Blog for Helpful Insights
Articles for growth and learning.
There are many types of counselling and psychotherapy, which can be confusing to a newcomer to this field. Counselling started with Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the 20th century. When treating patients with curious psychological ailments, he discovered a…
For me, the most important thing about therapy is that the therapist is there: every week, at a particular time, the therapist has said they’ll be there and they show up. This simple but powerful gesture can be a revelation…
At the heart of most psychotherapy theory is the idea that our experiences in childhood shape the person we become. I have written about this elsewhere in this blog. Attachment theory states that the quality of the child’s relationship with…
It’s difficult to summarise what therapy is about because everyone experiences it differently. For some, therapy is about having a space where they can feel heard and supported. I’ve written elsewhere about how the simple experience of being listened to can have…
Everyone wants to be happy, but what is happiness and why is it so hard to find? According to Sigmund Freud – the founder of psychoanalysis – humans are not constituted to be in a permanent state of happiness. He…
At the start of therapy, the client and therapist do something called ‘contracting’. This is where they agree on the ‘terms and conditions’ of the therapy work. The contract creates a structure for the therapy. Part of the contract concerns…
Most training institutions require trainee therapists to have at least some personal therapy, albeit the required number of therapy hours varies. But if you’re a trainee, why do only the minimum number? Cost may be a factor. But I want…
An essential part of counselling – and training to be a counsellor – is getting to know ourselves. When we embark on this journey, we quickly come to realise how complicated we are – for example, we are inconsistent, often…
As children, we come to realise – consciously or unconsciously – that certain behaviours, attitudes and ways of speaking are unacceptable to our parents/caregivers, so we start to shut down parts of ourselves. To use a technical term, we split…
Counselling – also called psychotherapy – started with Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the last century. Shocking at the time, his basic idea was: ‘We are not who we think we are!’ In other words, you don’t know yourself…