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…
Tag: mental health
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. …
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…
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…
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…
‘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…
Choosing Public Sector or Private Therapeutic Support
Choosing between public and private psychotherapy, counselling and mental health support
I feel like I’m going mad: is there something wrong with me?
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 are busy trying to figure out which category we fall into, adjusting our words, thoughts and behaviours in accordance with accepted norms, lest…
