Blog

A link between anxiety and neurodivergence is widely observed and commented upon by mental health professionals – yet often narrowly understood. To mark the start of Mental Health Awareness Week 2023, neurodivergent therapist Angela Kelly asks us to centre an appreciation of the lived experience of being an individual who learns, thinks or processes differently in a world designed for the neuromajority, including the impact of invalidation trauma.

How can therapists contribute to a more open culture around death and dying? As we focus on supporting our clients through their grief, we can at times be in danger of estranging ourselves from our own. To coincide with Dying Matters Awareness Week 2023, which is encouraging conversations about death, dying and grief in the workplace, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Anne Adelman shares a very personal experience of loss.

The unfolding climate catastrophe is a space of collective trauma, shared by both client and therapist. What qualities and capacities are required of us to work in the face of, and within, this existential crisis? How might the pandemic have prepared us for this task? Judith Anderson, Jungian Analytical Psychotherapist and Chair of the Climate Psychology Alliance, marks Earth Day 2023 with a call to therapists to carry both fearlessness and fearfulness in our clinical work – and to step beyond its borders in pursuit of systemic change.

When a dream is brought to therapy we may welcome it as a gift. But practitioners can also feel unprepared, put on the spot, puzzled by vastly different theoretical attitudes and unsure where to begin. Mark Blagrove, Professor of Psychology and author of a new book about the science and art of dreaming, outlines a simple yet enlightening technique devised by the psychoanalyst Montague Ullman – one that might help therapists develop confidence and curiosity when encountering clients’ dreams, and increase our empathy too.

Some clients seek out specialist treatment for sex or porn addiction. Others bring their compulsive sexual behaviour into general therapy. Psychotherapist Dr Paula Hall, founder of the UK’s largest sex and porn addiction therapy service, has created a not-for-profit app that clients and non-specialist clinicians can incorporate into their ongoing work as an accessible resource – using CBT, ACT and psychodynamic strategies to address both unwanted behaviours and underlying causes.

When does child safeguarding become a safeguarding issue in its own right? When child protection procedures are implemented without cultural competence, and without listening to the experiences of the children whose family roles and values are being pathologised. Gretchen Precey, independent social worker, draws therapists’ attention to the traumatising impact of some state interventions as she shares her encounter with one Eritrean teenager whose anxiety, depression and tics told a complex story.

Far from the wishy-washy passivity with which it is sometimes associated, person-centered therapy has in fact been busy taking on new and exciting forms. Ahead of a FREE live workshop this Friday (March 17 2023), leading author and trainer Mick Cooper outlines key developments in this dynamic contemporary field, including shifts around process direction and relational depth, and some proactively person-centered approaches to research.

Institutional anxiety, unrealistic expectations around risk, and a corrosive undermining of clinical work… University counsellors are under huge pressure, argues psychoanalytic psychotherapist Alan Percy, and the emphasis on waiting lists is both compounding the problem and missing the point. As we mark University Mental Health Day 2023, the former Head of Counselling Service at University of Oxford considers dynamics at play in the university sector, including media attention around suicides – and speaks up for the vital role and proven value of short-term student counselling.

More likely to seek our support, yet less likely to experience a good therapeutic outcome: evidence suggests sexual minority women are being underserved in therapy. As we mark International Women’s Day 2023, Counselling Psychologist and ACT trainer Aisling Leonard-Curtin considers what ‘embracing equity’ means for this client group, and suggests how therapists might develop our insight and resources so that all women – regardless of identity, orientation or behaviour – feel seen, heard and understood.

What are the four phases of the menstrual cycle, and how might we support a client to become more in tune with these inner seasons? In the second of two blog posts, embodied psychotherapist Kate Merrick outlines the hormonal fluctuations that can shape phenomenological experience for many clients, from states of clarity and creativity to irritability and heightened intuition – and invites us to work with, rather than against, these natural rhythms.