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?
Articles on: Anxiety Treatment
Anxiety is the core issue for so many of our clients. Whether they are suffering from depression, OCD, trauma, phobias or addictions, anxiety is in there somewhere. So it’s essential that, as therapy practitioners, we fully understand how anxiety works and what we can do about it. Here I’ve written about the clients I’ve treated for anxiety and what they’ve taught me about what works best.
7 Steps to Treating a Nervous Breakdown
The term ‘nervous breakdown’ isn’t a clinical one, but to me, it’s what happens when someone reaches a crisis point – when their capacity to cope with a situation is exhausted. So if we are called upon to help a client who seems to have ‘broken down’ in this way, how might we help ‘mend’ […]
7 Steps to Help Stop Your Clients’ Panic Attacks
‘Panic attack’ is actually a misnomer, since nothing is ‘attacked’. A house alarm doesn’t ‘attack’ the house it’s protecting, but it can sound when it doesn’t need to. Stopping panic attacks is about aligning the panic response so it only happens when it really needs to. When our clients overcome panic attacks, they get their […]
How to Stop ‘Headline Thinking’ in Your Depressed and Anxious Clients
Sometimes something stated as an immutable fact in a headline turns out to be simply conjecture or even a just a faint possibility when we bother to read further. But what if, as seems to be increasingly the case, a person thinks in ‘headlines’?
How to Ease Your Client’s Nightmares
Nightmares are trying to help us come to terms with emotional expectations that remain unresolved at the time of going to sleep. But, like an inflammatory response trying to combat infection, too much can cause terrible problems. So what do we need to consider when treating client nightmares?
How to Help Your Stressed Clients Quickly
Whether it’s through your skilled teaching of breathing techniques, the more advanced skill of clinical hypnosis, or simply your calming demeanour, with really stressed clients the first step is to help them be calm enough to receive further therapy.
6 Ways to Stay Sane During the Coronavirus Pandemic
This piece isn’t about all the sensible precautions we should take to remain infection-free or prevent passing the virus on to others. Prudent hygiene and social distancing should be, by now, a given – at least for a while. But what of the emotional strain of being cooped up and, maybe, fearful or isolated? I […]
How to Treat Child Separation Anxiety
Fear of separation – of being left alone and apart from someone significant (often a parent) – is a normal developmental stage many of us go through. But when the anxiety is severe, or if it doesn’t start to fade naturally past the age of four or five, help may be needed.
6 Easy Behavioural Interventions for Anxiety
Help your clients beat bursts of heightened anxiety.
Starving for Company
More than just shyness, social phobia causes panic. Meetings and minglings with others can feel like a brush with death itself.
