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When it comes to sexual issues, some of us may be avoiding the subject with clients while others are in danger of working beyond our competency. Where do the borders lie between ‘regular’ therapy and sex therapy? What kinds of physical difficulties and relational concerns can we listen out for? How might we make informed choices about professional development and referral? Beginning a new blog series, psychosexual therapist, supervisor and author Cate Campbell outlines the numerous ways that sexual issues may show up in therapy – or be lurking just out of sight.

How can we coax dormant motivation out of hiding? What part might compassion play when goals and momentum prove elusive? Susan Warren Warshow, author of The Therapist’s Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense and its forthcoming sequel, describes her work with one man whose sessions had become beset by vagueness – and shares three signs that a client’s motivation for change may be mobilising.

What particular dilemmas might we encounter, and what unconscious pressures might we experience, when working with individual clients on their relationship difficulties? In the final part of her series, couples therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Anne Power reflects on some common quandaries, including abusive relationships, partners who are critical of the therapy, and a pull towards psycho-education.

How can insights from Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy help individual clients? In the penultimate part of her series, couples therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Anne Power outlines the EFT approach to working with relationship conflict, including regulating relational distress, amplifying attachment meaning and enabling helpful exchange – and explains why the ‘Pursuer-Withdrawer’ dynamic is both so prevalent and so pernicious.

Learning to talk with a partner about sex and intimacy is an important skill, and one we can help clients develop through individual therapy. In the fourth part of her series, couples therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Anne Power explores various challenges and transitions that couples may experience in their sexual lives together – including aging, parenthood, and legacies of child sexual abuse – and shares how she learned as a therapist to broach the topic of sex.

Clients exploring their relationship difficulties in individual therapy are often preoccupied with one of two questions: ‘Is this really the person I married?’ or, ‘Is this truly The One?’ In the third part of her series, couples therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Anne Power observes the various ways in which relationships may begin, including through dating sites – and considers the role of the individual therapist in helping clients work through the fears, doubts, regrets and feelings of loss that can ensue.

When we fall in love, we may be reuniting with undeveloped, feared or even hated parts of the self. In the second instalment of her series about how insights from couple therapy can enrich work with individual clients, couples therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Anne Power looks at developmental and defensive relationship spirals, and shares her concept of ‘the fascinating and the familiar’ as a way to understand what we unconsciously look for in a partner.

How do insights from couple therapy enrich work with individual clients? In her new six-part series, couples therapist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Anne Power will share what she has learned about couple dynamics and suggest how these understandings and concepts can contribute to individual therapy – starting with the link between attachment strategies and escalating relationship cycles.

Taking a holiday from client work is an important practice that many therapists have difficulty with. As the traditional August break approaches, Dr Chris Irons, a clinical psychologist, specialist in Compassion Focused Therapy and creator of the Self-Compassion App, explains how insights and tips from CFT can help therapists to prepare ourselves – as well as our clients – for holiday season.

Understanding how our individual wellbeing is impacted by the people around us, and by wider systemic and structural forces, can be useful for all clients – and may be particularly powerful for LGBTQ+ individuals who experience self-blame. Brendan Dunlop, author of The Queer Mental Health Workbook, shares a conceptualisation for helping clients to understand the aetiology of some difficulties.