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In Support of Being Average

Ask yourself if you would like to be described as being ‘average’ and it might not be your first choice. Average might feel like a vague insult, a reflection on yourself that you’d rather not have. When we use the term ‘average’ we don’t see much that is positive about it.

What is ‘average’?

By definition ‘average’ speaks of a central or typical value across a data set. Average comes with connotations of mediocrity, not setting a very high standard, lacking motivation or even having given up. Average has little to make it feel desirable, but that doesn’t mean that we should write it off.

Perfection: The opposite of average?

Modern society, especially in the world of social media, seems to have no time for average. We are encouraged to seek perfection, to rise above what is seen as average and to strive and compete for a perfect existence. Flaws and defects wont do, only achieving a level that cannot be exceeded is acceptable.

In writing this we are presented with the thought that perfection is very subjective and is also very hard to achieve. We all carry a sense of who we are and the pursuit of perfection is something that we mostly define for ourselves.

Our sense of what is perfect is tied to our sense of self. Early messaging that one isn’t good enough and the associated feelings of inadequacy can make perfection feel appealing. By being perfect we compensate for our inadequacies and are beyond reproach. One becomes insulated from the feelings of judgement from oneself and others. Perfection and the pursuit of it become the solution to challenging feelings.

To always want to be perfect means that we never have to consider what failure feels like. Part of being human is that we are sentient beings and not merely machines carrying out limited functions in a repetitive fashion. To be simplistic we aren’t and can’t be all-knowing and therefore we are flawed and failure is possible.

The pursuit of perfection can impact our personal relationships and deny us the opportunity to explore and be curious. If perfection becomes a motivating factor how can be relate to others when we are managing our own anxiety around feelings of being judged. If it feels unbearable to think of failure how do we learn and develop?

Thoughts of being ‘average’ and psychotherapy

Considering how thoughts of being perfect can impact our life and relationships we might think of how we can move away from this high standard. To be less than perfect, we have to consider how we tolerate what has previously felt unbearable. The thought that it’s ok not to be perfect is a challenge and can expose one to questions of self critical, judgemental feelings that have been defended against. Psychotherapy offers the opportunity to think with a therapist and explore what is behind such feelings. Can we challenge this unconscious sense that anything other than perfection is bearable? Can we be ‘average’ and be happy with that?

Being an advocate for ‘average’ is not about promoting mediocrity, it’s a reaction to the rigour of perfection and a way of finding a more compassionate sense of self that can be at ease with and maybe even enjoy.

 

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 –

The challenge of change

Thinking about origins

Bridging Political divides

Save? Edit? Delete?

Football, psychotherapy and engaging with male clients

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Understanding Feelings of Guilt

Guilt can be a particularly tortuous feeling and, for some, a chronic state of mind. Below, I will think about different aspects of this complicated emotion.

Origins of Guilt

For Melanie Klein (1), guilt is part of a small child’s normal development, when they realise that they can hate and feel aggressive towards those they also love. The guilt arises out of fear that the infant is responsible for the potential or actual damage and loss of their mother/caregiver – on whom they absolutely depend.

These early experiences will be made better or worse by several factors, including the love and stability given to the child as it grows. Future events, particularly those early on in life, may help to relieve or compound the individual’s more complex or unresolved relationship to guilt.

Function and Dysfunction of Guilt

While painful, particularly when we are consumed by it, it’s important to realise that guilt is a normal part of our emotional lives. When it functions, it is helpful for us as individuals and societies. It is strongly connected, for example, with morality and conscience.

Being able to feel guilt is a healthy capacity and is connected to remorse. Guilt can lead us to accept our responsibility and take action, if necessary, to make reparation. This can take often place in ordinary ways, for example, saying sorry to someone we feel we’ve hurt.

However, when the awful and terrifying feelings of guilt in childhood have not been resolved enough, they can persist into adulthood in chronic and acute ways, and for some people becomes a regular place in their minds to go to. Feeling perpetually guilty can lead to, and be bound up with, intense feelings of anxiety and persecution.

