“I believe the key to happiness is: someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.” – Elvis Presley 3 key changes to remember: find someone to love in our life do something we love to do every day have something we love to look forward to Someone or some thing to…
Search Results for: depression
Depression Part 4: downhill or uphill?
There are simple reasons we end up depressed, getting deeper and deeper into a state of numbness or hopelessness or meaninglessness or apathy. All of the characteristics of a depressed state are the result of going away from something. That something could be a problem, difficulty or truth we are avoiding. Or feelings. Or people. …
Depression Part 3: ‘bad’ feelings, alcohol and substance misuse
Depression as a Response to the World The world loves to divide feelings and thoughts into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. But feelings and emotions really aren’t good or bad in the moral sense. When we call them ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we tend to mean pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable. Most importantly, feelings and emotions are…
Depression Part 2: a well-worn path
Depression is one of the most common afflictions of human beings and one of the main reasons why people seek some form of help. Depression has been medicalised in the last hundred years and ‘treated’ as a disease. In some cases there are, of course, biological or other physical reasons for depression, such as chronic…
Depression Part 1: Causes, anti-depressants, and two simple steps on your road to recovery
First of all, this isn’t a ‘how to get over depression’ guide. It’s something of a response to quite a few blog posts and articles on depression I’ve been reading lately and some concerns about what I’ve read. Many of the blog posts I’ve been reading seem to automatically define depression in medical terms and…
Splitting: the world and others in black and white
Splitting is a defence mechanism first posited by Freud and later developed by various proponents of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory including Ronald Fairbairn and Melanie Klein within Object Relations Theory. Each development has different perspectives on the splitting phenomenon but all broadly agree that splitting describes an individual’s way of forming conclusions about the world…
The Traumatised Psyche
Trauma in Simple Terms Psychological trauma describes the experience of difficult and distressing events or circumstances that we have suffered in life with which we have been unable to cope, give a clear rationale or learn from at the time they happened. Instead of being able to make rational and emotional sense of the events…
Psychiatric Diagnosis: a guide and caution for the weary
This post seeks to give an overview of how upsetting or distressing human experiences can be viewed and categorised as illness, disease, defect, disorder or dysfunction requiring the special expertise of specific treatments, therapies, interventions and pharmaceuticals for effective ‘cure’. It is not my intention to devalue the choices exercised by patients who elect this…
A Poverty of Help: inadequacies of support to vulnerable persons in the UK healthcare system
This is the start of a collection of experiences of mental health service and medical service encounters conveyed to me by patients over the years. I will add more in time. I thought I would start putting some of them together merely as an illustration of some of the bad practices that continue to go…
Existential Crisis
There is a point that some of us reach in life where the everyday normality to which everyone appears to be well adjusted just isn’t enough to keep us content, stable or secure. It can come out of the blue, or after a taste of the success we may have aspired to that once seemed…
The Outsider Part 4: the scapegoat, and surviving the dysfunctional group
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Friedrich Nietzsche The definition of a scapegoat is “a person who is blamed for…
Mental Distress and Suicide
Statistically, suicide is the highest cause of death in men between age 20 and 49. This is not to diminish the female suicide rate, merely to present statistics. And the suicide statistics are shocking, with greater numbers of men taking their own lives than are killed in road accidents, or by cancer and coronary heart…
Passive-Aggression: an expression of inauthenticity
Passive-aggression: the Suppressed, Repressed, Dissociated Possibly one of the most pervasive features of undesireable or antisocial behaviour we find in society is passive-aggression. Passive-aggression is aggressive or hostile energy that is used to emotionally injure or insult the recipient in a way that attempts to conceal the intent of the aggressor. It is the result…
Considering Starting Psychotherapy or Counselling?
