Blog

From working with resistance to understanding the role of integration, therapy and yoga have much to say to each other. In the third part of her series on yoga for ‘talk therapists’, Counselling Psychologist and former yoga teacher Cleandra Waldron shares how yoga has helped her reflect on the function and goals of therapy, the common threads of human distress, the ‘extraordinary powers’ of trauma survivors – and the ‘permission’ from which all therapy clients can benefit.

When does stuckness give way to change in therapy? How does a resisting client become a working partner? The key, of course, lies not in exerting pressure but rather in exploring the cost of old patterns and empowering a sense of choice. Susan Warren Warshow, psychotherapist, author and founder of Dynamic Emotion Focused Therapy, reflects on the painful intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of repressing feelings – and how identifying these with compassion can help our clients leverage their healthy internal force.

Dr Kathrin Stauffer on working with early emotional neglect, from common presentations and pitfalls to the role of creative resourcing and countertransferential responses – and the vital importance of scaling down the challenge. Part 4 in our new PESI UK Blog series, Free Clinical Conversations: An Hour With an Expert.

As therapists, we are used to working with a degree of ambivalence about being ‘seen’. But what about those clients, including individuals with body dysmorphic disorder, for whom the experience of being looked at can feel unbearable? How might we work in face-to-face therapy when our own gaze causes intense anguish? Psychotherapist Dr Nicole Schnackenberg, a specialist in BDD, discusses helpful conceptualisations, adjustments and meeting points when we’re in the room with body-focused shame.

Shame is an exceedingly vulnerable state that calls for great tenderness and delicacy on the part of the therapist – as Susan Warren Warshow learned through trial and error. Here, the author of The Therapist’s Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense and her upcoming The Practice of DEFT: A Shame Sensitive Workbook reflects on the process of developing her shame sensitivity – including requesting feedback, reframing interventions and communicating compassion for internal conflict.

Interest in ADHD is rising, in both the wider culture and among therapy clients. Yet many therapists know little about the real nature of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and many people with undiagnosed ADHD do not realise it is a central part of their problems. In the second of two posts, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and ADHD specialist Phil Mollon sets out four key tasks for therapy when a client is struggling with this brain-based condition, suggests how we might spot its presence early in the therapeutic encounter, and draws our empathic attention to the central and ever-spiralling experience of shame.

Making mental health a priority is something we therapists commit ourselves to on a daily basis… except, perhaps, when it comes to our own. To mark World Mental Health Day 2022, we recommend posts from fellow therapists that inspire us to focus on our own wellbeing – whether we’re rebalancing our nervous systems, getting playful, integrating mindfulness, movement and self-compassion, or addressing our shame and embracing our failures.

How can we help clients to access and attend to intense and difficult feelings that may be deeply buried? Susan Warren Warshow, author of The Therapist’s Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense and its forthcoming sequel, shares 10 ways in which we can support our clients to turn towards their unconscious affect, from clarifying the nature of feelings to expressing care for these ‘children at the door’.

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.

The connection between cooking and storytelling runs deep, and our personal narratives around food are rich with psychological information. In her fourth blog about her Kitchen Therapy practice, Charlotte Hastings considers the stories we tell ourselves at all stages of the cooking process, from selecting a recipe to ‘judging’ what we have produced.