Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

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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.

 

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.

 

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Are People with Mental Health Problems Violent?

The stigmatisation of mental health and mental illness is nothing new and can be traced back through the centuries and across cultures.

Despite much improvement in the treatment of mental illness and an increasingly open dialogue about the effects of mental illness from sufferers and professionals, the evidence shows that paradoxically increasing numbers of the general public fear violence from those who are mentally ill.

What is mental illness?

Whilst the term mental illness is ubiquitous, it is a ‘catch all’ term which fails to differentiate between people struggling with their general mental health, people who struggle to regulate their emotions and the tiny minority who have an actual illness as defined in psychiatric terms.

In its most extreme form, mental illness is an inability to ‘hold’ onto reality and is a terrifying experience for the sufferer – this would be the definition of psychosis. However, as terrifying as this is, there is simply no correlation between violence and mental illness.

Where does this fear come from?

The fear of mental illness seems to be profoundly primal. Human beings pride themselves on the rationality and intellect and to be exposed to someone who has ‘lost their mind’ triggers fear – if it can happen to them, can it happen to me? Losing ones mind can feel like losing the connection with what makes us human.

Periodically these fears are brought back to the surface, often as a direct result of some unfathomable act such as the recent school shooting in Texas where 19 children and two adults were murdered by an 18 year old gunman. How can something like this happen? Who would do such a thing?

Human beings seek to ‘fit in’. We all to a greater or lesser extent abide by the rules and laws laid down by our culture and society. Where we abide by the rules and perform well, society tends to reward us. The rewards are multiple, but are generally related to social standing and financial payment which propels us to continue to do well: fitting into culture affords us self esteem.

Many people who suffer from mental health problems have experienced trauma during their lives – it can be argued all of them. We now know, in no small part thanks for the 1998 ACE study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) conducted by the CDC-Kaiser Permanente, that the more adverse childhood experiences a child is exposed to, the higher the likelihood that they will suffer from mental illness.

However, whilst striking, it was not only their mental health that was likely to be affected, the higher the number of ACE’s, the higher the risk of emotional and cognitive impairment, physical disease, poverty, criminality, social problems and substance abuse problems, all culminating in a higher likelihood of an early death. Trauma therefore impacts on a person in every facet of their future life. Trauma is not caused by poor mental health – poor mental health comes about through trauma, accompanied with the long list of symptoms above.

All human beings harbour thoughts and feelings that we consider to be in conflict to how we see ourselves and how we wish to be seen. Psychoanalysis was the first discipline to start to talk about how we all have sadistic drives, harbour murderous thoughts and take glee in the suffering of others. Psychotherapy seeks, amongst other things, to help people know themselves and to integrate these parts of their character.

However, where this integration has not happened people can ‘split’ these parts of themselves off – as if it simply is not a part of themselves – and ‘project’ them into others: I am ‘good’, you are ‘bad’, or in this case, I am ‘sane’ you are ‘mad’.

I would therefore suggest that much of what drives the stigma around mental illness and the association between the latter and violence is driven by fear leading to the psychological defence called projection. ‘Mental illness’ or ‘mental health’ is a convenient scapegoat for the parts of ourselves that we disavoy.

What can be done to challenge the misconceptions around mental health and violence?

In order to challenge the misconception that people with mental health problems are violent, we need to be able to have a mature and complex conversation about society, trauma and how we are all collectively responsible for ‘othering’: scapegoating and ostracising certain groups of people who are vulnerable. There is correlation between childhood trauma and violence, but violence is not caused by mental illness.

Alongside this we need to use factual statistic to show that simply having a psychiatric diagnosis or ‘suffering from depression’ makes a person no more likely to be violent or to commit a crime than anyone else. What does significantly increase the possibility is childhood trauma, contributing to feelings of low self esteem, a lack of belonging in society, poverty and feelings of disempowerment.

The effects of stigmatising those with mental health problems

Through engaging in an open and honest debate around mental health and mental illness, we can not only support those who are suffering to talk about their experiences and seek help, but also acknowledge to ourselves that we are all in no small part likely to be affected by a mental health issue at some point in our lives. This makes it ‘our’ problem rather than ‘theirs’.

