Blog

Helping our clients to cultivate high levels of self-compassion can assist them in transforming their relationship with themselves. Dr Chris Irons, a clinical psychologist and specialist in Compassion Focused Therapy, introduces an approach that is increasingly helping clients with a wide range of psychological difficulties, and explains why learning to practice self-compassion involves real strength and courage.

NHS treatments for medically unexplained symptoms tend to focus on either the physical or the psychological aspect. This has led Professor Helen Payne, one of the leaders in embodied psychotherapy, to devise the BodyMind Approach, which uses creative expression to help people listen to their body’s signals and self-manage symptoms. In the third of four blogs, she explores the complex relationship between mind and body.

The RECON protocol is a way of working with traumatic memories that fits with any modality, and helps clients access their resilience to move beyond pain. Ahead of a two-day Psychotherapy Excellence workshop in November, leading trauma specialist Courtney Armstrong takes us through this five-step process.

NHS treatments for medically unexplained symptoms tend to focus on either the physical or the psychological aspect. This has led Professor Helen Payne, one of the leaders in embodied psychotherapy, to devise the BodyMind Approach, which uses creative expression to help people listen to their body’s signals and self-manage symptoms. In the second of four blogs, she explains how unconscious physiological habits can become stuck in the sensory-motor system.

Should clients keep their phones on or off during sessions? For a therapist working with refugees, this is a particularly pressing and complex question. Jude Boyles is the Manager and a therapist of a Refugee Council therapy service based in South Yorkshire, offering therapy to Syrian refugees resettled via the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Programme (VPRS). In her third occasional blog about this work, she discusses the role of mobiles in the lives of refugees, and the dilemma for the therapist when a client wishes to share images.

NHS treatments for medically unexplained symptoms tend to focus on either the physical or the psychological aspect. This has led Professor Helen Payne, one of the leaders in embodied psychotherapy, to devise the BodyMind Approach, which uses creative expression to help people listen to their body’s signals and self-manage symptoms. In the first of four blogs, she introduces this ‘bottom up’ method.

The focus of World Mental Health Day this year is suicide prevention. But when it comes to the accepted mainstream practice of risk assessment tools, are tick boxes and questionnaires getting in the way of potent therapeutic discourse? Dr Andrew Reeves, who has written extensively about working relationally with risk, calls for therapists to be brave, step forward, and really meet clients in their suicidal place.

The practice of existential therapy has often been reserved for those ‘in the know’. But at this time of global turmoil, it may well be coming in to its own. Emmy van Deurzen, founder of the Existential Academy and editor of the new Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, invites us to have our minds blown – in a good way.

What does a poetry therapy session consist of, and what can the trained practitioner bring to the creative encounter? To mark National Poetry Day in the UK, writer and trained poetry therapist Victoria Field considers how both reading and writing poems can promote health and wellbeing – and suggests we psychotherapists pick up our pens.