One of the most common worries I hear expressed by people starting counselling is that they won’t know what to talk about. Some people think their problems aren’t significant enough. Others fear they have too much to say, that they might overwhelm the therapist…
I’m often struck by the anxiety that I see on the faces of clients when they come to their first couples counselling appointment. They are invariably wondering what’s going to happen. Will they have to reveal things they don’t want to say in front of their partner? Will their…
When I trained as a psychotherapist, me and my fellow students were given the assignment of doing something we’d never done before. The course tutors wanted us to get in touch with how scary it can be to do something new, to feel the fear of the unknown. I chose to …
Over the years that I’ve worked as a therapist, I’ve been asked numerous times by prospective clients, “How does counselling help?” And I’ve yet to come up with a satisfactory answer. Not because I’m in any doubt that it helps, but because the ‘how’ bit is so hard to articulate concisely…
Psychoanalysis was founded by Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who revolutionised our thinking about the human mind. Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis is both theory and therapy, and his psycho-analytic theory forms the basis for many current psychodynamic theories. Freud was the first…
Time-limited therapy, also known as short-term or brief therapy, is a valuable form of therapy and can improve people’s lives. Arranged within a set period of time, usually up to ten sessions, this type of therapy can be more beneficial to some clients in certain circumstances than longer-term
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a practical talking therapy that helps people with problems and issues by addressing and changing how they think and behave. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focuses on the present problems that are happening now and the relationships between thoughts…
Based on the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, attachment theory has its origins in the 1930’s. Attachment theory combined Bowlby’s interest in the link between maternal deprivation and personality development with Ainsworth’s interest in security theory. Their collaboration began in…
With text messages, online networking and email so easy, talking to another person may seem old-fashioned. These days, communication is abbreviated and electronic. A quick text message or a short email is usually enough to get our message across. But humans have been talking to each…
First identified in 1982 by social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling, the broken windows theory suggests that broken windows that are not quickly repaired will encourage people to break more windows in the same neighbourhood. According to this theory, broken windows not only…
