Good relationships are the biggest predictor of a happy life,[1] yet excessive expressions of contempt destroy relationships like nothing else.[2] Contempt, commonly expressed in the form of criticism, fundamentally communicates the idea that “you are worthless”, even if this is not the intention.
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If you are a therapist or coach of any persuasion; counsellor, psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, life coach, bodyworker, in fact anyone who works in the helping professions, you will glean valuable, actionable ideas, tips and techniques from Clear Thinking, my free therapy techniques newsletter.
In it you'll find a wide range of topics including solution focused therapy approaches, cognitive-behavioural therapy techniques, ideas from DBT, hypnotherapy, counselling and even the occasional philosophical piece. I've been treating people with psychotherapy for more than 30 years and I've drawn what I find useful from many fields. I hope you find it helps you in your practice too, whatever flavour of helper you are.
The Pandemic and Us
The world has changed. We have become divided, even splintered. What did this series of coronaviruses do to society? To collective and individual psychology? Certainly, anxiety conditions, depression, and addictions, as well as sleep disorders may well have increased hugely during the pandemic.3 And the treatment of other illnesses and diseases has been, in some […]
How to Tell if Your Client is Hypnotically Capable Without Using a ‘Susceptibility Test’
Therapeutic technique needn’t always be laid bare in a procedural or even bureaucratic form of doing therapy. Rather, I feel it’s best to have it flow and feel natural as part of a very human interaction. In a recent Q&A session I was asked about why I don’t teach standard hypnotizability tests in my courses […]
How to Keep Your Therapy Client on Track
We practitioners need to know where the therapy is going. This means being aware of the ‘signposts’ on the way to therapeutic success. So how can we best monitor and ratify?
3 Reasons Your Clients Project and What You Can Do About It
People, at least sometimes, describe themselves when they describe others. This is what is known as psychological projection. Projection is a block to self-understanding and therefore to self-development. While it may provide comfort to the projector in the short term, it inevitably causes unhappiness and fractured relationships in the long term – as diminished understanding […]
7 Steps to Help Stop Your Clients’ Panic Attacks
‘Panic attack’ is actually a misnomer, since nothing is ‘attacked’. A house alarm doesn’t ‘attack’ the house it’s protecting, but it can sound when it doesn’t need to. Stopping panic attacks is about aligning the panic response so it only happens when it really needs to. When our clients overcome panic attacks, they get their […]
How to Stop ‘Headline Thinking’ in Your Depressed and Anxious Clients
Sometimes something stated as an immutable fact in a headline turns out to be simply conjecture or even a just a faint possibility when we bother to read further. But what if, as seems to be increasingly the case, a person thinks in ‘headlines’?
Three Perceptive Ways to Spot Client Incongruence
Incongruence – seeming to be one thing while really being or feeling another – can blight relationships or even whole lives. People can sometimes be honest with you as far as they know, yet if you dig a little deeper there may be other things going on. So what signs can we look out for?
Three Transcendental Tips to Help Your Sports Performance Client
I’ve found that supreme sporting performance requires an optimal state of mind. And this is about not just what the participant has in their mind but, equally importantly, what they exclude from their consciousness. Here are some approaches I’ve found useful when working with sporting clients.
4 Tips to Help the Passive-Aggressive Client
I’ve occasionally worked with clients who exhibit that peculiar and often confusing blend of domination and aggression couched in supplication and appeasement. Apparent congeniality and agreeability laced with sarcasm and subtle obstructiveness. So, what specific patterns do we see in the passive-aggressive person? And how can we help them?
