Face to Face Counselling in LondonAsh will be available for face to face consultations in central London 22-23 November. If you would like to meet for a therapeutic conversation , send an email or leave a message on the London number.
You can continue from this counselling appointment with online therapy via webcam, email exchange or instant message chat.
People are always asking me for advice. I regularly receive requests over email, via my websites and even on Facebook asking me for advice or direction with particular problems or difficulties. Often these requests are for relationship advice, or advice about how to find confidence or how to develop certain ‘communication skills’. It is not unusual for someone to write tell me what to do!
I read all of these requests but have to admit it is rare that ‘answers’ instantly come to me. On the other hand, I am always struck by the curiosity and interest that arises in me and my respect for the person who is looking for a way forward.
Experts in Our Own Lives.
I guess the assumption is that as a therapist, I have knowledge and experience that qualifies me to tell people what to do. Those who contact me assume that my profession means that I will be a better judge of their circumstances than they are, or at least that I will have more insight or skill with the particular problems or situations that take shape in their explanations. But advice is something I am reluctant to give. While I’m not suggesting that having started out as a counsellor over 20 years ago counts for nothing, I would not say that my experience makes me an expert in anyone’s life but my own.
Many of my colleagues would agree with me. Much professional counselling and therapy has moved a long way from the 1950’s when psychodynamic psychology and psychotherapy located the source of problems within the individual seeking treatment and promoted the therapist as the authority, master or even ‘guru’ in matters involving human dilemmas. Fortunately, the therapist’s status as expert in the lives of others is now being questioned.
The Limitless Possibilities of the Therapy Space.
It is true that most therapists and counsellors are trained in particular theories and even encouraged to ‘diagnose’ problems and fit them to these theories. Therapists are considered qualified to know how to respond to ‘types’ of problems be they problems associated with Depression, Anxiety or ‘relationship issues’ etc. However, taking such an approach neglects one of the most exceptional aspects of therapy: therapy as a collaborative activity can create a space where extraordinary things happen.
When a collaborative approach is taken to therapy, multiple understandings can co-exist, new meanings and understandings can evolve and language and the exchange of ideas can open the way for limitless possibilities. Advice-giving, in contrast, is a fairly one-sided process. Therapy is not just listening and it is not advice-giving. At its most exciting and influential, it is a collaborative process which gives us the opportunity to demonstrate and experience the expertise we have in our own lives.
How Collaborative Therapy Evolves and Dissolves Problems.
Collaborative Therapy is about participating in conversations that open up possibilities and ideas. This happens through dialogue and exchange of descriptions we give to things. When we put language to our experiences and to our hopes and intentions, we start to construct meaning and understanding. When we do this in a therapeutic context, we can become collaborators with our therapists in the construction of new and preferred meanings and understandings.
We create our understandings of problems through the language we use. People often talk about therapy giving them a new perspective. As much as I would like to claim credit for handing out new perspectives, I don’t think this is how it works in the conversations I have with people. New perspectives evolve from the dialogue, the conversation in the therapy space, whether in online therapy, a conversation with a therapist in the same room or a group therapy situation. New perspectives help us take the next steps forward and foster hope.
In therapy, like in other conversations, there is usually not just one way of looking at things. Like anyone else, I might have an opinion about a given situation as it is described to me. But as a therapist I am concerned to open the way to new meanings and understandings and continue dialogue, not close down understandings or impose meaning. When problems are defined collaboratively in this way, it is not surprising that the definition of the problem can change over time. Likewise, the therapeutic effect of conversations often continues even outside of the therapy space. Problems gain new and preferred meanings and understandings through talking about them with therapists and others. Problems are not fixed or solved by the therapist, but evolved and dissolved in conversations.
I’m not against advice. I particularly remember the advice certain people have given me at different times in my life which I am grateful for and continue to hold close to me. Advice can be useful and lovely. But therapy and advice are not the same. Collaborative Therapy offers us the opportunity to contribute our own expertise to conversations, open up new meanings and possibilities and find our own ways forward when advice is not enough.
I am indebted to Harlene Anderson for many of the ideas in this article.