Where people with mental health problems are stigmatised it further alienates them from mainstream society and the opportunity to ‘contribute’ to that society and feel a sense of belonging, purpose all leading to greater
self-esteem.

Stigma and scapegoating leads to shame and shame makes it even harder for people to access help. People with mental health issues need support, compassion (not sympathy) and a pathway to belonging in society. It is no more helpful to pretend that they have no problems than it is to demonise them.

Mental illness is a social problem

As discussed earlier, trauma – particularly childhood developmental trauma – impacts on every aspect of a persons ability to lead a fulfilling, healthy life. And trauma begets trauma, meaning that it is passed from generation to generation. Therefore, rather that scapegoating those with mental health problems, perhaps we need to collectively pause, reflect and look in the mirror to see what sort society we are all contributing to.

 

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

The limitations of online therapy

Pornography and the Online Safety Bill

Does the sex of my counsellor or psychotherapist matter?

How much time should I devote to self care?

Why is Netflix’s Squid Game so popular?

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Mental Health Problems in Brighton

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy, as the name would suggest, is an applied psychology practice located in central Brighton and Hove in operation since 2014. Whilst many of our clients travel from further afield to see and be seen by our clinicians, and whilst we offer online therapy, most of our clients over the years have been from the Brighton and Hove area. As such we are in a privileged position to have a good insight into the specifics of the state of mental health amongst the general population of this city.

Do different cities have specific mental health trends?

There is much in the media being published about the poor state of mental health (and mental health provision in England) at the moment. Years of austerity, the pandemic and soaring addiction problems are fueling a national mental health crisis across the nation. This is no different in Brighton and yet some of the issues that people present for therapy within Brighton will also be an expression of the demographic and culture of the city.

The demographics of Brighton

Brighton is a vibrant city on the south coast of England, within easy reach of London. It has a relatively young, highly educated population, many of whom move here for the lifestyle or have graduated from one of the two universities in the city and made the city their home.

It boasts both the highest proportion of small and medium sized enterprises in the country as well as the most start-ups per capita; both these are testimony to the young, highly educated population many of whom are liberally minded and self-starters.

Brighton considers itself not be ethnically diverse though statistically this is not reflected in the figures with 87% of the population being white. Brighton also markets itself as a ‘hip and happy’ city that is the epicentre of the LGBTQ community, though again, the statistics and perception may mask certain realities.

Millennials and mental health

As Millennials have come of age and are now approaching their thirties and beyond, we are noticing increasing numbers of them presenting for therapy. This is a national trend, however due to the large numbers of young people living in Brighton coupled with their education and entrepreneurial spirit, we see many Millennials presenting for open-ended psychotherapy to use as a relational tool to get deeply curious about who they are and what they want from their lives.

Whilst everyone who crosses the threshold of a psychotherapy practice has a ‘presenting issue’, these Millennials will often stay in therapy for a long time to engage in a depth relationship in with to get in touch with their deeper desires. They are often extremely bright as a population group and well-versed in psychological concepts. This in contrast to my own generation – Generation X – who consume the most alcohol and drugs of any generational group and will often only present for therapy once they reach crisis point (a generalisation, but true nonetheless).

Drug and alcohol use

There is a saying in Brighton that nobody who lives here is actually from Brighton. Of course this is a complete exaggeration, however, the city does attract a lot of ‘migrants’ from other parts of the UK as well as beyond. It is liberal and open at heart and, as already discussed, has a young demographic. It is therefore not surprising that drug and alcohol use and misuse is at the highest rate for the South-East of England and one of the highest for the UK. Indeed, back in 2011, Brighton held the disconcerting record for being the drug-death capital of the UK.

Another saying that seems to go some way to defining Brighton is that it is a ‘Peter Pan Town’ where nobody wants to grow up. This would be the ‘shadow side’ of its fun, hip culture in that the city and its culture can draw people into an ongoing cycle of ‘living for the moment’ and avoiding the realities of life.

Psychotherapy has many goals but one is that it is about growing up psychologically – working though past losses and moving with purpose towards what you want. Peter Pan, beneath his boyish charm, was someone who was frightened of the future and of adult responsibility, but unlike Peter Pan we all must grow up as otherwise life simply passes us by.