Guilt can get located into all kinds of irrational parts of oneself and can become a way of avoiding other difficult feelings. For example, guilt can be bound up with unresolved feelings around regret and loss or can be a response to uncomfortable feelings of anger. Or it can be used as a way of cushioning against feelings of a loss of control – for e.g. following an external trauma.

Defences against Guilt

For some people, feelings of guilt are so hard to bear they find different ways to get rid of them.

For example, they may become extreme in their efforts to ‘make reparation’, like compulsively putting others first. This is problematic for several reasons, not least of all because underlying this dynamic is often – and understandably – growing resentment which cannot be acknowledged. Inevitably this can simply perpetuate further cyclical feelings of guilt.

Fearfulness around feeling guilt can also lead to a difficulty in taking ownership and another way of avoiding guilt can involve being critical and blaming of others. This is often unconscious and a defensive way of managing guilt by projecting it out – so that others will hold all the guilty feelings.

How to get help with Guilt

If we think back to Klein’s ideas of development, it is the acceptance of responsibility that can lead to repair and resolution. In adult life it is similarly important to be able to bear our guilt without fear and attack (on ourselves or others). Taking responsibility for our actions is so important to our psychological health, and allows us, at times, to repair and this will also feed back into our sense of self and confidence.

Chronic and more compulsive feelings of guilt however are problematic and likely to be bound up with complex childhood (and, also, sometimes adult) losses and traumas. These can be worked through in therapy or counselling.
Group therapy can be particularly useful in tackling pervasive feelings of guilt as the individual can gain a great deal from the reassurances of other members. Also, seeing others grapple with familiar emotions around guilt can be powerfully therapeutic in thinking about one’s own relationship to it.

Therapy can encourage and support people in coming to terms with responsibility, regret, and remorse where this is helpful and appropriate, while still questioning and exploring more chronic and corrosive feelings of guilt.

 

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

A new psychotherapy group

The process of joining a therapy group

What is ‘othering’ and why is it important?

How psychotherapy groups can help change our internalised family systems

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

 

Reference – 

(1) Melanie Klein (Psychoanalyst) b1882 – d1960. Love, Guilt and Reparation (1937)

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Collective Grief

Recent Events: The Death of Queen Elizabeth and COVID

The recent death of Queen Elizabeth has drawn people together in grief in a ways both individual and shared. Having been Queen and a globally public figure for 70 years, her death felt like the loss of what had been a constant and stable presence in our lives.

The COVID pandemic forced us to engage with mortality in a way that many people hadn’t ever had to. We found ourselves experiencing emotions and feelings in ways that were unexpected and unsettling. We had to find a way to feel safe, in the face on what could feel like an invisible threat. Sharing the vulnerability of COVID became a way of coping with our feelings when so much felt unknown and uncertain.

Both of these events gave rise to feelings of loss and grief that were public and shared, yet they felt very different.

Contrasting experiences of grief

The experience of loss is something that no one can assume to avoid in life. It is part of human existence and can be the most obvious way in which we experience grief. The experience of grief is subjective and effects people in ways as individual as we are. Whilst some people appear unmoved and stoic, others can feel intense and uncontrollable emotions. Grief can be present in life in ways that can be hard to explain, either at the time, or at points in the future.

The death of a public figure and our sense of grief gives us an understanding of how we related to that person. Do we feel the loss of someone that we felt a closeness to, or do we find ourselves having ambivalent feelings? How does the loss affect our lives and what does it mean for us? Answers to these questions show us how unique our grief can be.

Sharing our grief over the death of Queen Elizabeth can feel as if it gives us permission to mourn and experience our own grief. We can attribute our emotions to an event that is shared and understood. We find comfort in sharing grief with others with a similar lived experience.

Looking back at the pandemic it could be hard to find ways in which to express feelings of grief, when everyone was trying to make sense of what was going on. Why we felt the way that we did wasn’t always easy to understand.

The pandemic also challenged us to experience death in ways that were far from what anyone would want. The absence of the ability to share grief at collective events like funerals and memorials left a sense of something unfinished and denied us the opportunity to find ways to understand our grief.