For more information or to make an appointment go to www.forwardtherapy.com
Burnout can present itself differently for different people. Someone who usually describes himself as “laid back” or “chilled out” may say he is “on the edge” or “uptight”. Others might talk about the numbness of Burnout or say they feel like an empty shell.
Sometimes people use the word ‘depression’ to convey what they are going through. Feelings of anger or sadness can be increased. Many say they are “unable to switch off”. Common factors for Burnout appear to be the loss of enjoyment of life, a disinterest in usual activities and physical and mental tiredness. Many say things like “I’ve lost touch with who I am”.
Burnout can result in us losing connection with our friends and family and withdrawing into ourselves. It can have us avoiding people and activities we enjoy such as going out or having sex. But the reverse can be true as well. The consequences of Burnout may be the spiral into a more chaotic life if someone is unable to face certain responsibilities or perceived expectations. We may find it harder to say ‘no’ or ‘yes’ to choices that are presented to us. This can lead to increased use of alcohol or drugs and these in turn can also be contributors to difficulties of Burnout.
Burnout is most often associated with overworking. But it can also happen while making the transition into a new job or new responsibilities (including becoming a father or mother for the first time or caring for a sick relative). At these times, we can find ourselves in situations where the expectations on us are just too high and unrealistic. In modern life and corporate culture where there is so much emphasis on performance, achievement and attaining materialistic goals, the public realm of our lives can easily take precedence over the private. Caring or meeting the requirements of others can easily take over from caring for our selves.
How Counselling Can Help with Burnout.
When they start seeking help for Burnout, most people just want to start feeling like their old selves again. Therapeutic conversations offer the time to reflect and an opportunity to gain understanding through a joint investigation of the problem.
Counselling can be like a reality check and a skilled therapist will not only allow you to release some of your feelings but assist you to re-establish connections to your values, beliefs and most importantly your sense of who you are. Who are the people who are most important in your life? Where are you in relation to these loved ones now and how might you return them to their rightful place in your life?
Attending counselling can provide stability in times of crisis as well as remind you of strategies you can use to switch off from responsibilities and expectations when you need to. Often, just talking about what is realistic and what is possible can clear the way for a fresh start. Burnout can leave us with a story of failure but a therapist can draw out other stories that are more positive and inspiring.
Narrative Therapy is geared towards recovering a deeper sense of meaning to life and resetting priorities so they are more in touch with your own principles. Before we can reclaim a sense of who we are, it may help to share what it was that we valued about our lives before Burnout. A counsellor can enquire into this and help you develop your own understanding of the best ways forward.
8 Ways to Recover Yourself from Burnout
For more information or to make an appointment go to www.forwardtherapy.com
Recently, there has been a lot of discussion in newspapers and on television about sex addiction. Stories about celebrities such as Tiger Woods and David Duchovny have raised interest and debate amongst health professionals and the general public. Many people who are struggling to make sense of things of their lives have been asking themselves whether their own problems might come down to something called ‘sex addiction’.
The Problems with Calling Something ‘Sex Addiction’.
But there are a few problems with this idea of sex addiction. To begin with, what actually is addiction? Is it a behavioural pattern? Is it a brain disorder? Something to do with chemicals in the brain? Is it treatable or untreatable? Because there are numerous definitions of addiction it can be very confusing for someone who starts thinking of him or herself as “an addict”.
Another problem with this idea of ‘sex addiction’ is: what happens to responsibility when someone starts thinking this way, that they are an addict? Does having an addiction mean a person is not responsible for his or her actions? Could sex addiction become an excuse for doing something that goes against a persons own values and beliefs?
And probably the worst thing about this idea of sex addiction is that it makes people feel bad. If you start thinking of yourself as a ‘sex addict’ you will probably start believing you have a disorder or that you are sick or not normal. In a therapeutic context, this is often called the ‘internalising’ of a problem. The problem – interpreted as ‘sex addiction’ in this case – has you thinking there is something wrong with you and you are the cause of it. Understandably, these kinds of thoughts can make a person feel quite shameful. And shame often traps and makes us afraid to talk about problems. So the problem becomes bigger and more influential than it was before.