The LGBTQ community and feelings of not belonging

Brighton prides itself on inclusivity and this is reflected in the size of the LGBTQ community. However, as with everything, there is also a shadow side here and over the years myself and colleagues have worked with individuals who identify as LGBTQ but feel no sense of belonging in the Brighton community, or worse still, feel ostracised.

There is prejudice everywhere and some research has shown that minority communities can unconsciously exhibit higher levels of prejudice towards others who do not meet the criteria of ‘their community’. This is not unique to the LGBT community nor to Brighton and has been observed in racial minorities who have been seen to express higher levels of racism towards other minorities that is present in the general population.

To what extend the above is ubiquitous in Brighton lies beyond the scope of this piece, however, I have had numerous clients over the years who felt that they ‘did not belong’ in the Brighton LGBTQ scene and who found this enormously difficult and painful as it had been one of the reasons why they moved here. They felt that the way they were ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ was not accepted.

We all need a sense of community and belonging and it can be extremely painful if we intentionally move to a place to be a part of a wider community with whom we identify on a profound level, only to find that the way we are in that identity is not accepted.

Cities are communities and communities are collectives of people who, through their unconscious process, create a collective unconscious that’ has an identity to it – so it is with Brighton.

Psychotherapy is a relational process embedded in culture and thus practicing as a psychotherapist in Brighton, the specifics of the community will both be expressed and need to be worked with.

 

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

The limitations of online therapy

Pornography and the Online Safety Bill

Does the sex of my counsellor or psychotherapist matter?

How much time should I devote to self care?

Why is Netflix’s Squid Game so popular?

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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. 

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The Challenge of Change

While it might not be explicitly named, ‘change’ is often alluded to as a desirable outcome of psychotherapy. Thoughts about feeling, being and living differently are expressed and the client is invited to understand what it is that they want. The ‘wished for’ life can often feel desirable and easy to describe, yet can feel so hard to achieve. Alternatively what it is that is desired can feel difficult to define, but what is known is that carrying on as one is does not feel possible.

Change can be thought about, talked about, imagined and yet it can feel no nearer to being achievable. It can feel that one is stuck and powerless to move forward. Change can feel more impossible than possible.

Feeling ‘stuck’

Thinking about change when one feels ‘stuck’ can feel unbearable as it brings up thoughts about why change feels so difficult. Is it in some way a reflection of the self? Thinking that ‘I know what I want’, but feel unable to achieve it. Not being able to effect change could be felt as a failure and a lack of capability. Talking about it and hearing other voices can be helpful, but when these voices have an edge of ‘snap out of it’ it’s experienced as unsupportive, critical and unhelpful. This all can lead to difficult self-critical feelings and so change feels like a challenge not worth pursuing. To have and share the desire for change, yet feel reminded of ones own shortcomings.

When we consider our own capacity for change we also bring in our own sense of capability. Can one believe that it is possible to change or is the sense of being ‘stuck’ in itself now stuck? How can we challenge feeling stuck or does it become just another thing that makes us unable to think of change? The thinking can become circular.

Familiarity and change

Change is challenging because change makes us move out of what is known and understood. A situation might be far from what is desired, yet it is familiar. Such familiarity allows a degree of certainty based on knowing what to expect. The result of change is unknown, not understood and potentially so unsettling it feels like it isn’t worth engaging with.

What is achievable?

When we think of a desired outcome we have to balance this with what is achievable. If we set the bar high are we setting ourselves up to fail and falling back into the circular thinking about not being capable. Coping with setbacks and being able to acknowledge what is possible are all part of how to move beyond feeling stuck.

How we can think of change?

To reflect on change we need to be aware of how we can be stuck and how hard that is. ‘Stuck’ isn’t something that is wished for, nor is it self created. Feeling stuck is a reflection of the challenge of change. To think of change we maybe first need to think of ourselves and take a more compassionate view. Compassion in the sense that we are allowed to imagine, wish for and achieve something different.

Psychotherapy offers the opportunity to understand what it is that we might want to change. The hope is that through exploring and thinking together, we can think of change as being more possible than impossible.

 

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

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 –

Thinking about origins

Bridging Political divides

Save? Edit? Delete?