Where to start Psychotherapy, counselling, psychology and other supportive services can be very confusing if you are unfamiliar with how it all works and have no experience of seeking such help and don’t know where to start. Many people wait until they are in or near crisis point, when decision-making may be compromised. The following…
Groups
Groups and Families I offer opportunities to work in small, safe groups of up to four people at a time in a comfortable, informal setting, with each meeting lasting 90 minutes. Group therapeutic work has particular benefits to participants as it provides opportunities to express oneself in a secure and confidential environment with support and…
Mental Distress as a Response to Dysfunctional Society
Mental distress as the individual’s response to society’s dysfunction I’ve been a psychotherapist for nearly twenty years and the longer I practice the more I recognise the foundational cause of human distress and disturbance tends not to be an isolated failing in the individual, nor defect or deficit, not a pathology, nor an inherent lack. …
The Outsider Part 2: living off-label
Whilst most of us long for kinship with others who will accept us, approve of us, validate our ideas and beliefs, some of us don’t. Many of us will adjust ourselves in order to fit in and secure such approval, or for the sake of ‘a quiet life’, even to the extent of compromising our…
CBT: a low-cost ‘cure’ for psychiatric ‘Illness’?
As a psychotherapist I continue to come across the ad nauseam promotion of CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – and its derivatives, both within the NHS and outside of it for what seems to be any and every ailment known to man, woman and child. This is partly due to the lasting momentum of a…
Suffer the Little Children: abuse and its legacy for survivors
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung The term ‘child abuse’ opens a Pandora’s Box of definitions and meanings. From words like neglect to domestic-, emotional-, physical- and sexual abuse; to bullying, genital mutilation, exploitation, trafficking, grooming – the list goes on. These definitions describe…
Healing Minds: what works for you?
Often we are so socialised into looking to ‘professionals’ for their expertise that we forget that, prior to the boom in professions, we did a pretty good job of taking care of ourselves and one another. Family, neighbours, community, aunts and uncles, grandparents: all of these community bonds have been eroded by massive shifts in…
Change Your World: Self-healing and Loving Kindness
Inspired by an article I read speaking about the benefits of pets to depressed people, I wanted to write a little bit about the therapeutic value of caring for other living things – not only pets – both as an aid to preventing and treating mental disturbance, particularly but not exclusively depression. “The greatness of…
‘Authority’: its misuse and dangers of individual conformity to it
This post is a look at the impact of the misuse of authority in our society upon the wellbeing and mental health of the individual and by extension our communities. It is not intended as an attack on benign or benevolent expressions of authority where they might exist in the world. The Death of Common…
Unsure?
Find the right psychotherapy, counselling or mental health support for you. Learn as much as you can before making a decision.
Self-healing: a shift from pain to compassion in five minutes
Periods of mental distress are often characterised by a hyper-focus on our own struggles to the exclusion of everything else. In the midst of pain and suffering, loneliness and desperation we can end up so concentrated on the distressing aspects of our lives and on what is missing that we literally forget ourselves and what’s…
Choosing Public Sector or Private Therapeutic Support
Choosing between public and private psychotherapy, counselling and mental health support
Existential Analysis and the differences between a psychotherapist, counsellor, psychologist, CBT therapist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst!
This is a somewhat contentious area for many practitioners because, as with most fields of endeavour, everyone has their own territorial imperatives and personal definitions. So with that disclaimer, here is my simple outline of the differences between each of these helping activities, the length of their training and training requirements. Counsellor Counselling as a…
5G, Wifi and other microwave frequencies harmful to ALL life-forms
(above) Dr Barrie Trower, Physicist and world authority on military microwave weapons, consultant and researcher “Wifi frequencies are known weapons frequencies. 5G is going to make this much, much worse.” Dr Barrie Trower Sources of EMF pollution Devices which emit and receive microwave and other Electromagnetic (EMF) radiation frequencies known to be harmful to health,…
About
Counselling, Psychotherapy and Existential Analysis in Glasgow from an NHS Experienced and Qualified Psychotherapist and Counsellor. BA(Hons), MA(Psych), MA(Ex.Psych). Life Coaching, Yoga, Meditation, Personal Development, Existential Analysis
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Glasgow Psychotherapy, Counselling, Life Coaching, Personal Development with reducing fee rates. SKYPE anywhere in the world, Home visits, Email and Telephone support, face-to-face sessions.
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Glasgow Counselling and Psychotherapy. Low cost and donation-only sessions; time-limited and long-term therapy; meditation, yoga and anxiety management
