I’m introducing another simple reflection tool today, one I met many moons ago when I trained as a life coach. It’s called a Life Wheel, and it’s a good way of taking stock of how life is feeling for you at the moment and why. First, you need to list out the areas of your life that are important to you. The list won’t be the same for everyone, but often includes dimensions like family, friendships, work, learning, physical health, mental health, leisure, finances and home.

Psychotherapy is intended to be an authentic encounter. An intimate, enabling space in which we as clients can be utterly who we are without condition. A place where we are acknowledged, honoured, and met in our wholeness. This is what gives psychotherapy its healing capacity, and without it, I’m not sure what is achieved. Why is it then that there are commonly held views about taboo subjects that should not be mentioned in the therapy room? Be it politics, religion, sex,

I want to talk today about a simple tool you can use to increase your awareness of how the relationships in your life impact your well-being. You can use it to reflect and consider the changes you might want to make, which relationships to prioritise and nurture, and which to let drift or move away from. All you need to do is draw 4 circles on a page, with a little circle representing you in the middle, and 3 bigger circles around it. The first represents your inner circle,

It’s hard to beat the feeling of really being with someone. That feeling of parent and child spontaneously connecting in an experience. The intimacy of two people who love each other sharing a moment in which they are utterly focused on each other. There is a beauty to attunement, a feeling of being safe, of being at home, of being free to be. This is an experience we are all wired for. We are social animals. In generations past, as for mammals generally, babies must cau

I frequently hear people talk about mindfulness as a way to inner peace. I hear it so often I feel compelled to write a little about my sense of it as a long-term meditator and frequent teacher of mindfulness in a therapeutic context. As a sound bite, it’s easy to perceive mindfulness = inner peace to be a one way ticket to bliss and harmony. While this might seem appealing, it is unfortunately not generally what is experienced with regular meditation and mindfulness practi

Almost at the end of my series on Erik Erikson’s model of psychosocial development, today I am exploring the seventh stage, that of generativity or stagnation. Erikson suggests this is the core development for us in middle adulthood, which he suggested is the period from 40 to 65. This development stage is all about contribution and caring. It’s about knowing that we are generating something, creating a legacy that will outlast and outgrow you, that there is meaning to your

I was reminded recently of the contrast between feeling that I had some control over what happened to me, and of feeling as if life was just happening and I was a passenger along for the ride. It was prompted by an auto-pilot moment where I was imagining I just had to go along with something that was wholly unsatisfactory. Fortunately for me, a colleague was able to challenge my thinking and remind me that I am not a passenger in my own life, I have choices and can exercise

Before you make a change, it is important to be clear about what the current situation gives you. Remember that odd old phrase ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water?!’ However awful your mental health symptoms may be, they were once an ideal solution to a problem that was arising for you. For example, your anxiety might help you avoid things you do not want to look at, or perhaps give you a reason to stay away from things you fear. At some point in the past your cur

On a training course a while ago, I heard a metaphor for therapy that I liked. The trainer described the role of a therapist ole as that of a sat-nav. The client is behind the wheel and has to do the driving, while the therapist can support by providing navigational aid. Without the client having a clear destination, there is no navigation. The client decides on their end goal or goals, saying where they want to take themselves. The client then has choices, do they follow

Continuing my series on his model, the sixth stage in Erik Erickson’s model of psychosocial development is that of intimacy and isolation, which he suggested happens in young adulthood, up to the age of 40. Erickson suggests that what is front and centre developmentally through this life stage is the development of loving, intimate relationships. It’s important to note that this does not mean sexual relationships, intimacy means close, honest and loving, it’s about being abl

"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

The fifth stage in Erik Erickson’s model of psychosocial development, which he suggested occurs in adolescence between the ages of 12-18, is that of identity or role confusion. This stage is the one in which individuals develop a sense of their own identity, or, a sense of confusion about who/what they are. Today I wanted to introduce this important stage that can trip us up any time in life if it was not fully integrated in our teenage years. We develop a sense of self by

I was reading some Esther Perel this week, and happened upon a quote about self-love that really spoke to me. She describes it as “about letting others love us even when we feel unloveable” and as “about awareness and acceptance of our incompleteness.” I sense it’s natural at times to feel unloveable, and incomplete. We each have foibles, wrinkles and bumps we might prefer not to notice or acknowledge, and yet, when we turn away from them they somehow gain a power and impac

When client’s come into therapy, it’s very common for them to have goals which are about feeling states. They might say ‘I feel depressed’ or ‘I feel anxious’ and when asked what they want to have happen they may respond with ‘I want to feel happy’ or ‘I want to be calm’ or ‘I want to feel confident.’ Oftentimes clients are not aware there are quite a number of ways they can impact their feeling states, in addition to doing the deeper therapeutic work that has drawn them into

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

Today I want to talk about the third stage of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development model, which is one way of explaining the phases we move through psychologically as we grow. It’s relevant not only to parents, but to us all, as it can help us understand some of the places we may have got stuck in the past, meaning the same themes play out for us again and again through adult life. Stages 1 & 2 were about developing a sense of trust in the world, and finding autonomy and

Two weeks ago I blogged about stage one of Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development model, today I’m introducing the second stage - Autonomy vs shame/doubt. Developmentally, we move into this stage of development between 18 and 36 months of age, when we are focused on development a sense of self-control. We are trying to work out whether we can do things for ourselves, and when/how we are reliant on other people. Kids want to pick out their own clothes, decide for

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

We come to know ourselves through our interactions with other people. It’s a bit like others hold up a mirror to us, we see ourselves reflected in them, sometimes noticing the things that are the same, and sometimes noticing things that are different. Those differences may be benign, just differences. Sometimes though, we may be hurt or wounded by what people do or say. Their actions and our reaction or response lets us know something about our personal values. When we fe

I’ve been pondering Erik Erikson’s theory of psycho-social development of late, which sets out eight stages of development along our way to maturity. Written in the middle of the 20th century, it still speaks pertinently to the issues that present in the therapy room, and so seems worth highlighting. The first stage Erikson talks about is that of the period of infancy, running up to around 18 months. In this period, we learn our orientation to people and the world in a key