Football, psychotherapy and engaging with male clients

When Home and Work merge

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Loneliness and CBT

People feel lonely for a wide range of reasons. Loneliness can be linked to mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety, social anxiety, perfectionism, low self esteem or eating disorders. It can also be linked to autism, loss, difficulties disclosing, early adulthood, elderly. This is not an exhaustive list but illustrates how many factors can be linked to the problem of loneliness.

Loneliness is the perceived discrepancy between what we want and what we’ve got, a mismatch between actual and desired social situation, a lack of meaningful relationships. Social isolation doesn’t have to equal loneliness. We can be alone without feeling lonely.

Triggers to feeling lonely can be internal psychological factors, such as attitudes to participating in social interaction / having a negative interpersonal appraisal, e.g. other people don’t like me; or external factors, such as bereavement or living far away from friends and family. These factors evoke an emotional response such as anxiety or sadness
and can lead to counter productive behaviour such as avoidance and a decrease in valued social contact or unhelpful cognitive processes in the social domain, e.g. self focused attention or hypervigilance to rejection. This then impacts on our perception and our interpretation of our relationships / social situations and can inadvertently become a
perpetuating cycle of loneliness.

Social media also has a big impact on loneliness, particularly in early adulthood. People share and post what they want us to see and we can end up comparing ourselves to others. The pandemic too has had an impact on loneliness. Spending less time with friends and family, self isolating and shielding are all contributory factors to feeling lonely. If we struggle with technology this too may play a part.

So how do we change things? In CBT we look at four domains: the individual, their relationships, social relations and the community. In terms of strategies behavioural activation is key with a focus on increasing the amount of social interaction, social contact and social networks. We can explore values and once we have identified these set goals to
help meet where the person wants to be in their values. We can introduce and identify unhelpful thought patterns and beliefs, and learn techniques to restructure these. We can learn strategies to reduce rumination and use behavioural experiments to make changes and gather information, e.g. finding out what happens if you do disclose and share with others. Additionally whilst engaging in behavioural activation we can practise exposure
whilst reducing safety behaviours.

Everyone is different and because loneliness can be for many different reasons there is no one size fits all. Other strategies may also be used, such as social skills and communication training, mindfulness, mapping social opportunities, emotional awareness and psycho-education.

To address loneliness in older adults Age UK and the befriending service, such as Silverline, can be a great resource. Age UK offer all sorts such as social activities, lunch clubs, IT Training, transport, day centres. Younger adults may benefit from Meet Up groups, Young Minds or The Mix.

Reaching out, connecting with others and using the supports that are available to us are fundamental in combatting loneliness. Remember we all feel lonely at times in our lives.

 

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 –

Is that a fact or an opinion? 

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

New Year’s Resolutions

Making Changes

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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

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“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.

 

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 a 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 –

Compassionate Curiosity and the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis

Why there’s nothing as infuriating as Anger Management

What makes Psychotherapy Different?

What’s wrong with good advice?

Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy 

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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).

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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.

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Demystifying Mental Health Issues

In the last few years there has been increased awareness of mental health issues in the media, way before the pandemic hit. Mental health professionals are seeing a growing mental health epidemic which has become significantly worse due to the human and financial cost of Covid-19, prolonged lockdowns, and a general shift in how people live, work and study. Nowadays, most of us know someone with a mental health issue or have experienced it ourselves.

Mental Health Issues are Human Issues 

The language used in the mainstream media to describe mental health does not adequately portray the issues people present with in therapy.  Terms such as trauma, anxiety and depression are often overused and do not describe their full meaning. Most of us experience fear, grief, sadness, and fluctuation in emotions. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, most of us have been through a challenging life event(s) or loss(es) with significant emotional and psychological impact.

Anxiety and Depression – An Emotional Accumulation 

I often hear people say that they or someone else “suffers with” anxiety or depression, or “has a mental health issue”. My first thought is: what does this mean? Though these terms have been fed to us through both clinicians and the media, I believe there are much better ways of describing someone’s experience in a less diagnostic, medical and all-encompassing way. 