Comparable experiences of grief

Comparing the experience of loss and grief between the COVID pandemic and the death of Queen Elizabeth might seem rather obtuse. Both are joined by the collective nature of the events and how there felt like something inescapable about being aware of a collective sense of grief.

There is some comfort in the shared nature of what has happened and the sense that ‘we’re all in this together’ offers some reassurance, yet grief is still an individual experience

Grief and Psychotherapy

Loss and grief are parts of our existence, yet they can affect us in ways that can be unpredictable and unsettling. Being able to think with a therapist about how one is experiencing loss and grief can help to give understanding and a sense that what can at times can feel overwhelming can become less acute.

 

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 –

The challenge of change

Thinking about origins

Bridging Political divides

Save? Edit? Delete?

Football, psychotherapy and engaging with male clients

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Why is Mental Health Important?

Mental Health has become a hot topic in the last few years. We often hear about it in the media, and because of more public awareness about mental health issues, more employers are adopting mental health policies and offering employees more support. Whilst mental health used to be seen as something related to mental illness, nowadays people are talking more about the importance of mental health as a part of their overall wellbeing, such as exercise and healthy eating.

But what is mental health?

Mental health is dependent on a certain degree of emotional, psychological, and social equilibrium. It impacts thinking, feeling and behaviour and therefore our capacity to handle stress, maintain good relationships and make decisions, amongst other things.

Good mental health is a vital aspect of us being able to function well in the world, hence it’s importance. There are environmental, social and psychological factors that can affect our mental state, such as:
– Ongoing real or perceived threat or danger to one’s life and livelihood
– Traumatic experiences/ events, recent or historical
– A physical or mental health diagnosis/ symptoms
– Bereavement and loss
– Breakdown in relationship(s)
– Major life change or life crisis
– Financial problems/ stressors
– Work stress
– Loneliness and isolation
– Discrimination and bullying
– Poor sleep and/ or diet
– Sedentary lifestyle/ lack of exercise
– Lack of light and/ or fresh air
– Noise and pollution

It is only human to have experienced one or several of the list above, therefore mental health is of relevance to everyone.

How to Look After your Mental Health?

Environmental and lifestyle factors:
Many people underestimate the impact of sleep, diet, exercise and sunlight on their mental wellbeing. With the increase in the use of screens and less time spent outdoors, especially in the case of children, these very basic factors are not being attended to, with often drastic impact on quality of life. Poor diet, poor sleep and lack of exercise and natural light are interacting factors. Lack of natural light and fresh air affects our sleep, as does the consumption of certain foods such as sugar and caffeine. Exercise can help improve sleep quality and lead us to want to eat better. Good sleep quality helps combat sugar cravings and when we feel rested need to consume less caffeine, etc. Good habits feed other good habits – it’s a cycle.

Social factors:
We all live in society and in communities within society. A sense of belonging paired with a sense of purpose and meaning are significant factors in our sense of mental wellbeing. We all need social connections and to feel a part of something. This became very apparent during the Covid pandemic when we saw many people’s mental health decline because of social isolation. Good relationships and good support systems make us feel safer and cared
about. Helping others, sharing interests, exchanging ideas and working towards common goals helps create a positive social loop where we feel that our life is meaningful and our contributions matter.

Psychological factors:
Most of us have gone through a crisis, a loss or even suffered significant traumatic event(s). Many of us have also experienced challenges growing up in dysfunctional families or under challenging circumstances. These issues when not attended to psychologically, can easily become cumulative and affect our lives in negative ways, often leading to depression or chronic anxiety. Feeling alone with our problems further exacerbates these issues, creating
a negative cycle that is self-perpetuating.

How Psychotherapy can Help

Psychotherapy can help you get and remain mentally healthy in several ways. A skilled therapist will help you address psychological issues such as the ones listed above. Therapy can be very effective in helping people deal with past traumas, life crisis, relationship issues and process loss, amongst many other things. In psychotherapy you can also explore how certain behaviours are affecting your mental health and how to change or improve them.

