It is not comfortable being told that you are feeling the way you do because of your hormones. This kind of biological reductionism is not helpful to any gender but the extremely severe symptoms of Pre-menstrual Dysphoric Disorder are completely aligned to the menstrual cycle. They manifest during the week before menstruation and end when…
Of all the problems presented by clients when they first attend therapy as a couple, communication difficulties are often to be found as the most pressing. However, our difficulties with communication is not just an issue within a relationship: it touches every aspect of our lives – which makes the effort of finding out how…
The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted our lives and disrupted the status quo – that which confers normalcy and (feels like) security. As we have in recent months reorganised and adapted our lives to halt the virus in its destructive tracks we have been derailed from our personal and collective sense of forward motion (progression). Forced…
I have found the Clash’s song of this title playing over in my mind when thinking about the current easing of the social lock down in the UK. It seems to me that we all, to some degree or another, now face a dilemma whether to stay or go. Straight away, it is important to…
“The passions, these “magnificent monsters” (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 521), can we consider them a gift in which something valuable can be learnt? Below is a consideration of the multiple, dynamic, creative and sometimes conflicting forces of energy that are often competing for dominance within us – what Fredrick Nietzsche sometimes described as ‘the passions’. Others…
I admit the shameless plagiarising of the title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ – ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ as it fits as a Segway into considering the tresses and strains of both finding love, and holding onto in, in the current pandemic. The statistics Disturbing statistics are emerging of surging rates of domestic violence,…
As I write this blog, we are entering into the fourth week of so-called ‘lock-down’ across the UK. Despite daily speculation, nobody has any idea how long the restrictions on life will last for. Everything has changed and this has been hard to cope with in a society where stability and the ordinary continuity of…
The medical definition of sexual dysfunction in women is hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) that is low or no libido. Like men, women’s desire for sex is effected by all sorts of factors such as relationship issues, bereavement, physical illness and the side effects of medication, job loss or work stress, depression and anxiety, recreational…
Following on from my earlier blog about the physiological effects of Viagra, in this blog I am going to discuss some of the psychological and social issues that make young men pop a blue pill. There is common notion that young men are constantly getting erections and always up for having sex. Various sources indicate…
How many of us are seldom more than an arms length from our mobile phone? Our bags, clothing, even our sports wear is designed with special pockets for its’ safe keeping. For most of us it has infiltrated every sphere of life, a constant companion. Staying connected has never been so easy. Mobiles are for…
The urge to migrate twists through the marrow of our bones; the restless energy moving our ancestors across vast wastelands in search of a better life mirrors our journey to self-actualisation. With global migration on the rise what happens to your relationship to yourself and to others when you leave your birth country for a…
Who wants to be ordinary? The word has unpleasant connotations; like something that offers little that is good or substantial. And yet it is a word I often think about and return to in my clinical practice. It could even be one of the primary goals of therapy: to become ordinary. In the world today…