It’s so easy to fall in love with our own first opinions. It makes us feel and seem clever. Ah! Those twin balms, security and certainty. Lovely! But failure to keep the gates of meaning open leads us away from truth. So how can we help our clients better by avoiding premature assumptions?
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If you are a therapist or coach of any persuasion; counsellor, psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, life coach, bodyworker, in fact anyone who works in the helping professions, you will glean valuable, actionable ideas, tips and techniques from Clear Thinking, my free therapy techniques newsletter.
In it you'll find a wide range of topics including solution focused therapy approaches, cognitive-behavioural therapy techniques, ideas from DBT, hypnotherapy, counselling and even the occasional philosophical piece. I've been treating people with psychotherapy for more than 30 years and I've drawn what I find useful from many fields. I hope you find it helps you in your practice too, whatever flavour of helper you are.
Treating Selective Mutism in Children
Selective mutism (SM) is strongly linked with social anxiety. Most children who experience it are not choosing silence; they are experiencing genuine fear in specific social situations, which forces silence upon them. So how might we begin helping a child who feels unable to speak?
Working With Clients’ Metaphors
Some delusions can be understood as symbolic attempts to communicate distress and meet fundamental needs. But all clients – not just the psychotically delusional! – talk in metaphors, and their metaphors can help us understand what they might need – if we are careful enough to notice them.
When a Story Says it Best
Excessive positivity in the face of dire circumstances can be the biggest turn-off since white socks with sandals and shorts. Sometimes we can simply tell a therapeutic story and let the client make their own connections.
You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup
Being empty of spare capacity to help others because you feel exhausted or wounded yourself is not fair to your clients. But it’s not fair to you either! Prioritizing your own wellbeing is essential for being the best therapist you can be. Here are five practical strategies to boost your mood and energy.
How to Treat Phobias: From Snakes to Belly Buttons
All post-traumatic phobias result from a kind of hypnotic learning that produces post-hypnotic effects. Once we understand that hypnosis is a naturally occurring and common state of mind, we start to see how phobias and traumas are formed and maintained – and how they might be cured.
How to Work Somatically with Your Client’s Emotions
Psychotherapy often overlooks the somatic element to emotion. We tend to think of ‘mental health problems’, aka emotional problems, as ‘in the head’ – but of course, emotions are experienced in different parts of our bodies. So how might we use this embodied aspect of emotion in therapy?
How to Help Your Gaslit Client
Gaslighting is a deeply destabilizing form of psychological manipulation that erodes a person’s ability to trust their own reality. As therapists, we can help clients disentangle from the manipulator’s distorted narrative and reconnect with their own sense of reality and autonomy.
Two Vital Principles For Treating Addicted Clients
In the grip of addiction, dopamine fuels the thrill of expectation while blurring out the reality of consequences. But what would happen if the client were able to remain fully in touch with the downsides of their behaviour when the addiction tries to suck them back in?
A Chronic Pain Client Case Study
Long, drawn-out or constant pain wears us down and steals our joy. In this brief piece I want to show how we can start to help clients overcome or at least improve pain so that it no longer makes life feel not worth living.
