Change Archives - Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

June 6, 2022 by BHP Leave a Comment

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.

May 16, 2022 by BHP Leave a Comment

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

March 22, 2021 by BHP Leave a Comment

The Problem with Change

When people come into therapy it is usually with the wish or hope for something to change. If not, they want help with adapting or stabilising following a major change.

It is a paradox that change is such a constant in our lives. As we age our bodies inevitably change and if nothing else this makes living itself a profoundly transitional experience.

Changes in our lives can come in many forms. For example, there are key developmental milestones at various life stages – adolescence and mid-life are perhaps the most discussed of these.

Significant events in life can also impact and bring about profound change in ourselves. These changes always involve beginnings and losses and can lead to crisis. Crisis too can bring about change. Even positive changes – like getting married or starting a new job for example – are often cited as highly stressful, so societally we very much recognise the equation of change and crisis.

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have had huge influences in how we might understand changes and crises in life stages and events.

For example, Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst, coined the term ‘midlife crisis’ in his 1965 paper (1). Jaques wrote about how this crisis repeats earlier intense transitions from adolescence and infancy and explored what he saw as a tendency for the individual to lose or discover creativity as a response to this life-stage.

And it is largely due to Winnicott’s seminal work (2) that we understand the level of intense feelings that typifies adolescent transitions, when the young person is caught in a fraught conflict between childhood and adulthood.
In psychotherapy we think about therapeutic change, meaning an internal change for the better. I think most people come into therapy welcoming this idea of inner change and certainly those who are assessed as being suitable for psychotherapy will partly be so on the basis that they recognise the need for some internal change.

Initially in therapy, changes are often experienced as positive. Being heard and supported and gaining insight generally increases confidence and a sense of self. At the same time people can find quite that more negative feelings towards themselves seem less extreme. These changes are important and real. However, deeper changes that take place in therapy, in my experience, are not always so welcomed. This is partly because of the disruptive nature of change and its relationship to crisis.

Undergoing the kinds of powerful changes that therapy can offer can feel destabilising and bewildering. As mentioned earlier, change always involves loss of some kind. What might need to be given up may be experienced – consciously or more often unconsciously – as vital to the person’s sense of self. Even unwanted aspects to one’s psyche and behaviour are still familiar and what is known is experienced as safe, even when it is also recognised as harmful and self-limiting.

While we might recognise the likelihood, even perhaps inevitability of crisis in change, experiencing this in therapy can, for some people, feel understandably counter-intuitive.

Many people who come through therapy find a way of tolerating and working through these unsettling if not disturbing experiences of therapeutic change. But some become too frightened or overwhelmed and may then leave suddenly.

In my experience, those who stay are able, with the support and help of the therapist, to recalibrate and restabilise – much as after major life stages and events. As things settle, they can then experience and enjoy the positive benefits of the internal work and changes they have undertaken. However, inevitably and necessarily, in time the problematic process of change will be repeated.

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

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.

Further reading by Claire Barnes –

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

Silences in Therapy

Sibling Rivalry – Part 1

Sibling Rivalry – Park 2

What is loneliness?

References –

Death and the Mid-Life Crisis. Elliott Jaques, 1965
Contemporary Concepts of Adolescent Development and their Implications for Higher Education, from Playing and Reality. Winnicott, 1971

February 1, 2021 by BHP Leave a Comment

New Year’s Resolutions

In my last blog I wrote about goals for change and linking these to our values. When someone decides to come into therapy it is often because they would like to make changes and it can help to set goals as a means of knowing when these changes have been achieved.

Given this is a time of year when we might have made New Year’s Resolutions it seems quite fitting to talk a little more about setting ourselves goals for change. It is often the case that at the start of the year we have all these wonderful ideas of what we want to achieve and we start off really motivated with all good intentions and then several months in we start to lose heart and give up.

A common goal at this time of year is dry January and this can quite often be successful because its time limited. We know that after a month we can return to our favourite tipple. However, for some this is difficult, particularly in the current situation with the stressors of Covid. Complete abstinence can be too challenging as its very all or nothing. It might be more helpful to consider cutting down and reducing frequency, e.g. limit to just one drink once or twice a week. In this way we can make the goal more achievable. Making our goals for change realistic and time limited is really important for achievement.

Another common goal for this time of year is to get fit and start exercising. To start with when we are motivated it goes well. It’s the trying to keep it up that’s difficult. Part of the battle is finding what exercise you enjoy. There’s no point pushing yourself to do something you don’t like. Often when people think of exercise they think they have to do something cardio related. However, there are lots of low impact workouts that are good forms of exercise, such as walking, yoga and pilates. Whatever choice you make its important to start small and build up. It’s the achievement that helps to maintain the motivation. So the first week or two you might aim to exercise for 20 minutes twice a week and then the third week, 3 times per week. Once you have comfortably achieved the first goal you set another, building on the first to push yourself that little bit further. All the time holding in mind where you want to be and this is where it can be useful to link goals to your values. In this example its values around physical well being and of course exercise is also great for our mental health.

Losing weight or eating healthier is another very common goal for people to set themselves at this time of year. And again is another that can be difficult to maintain. So rather than push yourself to go on a really restrictive diet or to cut out entire food groups consider aiming for a ‘better’ diet. Try reducing unhealthy food groups, reducing treats, and swapping to more healthy options. It can be more helpful to aim to eat healthily for 75% of the time or to eat healthily in the week and let yourself indulge a little at weekends. Again, it’s about trying to set more realistic goals for yourself. For example if your norm is to eat half a packet of biscuits with your cup of tea to allow yourself just 2 biscuits rather than going for complete abstinence.

Thinking about setting the right goals is really important and if you don’t achieve them, that’s o.k. There’s no such thing as a failed goal. If you don’t achieve your goal then there is still useful information – ask yourself why wasn’t I able to achieve this? What got in the way? What is the learning from this? What can I do differently next time? Are there any supports available to me to assist in this? Often we don’t achieve our goals because they are too big and need to be broken down further.

None of this is rocket science but we all to easily forget the basics. We can impose high expectations on ourselves and then become disheartened when we don’t achieve them. Our self critical voice kicks in and this can have a negative impact on our mood. Given the difficulties we are all facing currently its even more important to be kind to ourselves and realistic of what we can and can’t achieve.

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

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.

Further reading by Rebecca Mead –

Making Changes

Social Connections

Back to ‘Bace’ics

Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) explained