Although some of us may say “I feel anxious” or “I feel depressed”, anxiety and depression are not actual feelings but a cluster or accumulation of many things. Feelings and emotions when undealt with (supressed) and poorly understood, can result in what we currently describe as depression or anxiety. 

For instance, a prolonged period of low mood which we call depression can ensue as a response to anything from prolonged grief to suppressed anger, feelings of powerlessness and helplessness, just to name a few. Depression can range from low mood to intense depressive episodes, depending on cause and other psychological and biological factors. 

A prolonged or chronic state of high alert resulting in unpleasant feelings of fear or dread which we call anxiety, often manifests when we are responding internally to a certain situation that we perceive as a threat of some description, either actual or imagined. Like depression, anxiety symptoms range from generalised anxiety to panic disorder, depending on the level of accumulation of emotions, life circumstances, personal resilience, previous trauma, etc. 

Finally, our mood is also impacted by environmental and physiological factors such as sleep, hormones, mood altering substances such as caffeine, alcohol and drugs (illegal or prescribed), exercise, fresh air and sunshine, screen time, etc.

The Role of Psychotherapy

Is to help people make sense of why they feel the way they do. To understand what is behind the symptoms that people label as anxiety or depression because they do not know what they are experiencing and why. Uncovering the ‘why’ is a big part of the process of getting better – the more we know why, the more we know ourselves.

Elsewhere on this website we list the issues that people commonly seek therapy for. Anyone who comes to therapy seeking help with a particular issue or issues, also brings with them a rich context and personal history. Making links between symptoms and experience (past and present) is an essential part of understanding, accepting and therefore overcoming some of the barriers we face in feeling mentally well and more at ease with ourselves. 

 

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

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara

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

What shapes us?

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Pornography and the Online Safety bill

Having just come off a phone call with the Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Policy Lead, my thoughts have been drawn to the enormity of the problem we face with pornography and the ‘pornification’ of society, particular the world of young people.

Pornography use has become ubiquitous and normalised to the extent that increasingly the world of pornography seems to influence and infiltrate wider society through body shape, appearance, hair removal, sexual behaviour, dating, all the way through to the core of our identity.

From my perspective as a clinician, I have no particular moral take on what consenting adults do behind closed doors and indeed, it is my job to hold curiosity about this as with any other aspect of my clients’ lives.  It could be argued that pornography falls into this category.  However, whilst I have no particular moral take on (some) aspects of pornography (consumed by adults), I have a strong healthy perspective on the issue much like I do on the consumption of alcohol for example.

A person may choose to live their life drinking a bottle of wine per night.  Other than this they don’t negatively impact society, they maintain a job and pay their way in the world.  However, I would hold a health perspective on this issue and whilst as a lay person I am as aware as anyone else about the physical health risks of excessive alcohol consumption, I believe that in my role as a psychotherapist I can claim an expert position on the mental health impact of excessive alcohol use extending to the wider social context.  And so it is with pornography.

It is easier for anyone to access pornography via the internet than it is to buy alcohol.  At the very least, alcohol must be physically purchased and paid for whilst porn is free – in the monetary sense.  However, I believe that what seems free to consume is in fact a Faustian deal in which the consumer sells their soul – in this case their mental and emotional health.

It is also extremely disturbing and concerning that it is easier for children to access pornography of virtually any description than it is for them to be able to access alcohol.  Let’s be clear, I am not advocating children have access to alcohol, however surely it should be at least as well regulated and policed and the risks considered? To date, the impact of pornography use by children, teenagers and young people has been vastly underestimated and as a mental health professional, I and my colleagues see the fallout of this.

We face a pornification of society whereby the young now trade in sexual pictures of each other and sexual acts that would until very recently have been considered ‘fringe’ at best, have become normalised such as non-fatal strangulation.  The effects of this pornification of our young is leading to enormous self esteem issues, relational problems and mental health conditions such as eating disorders, depression and anxiety.

As a society we therefore need to safeguard children from child abuse – and to be clear, permitting children to view pornography constitutes child sexual abuse.  The online safety bill aims to do just this – it is imperfect and won’t solve the problem in that legislation can never solve social ills, however the first port of call is to safeguard children and then a more nuanced consideration of the insidious effects pornography is having on society can take place.

