Most parents go through some tough times when their children move into young adulthood. The family system is put under pressure to accommodate shifts in responsibilities and authority – and such changes, although necessary, can be painful. Usually, a new equilibrium is found that everyone can live with. Sometimes, however,…
I often work with people who come for help dealing with a ‘difficult’ mother. Many find themselves stuck in an unsatisfactory relationship with their mother and although they might feel a close connection to her – often involving strong feelings – it is not the kind of close connection that…
‘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…
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…
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…
Authenticity is a term that is often bandied around by counsellors and psychotherapists as something worth having. But just what does it mean in the context of counselling and psychotherapy and what are the implications of trying to get it? For me, authenticity involves being true to one’s own beliefs,…
Attachment theory is an attempt to explain differences in the dynamics of long-term human relationships based on how an infant connects on an emotional level to a primary caregiver – usually its mother. The theory was first developed by John Bowlby, a British psychologist and
It can be hard to ask for help and particularly so if you are someone who has become used to dealing with your own difficulties alone. You may be making the assumption that asking for help is somehow a sign of weakness and that by allowing yourself to be vulnerable in front…
If, as children, we felt repeatedly hurt, humiliated, abandoned, suffocated or ignored by someone close to us and on whom we depended for survival (usually a parent), we might have made the perfectly logical decision – at least from a four-year-old’s point of view – to keep other people at bay.
