Blog

In this guest article from Psychotherapy Networker, pioneering trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk took aim not only at the politics within the therapy field that determine what diagnoses get into the DSM, but the politics in the larger arena that lead people to ignore the prevalence of trauma in society.

We are in the midst of Mental Health Awareness Week. But for Benjamin Fry, the term is highly misleading. The founder of residential trauma treatment centre Khiron House, Fry believes we can only understand ‘mental health’ by going back to the body, getting curious about the nervous system, and helping our clients to see their ‘invisible lions’.

Patient listening may not get its due in current parenting advice. But giving children a daily opportunity to talk about anger and anxiety can help them improve emotion regulation, and transform family life. Following National Children’s Day yesterday, child therapist and Clinical Professor of Psychology Kenneth Barish explains why setting aside just 10 minutes a day may be the most important change parents who are clients can make.

Psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE has spent 25 years working with bereaved families. Over the next eight weeks, the author of Grief Works will share what she has learned about helping people to grieve and, in time, to rebuild their lives. Key to this is her concept of the ‘pillars of strength’ – in today’s blog, Samuel explains how she developed these, and introduces the first pillar.

Chronic fatigue is still vastly misunderstood – and psychotherapy is a significant culprit. To mark ME Awareness Week, somatic-relational psychotherapist Tom Warnecke concludes his myth-busting two-part blog on working with chronic immunological and neurological diseases, with thoughts on prognosis and the therapeutic frame. Above all, he argues, we mustn’t become ‘trapped’ by the single issue and blind to multiple meanings.

Chronic fatigue is still vastly misunderstood – and psychotherapy is a significant culprit. To mark ME Awareness Week, somatic-relational psychotherapist Tom Warnecke busts some myths with a two-part blog on working with chronic immunological and neurological diseases. Today, he outlines treatment approaches, and considers how misconceptions about chronic fatigue can impact the therapeutic alliance. Tomorrow, he will discuss implications for meaning making and the therapeutic frame.

Creativity is an energy that is available to all of us. Making room for a song, poem or image in a session can help us out of therapeutic ruts, turbo-boost clinical work, and gently assist traumatised clients to unfreeze their unconscious. So, asks Sarah Van Gogh in the final part of her blog series on creativity and trauma – wouldn’t we be foolish not to invite its healing power into the consulting room, whatever our therapeutic modality?

A pregnant woman doesn’t just share her body with the growing baby – she shares her state of mind. To mark the start of Maternal Mental Health Month, Sue Gerhardt, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author of the landmark Why Love Matters, explains why supporting pregnant women is vital for the physical and psychological wellbeing of the next generation.

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

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.