The topic of sex and porn addiction is one that is hotly debated in the media at present. It is also one that is hotly debated amongst psychologists/psychotherapists. But is it really an addiction? First off, perhaps part of the problem lies in the interchangeable use of the two terms: lay and professionals often refer to a porn addiction, as a sex addiction (although not the other way around), but is this actually correct? And does it matter? [Read more…]
Relationship Issues
Apparently January is the month when more couples file for divorce than any other. The reason given for this? After what is often a stressful festive period, couples spending extra time together suddenly realise that they don’t have nearly as much in common as they once did. Whilst this may well be true, I wonder if there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Being in a relationship is hard. There are no ifs and buts about it. There is no such thing as the fairytale relationship. There are plenty of reasons for this but some of the most credible come from anthropological and neuroscience studies which support each other in suggesting that the things that bring us together and then keep us together are different. And those differences are largely down to the different chemicals our brains emit during those processes – dopamine vs oxytocin.
Add to the mix the paradigm shifts in the place relationships take in modern life vs that of our distant and much more recent ancestors and we can get a real sense of why life-long pair-bonding (or even long-term monogamy) is a challenge. Consider for instance that marriage has only relatively recently – the last couple of hundred years – become an institution based on romance. As odd as this may seem, this was never the case and marriage has a much longer history of being associated with financial gain, land rights, lineage, convenience and convention. It was generally assumed that the role of marriage was not one of romance or passion.
From an anthropological perspective us humans are also living significantly longer than we did only a couple of hundred years ago. How does this apply to relationships? Well with a lifespan of perhaps forty of fifty years, we would live just about long enough to raise kids. Now we can potentially be with the same person for 40, 50 or 60 years.
Lastly there have been significant changes to how we live in terms of community. Few of us now belong to tribes or live communally with our families. For many of us, we are geographically distanced from many in our families and no longer part of strong local communities. This puts further pressure on our primary relationships to meet all our needs.
Relationship, couple or marriage counselling can be an extremely beneficial environment in which to explore how we can find our own way to balance our need for excitement and novelty with our need for safety and security, within the context of a single romantic relationship. Contrary to what many people think, couple counselling does not mark the end of a relationship, but can in fact be a conduit to a new beginning.
Perhaps the best definition of a perfect marriage or relationship is one that I came across as a virtual bumper sticker which read ‘a perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other’.
Image from
Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now
Click Here to EnquireSelf-care
It is relatively easy to recognise when those around us are not caring well for themselves, either by overworking or just carrying on with their busy work and family lives despite feeling utterly depleted.
But isn’t it just as easy to neglect our own need for self-care?
What is actually meant by self-care? The expression sounds self-explanatory but do we know what it involves?
Most people recognize signs of depletion when they begin losing energy, passion and creativity. Signs of stress generally manifest in the body in the form of colds, flu and tiredness. There might be a lack of engagement with life or even depression. Things begin to feel dull or quickly overwhelming.
But life presses on and taking time out is not in question, right?
The link between stress and physical illness is estimated at 75-90% depending on the source, which is why emotional self-care, stress management and relaxation are so important in our lives.
The focus on work and life duties can easily take precedence over everything else, yet a truly happy life is a balanced life. Freud talked about mental health in terms of love and work; early warning signs are when love is missing.
Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now
Click Here to EnquireBeing Yourself
I came across Oscar Wilde’s lovely quote “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”. It made me think of the work I do and how so much of it is about facilitating people to discover who they really are. I am also reminded of my own personal journey of embracing my unique self and becoming more the person I wish to be. I truly love seeing people tapping into their inner-wisdom, finding their own voice, and coming into their energy and aliveness through allowing themselves to feel. Of course this is no easy process. It is hard for us all to challenge the familiar and the known because, although it no longer serves us, at least we know where it leads us. Daring to do something different is scary because it is unknown, but it also means challenging our early survival mechanisms. Those who have experienced the therapeutic process know it takes time and effort to come to a place where it feels safe enough to let go of old patterns.
As we come to the end of this year, I would like to think that I have supported the individuals I work with in coming a little closer to who they are or wish to become. I would also like to think that I have come closer to myself and done more things that I find personally fulfilling. As the holiday approaches, I look forward to having more time to be, think, feel and enjoy.
