in groups. However, it plays a key role in the group therapeutic experience. Many people seem to find group therapy particularly helpful for their confidence and sense of identity. While this will be down to many factors, mirroring between group members plays an essential part, helping the individual develop a sense and understanding of who they are.

 

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?

by Leave a Comment

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?

by Leave a Comment

Some existential musings from the sea

“Why do we like the frantic, the unmastered?” Asks Virginia Woolf,  in her diaries. This is a question I also return to time and time again as I look out to sea. Feeling the disquiet holds an edge of excitement for me, there is a thrill to its wild and unknown nature.
For me there is something quite awesome about being made to feel small, insignificant, vulnerable.
Something playfully cherishing about being sprayed by the sea and even more so when seeing the other’s surprise as they are splashed by the sea spray as they walk along the promenade.
Even more touching is when I am in the sea, bobbing around, apparently trusting its capacity to hold me, softly caressing my form, knowing its strength could take me over, its sometimes silent, sometimes roaring power could take away any sense of control I may feel I have, at any time.
For me that makes me feel free. For others I am aware that feels like the opposite of freedom. Perhaps it is the sense of disquiet that is not thrilling for the other. Of course that is completely understandable and perhaps very sensible.
The sea, our relationship, has taught me a lot.  Not just what was said above. Many other beautiful things too, some known, some still unknown.
It has deepened my capacity to feel, to reach into sensations, when to let go and when to push forwards. It has taught me how not to take things personally,  how to play and take risks, how to feel and experience joy, it has taught me, or at least invited me to be open even in the unknown and when I think I might be unsafe; not to judge or believe every thought that emerges from the reckless mind. It has taught me there is much I don’t know and that it is ok not to know. It has taught me lessons about connection,  intimacy and friendship.
It has inspired me, filled me with awe. It has provided beautiful gifts, delightful and magnificent gifts.   Whether seeing elusive pods of dolphins in the early dawn, as I witness the wonder of the full moon and the rising sun in unison.  Or the simple drama of playful young seagulls dipping and diving into the waters. It has yielded me a space to dive deeply into the unknown, into pleasure, and held me patiently on its voluptuous and flowing surface as I come up for air, breathing, resting and trusting.
And when its roaring form prevents me from entering its embrace it still teaches me much. It teaches me about patience, power, movement and change,  and it quietly, continually gives me permission to become. It invites me once more to come into contact with and enjoy the unmastered within me.
Even if one only feels a slight desire to see the sea, and not even consider entering it, there are many gifts to receive, lessons to learn. But if that desire increases I recommend dipping a humble toe into that vastness, you never know what might happen.

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.

 

by Leave a Comment

Intimacy: pillars and obstacles

Our capacity for intimacy as adults is widely understood to be shaped by our early relational experiences. Theorists from diverse orientations emphasise the link between early attachment patterns and subsequent adult love relationships. When our formative experience is one of loving reciprocity with our caregivers, our abilities to give and receive love freely and fully later in life are enhanced. Children who experience themselves as loved and valued in the context of a harmonious parent/child dyad are more likely to develop a secure sense of self and will have a more robust relationship to (their own and others) autonomy and dependence.

We all struggle to find a balance between a need to be a part of something greater than ourselves and a need to be apart from – to be separate. Some of us will navigate the continuum between proximity and distance with fluidity and ease. Others will experience greater comfort at one end of the continuum or another. For all of us our capacity to experience intimacy will reflect in some measure our abilities to risk closeness and separateness. 

Separateness

The growing infant internalises their primary care giver(s) through the process of separation-individuation. A parent’s recognition and validation of the baby’s unique self will initially be expressed in the child’s specific preferences for being held, soothed and fed. The feedback loop between child and caregiver as the child seeks to explore the world beyond (m)other is critical. When attuned, the child will learn that separation is both pleasurable and manageable  and that it will not entail the loss of the love object. The process of separation-individuation is repeated throughout the life cycle, in adolescence, in marriage and in parenthood. At each stage there is an  opportunity to rework or repeat old patterns and to adopt either old or new solutions. 

Mutuality

To give, to receive and to share in the spirit of joint reciprocal endeavour is the cornerstone of mutuality, another pillar of successful intimacy. Once again it is understood that the capacity for mutuality is rooted in our early experiences with a “good enough” caregiver. The infant develops trust and confidence through interactive engagement with an attentive other. Through this exchange expectations of safety, effectiveness and pleasure are cultivated or impaired. 

Successful intimacy requires the capacity to regress and be dependent, and in an adult partnership, for each individual to be able to tolerate these states in both themselves and the other. This requires a secure sense of individuation on both sides so that closeness is not experienced as an engulfing fusion and a threat to a cohesive sense of self, and separation is not experienced as a catastrophic rejection or abandonment. 

