Psychotherapist London
Thinking & Writing
On psychotherapy, the inner life, and the work of change.
The Karpman Drama Triangle: The Map of the Drama, and the Way Out
In 1968 the psychiatrist Stephen Karpman, a student of Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, drew a small triangle that became one of the most useful maps in all …
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The Mother Wound: A Wound in Being
The phrase “mother wound” is modern shorthand, not a term Jung used. But Jungian psychology gives it a depth the internet versions lack, because Jung saw …
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Emotional Eating: The Hunger of the Soul
Eating your feelings means turning to food not because the body is hungry, but because something else is. To understand that something, you can open a nutrition …
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Hyper-Empathy and the Mental Load: Carrying the World Like Atlas
The myth is Atlas. Condemned to hold the world on his shoulders. Now picture the mental load: the invisible, constant, cognitive and emotional burden of …
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Parentification: The Child Who Was the Parent
Parentification is an inversion: the child takes the parent’s role, and the parent the child’s. It can be practical: the child who runs the household, raises …
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The Fear of Abandonment: Where It Comes From, What It Destroys, and How It Heals
The fear of abandonment is the persistent terror that the people we love will eventually leave us, even when nothing suggests they will. It is almost always …
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The Panic Attack: A False Alarm, and How to Calm It
A panic attack is a sudden surge of intense fear, with violent physical symptoms, in the absence of any real danger. Here is the analogy I give in my consulting …
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The Saviour Complex: Helping Until You Lose Yourself
The saviour complex, sometimes called rescuer syndrome, is a compulsive need to help, fix and save others, on which self-esteem has come to depend. To …
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The Toxic Relationship: Recognising It, Understanding Why You Stay, and the Way Out
If you want to understand toxic relationships, you can open a psychology textbook. You can also open Greek mythology, and everything is already there. Zeus and …
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