This series on personal authenticity has focussed predominantly on the relevance of the individual’s alignment with his or her own truth and truth’s impact upon relationships with others. Part 6 looks at the wider implications of personal authenticity beyond the notion of personal development and the individual’s sense of inner contentment. Dog-Eat-Dog Culture The contemporary…
Author: Stephen
Stephen is a Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Yoga Instructor and Artist, and practices using Existential Analysis integrated with a variety of methods and creative techniques to help people overcome their life difficulties and move to a free-er, more fulfilling way of living. He views mental illness, disturbance and distress, not as personal defects or failings, but as part of the spectrum of human nature responding to the world's influences. He offers face-to-face and Skype sessions, Email and Telephone support. Work can incorporate yoga and meditation, art media, writing, monodrama, body awareness development and many other creative ways of exploring experiences and personal meaning in engaging and non-threatening ways that respect the patient's worldview.
Personal Authenticity Part 5: genuine relationship
One of the significant benefits of making a commitment to living more authentically, is the opportunity we give ourselves and others we encounter to engage in genuine relationship. Personal authenticity can have a revelatory and revolutionary effect upon our relationships with others, inviting the other to meet us genuinely, and creating conditions that can prompt…
Personal Authenticity Part 4: being and becoming
The quest of developing personal authenticity is one that really implies a litany of questions that are both difficult to ask and difficult to answer: ‘who am I?’ ‘what is my context?’ ‘how long do I have to live?’ ‘what truly matters to me?’ ‘do the values I believe I have manifest in my actions?’…
9 ways we hurt one another
What does not kill me makes me stronger Nietzsche Finding Words Inflicting suffering upon another person is universally accepted as being morally wrong. But it is done all of the time, every day of the week, every hour of the day, to the extent that the world is never short of pain and suffering caused…
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…
When the Past is Present
As children we absorb experiences and information around us without necessarily having the ability or maturity to defend ourselves and our best interests against it, or to make complete rational sense of it at the time. This is particularly true of behaviours and emotions both expressed and unexpressed in the relationships around us when we…
The Traumatised Psyche
Trauma in Simple Terms Psychological trauma describes the experience of difficult and distressing events or extended circumstances that we have suffered in life with which we have been unable to cope, give a clear rationale, recover or learn from at the time they happened. Instead of being able to make rational and emotional sense of…
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…
Keeping a Therapy Journal or Notebook
Our psyche tends to focus on the familiar and to obscure the unfamiliar. Like forgetting a dream a few minutes after you wake, we can forget key insights in therapy shortly after the session. Keeping a notebook in which you record your insights, memories, dreams, things you want to focus on, questions that come up,…
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…
The Outsider Part 3: whistleblowers, and surviving the inauthentic workplace
Whistleblowers are, in my view, the unsung heroes of our day. They are the rare people of personal integrity, driven by force of conscience against a sea of resistance, by an inner compass that is sadly lacking in the majority who conform to the prevailing politic of the workplace or culture. If this were not…
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…
Prevalence of Autism Study Comparing Vaccination Schedules in a Pediatric Patient Population
Approx. 2 Min New comparative Autism Rate Data Study Published March 14, 2019 Dr. Paul Thomas commissioned an independent quality assurance project. The researcher found 3,345 patients born into Thomas’ practice in the last 10.5 years. 715 in his practice had ZERO vaccines. Autism rate 1 in 715. Remaining 2,630 followed his “vaccine friendly” getting…
Mental Health Feedback: help me help you
In a continual effort to expand my understanding of the needs of people who need help, I wanted to invite people to tell me something about their experiences of seeking help or being helped and what could be of greater helpf to them during times of need. Your comments are valuable in developing my own…
Depression Part 5: Listening to Elvis
“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…
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Still Like A House Fractured? No, curiously I feel fractured but I see myself in the mirror and I’m whole, standing still like a house. The mirror may be fractured, but my eyes still swivel like windows in this head, guided by a nose that acts as a weather vane. I open and close my…
Self-development Courses
Courses – coming soon I’m currently designing a series of what I anticipate will be twelve week courses focussing on specific topics to help improve the quality of your life through awareness development, psycho-education and focussed therapeutic work where appropriate. Courses will comprise weekly sessions, experiential learning, workbooks, therapeutic tasks and between-session support to help…