Sometimes bad habits tell us something about how we were looked after, and therefore how we end looking after ourselves. Finally, it can also help us get to a better place within ourselves and therefore make better decisions. Sometimes issues are multi-faceted, layered, and complex. Being able to distinguish, pick apart and navigate a seemingly hopeless situation is empowering and puts us back in control of our lives.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Superviser and Tavistock Certified Executive Coach.

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara

What makes us choose our career paths?

Antidotes to coercive, controlling and narcissistic behaviour

An in-depth approach to leadership coaching

Demystifying mental health

Women and Anger

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What makes us choose our Career Paths?

In both coaching and psychotherapy I am always fascinated by the reasons people choose certain career paths or lines of work. It is also interesting to see how career paths develop and change because of personal choices and how people’s personalities interact within organisations and changes in the job market.

These explorations can be vital to our personal fulfilment and sense of satisfaction, after all most of us spend a significant amount of our lives in work.

For instance, a surgeon may have chosen to go into medicine because this was what was expected of them. However, on further exploration it turns out that the demands of being a medical doctor in a public hospital, combined with the repeated reward of saving lives and a certain clinical detachment are very all significant factors in further exploring this choice of career.

Working hours and shift patterns, type of work, setting and level of responsibility, employment status (self-employed, employed, or unemployed), relationship to work, etc can generally be traced back to the weight of status and education in the family, sibling hierarchy, types of relationship, life-changing or traumatic events, gender and sexuality, level of family support, parent’s line of work, and family expectations, just to name a few.

There are other environmental and biological factors as well such as migration, displacement, political and societal influences, personality traits, life circumstances and opportunities, etc.

The role of psychotherapy and coaching can be helpful and exploring one’s motivations and drivers for following a career path, realising when that path no longer suits or making necessary changes to one’s work life. For instance, gaining more self-confidence to take more risks or becoming more aware of one’s personal desires and wishes, rather than following the path that was expected by others.

I see this as a maturing process, a way of becoming more in touch with oneself and making choices that are more in line with who one is rather than being restricted by self-limiting beliefs. To live according to our beliefs and values is a great thing to do, if we know what they are in the first place.

To find out more about leadership coaching or psychotherapy get in touch with us.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Superviser and Tavistock Certified Executive Coach.

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara –

Antidotes to coercive, controlling and narcissistic behaviour

An in-depth approach to leadership coaching

Demystifying mental health

Women and Anger

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

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Why do people get the birthday blues?

Birthdays are generally depicted in the media as happy events that should be celebrated. However, for no small number of people birthdays can be complicated and evoke difficult feelings such as sadness, listlessness and even feelings of depression. Why is this?

The ‘birthday blues’ is a term used to capture the range of difficult emotions that some people experience around birthdays. They often come on in the lead up to a birthday, peaking on the actual day and then quickly dissipating, at times with a sense of relief.

There is no single clinical reason why people may feel down or depressed on their birthday and nor is it a pathology but rather a combination of association and arguably somatic memory. Let me explain.

Whilst we all have seen images heard stories or seen films depicting ‘the perfect birthday’ for children, for most of us this was not the case, but overall we enjoyed the day because we were allowed to celebrate it with those we love. However in many cases this simply is not so. For example, for children of divorced parents birthdays can be difficult as the loss of one of the parents may be highlighted on that ‘special day’. As a clinician this is something I encounter often with clients whose parents divorced acrimoniously – they wanted nothing more than to spend the day with both parents but can’t. Worse still I have encountered stories whereby my clients as children had to choose between their parents as to with whom they were going to spend their birthday. The outcome was that birthdays become something to dread rather than eagerly anticipate.

So, birthdays can represent a marker date (not dissimilar to Christmas) – a reminder – of a painful event which is compounded by the societal expectation of how a person should feel. This creates an internal conflict between the felt reality and how that person actually feels, which exacerbates the problem and can lead to symptoms of depression.

Why are birthdays so important to so many people?

