Artisan Therapy

05/06/2023

I shared Fritz Perl's Gestalt Prayer with some of my clients today and it had a special resonance for them. In case you don't already know it, I thought I would also share it here. Fritz Perl established 'Gestalt Therapy' in the 1950s as a therapeutic approach that was designed to help people develop self-awareness but with practical, positive ways to address problems and affect change in their lives. Perl built his therapy on his desire to give clients increased insight into the way they think, feel and act, believing that this builds self-confidence and frees people to address issues and help them live life to their full potential.

Gestalt Prayer

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your
expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to
mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we
find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.

(Fritz Perls, 1969)

22/05/2023

The Waiting Room

We all find ourselves in The Waiting Room at many different points of our lives.....waiting for good or bad news, waiting for results, waiting for flights, waiting for an interview, waiting for news of birth and death, waiting for resolution, waiting in traffic. What happens at the end of the waiting period may be out of our hands and in the hands of others; doctors, employers, professors, decision makers, judges. Time pauses and for those more difficult times in the waiting room, time takes on a very different dimension for us internally. It is hard to be at peace, our bodies hold tension and our minds create space for anxious and worrying thoughts. It can feel all consuming.

Those who come to therapy are all on individual journeys in their waiting room. Some have just found the entrance, some have been sitting and contemplating a while, others are closer to leaving. I am not the giver of news. I am on the chair next to them in the waiting room while they unravel and untangle feelings, listening and hearing them through each of their journeys from entrance to the exit. The waiting room of therapy provides a time for contemplation, a time to get to know ourselves better through our exploration of anxious and worrying thoughts. It provides steps on the journey to news, news about who you are, how you may want to live your life, hope for life beyond the waiting room door.

20/04/2023

‘So much of our trauma is in the aloneness, not just during the event itself but in its immediate and ongoing aftermath.’

Trauma is an experience that is so often accompanied by shame and silence. It can be a place where we feel numb or highly sensitive, disassociated or hyperaroused, quick to anger without knowing why or retreating into the background, unable to make your voice heard without fear of getting it wrong.

Being truly heard, being truly seen and being validated, with compassion and without judgment creates a path towards connection and a restoration of safety. Recognising that people around us may have different levels of hurt, pain or trauma creates a space for understanding each other’s fragility and arriving at a place where we consider ‘what happened to you?’ rather than ‘what are you doing?’ or ‘what shall we do with you?’

Becoming trauma informed and adopting trauma informed practice in our workplaces, schools, hospitals and lives is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other and the generations that come up behind us.

We have evolved as social beings whose survival is dependent upon other people. Being alone, abandoned, isolated – or when attachment needs are not met – can be traumatising: because it's perceived as life-threat.

Read more: http://www.carolynspring.com/blog/trauma-and-the-bears

27/03/2023

Today, I am wondering whether 'if....then...' thoughts might be familiar to you? Check out some of the below beliefs or fill in the gaps with your own words.

If...... I ask anything of anybody, then...... they will think I am needy and I am incapable.

If...... it is not perfect, then...... I am a failure

If..... my colleague didn’t acknowledge me at work today, then...... this means that they don’t like me

Assumptions and Core Beliefs

'If…then….' thoughts are thoughts that run under the surface of our awareness. They have a strong influence on our behaviour, our moods and our physical reactions. They are underlying assumptions, otherwise known as Core Beliefs, which form the rules by which we live our lives. Core Beliefs are strongly-held, rigid and mostly inflexible beliefs that are maintained by our tendency to focus and hone into information that supports this belief, filtering and ignoring information that belies it.

Why do I need to know about my Core Beliefs?

Identifying our core beliefs can help us to understand ourselves better and to allow us the opportunity to ask if these beliefs are helpful to us or not. It gives us the possibility of creating new core beliefs that may work better for us.

For the most part, we are born a blank canvas, pure white with few colours painted on.

Through our lives and especially in the formative years of our childhood, teenage and young adult years, colours are painted onto our canvas through the people, environment and experiences that we are exposed to: parents, family, teachers, friends, socio-economic environment, war, famine to name but a few. Through the lens of these colours, we begin our understanding and interpretation of ourselves, other people, the outside world and our future. Some of those colours we welcome, those that fit the values that we feel are true to ourselves. Some of these colours cause us difficulties in the form of anxiety and our sense of self and identity. Often we live our lives, feeling at odds with ourself but not understanding why.

Identifying your Core Beliefs

Reading this article may already have given you an ‘Aha!’ moment. Some of these ‘if….then…’ word patterns may be familiar to you. Perhaps you have different ones, perhaps you have ones that crop up when you socialise, eat, work, relax or study.

To start to identify your Core Beliefs you may wish to try out the following but placing your own words after each opening sentence:

Core Belief: I need to say yes in order to be a good person

If I ………………………………. don’t say yes to everything
then…………………………….. it means that I am not being helpful
If I don’t……………………….. say yes to everything
then…………………………….. people will think I am selfish and no-one will like me

Challenging our Core Beliefs and creating new ones.

