Blog

Clients with addiction issues too often feel cast adrift from general therapy. What can non-specialist psychotherapists do to better support such individuals? Cece Sykes is an IFS senior trainer and consultant specialising in recovery from trauma and addiction. Ahead of a PESI UK training in Autumn 2023, she explains how a parts-based perspective on addictive processes can offer empowerment and hope to both clients and therapists – and outlines an understanding of the addictive cycle as a battle between inner teams of protectors rather than a self-destructive pathology.

What is resilience, and where does it come from? For psychoanalyst and professor of clinical psychology Clara Mucci, the answer lies securely with early attachment – while the responsibility must extend to political and social practices. Here, the author of Resilience and Survival discusses the central relevance of affect regulation to any understanding of resilience, and shares some clinical pointers for addressing interpersonal and intergenerational traumatisation.

We will all encounter the impact of reproductive trauma in our client work. But we may not always know it. From intergenerational trauma to disenfranchised grief, issues related to reproduction often lie deep beneath the presenting problem, sometimes buried within a family history or silenced by social norms. In the second of two posts ahead of PESI UK’s Women’s Trauma Summit 2022, reproductive psychologist Julie Bindeman draws our attention to the huge range of ways in which reproductive trauma can show up in clinic, and be experienced by our clients.

How can we extend the benefits of EMDR to better support LGBTQ+ clients? Ahead of her PESI UK masterclass on Attachment-Focused EMDR, Dr. Laurel Parnell outlines the potential impact of stigma and discrimination on relationships to self and others, and explains why she now includes an attachment-repair orientation in all phases of this work.

What can a deep and persistent feeling of loneliness tell us about a client’s inner world? How might we think about our role as therapist when working with an isolated client? To mark the start of Mental Health Awareness Week 2022, body psychotherapist and author Kathrin Stauffer shares her take on the theme of loneliness – and explains how both physical and non-physical contact can help is enquire into the nature of our client’s isolation.

Next month, PESI UK invites you to connect with Dr Rachel Yehuda, Dr Peter Levine, Dr Pat Ogden, Dr Stephen Porges, Dr Dwight Turner and other key voices in working with transgenerational trauma. Taking place from October 7-8 2021, this special two-day conference will take in the latest insights from epigenetics to IFS – and feature a very personal keynote from Baroness Floella Benjamin – as we consider how therapists can best support our clients to transform long legacies of pain.

What happens when we bring our food selves into the therapy room? How might food-related disclosure feed the relational dynamic? Attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist Andrea Oskis explains why she began creating recipes inspired by clients’ memories – and recalls how her own therapy was transformed when the therapist spotted her cookbooks.

How is the world of dating changing in the wake of the pandemic? In what ways might vaccine status be interacting with relationship values and attachment patterns? Psychosexual and relationship therapist and author Silva Neves surveys the new preoccupations facing single clients, and considers how core dating concerns around safety and autonomy have been further complicated by Covid-19.

Unresolved birth trauma can lead to clients presenting with depression, anxiety and attachment issues – years, and even generations, after the event. As we mark Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week and World Maternal Mental Health Day, Kate Foster, a psychotherapist and former manager of an NHS perinatal counselling service, explains why therapists shouldn’t confine our curiosity about birth experiences to the perinatal period.

Harlow’s monkeys taught us the impossibility of choosing between food and love. In her third blog about her Kitchen Therapy practice, Charlotte Hastings explains how she seeks to recombine the two by cooking with clients – an approach that originated in her work with addiction, and is rooted in ‘the shared sustenance of connection’.