Avoidance in psychotherapy and why it’s important Avoidance is one of the most misunderstood things that happens in therapy. It tends to get framed as a problem to overcome, a sign that someone isn’t ready, or isn’t trying hard enough. That framing is wrong, and it does real damage. Avoidance is a signal. When it shows up in therapy, it’s…
Why One Conversation Can Be Enough Not every difficulty requires long-term therapy. Sometimes what you need is one focused conversation, space to think clearly, a different perspective, and the relief of saying out loud what’s been circling in your head. That’s what Single Session Therapy offers. Single Session Therapy, sometimes called ad hoc therapy, is built around one meeting at…
Why the urge to leave, or disappear, is a meaningful part of the work There are moments in therapy when something in you says: I have to get out of here. Your legs want to move, your chest tightens, and part of you is already planning the exit. It doesn’t always look dramatic from the outside, but internally the system…
One of the things that becomes clear in relational therapy is how intelligent our defences are. Intellectualising, the tendency to analyse, explain, and think our way through experiences rather than feel them, isn’t a failure of emotional awareness. It’s a sign that somewhere along the line, staying in the head felt considerably safer than dropping into the body and its…
Have you found yourself defending someone who treated you badly, or feeling loyal to a person whose care was unreliable at best and harmful at worst? That experience is more common than most people realise, and it has a name: trauma bonding. Trauma bonding develops when harm and connection become entangled in the same relationship. It’s most visible in abusive…
A stiff neck, a clamped jaw, a hollow ache in the chest that has no obvious cause. Most of us have learned to explain these away as bad posture or getting older. Sometimes that’s accurate. Sometimes the body is holding something the mind hasn’t found words for yet. People who come to therapy often say something like: “It wasn’t that bad.…
There’s a particular frustration that comes from trying to explain how you feel and coming up blank. Your mouth and your mind seem to be working from different scripts. For people living with the effects of complex trauma, especially those who dissociate, that’s not a loose description. It’s biology. When the nervous system is under threat, the body’s primary aim…
What if Writing Could Be a Way In? Not everyone finds it easy to talk. For some, sitting face-to-face and trying to explain the inner world means words vanish before they arrive, sentences falter, and the thing you most need to say stays just out of reach. Something different can happen when a pen hits the page. Therapeutic writing offers…
People come to therapy for many different reasons, and most of them aren’t in crisis. Some arrive knowing exactly what they want to work on. Others have a vaguer sense that something isn’t quite right, that they keep arriving at the same difficulties, or that they’re functioning well but not fully. Both are valid starting points. The list below covers…
Grief is a natural response to loss, but when it feels unending, overwhelming, or tangled with emotions that don’t seem to belong to ordinary mourning, it may be what’s known as complicated grief. This form of bereavement can feel isolating, particularly when the people around you expect you to have moved on. If you’re carrying a loss that doesn’t seem…