Blog

For complex reasons, therapeutic support is often inaccessible or poorly attuned to the needs of parents caring for children with a disability. Joanna Griffin, author, counselling psychologist and parent carer, shares insights from her research – and her lived experience – of what counselling can be doing to help.

Clients who were neglected as children are likely to have fewer psychological resources, leading to a life of constant overstretching. How can we help such individuals to build ‘psychological muscle’ and experience a felt sense of achievement – without risking overwhelm? Body psychotherapist and author Kathrin Stauffer introduces the concept of ‘dosing down’.

Stephen Porges on the intimate connection between our social world and our visceral organs, the impact of stress and trauma on physiological state, and why the pandemic has left even the founder of Polyvagal Theory struggling “to feel comfortable in the presence of others”.

New windows on risk have been opened by online therapy with children and young people. In her third occasional blog about her work, independent social worker Gretchen Precey shares some of the emerging dilemmas with which our safeguarding procedures and trainings need to keep pace – from the unseen presence of family members to what we might glimpse on the mantlepiece.

The sharing of sexual images without consent is on the rise, including among school-age children. Renée Danziger, psychoanalyst, social scientist and author of Radical Revenge, discusses the life-changing impact of these acts, and the powerful and complex feelings we may encounter when victims of revenge porn come to therapy.