Human beings are defined by time. We did not invent it as it passes whether we are aware of it or not, however, we structure our lives around time and use it not only as an important guide in terms of the passing of the seasons but also in measuring our time on this earth.

Birthdays are seen as something to celebrate as an achievement which may seem somewhat arbitrary in the modern world, however in a world in which infant mortality was rampant and few people lived beyond their forties – which constituted much of human existence – there was arguably much to celebrate in living another year.

However, I believe that there is something else that sits beneath this explanation that operates on an unconscious level and that is how birthdays represent an overcoming of death. It could be argued that becoming yet another year older is nothing to have a party about – especially once we have passed our youth. Birthdays mark the passage of time and bring us ever closer to death – something us humans have a hard time dealing with. So by marking birthdays and celebrating them, we are perhaps avoiding contemplating our mortality. They function in part as a form of
death denial.

Like the actual new year, birthdays are psychologically and thus symbolically representative of an opportunity for renewal – we can put the bad or mediocre of the past year behind us and start another year with good intentions. Sadly, like new year’s resolutions, little generally changes following birthdays as we take our old selves with us into the ‘new year’.

Is there any physical reason why people would feel differently on their birthday?

From a medical perspective, there is no reason why anyone would feel differently on their birthday, however, as noted earlier, birthdays can evoke powerful memories that may be pleasant, difficult, or a combination of both.

We know from neuroscientist and Professor of Psychiatry Steven Porges’ work on Polyvagal Theory that our neural network extends to our gut and that we receive significantly more ‘data’ from our gut to our brain via the vagal nerve than the other way around. It therefore stands to reason that where we have powerful memories associated with a significant date, that we will feel and possibly experience those memories in our body too. How may these manifest?

Some people may feel lethargic or achy and others may have headaches or migraines in lieu of experiencing the actual feelings – and this is particularly likely in cases where there is a conflict between how the person feels, and how they believe they should feel based on social or family expectations.

How can people start to think differently about their birthday?

When I was a trainee psychotherapist, one of my tutors would say ‘if you feel stuck with a client, find the feeling’. Ultimately psychotherapy is about grieving – what clients grieve will vary, but they are coming to grieve whether they know it or not.

If birthdays have in the past been difficult and remain so in the present then there is something that has not been grieved. For example, where a client began to dislike their birthday or even dread it due to a family event such as parental divorce, and that feeling repeats in their adult life, then I would suggest that there are feelings relating to that loss of the parental unit that remain unresolved. Once these have been worked through, birthdays will be ‘freed up’ so a different meaning and set of memories can be ascribed to them.

So, the first step is in grieving whatever needs to be grieved and then the second step is in recognising that a birthday is largely symbolic and that as an adult we can take control of them and take responsibility for creating of them what we wish. The latter is critically important as it may be that one person’s idea of a ‘good’ birthday is a full-on bash with friends whilst another is a quiet walk in the woods. Both are equally valid.

Are birthdays as important as people think?

Human beings are symbolic and are unique (as far as we know) in world of mammals in that we are the only creatures that inhabit a symbolic world. The majority of what we do, create and celebrate has no pragmatic purpose, however that does not mean that it is not important.

The symbolic is the basic fabric of culture and we all subscribe to a culture, as it is through culture that we gain our sense of belonging and self esteem. Culture (whichever one you happen to belong to) gives us three fundamental stories which enable us to cope with death anxiety according to psychoanalyst Otto Rank, who was one of Freud’s acolytes – culture tells us where we came from, how to behave whilst we are alive and lastly, it tells us what happens to us when we die. Without culture, we have very little.

Birthdays are symbolic and embedded in culture thus they are important in us being a part of the world in which we live. However, particularly in Western Culture where we subscribe to individualism, we are free to create of our birthday whatever we wish.

I would therefore suggest that birthdays are important as all cultural markers are important, however, that does not mean that we should be indentured to them.

Are the birthday blues real?

Anything that a person feels is real, as it is their felt experience. This does not mean, however, that that feeling or set of feelings belong in the present. Nor does it mean that the ‘birthday blues’ are a pathology but rather a term that helps us makes sense of what someone may be experiencing.

