Emotional problems, addictions, and compulsions of all kinds come to inhabit, then mimic and merge with, a person’s core identity. When we defamiliarize, we are moving the client towards a new way of seeing the problem – and therefore a new way of feeling about it. But how do we do this?
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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.
Riding the Wave: Fast-acting ways to use urge surfing with your clients
Catastrophic impulsivity can lay waste to whole lives. And yet if we can just wait a little, the seemingly overwhelming urge to blow out on drink, drugs, or food; buy uncontrollably; or blow up in a fiery ball of rage will, like dew on a summer morning, evaporate fast. So what can we do about […]
The Therapeutic Power of Journaling for Self-Reflection
Far beyond being a simple record-keeping practice, journaling serves as a gateway to the depths of self-reflection and insight and an aid in the development of emotional intelligence. So if you feel a bit of journaling may help your client, how can you usefully get them started?
How to Help Your Hoarding Client Break Free
Hoarding may be a natural instinct. After all, the last ice age only ended 10,000 years ago. Hoarding food for the deep winters was vital for survival. But an instinctive need can sometimes turn into an all-consuming ‘greed’. So what do we need to consider when diagnosing and treating hoarding disorder?
How to Use the ‘Meaning Vacuum’ with Your Clients
The art of relaxing with not knowing is, I think, more profound than many people realize. Being able to suspend judgement, not being too quick to label something as ‘bad’ or ‘good’, can help us see what there really is to see. So how might we use this concept with our clients?
Research Roundup 20
Like a spaceship constantly bombarded with meteorites, during the course of our human lives we find ourselves pelted continually by bits of information. Some of it is valuable, some of it may be essential, and much of it is useless… unless we see where it fits in the greater scheme of things.
How to Help Clients Overcome Fear of Confrontation
Confrontation isn’t always easy and doesn’t always go smoothly. But, like a bitter medicine, it may hold a cure. So what about those who just can’t confront others? If you ever work with clients who feel they would rather do anything than confront someone, I hope these ideas are useful.
How to Motivate Change in Your Clients with the ‘Curiosity Gap’
The piquing of curiosity may be an underrated yet powerful strategy in therapy. Curiosity, a kind of open-minded expectancy, can align clients to therapeutic improvement and actually drive them toward that improvement. So how can we recruit the power of curiosity to facilitate change?
Avoiding Emotional Burnout for Practitioners
When we can be sympathetic, that is, appreciate how hard it is for someone without being swamped by maladaptive empathy, then we’re freed to be more effective in actually helping. Here are a few thoughts on how we can care less to help (ourselves and our clients) more.
How to Positively Reframe Your Clients’ Negative Traits
We all have certain ‘negative’ personality traits. And if we view those traits as irrefutably negative, it can make us feel hopeless. So how might we reframe ‘negative’ traits?
