A number of themes seem to surface repeatedly in my work with clients. I thought it might be useful to write about my experience of some of these repeating themes and ideas, so here is the first post in the series. It takes courage to ask for help Starting at the beginning, I have come to realise that most people who contact me about starting counselling have taken a hugely courageous step in order to email or text me, or to make a phone call. It's not at all easy to accept t

I was about to write a piece on relationships and attachments, but found everything I wanted to say in this excellent article on http://www.psychalive.org/where-relationship-patterns-come-from/. (Lightly edited.) In an ideal world, we would all be born with perfectly attuned parents who love us truly and are there for us whenever we need them, but who also give us just the right amount of space and independence to flourish and fully develop our unique selves. Parents would pr

In my last post, we thought about choosing the right therapist. This post looks at the psychodynamic approach, a direct development of Freudian analysis. The psychodynamic approach starts with the idea that we all have an ‘inner world’ that has a powerful influence on how we think, feel and behave. Our inner world is comprised of feelings, memories, beliefs and fantasies. It is partly conscious, meaning we have access to it. But it is largely unconscious, meaning that we are