Practicing alternative thoughts and finding spaces in which to action them allows you the possibility to create change and see life from a different angle. Start small and begin with self-directed kindness and compassion. See if you can test the opposite to a belief which you may feel could be unhelpful to you.

If...... I say yes to everything, then...... everyone will know they can rely on me and will want me to be around them.

If...... I say yes to everything, then..... I won’t have time for myself and this will make me unhappy.

If...... I say yes to everything, then.....my unhappiness will affect my partner and my family and they are important to me

Altered Core Belief: Being a good person means that you also have to be able to know when to say no.

Remember tiny steps, taken with empathy and self-compassion, can start the path to bigger changes.

sinead@artisan-therapy.com

16/03/2023

I am so happy to now be able to offer Face to Face sessions in Windsor. Having worked predominantly online throughout and since Covid, it is wonderful to be able to offer this possibility to clients again.

My room is, rather wonderfully, next door to Yoga for Harmony on Arthur Road in central Windsor. The mind and the body are interlinked so strongly in our mental health and particularly with issues relating to trauma. I feel that this fits the Artisan Therapy way of working so well.

sinead@artisan-therapy.com

08/03/2023

In honour of International Women's Day, I thought I would pay tribute to the wonderful Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein.

Klein was a pioneer of children's psychoanalysis and the inventor of 'play technique,' out of which 'play therapy' emerged and is still used extensively today.

Klein's 'Object Relations Theory' has also been hugely influential to therapists and psychologists throughout the world. It looks at how we have related to the world outside throughout our life (be it people, objects etc, be they good or bad), how we make a mental and emotional image of this and how we then internalise it within our own self. This complex interaction between those internalised representations (from all ages of our life, good and not so good) and those actually out in the real world (external to ourself) helps to throw a light on any internalised mental images that may contribute to any current difficulties in our present lives.

Thank you to all the extraordinary women before and after Klein that have given and continue to give such insight into the human condition and help alleviate human suffering in mental health.

02/03/2023

Did you know that anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric presentation after depression, with approximately 25% of adults reporting anxiety symptoms between the start of Covid and August 2020?

The most recent research on anxiety in the UK shows that:

In any given week in England, 6 in 100 people will be diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder (Mind)

In the UK, over 8 million people are experiencing an anxiety disorder at any one time (Mental Health UK)

Less than 50% of people with generalised anxiety disorder access treatment (Mental Health Foundation)

An estimated 822,000 workers are affected by work-related stress, depression or anxiety every year (Health and Safety Executive)

Although I hadn't planned another blog this week on anxiety, I felt compelled to put together some information defining anxiety a little further, to talk a little about the some of the treatments currently available and suggest a variety of further reading for those that may be interested. As the blog is a little long and you are all busy people, I enclose a link to it on my website rather than publish it here:

https://artisan-therapy.com/blog-item/shining-a-light-on-anxiety/

20/02/2023

We all understand the word, compassion or do we? Compassion is threefold; compassion to others, compassion shown to us and compassion that we show to ourselves. How comfortable do you feel receiving compassion, both from others and from yourself?

My clients will often hear me gently asking them to be compassionately curious about themselves. What kind of thoughts are you having? Where are they originating from?

As humans, our brains have a negativity bias. This means we naturally gravitate to more negative thoughts. It originates from the earlier formation of our brains where we were programmed for survival. To stay alive, we had to be able to detect threat. Forward on two million years and we have extraordinary brains that can visualise, imagine, anticipate and ruminate. We got smart. We could solve problems by considering solutions and this meant also checking out all the possible negatives to those solutions.

The downside to your amazing brain is that we still have our old brain emotions. A small animal running away from a tiger will be able to settle down reasonably quickly after it escapes. Our brains, holding on to both old and new brain ability, will create thoughts that stimulate and hold onto emotions of fear and threat. We can start to think whether the near miss we had in the car yesterday, means a possible accident today or tomorrow, a 'what if' situation that runs around and around in our minds, causing havoc.

This is not our fault. It is simply the way our brains have evolved. However, if we are not mindful, we can get caught up in loops and spirals of negative thinking which cause issues of panic, anxiety, fear, shame, self-criticism and self-harm. These thoughts activate our nervous system, leading also and often to physical problems (tense muscles, painful tummy, headaches and more).

So how do we begin to break this pattern? I suggest the following four steps.

1. Compassionate Curiousity. Becoming aware of the thoughts we are having.

2. Compassionate understanding. Recognising where these thoughts are coming from.

3. Compassionate accepting. Realising that they are a reaction to a past moment, that we are safe but our brains are acting as though the threat was present because it's primary objective is your survival.

