Andover Psychologist

31/08/2023

Kintsugi. This is a Japanese pottery art where damage is seamed with precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum. Accepting change is privileged and leant into. Breaks are patiently and carefully repaired. Beauty is found in flawed things.

This is an art form where there is a commitment to restoring shattered and fragmented things, and where breaks are visibly honoured.

Imperfections are actively valued as parts of the object’s history- parts that enhance it’s value, rarity and uniqueness.

28/08/2023

There are some ‘ingredients’ most humans need to learn to cope positively with their big feelings, especially as children learning to navigate the world.

We need someone to attune to us- to notice we have the feeling.

Sometimes just noticing is all that’s needed- it’s a response in itself.

Sometimes, especially with children, it can help to put words to an otherwise overwhelming physical and emotional experience: “I can see you’re hot and bothered and feeling really angry”: we language it for them and in doing so it’s transformed into something both understood and communicable.

And there is power in validation: “of course you’re angry!” Full stop. This is a good moment to just pause. Resist the “but….” (“Of course you’re angry, but you can’t just lash out like that!”). An important point here is that you’re validating the feeling. You’re not excusing poor behaviour. There’s a time to think through what alternative behaviours a person has- but this moment of high emotion is probably not it.

Finally, we need people to be able to bear it for us and with us: to show us that our distress can be safely borne, to show us that we’re still loved and loveable even in our most challenging moments.

When we offer these things to others with reliability, they have the opportunity to internalise them as skills for life, so they can regulate themselves even when their loved one isn’t with them in person.

And please note. It’s not just the children that gain comfort and support from this. We all need these things to various degrees. If we are lucky, we have friends and family who offer these things freely, and our capacity to manage challenges is nurtured. Sometimes people offering these things is a key part of therapy.

So these are gifts: to attune to another’s experiences, to acknowledge & validate them, and to sit with their feelings without rushing in to mitigate them because it hurts us to witness them. And so often the person will then find their own solutions and their own strength.

12/08/2023

Survival responses. We’ve all heard of fight, flight and freeze. But did you know there are more?Fawn (or befriend) is a really important one to know about. And the fifth ‘f’ is flop. These survival responses also look a bit different if we have to adapt to situations of chronic danger, living in an unsafe home for example.

I should probably also have said in the video that fight flight & freeze can also manifest in longer term adaptations to a dangerous world:
Fight - can look like anger, bullying, controlling behaviours
Flight- can look like various forms of chronic anxiety, agitation, distractibility
Freeze- can look like chronic indecisiveness and difficulty making decisions, ruminating without action, isolating, numbness and disconnect
Fawn (befriend)- can look like a please & appease relational style, to the extent that it’s to the detriment of the person
Flop- can look like a ‘collapse-submit’ response eg self neglect, learned helplessness (a horrible phrase!), treatment resistant depression

As always, this is just a whistle stop tour of my take on some important ideas, ideas that are being elaborated all the time. But I hope it’s helpful!

11/08/2023

Consent. Its hard to put words to how important this is. And whoever you are, if you’ve not seen this two minute clip I think it’s well worth it!

If you’re still struggling with consent just imagine instead of initiating s*x you’re making them a cup of tea. Animation courtesy of Emmeline May at rocksta...

05/08/2023

05/08/2023

The Growth Mindset- Part 3! The Big Life Journal is a lovely resource if you’re interested in supporting children with their confidence & resilience.

https://biglifejournal.com/

04/08/2023

The Growth Mindset. This has been the focus of my attention this week. It’s being used now in schools as a lovely way to promote confidence & resilience in children. But I think we adults often need reminding of these ideas too.

28/07/2023

ADHD. A current hot topic and one I’ve been educating myself more about this week. Having listened to many podcasts now, this one stands out- possibly because she has a variety of bite sized videos on various aspects of it. And it’s accessible to young people as well as adults. I wish I had a remote to slow her down a little as she gives a lot of information at speed! (There’s irony there.) But, if you can strap yourselves in and bear with it there’s some really interesting information & illustrations to help us connect with what she’s saying.

I will admit a personal bias that I suspect a lot of conditions, including ADHD, are being over diagnosed in our current culture. I also suspect that this is not helpful for those whose neurodiversity is very real.

I have really enjoyed learning more about it: what it looks like and how it affects people in both distressing and, importantly, extraordinary ways: ways that are heavily impacted on by the context a person grows and the attitudes, education and compassionate understanding of the people around them.

What IS ADHD, anyway? And how do you EXPLAIN it to people? We teamed up with the ADHD tribe to bring you simple explanations of the most common ADHD challeng...

22/07/2023

“Why I am rude.” Food for thought for anyone who has children or works with them. Well worth
the two minutes twenty seconds to watch it!

Thanks to for sharing this with me. Thanks to for creating it.

https://youtu.be/waeRP6jzW_U

This poem aims to help adults and children to understand the 'why' behind behaviours which may be seen or described as rude, when actually, it is often a def...

17/07/2023

I’ve mentioned before that as a clinical psychologist, I know that the stories we tell hold power: power over how we relate to ourselves & the world, & power over how the world & others relate to us.

This is social constructionism: how we language our experiences makes them so.

As a therapist I am interested in how people tell their stories. Some people say to me, “you can’t change the past so what’s the point in therapy?” Great question. My answer is: sometimes, we need to review how we tell our stories; we can repurpose them, find different meaning in them, & change how we feel about them. So this is the value of therapy, and particularly, systemic psychotherapy & social constructionism. Nile Wilson illustrates this beautifully in the short Ted Talk below; you will see the power of stories told within his first few minutes.

Olympic gymnast and medalist Nile Wilson draws on his own personal challenges with mental health as a trailblazer in sports to shed some light on the challen...

15/07/2023

Many psychologists believe anger is often a secondary emotion- that it is actually another feeling in disguise, guarding against grief. Fear. Sadness. Vulnerability.

Some people need to make good use of their anger, wielding it like a shield, drawing from its energy & guarding themselves against the world.

In therapy I often find myself observing with people that all coping strategies come with side effects: they help us with something but they often also create another issue. Anger definitely has some side effects! It can distance, disconnect & destroy. And it can be incredibly difficult to climb down.

?

[Side note: I wouldn’t have chosen a
Knight myself! Just an ordinary person who remembers to ask what might be shielded by the anger. Who recognises instead the fear, sadness, vulnerability or grief for the life they’d have preferred: and responds to that.]

14/07/2023