Whether you find this time of year enjoyable, relaxing, exciting, sad, difficult or stressful, I hope you find back to yourself and do what feels right to you.
Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now
Click Here to EnquireReal Contact
According to Carl Rogers’s theory of personality, the self-actualizing tendency is an inner drive to experience oneself in a way that is consistent with one’s conscious view of who one is. The therapeutic process is largely about expressing oneself in life and relationships from a place of authenticity, rather than from one of conformity and a need for approval. Whereas most people grow up trying to please others in order to be accepted, self-exploration empowers the individual to seek acceptance within themselves. Individuals start to define who they are by exploring new possibilities within a non-judgemental, safe and supportive therapeutic environment.
As a counsellor, I sometimes walk the fine line between identifying with what a client brings, whilst also honouring the uniqueness of their experience. It is a balancing act, whereby I feel immersed in the relationship without losing the objectivity needed to continue seeing things from their perspective. I endeavour to work phenomenologically whilst acknowledging the shared humanity between us. I resort to the later to ‘tune in’ and convey an advanced level of empathy thereby nurturing a climate of acceptance and trust.
In addition, I strive to create a therapeutic environment which supports a client’s process of self-acceptance and reduces their sense of isolation by adopting an accepting, non-judgemental and empathic attitude. Rogers maintained that these core conditions create a climate where one feels loved in the relationship with the therapist. “Loved’ has here perhaps its deepest and most general meaning – that of being deeply understood and deeply accepted’. This way of being together in turn offers the potential of being extended into one’s relationship to their community.
To love always implies a transcendence of the dual-unity. Hence, plural is essential for encounter: it transcends the duality and is open for a Third One, for the group, for the community which itself offers space for encounter (Schmid 2001, p.60).
In the therapeutic relationship, both people in the room cease to be isolated beings and begin to create a connection whereby one is invited to communicate their thoughts, feelings and experiences and the other to understand by opening up to what is being communicated and revealed to them. In both humanistic and existential theories there has been a great deal written about how the self is constructed in interaction with others. Schmid (2001) writes:
(…) the other is the power which liberates the I from oneself. The foundation of self-confidence is not the reflection on oneself but the relationship to the other. This overcomes the limits of the self and opens up infinity. The self is born in the relationship to another person (pp 53-54).
The concept of the self-being formed in relation to others is especially relevant here, in the context of the therapeutic relationship. Jordan(1991) talks about episodes of real contact and connection in therapy in which:
One is both affecting the other and being affected by the other; one extends oneself out to the other and is also receptive to the impact of the other. There is openness to influence, emotional availability, and a constant changing pattern of responding to and affecting the other’s state. There is both receptivity and active initiative toward the other (p.82).
The personal connection between client and therapist can only evolve when clients are free to define their experience in their own terms, without an awareness of pre-existing assumptions. Yet, this personal connection is reliant on the authenticity of the relationship, which is achieved by the therapist showing himself as a real person: therein lies the rub. The Gestalt therapists, Erwin and Miriam Polster describe beautifully how transformation and growth happen in a ‘real relationship’:
Contact is not just togetherness or joining. It can only happen between separate beings, always requiring independence and always risking capture in the union. At the moment of union, one’s fullest sense of his own person is swept along into a new creation. I am no longer only me, but me and thee make we. Although me and thee become we in name only, through this naming we gamble with the dissolution of either me or thee. Unless I am experienced in knowing full contact, when I meet you full-eyed, full-bodied, and full-minded, you may become irresistible and engulfing. In contacting you, I wager my independent existence, but only through the contact function can the realization of identities fully develop (Polster & Polster, 1973 p.99).
———
Laing, R. D. (1977). Self and Others (2nd Edn.,). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Mearns, D. & Cooper, M. (2005). Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy. London: Sage.
Polster, E. & Polster, M. (1973). Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Contours of Theory and Practice. New York Random House.
Rogers, C. (1961): On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Schmid, P. F. (2001). Acknowledgement: the art of responding. Dialogical and ethical perspectives on the challenge of unconditional relationships in therapy and beyond. In Bozarth, D. J. & Wilkins, P. (Ed.): Roger’s Therapeutic Conditions: Evolution, Theory and Practice, pp.49-64.