Blog

Unattended shame can be one of the biggest obstacles in therapy – and it doesn’t always belong to our clients. How might we spot when shame is operating within us, as therapists, during a session? And what can we do about it? Susan Warren Warshow, author of A Therapist’s Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense, shares some typical thought patterns and bodily sensations to look out for, and offers some compassionate reflections to help hardworking but only-human therapists transcend shame.

We tend to focus on how therapy changes clients. But what about how it changes us, as therapists? To celebrate Children’s Mental Health Week 2022, with its theme of ‘Growing Together’, leading child psychotherapist Tamsin Cottis reflects on therapy as a dynamic two-way process, as she shares how one isolated young client’s interest in swimming became the key to a mutually enlivening encounter.

Being able to both self-soothe and to ask for support is a gift we can give children for life… once we adults have developed the skill ourselves. To mark Children’s Mental Health Week 2022 with its theme of ‘Growing Together’, Dr. Martha Straus, leading child and adolescent clinical psychologist and author of Cool, Calm & Connected, explains why those of us who live and work with children, or support the grown-ups in their lives, need to make a commitment to co-regulation.

Self-fulfilling prophecies can trap damaged children in cycles of exclusions and discipline. Early unsafe environments become internal worlds, which may then in turn be projected into relationships with school staff. To coincide with Children’s Mental Health Week 2022, with its theme of ‘Growing Together’, child psychotherapist and director of Your Space Therapies Emma Connor considers how child prophecies come to be fulfilled – and shares some of the relational keys she has found to this difficult but vital work.

How can we best support children’s emotional growth? What do today’s developing minds need in order to cope with tomorrow’s uncertain world? Next Friday, join world-leading specialists for PESI UK’s one-off online conference in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre, and learn key psychological and neurobiological interventions for building growth and resilience together.

What if insight and motivation are overrated when it comes to change? Peter Fraenkel, author and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, introduces the approach he has developed for working with clients who feel un-motivated in life and stuck and hopeless in therapy, including the importance of encouraging ‘creative experiments with possibility’ – and explains why Nike might just have got it right.

From shame, blame and guilt to the stress of official proceedings and the loneliness of disenfranchised grief, individuals bereaved through a drug- or alcohol-related death may require specific support in counselling. In the second of two blogs, Peter Cartwright, counsellor, author and specialist in substance-related bereavements, shows how his five-part framework can help us meet these too often neglected needs.

What specific support is needed by individuals who have lost someone through a drug- or alcohol-related death? In the first of two blog posts, Peter Cartwright, counsellor, author and specialist in substance-related bereavements, shares a framework for working with the complex grief experiences of this sadly ever-growing client group.

As the coronavirus crisis disrupts clients’ usual routines and attachments, how do we assess for problematic drinking, and support clients to find alternative sources of safety and security? To mark Alcohol Awareness Week, addiction specialist Stefan Walters shares some helpful questions for exploring clients’ relationships with alcohol during the pandemic.

The focus of World Mental Health Day this year is suicide prevention. But when it comes to the accepted mainstream practice of risk assessment tools, are tick boxes and questionnaires getting in the way of potent therapeutic discourse? Dr Andrew Reeves, who has written extensively about working relationally with risk, calls for therapists to be brave, step forward, and really meet clients in their suicidal place.