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?
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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.
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?
Help Ease Your Client’s Adult Sibling Rivalry
Sibling rivalry can be complex. Love and envy, affection and resentment can and often do coexist within one relationship – but they make uncomfortable and messy bedfellows. Here I offer five strategies that may help you help any clients who exhibit sibling rivalry.
Why is Your Client Depressed?
Understanding the origins of depression is often a necessary starting point in treatment, because once we know what they are or have been missing in their life, we can help them fill the gap of that missing need. So what might we do well to discover about the origins of our clients’ depression?
How to Help Your Client Overcome Fear of Rejection
The fear of rejection can stalk our minds like some mythical monster, terrorizing our dreams and casting a shadow across our every thought. Here are seven tips to help you help your clients overcome a morbid fear of rejection to live a fuller and happier life.
Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder
Diagnosed cases of borderline personality disorder (BPD) seem to be on the rise. While working with a client with BPD may feel difficult, ultimately anything we can do to help such clients gain some emotional stability and regulate their emotions will help. So, what might that involve?
