‘How To Talk To A Defensive Person’ (15th February 2014) has proved to be the most popular post on this blog. Finding a way to have important conversations with someone who fends off all advances appears to be a subject which touches hearts and minds across all cultures; it’s not…
When somebody in a family begins to have a problem – e.g. an eating disorder, unexplained illness or difficulty leaving home – it is very easy for everyone else involved to pin the blame on this one person. They are the ones who “should pull themselves together,” or “stop upsetting…
Nobody wants to stay feeling stuck, sad, angry or confused. All we want is for these feelings to be magicked away – hopefully never to return. Rather than banish troublesome feelings, good counselling or psychotherapy helps us to understand where these feelings are coming from and sheds light on new…
In counselling and psychotherapy, we have the opportunity to ‘tell our story’ to someone who is able to hear it; someone who can help us think about it in new ways and support us while we are doing so. But what about outside the consulting room? What else can we do…
Panic attacks commonly bring people to counselling or psychotherapy. Usually, I am asked how to make them go away. Rather than simply treating the symptoms (e.g. through breathing techniques), I tend to look at the anxiety behind the panic attack as providing a warning or message that something is amiss…
Choosing a good counsellor or psychotherapist can be a daunting task. How do you know when you have found the right one for you? What factors can you look out for when you first meet? And what about after the first few weeks of working together?
Recently, I had a call from someone looking for a counsellor. They asked me two perfectly reasonable questions – “How do you work? And what do you actually do?” These are tricky questions to answer since the kind of narrative therapy I offer is not so much about what I…
In 1968, Stephen Karpman first referred to the Drama Triangle model as a means of describing and analysing human interaction. Karpman’s ideas often prove useful in helping us identify the roles we ourselves play when stuck in unhelpful repeating patterns of communication with others – and how to step out of those roles.
Perhaps you know someone who is going through a tough time. You’re worried about them and think they could do with some support. You want to help but when you try to talk to them they get angry and upset and it only seems to make matters worse. What can…
Shame. There, I said it. Shame feels horrible. I think of a hot, creeping sensation that sweeps over the body, starting in the face and travelling rapidly down to the stomach – where it stays. It’s a feeling of having been exposed and found wanting when measured against our own or somebody else’s idea of a…
