The Anxiety that’s there when you awake. There’s a particular morning experience you might be familiar with if you have generalised anxiety You surface from sleep and the anxiety is already there, waiting, like it got up before you did. No bad news arrived overnight and yet your body is jittery, your chest is tight, and … Read more
What is the Float Approach to Anxiety? The thing most people with anxiety suffer from is not just the anxiety itself. Rather, it is the repetitive, intrusive way it keeps returning. When you have a job to go to, or a gathering to attend, you really just want to work and play. Instead your mind … Read more
Why Fixing Your Anxiety Loop Is Making It Worse Most people who come to see me about anxiety have already done a great deal of work on it. They can name their triggers, trace their patterns back to childhood, and identify the thoughts that set the whole thing off. They have journals, apps, breathing techniques, … Read more
Using solution focused questions Brief therapy is often (but not always) associated with the employment of solution focused questions. Which are designed to draw attention away from the problem state and towards desirable changes. For example, a client with anxious thoughts might be asked if she is aware of a time when she was able … Read more
AI Therapy and Psychotherapy are not alike Recent publicity surrounding the AI boom has raised a familiar question: Can AI therapy replace psychotherapy? To my mind, this is a false question. It assumes that AI therapy and psychotherapy are fundamentally similar activities—differing only in efficiency or scale—when in fact they are categorically different. They do … Read more
Your thoughts are not yours No one, not even the boldest scientist, has yet explained where thoughts come from. They arrive like uninvited guests at a wedding, and disappear just as mysteriously. One might say they belong to no one in particular, though most people claim ownership. To think a thought is to assume it … Read more
What is psychological flexibility? Psychological flexibility is a state of mind in which we pursue productive activities despite the presence of unpleasant thoughts and feelings. Such thoughts can be linked to anxiety, depression or inhibitions of various kinds. Feelings can also include dejection, frustration, irritation and tiredness. Inflexibility arises when we treat these states as … Read more
Common mistakes that drain mental health This June will be the 35th anniversary of my career in treating mental health problems. My first client was a young person with social anxiety who, perforce, suffered from loneliness. Therapy, for him, involved getting him to do the thing he most wanted to do (i.e. meet new friends) … Read more
What is the Power of Now? It is 28 years since Eckhart Tolle published The Power of Now; a book that has sold over 16 million copies over that time. This book is a bestseller for a reason. It points to a very simple and liberating truth: that all our experience happens in the Now. … Read more
The illusion of personal control The illusion of control is at the root of most anxiety disorders: overthinking, worry, obsessional disorder and OCD, perfectionism, panic disorder and control freakery. However, it also has roots in our individualistic culture, centring on the myth of a separate, personal self that is in charge of all that happens. … Read more