If you haven’t heard of the phenomenon that is ‘Squid Game’ then you either have not got Netflix, or are asleep. However, for those of you who haven’t, here is an extremely brief synopsis: Squid Game is set in modern day South Korea and is a dystopian nightmare of a game whereby the wealthy and…
The historian Susan Mattern argues there is no doubt there is some value to naming menopause as a concept. It has provided women with reasons and different perspectives and interventions on what can be sometimes very distressing symptoms. However she points out that modern medicine can have a tendency to locate cause and explanation inside…
I found myself being asked ‘what is the menopause?’ by a friend’s 13 year old son a few weeks ago. All the women in the room chimed in to answer. It was not surprising to me that he asked, nor was it surprising all the women answered. Interestingly I had no idea about the menopause…
As a boy I was fascinated by space travel. I remember being glued to the television set with awe as the Space Shuttle blasted off into space back in the early 80s – I was born after the epic Apollo programme came to an end and was just the right age to appreciate the engineering…
As psychotherapists, we have often been asked to provide anger management. Whilst we know some people need to control their anger to prevent destructive effects on themselves and their relationships, what was then called anger management mainly consisted of breathing and cognitive techniques to control their anger. Although this worked for a lot of people,…
Being human means living with the knowledge that we will one day die and that those we love will die too. As mortal beings we are the children of time and none of us are spared its reckoning. Time makes playthings of us all and we are powerless in its passage. A healer it may…
Now we are all starting to go out more and socialise again, I wanted to acknowledge how we can all experience anxious or self critical thoughts. I have noticed, when meeting up with various girlfriends recently, how we’ve all shared thoughts of feeling slightly anxious about how others are perceiving us. Due to the various…
How many of us feel we don’t want to be known beyond what we present to the world and are relieved when our presentations are not tested? When we’re not found out. The poem below by the American poet Jane Hirschfield, is an uncomfortable look at our response when we read about the shameful acts…
How can an old parlour game help us reflect on the way we communicate? Quite a lot it would seem. Many of us will have played the game where we tap out the rhythm of a tune or song and ask our partner to guess the name of the piece. The challenge for the person…
I recently read that an English professional football team has a resident psychotherapist. Whilst the connection between clinical psychology and sporting outcomes is well established, having a team psychotherapist is something new. The therapist explained that they’re there to support the players, coaches and a team of staff through the emotional highs and lows of…
In this blog I will briefly discuss avoidant attachment strategies and how what can look like independence is actually a sort of suit of armour designed to protect and hide a locked box of vulnerability and need, preventing mutual dependency and intimacy. The person who has developed the avoidant strategy has done so in order…
“Why do we like the frantic, the unmastered?” Asks Virginia Woolf, in her diaries. This is a question I also return to time and time again as I look out to sea. Feeling the disquiet holds an edge of excitement for me, there is a thrill to its wild and unknown nature. For me there…