Psychotherapy is about relationships and at its core it is about helping clients to have a healthy relationship with themselves and others in a two-person world.  Pornography is by its very nature perverse – it is narcissistic and is about voyeurism and exhibitionism rather than relating.  It is therefore by its nature in conflict with the very essence of the psychotherapeutic journey and a healthy society.

 

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

How much time should I devote to self care?

Why is Netflix’s Squid Game so popular?

Space: The Final Frontier of Manic Defence

Do Psychotherapists Need to Love Their Clients?

Unexpressed emotions will never die

 

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Does the sex of my counsellor or psychotherapist matter?

A question I have often either been asked or has come up up is whether the gender of the clinician matters (or should matter) to the client?

The answer, as with most questions relating to the intricacies of psychotherapy is not categorically ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  However, the question opens up other questions which may themselves be more interesting such as, what are your beliefs about psychotherapy and why should the sex matter?

To start with, there are clearly cases and instances where it is entirely appropriate for a patient or client to want or need to work with a therapist of a particular gender.  Aside from the fact that this may simply be the wish of the client (and therefore to be respected) valid reasons may include a history of sexual abuse by one gender leading to the client feeling safe with the other gender (often their own).

However, if we drop beneath the obvious, the question takes on more of a philosophical slant and how it is answered gives much insight into what a clinician believes about psychotherapy – let me explain.

There are many ‘schools’ of psychotherapy and many methods, however most of these have more in common than they don’t and secondly, most clinicians are to a greater or lesser extent ‘integrative’ in that they use different models in their clinical work.  The greatest distinction, or divide, perhaps lies in whether or not a method, and thus a practitioner, believe in unconscious process or not (and spoiler alert – I do profoundly).

As a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist, I work with the unconscious which means to say that I take very little on face value and work with my clients to understand why they think, behave and act in the way they do; in other words, how is their past experience influencing their perception of the present without their knowledge.  Through therapy the past can be uncovered, worked through, grieved and its hold on the present reduced.  This frees clients up to make informed and thought through choices based on their reality as it really is now rather than where they were previously stuck.

Those who don’t believe in the unconscious (namely behaviourists or person-centred therapists to name a couple) take things on face value.  They do not believe in unconscious process and work very much in the ‘here and now’.

How does the unconscious link to the sex of the therapist?

Those of us who work with the unconscious will, to a greater or lesser extent, work with transference – that is, work with whom we represent to the client in the room.  And whom we represent will invariably be one of the client’s caregivers, usually a parent.

Transference is very similar to projection, which is something we all do at times – we ascribe values to a person based on prior assumptions rather than on the reality of who they are.  The difference with transference is that the clinician, if trained well enough, will receive the client’s projections and be thinking about who they are (represent) for the client.

Freud believed (and rightly so) that transference occurs irrespective of gender/sex.  We will therefore ‘transfer’ our unfinished business relating to either or both parents onto the therapist.  This too is my experience as I work in the transference and so recognise that how the client relates to me tells me something important about how they learnt to relate as a child and I can represent their mother just as easily as their father in the transference.

Therefore, whilst in some cases the sex of the therapist may matter, in most, it does not.  And I believe that has also been my clients’ experience over the years whereby they may have had a preference in working with a female, have ‘ended up with me’ and we have done excellent work.

 

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

How much time should I devote to self care?

Why is Netflix’s Squid Game so popular?

Parental Alienation and the impact on children

Space: The Final Frontier of Manic Defence

Do Psychotherapists Need to Love Their Clients?

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Compassionate Curiosity and the fundamental rule of Psychoanalysis

Freud said that there was only one rule in Psychoanalysis which was to say whatever comes to your mind, even and perhaps most importantly when we don’t want to. In this way we can start to listen to different parts of ourselves and start to discover the dynamics within. We discover quite quickly how much of what goes on inside of ourselves is blocked from entering our consciousness. We become aware of all sorts of inhibitions and repressions, shames and conditioning. We may have all sorts of prepared narratives about who and why we are the way we are. Often these have been constructed to deal with difficulties in our lives and may have been to some extent useful coping mechanisms. However, what often brings someone to therapy is the realisation that these coping strategies or defence mechanisms have actually become a problem in themselves. 

