Blog

What is it like for a parent when a child starts attending therapy? How can we better support guardians through this experience, and thus also improve the therapeutic process for our young clients? Suzanne Alderson, mother, author and founder of the charity Parenting Mental Health, offers a window into the thoughts, fears and un-voiced needs that may be racing through parents’ minds as they sit nervously in our waiting rooms.

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.

Interest in ADHD is rising, in both the wider culture and among therapy clients – with increasing numbers wishing to pursue, or to understand, a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Yet many therapists know very little about this brain-based condition, which also suffers from misleading publicity and a mis-directive name. In the first of two posts, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and ADHD specialist Phil Mollon outlines its core features, explaining how ADHD can lead to anxiety, procrastination, impulsiveness and emotional overwhelm, and cause much relational difficulty and suffering.

Icy paths, driving rain, burning cheeks and rustling nylon hoods… For the increasing number of clinicians who offer walking therapy, winter weather can bring additional challenges and distractions. But most can be navigated with careful planning and contracting – and a ready supply of cocoa butter and cup-a-soup. Claire Goodey, an integrative psychotherapist working outdoors in Nottingham, shares how she adapts her walking therapy practice in the winter months.

Courage, hope, determination, even aggression – such traits drive us forward, and are allied to the fight rather than the flight, freeze or flop responses. Yet they have also been cut out of many contemporary rewards. Drawing on his recent work around ‘resparking’, Graham Music considers the role of the dopaminergic system, the nature of the ‘internal lifegiver’ and the centrality of risk in therapy as he stands up for the often misunderstood or miscategorised fight response.

How can we better support our neurodivergent clients to explore and make sense of their inner world? What contributions from neuroscience and insights into the mind-body union might help us? Drawing on Somatic Processing and the concept of Interoception, Psychotherapist and Brainspotting therapist Stefan Walters shares some specific questions that can help neurodivergent clients – including individuals who may have learned to cope through masking or dissociation – begin to process and relate to their own experience.

Family feasts, large social gatherings, travel arrangements, lurking germs… For individuals with a fear of vomiting, the festive season can feel like a stocking full of trigger points, prompting heightened anxiety, panic attacks, safety behaviours and avoidance. Anna S. Christie, psychotherapist and leading emetophobia specialist, offers a brief introduction to this debilitating condition – and shares eight challenges that our clients with emetophobia may be facing in the run up to the winter holiday.

What if therapy’s insistence on establishing a sense of safety is paradoxically causing clients harm? Drawing on lived experience and the concept of insidious trauma, therapist and author of Trans Sex Lucie Fielding questions the helpfulness of the ‘safety axiom’ – both in the context of informed consent and within a profoundly unsafe world – and suggests it may be setting up members of marginalised groups in particular to ‘fail’ at therapy.

When working with bereaved clients, we may sense the need for a ritual… and find ourselves reaching for a ready supply of generic prescriptions. As Paul M. Martin, clinical psychologist, assistant director of The Center for Grief Recovery and author of Personal Grief Rituals explains, therapists have an opportunity to help clients design something far more expressive, meaningful and tailored to their unique psychological needs.

What are the defining features of a crisis, and how do these illuminate what an effective therapeutic response might look like? Drawing on his Single-Session Therapy model, Windy Dryden outlines his approach to helping clients in the throes of crisis – including the importance of addressing uncertainty, identifying internal resources, and beginning always with the unique individual.