Category: therapy
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How to move forward and take positive action
This article first appeared in the Autumn edition of All About Malvern. In our small town, nestled safely into the side of these ancient hills, the sun is shining. In other parts of the world the weather is not so kind. As I write this people are assessing the damage from two hurricanes that moved…
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What’s the point of empathy?
This morning as I took my usual morning walk around the garden I heard a bird call that I didn’t recognise. I looked up and there was a female blackbird, with its mottled brown coat, sitting up high in the copper beech above me. It wasn’t singing the usual blackbird song. A warning call, I…
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Ten things you can get from therapy
1. Better relationships As you start to learn what makes you tick, what makes others tick, and what your triggers are, it becomes easier to connect with others and to build better relationships. 2. Increased confidence A good run of therapy will leave you with more confidence, as you start to trust yourself more deeply.…
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Turning away from anxiety and depression
We usually come to therapy because we are unhappy, or dissatisfied; because we want to change. Often, what we want to change from is feeling anxious or depressed. Anxiety can be like a constant worrying, both in the mind and in the body, it can be a feeling of being on edge, of always being…
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Why do we come to therapy?
Why do we come and sit in a room, and talk to a stranger, and share our deepest thoughts and feelings? My therapy room is at the end of a long narrow corridor. In the winter the corridor is light by bulbs hanging in Victorian glass lampshades. In the summer, light from the open doors…
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The biggest frog (how to get things done)
I sat facing a blank page for about an hour this morning. Occasionally I wrote a few words and then I deleted them. They didn’t feel like the beginning of anything worthwhile. I wrote about my oldest cat sleeping at my feet. I wrote about the squirrel stealing peanuts from the bird feeder. I wrote…
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Living with change
Written late spring/early summer Suzuki Roshi was once asked if anything was constant in this life. He replied with one word: change. A couple of weeks ago I watched a wave of hail moving from behind the hills, over the temple and through the valley. Directly above my office, directly above my writing desk, is…
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How accepting ‘what is’ leads to real change
Yesterday afternoon I was tired, and I was grumpy. I was upset with someone for not having behaved how I wanted them too, or how I thought I would have behaved in their situation. I worked over the situation in my mind. I was justifying my upset feelings to myself, but of course this just…
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Taking care of ourselves in a busy world
As autumn approaches we start to feel the first trace of autumn in the air. The nights draw in and the days slowly get cooler. Trees turn from bright summer greens into reds and yellows until the sides of the roads are lined with dried brown fallen leaves. At the same time the natural world…
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How can we begin to grow?
How our relationship with our therapist leads to change Most research that compares different types of therapy, to see which is more effective, reaches the same conclusion: the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist is more important than the style of psychotherapy. Putting yourself into a good relationship with a therapist…