Aspects of ourselves that we don’t like or believe are shameful become feared parts of ourselves that have to be avoided or sanitised. Like the idea of the monster under the bed, often understandable thoughts behaviours and emotions, become magnified and terrifying. 

Aspects of ourselves don’t match the identity, we feel we need to create, to be acceptable to ourselves and others. This doesn’t mean that psychoanalysis seeks to condone problematic behaviour, but rather by taking a neutral unmoralizing stance there can be space for these troubling areas to surface and to be understood,  lessening their power and likelihood of being enacted. 

Therapists will have spent a lot of time getting to know these parts of themselves in their own therapy helping them understand the nature of the human psyche through personal reflection on their own ‘stuff’. 

Resistances arise as this unmoralizing stance can feel shocking, and be experienced as if the therapist is being critical, as any light shone on these repressed parts can feel shameful. However hopefully over time it can be understood that the therapist’s unflinching observance of these parts, is not in way an intention to criticize or shame but to be compassionately curious. When this can be understood, hopefully the patient too can start to feel less afraid and more curious about themselves, the power of the ‘superego’ or internalized judge, with its narrow rules and harsh judgments can be lessened as we accept what we came to believe was unacceptable and had to be repressed.

The following poem hopefully gives a flavour of this:-

“Be curious, not judgmental.”

  • Be curious. Wonder awhile, listen, allow yourself to not know.
  • Not judgmental. Not “I know what this means”, not imagining the worst, not coming to hasty conclusions.

Be here, not there. Be now, not then. Be curious, not judgmental…

Walt Whitman. 

 

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 a 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 –

Why there’s nothing as infuriating as Anger Management

What makes Psychotherapy Different?

What’s wrong with good advice?

Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy 

Analytic Therapy for Addictions

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Thinking about Dyslexia Differently

“The word itself – dyslexia – is ironically very hard for dyslexic people to spell correctly”
Eddie Izzard

Up to one in five people are influenced by dyslexia, including me and Eddie Izzard. Our differing genetic differences inform our ability to process and learn information – however, we can also simplify difficult problems, explain them with clarity, and see multiple perspectives making distant and unusual connections that others might not notice.
Some describe it as thinking outside the box – but it’s more than that – we are curious people, who notice numerous other boxes that need to be urgently investigated!

We are now learning to celebrate the positives of not being neurotypical, so let’s share this information with our children and young people who have received a dyslexia diagnosis or may have undiagnosed traits.

These children and young people sometimes present with mental health issues including anxiety and low mood; on closer investigation they also report struggling academically and unsupported dyslexia is sometimes there in the background making life difficult for the child.

Made by Dyslexia is an organisation whose mission is to help teachers spot, support and empower every dyslexic child and to help the world value dyslexic thinkers. Together with their Join the Dots campaign to help organisations and work places harness dyslexic thinking – their recent report ‘The Dyslexic Dynamic: Why Dyslexia Can Help Meet Today’s Talent Challenges’ is available on their website.  Made by Dyslexia is proving to be a powerful advocate for the dyslexic advantage.

Dyslexic thinking can be highly desired in the work place – we know that many entrepreneurs are dyslexic and creative industries are awash with us. And now GCHQ reports that its official dyslexic people make great spies!

Further reading includes The Dyslexic Advantage. Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain by Dr Brock L Eide and Fernette F Eide, published in 2011 this book describes the dyslexia processing style as a gift. It helps us understand the power of our own dyslexia or that of our children.

Dyslexie, is a typeface designed in 2008 for those influenced by dyslexia. By ignoring basic typography rules Dyslexie letters have heavier bottoms, longer sticks and different shapes.  The centre of gravity is shifted in the design so the letters sit it nicely and snuggly on the page so helping the readability of words.

So welcome to thinking about dyslexia differently – it can be both a pleasure and a pain to live with but life would be less interesting without it.

 

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

Sharon Spindler is an experienced Systemic Family Therapist with twelve years experience within the NHS and private practice.  Sharon is available at the Brighton & Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Sharon Spindler –

A Primary Task

A desire to change

Covid-19 – talking with children in uncertain times

Family Therapy for Beginners

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