When a client tells me or shows me they are overwhelmed, what they are describing is an intense experience. For them, moving past the point where they are experiencing themselves as having the capacity to cope with what is happening or has happened is just awful. Often there are events beyond the person's control, and they feel as if they are struggling to stay afloat amidst wave after wave of feeling, of changing circumstances, of thoughts, of body sensations. Beyond full

It's sometimes the case that we lose perspective. When times are difficult, or emotions are intense, it is easy to imagine that whatever it is that is happening will last forever. Thankfully, and sadly, in equal measude, nothing lasts forever, not the diffuclt stuff nor the joyful. Today's short blog offers two tips I have found to be consistently helpful for clients working to build emotional balance and resilience. The first is to get a diary with just a few lines of spac

I've had a good old move around at home recently, changing the purpose of several rooms, and moving lots of furniture and it's contents. I've been interested in my emotional response to the process, so today's blog is about space and stuff and the way we interact with them. Like many people, I love my home to be settled. Clean and tidy for me is comforting, knowing where stuff belongs and having it be in that place. I knew therefore it would be a big deal to have a re-jig,

Anger is an unpopular emotion, and frankly it gets quite a bad press. The caricature of an angry person is red faced, steam coming out of the ears, an unattractive figure that people feel comfortable judging and looking down on. Anger is actually a very normal and important emotion. Anger is what we feel when we are wronged and when our boundaries are ignored or trampled over. It's the natural emotion we feel when we see injustice. Anger energises. It mobilises us to defe

Often, what brings clients into therapy is a reticence to experience their feelings. This can show up in all sorts of ways, in low mood and depression, in anxiety, in disordered eating, addictions, obsessions and compulsions…there are many mental health conditions that have an aspect of emotional avoidance embedded within them. Andrew Seubert has a simple initialism that provides a process for emotional containment. It succinctly describes the skills that clients may learn,

“Adaptability does not prioritize drastic change over fierce rigidity. Adaptability is the conversation within us between stability and change, between continuity and innovation. It is the marriage of our fundamental needs for security and adventure. Adaptability is our ability to bend and come back to center over and over again, increasing our flexibility each time, whether we’re in our daily stretch or the fight of our lives. And the more we practice becoming adaptable, the

I was listening to Andrew Seubert recently talking about The Courage To Feel. I liked the way he described feelings, as embodied emotional energy. The physicality of this is important, feelings happen in the body, they are visceral. They are also energy, and by definition are continuously changing. Anil Deth points out that we perceive our feelings, we think about them, and we develop beliefs on the basis of them. For example, if your shoulders are tense, you may experie

Sometimes, we can get caught in a trap of feeling continually ‘on.’ It may feel like you’re on a hamster wheel, needing to be in constant motion, always finding the next thing to do and the next problem to solve. It may be that you can’t easily rest, not even sitting down to relax regularly. These are symptoms of your system being stuck in sympathetic arousal, with the accelerator pedal continually pressed down. Essentially, our fight/flight mechanism is firing to keep us

Sometimes clients come into therapy wanting to be absolved of guilt when they have done something they regret. Guilt is painful, and this is a natural instinct. The first step is working out whether the guilt is realistic, or dysfunctional in nature. It is perfectly normal, healthy, and appropriate to feel guilty when you have done something you would judge someone else for, guilt is a helpful emotion to help us reflect and grow so that we don’t continually repeat the same m

"Everything you love will probably be lost, but, in the end, love will return in a different way." Franz Kafka This quote touched me deeply when I read it; it is poignant, true, and filled with a sense of the completeness of life and human experience. Love is one of the most profound, and deeply ordinary experiences we humans can have. We are wired for love from the beginning, it is a hard-wired circuit essential to our survival as fragile, dependent babies, and one that en

Week by week I’ve been looking at Erik Erikson’s model of psychosocial development, which is one way of looking at key developmental tasks over our lifespan. Like any model it’s not perfect, but it does offer some patterns to look out for, and some ways to make sense of our experience. Stage 4 of the model looks at the phase of progressing through school (age 6-11), when we gain many new social influences, and begin to be evaluated for our achievement, rather than solely bei

One of the central themes of therapeutic work is how client’s experience their feelings. For some, there is overwhelm. For others, a blankness or avoidance. For some, a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and a desire to find some level ground. I notice a common thread through much of what is explored. Feeling = weakness. Socially this is a well rehearsed concept, with connections to cultural attitudes towards gender and sexuality and the outdated stereotypes therein. It’s

“When your eyes seek and your heart is open, that is true brave” - Anne with an E I just loved this line when I heard it while watching an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. It resonated so strongly with me, both in my work and spirituality. It takes courage to really look, and to be open hearted about what it is that is revealed when you are prepared to notice it. This is at the heart of the therapeutic endeavour, to come to know ourselves more deeply, to look honestly,

I discovered recently that the root of the word alone is all-one. Clarissa Pinkola Estes expresses this beautifully, saying “To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in one-ness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.” I sense most of us know this experience, to be wholly in the one place, to feel complete, to come home to who and what we truly are. We may find it looking at a beautiful landscape or a tiny flower, or fin

A theme I often return to is play, and its importance. I was first introduced to this concept back in 2008 by Stephen Gilligan with his triad of archetypal energies that we all need: Tender - Fierce - Playful More recently I learned of Jaak Panksepp’s work discovering seven emotional brain systems that are innate, I smiled to learn that one of them is play. It’s a hard-wired circuit we are born with. It’s biological. Why, oh why, do we think it’s not adult? We all need p

I often hear people saying they cope with emotions and thoughts by avoiding them. Sometimes, it may feel the only option available. Ultimately though, it tends not to work. I think of emotions and thoughts when ignored or resisted as a bit like a toddler...they get louder and more insistent until they are heeded. So what to do? Perverse or even scary at is may seem, the most effective way of navigating difficult emotions or challenging thoughts is to welcome them in, brin

It’s natural to want to turn away from things that make us feel uncomfortable. Our biology is set up to seek out the pleasant, and avoid the unpleasant; this is a key driver of human behaviour. From choices about the kind of work we do to the food we eat, it’s easy to recognise our attraction to the things we feel comfortable with and our aversion to those that unsettle us. The funny thing is, the more we avoid things that trouble us, the more power they seem to get. For e