I have been doing Inner Child and Inner Family Systems Therapy for a number of years. It never ceases to amaze me what a powerful force it can be when a client truly reconnects with a part of themselves that has been locked away and abandoned for years. They then realize that their paradigm is…
Historian Arnold Toynbee once wrote, “There are always two parties to a death; the person who dies and the survivors who are bereaved.” Unfortunately, many survivors of suicide suffer alone and in silence. The silence that surrounds them often complicates the healing that comes from being encouraged to mourn. Because of the social stigma surrounding…
In recent years, there has been a massive increase in mental health issues across all genders, age groups and cultures. This is a problem that will increase and will probably get worse before it gets better. Many people go through life accepting their problems, seeing them as “normal” or as a an inevitable consequence of their job,…
Self-esteem is in essence a measurement. We rate ourselves against a variety of criteria to come up with a value of our worth. The big problem is that we often rate ourselves against impossible criteria and judge ourselves too harshly and produce an inaccurate picture. The end result is a lack of self-esteem as we…
Samuel McChord Crothers once wrote ” try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.” Do you feel like what you accomplish is never quite good enough?…
Many of the clients I deal with in my online therapy practice suffer from anxiety. Anxiety is the disorder of our modern times and the amount of people suffering from it is increasing every year. In fact, the American Anxiety and Depression Association published these facts : Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in…
We all do it. We convince ourselves that filing our tax return or planning that career move can wait until tomorrow or next week or next month. We bury our heads in the sand waiting for the right time, knowing that the right time is usually right now. We beat ourselves up because of it knowing that the…
Opinion 1. Peer Group and Teachers are more important. The role of parents in a child’s development has long been seen as crucial. Great minds like Freud and Peck, among many others have highlighted generations of parents’ inadequacies and the effect this has on the subsequent adult. This idea is borne out every day in my practice where…
One of the enduring questions of human development and behaviour is why we take the paths that we do. What influences us in our choice of partner, profession, lifestyle and other things that make us who we are? This is a deep and complicated question even if a “good enough” upbringing has been experienced but…
When a child is sexually abused, it is done within the context of a manipulation of love and trust. For an abuser to achieve his or her goal of sexual gratification, the victim is persuaded to look on the act as “normal” interaction. Even worse, they are then sworn to silence through threats of violence or…