If people are habitually getting the ‘birthday blues’ which is a set of difficult feelings akin to depression, then something from the past has got ‘stuck’ and is repeating as an experience each year.

A psychotherapist would work with you to uncover what it is that brings on these ‘blues’ around the time of your birthday and to work with you to resolve the underlying grief or address what it is in your appetite for life that is being suppressed.

Can birthday blues ever be a good thing?

Whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, it can be helpful to be curious about how we really feel around our birthday and to work out whether those feelings are perhaps telling us something important.

It’s no secret that in my profession the peak time for couple’s therapy enquiries is in early January (the same is true of a family solicitor friend of mine). This I believe is in no small part to the pressures of family Christmas being combined with a new year and a desire for new beginnings.

Birthday blues can also be a sign that something in a person’s life needs addressing and perhaps changing. Birthdays are a reminder of the passage of time and can increase feelings of anxiety when deep down a person knows they are not really living the life they want to.

If we can be curious about them, birthday blues can tell us important information about what we may want or what is missing from our life. And if you can’t make sense of it, it can be really helpful to talk to a psychotherapist who can help you unpick what the blues might mean – whether that is a loss that needs to be grieved or an appetite that needs to be expressed.

 

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

Are people with mental health problems violent?

Mental health problems in Brighton

The limitations of online therapy

Pornography and the Online Safety Bill

Does the sex of my counsellor or psychotherapist matter?

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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.

 

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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?”

Many people believe that they don’t have a justified reason to go to therapy. They may feel they haven’t had anything ‘bad enough’ happen to them, or feel it is too self-indulgent. They may not think they are worthy of the attention they will receive. The truth is everyone is worthy of therapy. Therapy can help us look at our painful experiences and use them to adopt a different approach to living and engaging with ourselves and others.

Mental Health Imposter Syndrome Is Real

We’ve heard time and time again how clients feel they aren’t suffering enough to deserve mental health support. Following the pandemic, it’s more important than ever before to ensure you’re taking care of yourself.

Melanie Klein, an Austrian-British psychoanalyst, theorised a key early and ongoing development task is the realisation that others and different from us with their own needs rather than as extensions of our own. This forces us to realise the loss of what we want other people to be. However, this loss enables us to move on to a more realistic life.

Many feel that they don’t feel ‘that bad’ right now, however, it’s a common misconception that you much be going through some sort of crisis to be a good candidate for therapy. It’s easy for people to compare themselves to others or brush off their pain because it’s ‘a stressful time of year’.

Why We Need Therapy

Everyone’s experiences are valid, and many of us will benefit from therapy. A lot is going on in the world, especially following the pandemic. So, we must take time out for ourselves and work on what makes us feel good to be able to function to the best of our abilities.

The French philosopher and writer, Voltaire, tells the story of travellers who have suffered various trials and tribulations. These travellers hear of a murder at the Ottoman court. They pass an old man calmly tending to his garden and ask him if he’s heard about the murder. The old man doesn’t know anything about it and explains how he doesn’t concern himself with the affairs there. Voltaire uses this example for the idea that to live a good life, we should put more effort into the tasks that make us feel good and less about other worldly affairs.

Many of our therapists relate to this in the sense that many clients like to express their feelings and opinions on politics or activism, which, don’t get us wrong, is very important. However, we find that hidden within these opinions are parts of the client’s self that they are unable to face such as feelings of hopelessness, insecurities, despair, rejection and more.

Therapy Is Not Self-Indulgent

Rather than being self-indulgent, therapy is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and the world. By trying to understand ourselves, we don’t project our own pain onto the world. Through therapy, we can explore what is happening inside ourselves and utilise this new self-awareness to accept and understand ourselves better.

Voltaire argues in his book that cannot escape suffering, since the world is a brutal place. But rather than getting lost in these feelings of despair, we can accept them as part of the human condition. We must do our best to be honest about our feelings and cultivate what we can. Like tending a garden, the work is never complete.

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch. Online therapy is available.

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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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