Empathy

Feeling what another person feels whilst maintaining psychological separateness is the essence of empathy. It involves the capacity to immerse oneself in the emotional life of another, temporarily leaving one’s own world without experiencing a loss of self. As such it is fraught with difficulty and risk for the individual who is not securely individuated. Empathy is a two way process in which each partner must have an investment in both understanding and being understood. Early developmental deficits or excesses will inevitably interfere with our capacity for empathy and mature intimacy in our adult pairings.

Viable Intimacy

Intimacy can evoke fear ( conscious or unconscious) in any relationship. Fear of loss or merger, fear of shame, fear of attack or of one’s own aggressive impulse, fear of disappointment and fear of needing. The path to intimacy is complicated and fraught with risk, never more so when we bring our unattended psychic wounds to our adult partnerships in hope of healing. For intimacy to be viable  it will probably help to have an idea of our appetites for closeness and distance. Armed with this self understanding and willing to understand the appetites of our partners we will be better positioned to navigate and negotiate this most foundational relational terrain.

 

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

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Gerry Gilmartin – 

Love and Family

Understanding sexual fantasy

Fear and hope in the time of Covid

Relationships, networks and connections

Paying attention to stress

by Leave a Comment

As we come out of lockdown, will a number of us be feeling socially anxious?

For the past year we have largely been confined to our homes, a lot of us working from home and only going out for regular exercise. Our social lives have been depleted, we’ve not been able to see friends and family and generally life may have become quite repetitive.

As we come out of lockdown there will be mixed feelings, some people may feel really ready to socialise again and are already filling their calendars with get togethers and events. For others, they might be more cautious and be worried about feeling anxious in group settings.

Perhaps you’ve always found social gatherings difficult and so the lockdowns gave you permission to not have to socialise. By having to keep ourselves to ourselves anxiety has not been triggered or challenged and so confidence in social settings may have reduced. The prospect of now going into situations where there are more than two people may feel quite daunting.

Because we’ve not had much going on in our lives we may start to worry that we have nothing to talk about. Or perhaps our appearance has changed a little, we’ve put on some weight, or we’re not as toned as we were or our hair is more grey than it was, and so we are worried we will not look physically good enough. Or perhaps we are worried whether our friends will still want to see us after all this time.

These are normal thoughts that we may experience but they aren’t helpful and we may have to work at keeping them in check. It’s worth reminding ourselves that thoughts are not facts and whilst we may have these thoughts about ourselves it doesn’t mean that others are having these thoughts about us.

We’ve all been socially deprived over the last year and when you haven’t done something for a while it can feel uncomfortable going back into it, its normal to feel some level of anxiety. Just as the more we avoid something the harder it becomes to do. Be kind to yourself, don’t expect yourself to be able to go straight into large social gatherings. It’s better to return to socialising in a graded way. If it feels too big it’s ok to say you’re not ready.

When we are feeling socially anxious we can start to worry about how we come across to others and feel like we’re in the spotlight. The more we focus on ourselves the more self conscious we can become and the more this happens the more we end up in our own head. The more we start to judge ourselves and the more difficult it becomes to interact with others. We can’t be concentrating on what is going on around us or what others are saying if we’re so busy in our heads judging ourselves. Try shifting your focus onto others, paying attention to what’s being said rather than your internal dialogue. By shifting your focus of attention outwards to others, from internal to external, you can keep more relaxed.

A common fear to have when socially anxious is thinking you should be interesting all of the time. How realistic is this? particularly given that none of us have had very interesting lives recently. Take the pressure off yourself to perform, it’s about being with others, not entertaining others. Share how bored you’ve been, I’m sure others will have been to. Try to reduce those high expectations of yourself.

Another fear is to think that others can see your anxiety however the research tells us that this is not the case. What feels magnified and obvious to you, such as shaking or sweating, isn’t visible to others.

It is also unhelpful to prepare things to talk about as this again puts pressure on yourself to perform and maintains self focus. If you’re so busy thinking about the list of things you’ve prepared you’re not going with the flow of conversation, you become more self focused and can appear uninterested in what’s being said or aloof.

Lastly don’t allow yourself to replay or dwell on what you said or did later. No one else will be giving a second thought to what you’ve said or done, they will have moved onto the next thing in their day. You’re the only one analysing yourself and giving yourself a hard time.

Remember social interactions are a two way street, it’s not all your responsibility. The more we can focus on the social event rather than ourselves the more we are likely to enjoy the social interaction.

 

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.

 

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

 

Further reading by Rebecca Mead –

New Year’s Resolutions

Making Changes

Social Connections

Back to ‘Bace’ics

Copyright © 2021 – Brighton And Hove Psychotherapy – Privacy Policy
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.