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Our lively editorial platform, serving you with enriching and engaging reads from world leading therapists, psychologists and other key voices several times a week.

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Why Neurotic Solutions Are So Hard to Change

  • 29th Apr 2019
  • Joan Woodward

Thirty years ago, Joan Woodward coined the phrase ‘Neurotic Solutions’ to describe compulsive and unhelpful patterns of behaviour that we are driven to keep putting into practice because they were originally experienced as necessary for survival. Revisiting the concept for a new book, she explains why attachment theory is the key to helping clients break this deadlock

Creativity and Trauma - 4/5

  • 26th Apr 2019
  • Sarah Van Gogh

Last week, Sarah Van Gogh introduced us to Shaz, a middle-aged woman of Pakistani heritage experiencing chronic pain in her shoulders. In the penultimate part of this series on working creatively with trauma, we see how facilitating an imaginary dialogue between the client and a mysterious figure led the past to lessen its grip.

How Older Clients Help Us Grow

  • 24th Apr 2019
  • Helen Kewell

Older people have often been overlooked in psychotherapy literature, and Freud even went so far as to state that people over 50 could not benefit from psychoanalysis. For Helen Kewell, this is a huge loss, both for an aging population that needs support, and for the therapy profession itself. The author of a new book of case studies focused on older clients, here she explains why such work is not just necessary and meaningful, but helps us grow as therapists.

Creativity and Trauma - 3/5

  • 19th Apr 2019
  • Sarah Van Gogh

Working imaginatively with what a client brings, rather than interpreting it, can help us to amplify unconscious material and explore feelings. This, argues Sarah Van Gogh, is where real change lies. In the next two parts of her series on creativity and trauma, she presents case extracts that reveal how imaginary dialogue helped a client with chronic back pain.

Working with the Breath

  • 16th Apr 2019
  • Michael Soth

For leading body psychotherapist Michael Soth, the main regulator of the intensity of feeling – for both client and therapist – is the breath. But how much do most of us really know or understand about breathing? And how can we navigate the myriad existing traditions and techniques of breathwork? In preparation for a groundbreaking CPD weekend in May, here he outlines the importance of an integrative approach to working actively with the breath.

Creativity and Trauma - 2/5

  • 13th Apr 2019
  • Sarah Van Gogh

In our first Friday Focus series, Sarah Van Gogh is exploring the role of creativity in trauma work. Using the fictionalised case example of Belle and her recurring dream of a doomed astronaut, in her second blog she explores how working imaginatively with dreams can help clients to gradually integrate early trauma.

Stress: A Neurobiological Friend or Foe?

  • 10th Apr 2019
  • Tracy Jarvis

What do Polyvagal Theory, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing and Interpersonal Neurobiology have in common? They all encourage nervous system awareness and regulation as a key to wellbeing. To mark Stress Awareness Month this April, psychotherapist and Director of Psychotherapy Excellence, Tracy Jarvis, explains how we can help clients to identify positive and negative stress, befriend their bodies, and ultimately regulate their own nervous systems.

Creativity and Trauma - 1/5

  • 5th Apr 2019
  • Sarah Van Gogh

In the first of our Friday Focus series, Sarah Van Gogh will be exploring the role of creativity in trauma work. Over the next four weeks, she will show how helping traumatised clients to express themselves imaginatively increases their capacity to process un-integrated experiences. Today, she introduces this ‘third way’ of working with trauma, which neither risks destabilisation on the one hand, or superficial engagement on the other. On subsequent Fridays, she will use fictionalised case vignettes to illustrate how working with music, poetry or the client’s own imaginings can unfold in practice.

Think You Have No Autistic Clients?

  • 2nd Apr 2019
  • Caroline Hearst

How many of your therapy clients are autistic? And what about your therapist colleagues? Caroline Hearst, who trained as an art psychotherapist and now works as an autism acceptance educator, suggests the numbers are far higher than we think. To mark World Autism Awareness Day, the founder of Autism Matters talks training gaps, internalised oppression, and the dangers of assuming neurotypicality and pathologising autism.