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

Whilst researching how to help clients with anxiety, I came across these top tips by Michaela McCarthy of The Awareness Centre in Clapham, London: There’s an old adage that says anxiety is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but gets you nowhere. If you’ve ever suffered from anxiety then you’ll know just how much time it can take up worrying about things that may never happen. Anxiety can affect you physically, mentally and emotionally, even though it can somet

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

If you’re reading this, you may have reached a point where you feel that it might be helpful to talk to someone who isn’t a family member or friend about what you are finding problematic in your life. You would like to find a counsellor who you can talk to and who will listen and support you. You may have looked on the BACP’s Find a Therapist directory, or the Counselling Directory, and found that there are literally thousands of people to choose from. So how do you go about