Some things to consider before being assessed for a psychiatric diagnosis or treatment
Tag: mental health
Authority Part 1: Common Sense and Freedom
How subservience to toxic authority erodes individual freedom, power and authenticity.
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…
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 and 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
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one…
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…
Narcissistic Abuse Part 2: from darkness to light
Cast a Giant Shadow Recovering from narcissistic abuse and other forms of exploitation that have gone on for months or years can be a painful experience as we re-emerge from breakdown. Malignant and predatory narcissists are inherently parasitic upon others, alternately taking what they want from victims to supply their own needs at the other’s…
Choosing Public Sector or Private Therapeutic Support
Choosing between public and private psychotherapy, counselling and mental health support
Mental distress: 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…
