Entitlement and Lack of Generosity I looked that the entitlement mindset in an earlier article, which examined how this mindset is a symptom of unmet infantile needs that carry the expectation that other adults owe us something. Freud referred to the Anal stage of child development in his early theories whereby interruption of the stage…
Tag: therapy
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…
Protected: Depression Part 4: downhill or uphill?
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Protected: Depression Part 3: ‘bad’ feelings, alcohol and substance misuse
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Protected: Depression Part 2: a well-worn path
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Protected: The Outsider Part 2: living off-label
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CBT: a low-cost ‘cure’ for psychiatric ‘Illness’?
“The fact remains that the construct of psychiatric diagnosis and the construct of a psychological model aligning itself to it are both divorced from the actual, more complex and individuated realities of the particular patient and the individual practitioner. The technocratic relationship of the first denies the non-mechanistic, much more complex organic nature of the…
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…
The Outsider Part 1: clarifying our place in society
“You were born an original, don’t die a copy.” -John Mason 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 or rejecting of the group. I wanted to start writing a series of…
Mindset Part 12: 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…
Protected: The Outsider Part 6: a sane response to an insane world
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Protected: Psychotherapy Part 6: A Guide to Making the Most of Your Sessions
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Psychotherapy Part 5: 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…
Protected: Psychotherapy Part 4: existential practice
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Psychotherapy Part 3: Existential Analysis, Integrative Psychotherapy and Other Approaches to Helping
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. The terms counsellor, therapist and psychotherapist are, for example, often used interchangeably but do not necessarily express the same activities. So with that disclaimer, here is my simple outline of…