Psychotherapist London
Thinking & Writing
On psychotherapy, the inner life, and the work of change.
The Line Between a Therapist and a Guru
When I walk into a supervision group for the first time, something arrives before I have said anything. The group hands me their wisdom. They have decided, on …
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The Container That Was Taken Away
This follows on from an account of why recovery is so hard to sustain — the part of a person that never comes to the session, and the state it leaves them in: …
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The Part That Waits Outside
Something happens in this work that I have never entirely got used to. A man sits in front of me for fifty minutes. He is honest, he is intelligent, he can see …
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The Six People in the Room
Two people sit down opposite me. They have agreed to come. They have found a time, arranged the money, and taken an afternoon out of a working week, which is …
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From Junky to Doctor
After twenty-five years of clinical work, most of it in addiction, eating disorders and trauma, what I offer patients is more or less what was offered to me …
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Burnout or Depression? What the Partner Sees First
It is eleven at night in Geneva, Dubai or Monaco, and he is not the one searching. You are. You are searching because something has changed and you cannot name …
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Does Online Therapy Work? What the Evidence Says, and What It Cannot Measure
The question arrives in almost every enquiry about remote work, usually apologetically, as though it were an admission: would it be better if I came in person? …
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Adult Children of Alcoholics: The House That Was Never Finished
The most severe complex PTSD I have encountered in twenty-five years of clinical practice has not been in people who went to war. It has been in adults who grew …
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Cross-Addiction: A Different Cabin on the Titanic
The image I use for this is a different cabin on the Titanic. You have moved. The move required effort, it involved packing, and it feels like you have done …
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