Blog

Learn direct from some of the foremost female originators and innovators in trauma therapy this November at PESI UK’s international Women, Trauma and Mental Health conference.

Invisible influences from our ancestral pasts can prevent us from really seeing our children in the present. In the seventh part of her blog series, Nicola Mackay, a clinical physicist turned constellation therapist and researcher, discusses how one client’s ruptured relationship with her adult daughter began to heal when she confronted her family history of anger and sacrifice.

A recent experience in her own home has forced Anthea Benjamin to re-confront women’s vulnerability in the presence of male privilege – and how suddenly our sense of safety may be stolen. Ahead of PESI UK’s Women, Trauma and Mental Health conference next week, the psychotherapist reflects on oppression as trauma, the key concept of misogynoir, and the collective work needed in the face of an epidemic of violence towards women and girls.

What can we do to help women befriend their bodies? How might we invite self-disclosure around race-based trauma? What are the latest insights into traumatic grief? How can we be truly present with our female clients – while avoiding vicarious trauma? Join world-leading trauma innovators live and online from November 18-19 to get the whole picture on women and trauma.

The notion of inherited ‘relationship promises’ can shed a helpful light on difficulties within couples – including a common experience for many women of feeling ‘unseen’ within their relationship. In the sixth part of her blog series, Nicola Mackay, a clinical physicist turned constellation therapist and researcher, shares how constellation work with one couple helped them to remove an invisible barrier to commitment.

Unless we have taken training in nutrition, or are working with eating disorders, we may never broach the topic of food with our clients. This is a shame, suggests attachment-informed counselling psychologist Julie Friend, because such conversations can provide a feast of helpful therapeutic insights – even when a banana is just a banana.

What is the significance of the maternal line in family and ancestral constellation therapy? What does it mean for our clients when this line is ‘reversed’? In the fifth part of her blog series, Nicola Mackay, a clinical physicist turned constellation therapist and researcher, explores a common theme in so many family histories – that of missing children and grieving mothers.

Widely used by sex and relationship therapists, Sensate Focus can help clients to reduce anxiety around sexual intimacy and to reawaken sensuality. Psychosexual therapist and author Silva Neves outlines the five phases of this common intervention, taking in the role of the therapist and the room it affords for inclusive and creative adjustment.

Bringing together pioneering women practitioners in the fields of trauma and mental health – including Susie Orbach, Pat Ogden, Janina Fisher, Babette Rothschild and Gail Parker – this international conference on November 18 -19 will be a chance to learn together, and to stand together.

What is the significance of the paternal line in family and ancestral constellation therapy? How might a connection to the father be interrupted, and what impact can this have? In the fourth part of her blog series, Nicola Mackay, a clinical physicist turned constellation therapist and researcher, discusses some of the most destructive entanglements she encounters in therapy, and shares how a constellation helped one group member find his place.