So if sex addiction isn’t the problem, what is?
Good question!
If you have contacted a therapist or counsellor wanting help for ‘sex addiction’:
In other words, there are a range of situations that lead people to get an idea they may be experiencing sex addiction. There are also many reasons individuals find themselves in these situations. For every person who believes they may have a ‘sex addiction’, there is a unique story behind their arriving at this understanding.
People are more than just machines or animals: we are meaning makers. We are constantly making meaning about our lives. And these meanings are connected to our culture and history. If a therapist focuses on sex alone as the problem, and doesn’t explore the meanings you have and can make, they risk failing to understand what is most personally important and relevant to you. This idea of treatment for sex addiction can actually be obscuring many other details that factor into what is affecting you and what you would prefer for your life. Furthermore, the idea of ‘sex addiction’ probably has you believing any problem (whatever it may be) exists within you, instead of in a particular circumstance or relationship you are involved with.
How Can Narrative Therapy Help?
Asking this question ‘what is sex addiction?’ is one way to begin investigating the problem or problems that might be hidden by the idea of sex addiction. There are many ways of proceeding in a therapeutic conversation that questions this idea of sex addiction.
We can investigate how these thoughts of sex addiction have been constructed. We can explore your hopes, values and beliefs through considering the circumstances that have brought you to therapy. Once we have some new ground to stand on, these ideas about sex addiction often become less relevant than your intentions and the efforts you have been making for what you want in your life.
For more information or to make an appointment, go to www.forwardtherapy.com
I work a lot with metaphors and many of my clients are gay men and lesbians. The approach I use in counselling and psychotherapy is based on the principal that we interpret and make meaning of life through the stories we tell ourselves and others. These stories about the events and the experiences of our lives employ metaphors.
The journey metaphor (life as a journey) is very common in counselling work as are pedagogic metaphors (life as learning). But rather than come up with the metaphors myself, I am interested in the metaphors people bring to the counselling session. As a therapist I do not set about making interpretations but assist people to make their own interpretations.
For example, say I am meeting with a client who talks about not being able to find any satisfaction in life. He has been searching for satisfaction for a long time. He knows it exists because he knows some other gay men who seem to have found it, but he was always told when he was growing up that satisfaction came from having a family and finding a loving partner. He hasn’t been able to find satisfaction and has often thought about giving up (the giving up took the form of suicidal thoughts), but something leads him to keep pursuing it.
This story could be seen as a kind of a quest metaphor: the quest for satisfaction. In telling me the story of this search he uses words like ‘finding’, ‘searching’, ‘existence’, ‘giving up’ and ‘pursuing’.
So I can pick up this metaphor and start using it with him, using his own language and interpretation of the events and experiences of his life to find new clues, signposts etc to explore the origins of this quest with him. Quest metaphors are not uncommon of course and we see them regularly in films such as The Wizard of Oz, and Lord of the Rings etc.
Someone else might come to me with a problem of ‘not knowing how to make friends’. So there is a metaphor here in the ‘making’. This person has ‘almost given up’ because it requires ‘too much effort’ and he has ‘nothing to see for it’. When I ask about what he has heard about making friends he tells me that he understands it takes ‘Time, Trust and Effort’. And from his experience already he has decided that it is quite ‘hard to build on one night stands’ or ‘random hook ups’ because the whole thing is liable to ‘come crumbling down’ too easily.
This sounds to me like a construction metaphor. I can follow this up with him by asking about plans and dreams of what kinds of friendships he wants to build. Are they great edifices or cosy hideaways? If random hook ups don’t seem to work, what sort of foundations might work? What is the cement of friendship? What are the building blocks? Does he know of any ‘finished products’ or ‘works in progress’ he can get ideas from?
I find metaphors really stimulating. Firstly, I don’t come up with them, others do, but I can help develop the preferred story and plotlines. Metaphors also speak to the hopes, beliefs, commitments and values people have. And hearing about these is just as important as hearing the problem story.
For more information or to make an appointment, go to www.forwardtherapy.com
