Articles and Blogs

Anxiety sucks. It's debilitating and awful. But if we can change our relationship with it, and develop skills to deal with it, it can become manageable – and at times even helpful. Here are six steps we can take to develop that different perspective.

Recovery from trauma starts with acknowledging the existence of bears. It requires the involvement of a safe tribe. It necessitates the telling of our story and the healing of our wounds. And it requires action to keep us safe from further bear attacks.

So this was me, then: a tick-box list of symptoms demonstrating how screwed up I was. ‘Loser!!’ it screamed at me, casually. The more items I ticked, the more it screamed: ‘Bigger loser!’ Forty items – tick, tick, tick: ‘Biggest loser in the world!’ And so shame sat like a heavy puddle of tar in my stomach.

We don’t fail to heal from trauma quickly because there’s something wrong with us – because we’re stupid, because we enjoy being victims, because we’re mentally ill, because we’re lazy, because we’re weak. Trauma is difficult to heal from. It’s meant to be.

Child sexual abuse and shame are inextricably intertwined. As victims, we feel the shame that the perpetrator doesn't. But why is it so hard to shift this shame? This article looks at six reasons why the deck is stacked against us.

What is grounding? What is its purpose and aim? What if a particular grounding technique isn't actually very effective at grounding? Do we confuse the outcome of grounding with a list of techniques?

As trauma survivors we all know what it's like to be triggered by reminders of danger from the past. But do we know what our joy triggers are? And how does paying attention to what we enjoy help turn down our sensitivity to danger?

Shame so often has been conceptualised as a belief in the badness of the self, a construct of faulty cognitions. But if it serves a self-protective purpose, of acting as a handbrake on anger to keep us safe from further harm?

Why have so many of us felt brain-fogged and lacking in energy and motivation during the pandemic? Is it just the gin? Or does it have its roots in the evolutionary neurobiology of trauma?

We need the capacity to cope with the pain of facing our trauma. We need confidence that things will get better. And we need a safe therapeutic relationship ...

Do female clients prefer female therapists and male clients prefer male clients? Or are there more pressing questions to ask other than gender? Who would you work with?

Are the words we’re using, to describe our own experience or to make sense of someone else’s, distracting from human suffering and a bid for connection and support? Or are they tools to be able to come alongside someone in their distress?

People who are successful in life often obsess over the details. But people who struggle in life also often obsess over the details. What's the difference?

Skin hunger, the unenjoyables, little lifts, crystal balls and 'just' surviving: five things I have learned during lockdown.

Sometimes life doesn't go to plan. In this article I relate the circumstances that led me back into therapy and how I'm rising again after being knocked (and literally falling) down.

In suffering abuse in childhood, we often experienced pain. And that pain was reflected back in the eyes of our abusers as pleasure. We then take that template and expectation into our adult relationships. In this blog post, written based on a therapy session early on in my recovery journey, I explore this topic by drawing on my experiences of working through the shame of self-harm and how the inflicting of pain can in some circumstances be an attachment cry.