Blog

Are you all set for the most dysfunctional 10 days in the UK calendar? Christmas may be the most wonderful time of the year – but it can also be an emotional minefield. Pip Weitz, of the Academy for Online Counselling & Psychotherapy, knows what a useful tool online apps can be over this period, helping people manage everything from panic attacks to alcohol use. Here, she suggests a few apps you might want to share with your clients to help them cope over the Christmas break.

Ron Taffel isn’t the same therapist he was a decade ago – and he reckons that has a lot to do with working with millennials. Today’s 18-35 year olds are outspoken and consumer-savvy. But they are also intensely vulnerable, and struggling to hang on to meaning in a world of fast-talking and fast-forgetting. In an excerpt from his Psychotherapy Networker article, Taffel explains how Millennials have helped him to re-examine many basic assumptions about therapy.

To self-disclose, or not to self-disclose? That is the perennial question. Unfortunately, the answer given in trainings and discussion groups is often a debate-dampening “it depends on the situation”. For Graham S Danzer, author of Therapist Self-Disclosure: An Evidence-Based Guide for Practitioners, this just isn’t good enough. Here, he explains how the research on self-disclosure can help us to make individual clinical decisions.

What does climate change have to do with grief work? And why are play, humour and creative imagination such important psychological tools at this time? In Friday’s Blog post, ahead of the Tavistock’s Ecology, Psychoanalysis and Global Warming conference, Paul Hoggett explained why therapists have a vital role in confronting climate change. Following a deep and exciting weekend of discussions, Chair of the Climate Psychology Alliance Chris Robertson now looks to the other side of environmental collapse.

This weekend, psychotherapists, psychologists, philosophers, scientists and activists will come together to explore the traumatic reality of climate change. What can therapists contribute to the picture? And how might global warming be permeating our consulting rooms? Paul Hoggett, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and co-founder of the Climate Psychology Alliance, thinks we can help humankind understand it’s anxiety, anger, despair and denial – and outlines three key ways therapists can contribute to positive change.

Is the spectre of Christmas showing up in your consulting room yet? For those of our clients whose culture celebrates Christmas, this can be a season of celebration, optimism and togetherness. But it can equally be a time of increased financial, family and social pressures, with associated spikes in domestic violence and suicide rates. Either way, December is a month when powerful therapeutic work can be done: not for nothing has Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol been dubbed the first act of interpersonal psychoanalysis. Here are six ways in which Christmas may be manifesting in your consulting room.

Some only do what they feel like doing. Others only do what they think they ought to do. And then there is the teenager we are perhaps least likely to encounter at the start of therapy, and most hopeful to see at the end – one who has a growing sense of ownership of his life, and interest in his future. To mark the publication of her new book, Adolescent Psychotherapy: A Radical Relational Approach, Bronagh Starrs shares her concept of ‘configuration styles’ – and explains how they can help us find a therapeutic focus.

From David Bowie and The Beatles to the Myers-Briggs test and Alcoholics Anonymous, Jung’s influence ranges from pop culture to popular psychology. What sometimes slips our notice is his enduring relevance for today’s psychotherapists. To mark the publication today of her new book, C.G. Jung: The Basics, Ruth Williams tells us why it is high time young therapists were reintroduced to Jung – and why asking candid questions about his personal views has to be a key part of that process.

What can therapy teach us about love, and love about therapy? Following the death of her partner of 32 years, Lisa Appignanesi recently published a striking memoir of bereavement interwoven with psychoanalytic approaches to mourning. Ahead of her appearance at the Tavistock Relationships conference later this month, she reflects on coupledom through the rear-view mirror, shares some early marriage guidance tips from the unlikely pen of 19th century French writer Honore de Balzac – and issues a challenge to today’s couples therapists.

Alcohol Awareness Week tends to focus our thoughts on those who drink. But what about the clients who grew up with alcoholics? Are there particular aspects of this experience that we need to be aware of? It was only after he started working for the National Association for Children of Alcoholics that Josh Connolly started to confront the reality of his own childhood. Here, he shares his story, and the vital importance of validation in his own therapeutic journey.