Spirituality II: Developing an Existential Practice
In an earlier post I outlined an existential perspective on spirituality as a means of responding to existential needs and questions by recognising and forming a more meaningful relationship to the bigger context in which we live as human beings. In this post I list some of the pragmatic aspects of developing existential awareness by…
Ways of passing the time
Indifference Here I am and there you are. And there’s the clock on the wall. I pretend I don’t want anything from you. You pretend you don’t want anything from me. Our pretending binds us like a form of artificial intimacy. And keeps us hungry, a million miles apart. Conversation I pretend I’m listening to…
Recovering your self in 7 days
Hollowday There’s a hollow in me; an absence. Like a piece of furniture missing from a room I haven’t been in for years. I enter knowing something’s changed and I can’t say what. There’s just the feeling. Hollow. Dumbday I feel dirty on the inside. I scrub the outside; wet hair, towel and soap, and…
Spirituality I: An Existential Perspective
“The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, […] experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.” Nietzsche A feature of the work that I do with people who request it, is helping them…
PTSD, cPTSD, and Dissociative Experiences
I wanted to write something about the relationship some of us have to traumatic experiences from our past. It seems important that I write this from an intuitive, non-technical place. For me, this is because intution – as opposed to fear – is what we need to develop regarding our power to manage our way…
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. …
On choosing a psychotherapist
When choosing the right psychotherapist it’s important to remember some basic facts about psychotherapy if you want it to work for you: Psychotherapy is founded upon a trustworthy, secure relationship. The best evidence from the longest-term study supporting psychotherapy’s effectiveness in helping people make changes in their lives says that the quality of the therapeutic…
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…
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…
Personal Authenticity Part 3: the healing power of truth
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32 When it comes to healing ourselves from significant troubles, distresses, wounds, afflictions and traumas that we may have suffered, the one thing that I have found to be of primary importance is clearing any and all impediments to our seeing…
The Outsider Part 1: clarifying our place in society
If there’s one area of my work that I have a special interest in it’s working with people who feel like they don’t fit in or who find themselves rejected by the group. I wanted to start writing a series of posts on this subject because of the confusion and assumptions that we typically make…
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…
Existential Analysis: how I work with you
I first read Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea” – a classic existential novel – when I was nineteen. From a place of teenage angst it struck a chord with me as I recognised the overwhelming sensitivities I felt at the time and typically kept to myself. Sartre speaks of experiencing the world in a felt way; a…
Narcissistic Abuse Part 1: the tools of manipulation
Normalisation of Narcissistic Behaviour Predatory narcissists are extremely damaged individuals who have gained a foothold and greater and greater influence in our society by virtue of our celebration of qualities towards which narcissists gravitate: celebrity worship, unquestioned obedience to authority figures, status obsessions, pre-occupation with appearances, the absence of depth of character and personal integrity,…
‘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…
Personal Authenticity Part 2: a good or bad idea?
“The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be…” Socrates 469-399 B.C. Personal authenticity has some diverse definitions, especially within philosophy. I define it within my work as a psychotherapist as involving “a commitment to being aware of and honest with…
Life Coaching
I offer a Life Coaching service which supports people in achieving their personal development aims. Life Coaching differs from psychotherapy, but shares some areas of crossover. Essentially Life Coaching is about addressing three main support needs: Guidance, Empowerment and Improvement. The first step in the Life Coaching process is our Introductory meeting, followed by an…
Personal Authenticity Part 1: the courage to stick your neck out
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” -Søren Kierkegaard I read Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Marcel, Unamuno, Heidegger and a bunch of other guys whilst searching for ‘meaning’ during and after my studies as a psychotherapist. And whilst they all helped the intellectual journey of finding words to grapple with the…
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…
Madness: a sane response to an insane world
R.D. Laing Renowned Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing once said “madness is a sane response to an insane world”. We live in a world that promotes ideas of normality and abnormality and many of us can spend years trying to figure out which category we fall into, adjusting our words, thoughts and behaviours in accordance with…