4. Self-compassion. Becoming present in this very moment by using your 5 senses and deep breathing to tell your brain that you are ok. Begin to show yourself compassion. It is not easy to be in this place. It is not easy to have negative thoughts. Often these thoughts are coming from a place where you really did feel hurt, scared and afraid. Place your two hands across your heart and visualise a place of safety, somewhere that you have warm and happy memories of, a colour, a smell, the sun...

Remember there is no tik-tok instant therapy cure. Taking your brain on a journey to better health takes time, compassion and patience. I recognise that the voice of self-criticism may be very strong for some of you. Don't be afraid to seek help. It is what I and other therapists are here for.

sinead@artisan-therapy.com

08/02/2023

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06/02/2023

Often my clients come to therapy because of anxiety. Anxiety is our body's natural response to stress but when this feeling becomes persistent, it can become overwhelming, resulting in sensations of fear and dread. You may also experience a range of physical symptoms from difficulty sleeping and heart racing to muscle and stomach pains.

Your nervous system can be a fabulous friend. It springs into action when it thinks it senses danger, switching off the pre-frontal cortex (your thinking brain) and releasing neurochemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. It's sole purpose is to keep you safe. This works brilliantly when you need to jump out of the path of an oncoming car or press the brakes on your bike. When there is no car or bike, no jump to be made or brakes to press, there is nothing to use up all of these neurochemicals. Left unused, you are left with the mental and physical feelings of anxiety, often confused as to how you got to this place.

So how do you make a start in befriending your nervous system? Well, a good place to start is to remind yourself that all good friendships need nurture, kindness and care. Unlike the tiktok promise of an overnight cure, this takes time. If you are dealing with anxiety, your nervous system has become stuck in safety mode and needs convincing that it may not be viewing the world correctly. Today, let's give you a path forward when you are in the throes of anxiety and feeling strings of negative thoughts.

A beginner's guide to dealing with anxious, negative thoughts

1. Observe your thought. Don't push it away, stay with it and feel it. Breathe deeply.

2. Distance your thought. Begin by simply placing the words ‘I am noticing” before your observation of your thought. “I am noticing that I am having the thought that I am not going to be able to cope”, “I am noticing that I am having the thought that I am not good enough”, “I am noticing that I am having the thought my friend hasn’t called because she doesn’t like me anymore”

3. Remind yourself that your thought is not fact, it is simply a thought. The average human has 6,200 thoughts a day. This is just one of them and you have a choice to believe it or not.

4. Ask yourself “Is this thought helpful to me?”

5. If you find that this thought is unhelpful to you, visualise yourself standing calmly and peacefully on a bridge watching leaf after leaf float by in the river below. Place your thought on each leaf and watch them float away, far into the distant horizon. Imagine yourself breathing in the fresh, clean air of the surrounding countryside as you continue to place your thought on the leaves. You may find your nervous system sending further negative thoughts your way as you work towards establishing a sense of peace. If this happens, turn back to the river and work through these steps again until you sense a move towards calm.

Remember, your nervous system, like all good friendships, will require time, patience, understanding, love and acceptance. Be kind to yourself. Practicing the above exercise is just one of the ways in which I work with my clients to help bring them back to a place of equilibrium and choice. Working with a therapist helps you to be curious about yourself and your thoughts, allowing you to work towards a place where you start to have choice.

sinead@artisan-therapy.com

29/01/2023

Take just a moment to yourself.

Breathe.

Where do you feel that you are right at this moment on this ladder?

In this moment do you find yourself feeling anxious and stressed? How often do you think you feel this way in any given day?

Are there times that you feel like you are alienated from both yourself and the world outside? How often might you you think you feel this way in any given day?

Are there times when you feel that you are safe, connected and at peace with the world? How often do you feel this way in any given day? Do you wish you were at this part of your ladder more often?

Rest assured that you are not on your own. Often we find ourselves in many of these states many times during the course of one single day, even in one single hour.

Just for today and the week ahead, see if you can find some time each day just to check in with your self and ask:

How do I feel in this moment?
Where in my body do I feel this?
Where on my ladder do I feel that I am?

Can you visualise a world where you are aware of your own emotions, where you could have actual and active choice to live differently.

Over the coming weeks, I will be introducing you to ways to enable you to recognise where you are on your own nervous system ladder in any given moment. I will be giving you evidence-based ideas to help you to start taking control of your own ladder, to move up and down it with greater ease, to feel the gift of choice.

Evidence based: Polyvagal Theory is a concept devised by Stephen Porges. Deb Dana conceived the idea of the Polyvagal Ladder to allow clients to befriend their nervous systems. It is a theory that I find hugely beneficial and use regularly with my clients.

Sinead
sinead@artisan-therapy.com

25/01/2023

A warm welcome to Artisan Therapy, a place of confidential counselling and psychotherapy.

Does life feel difficult and challenging for you now? Do you feel you have reached the end of your tether?

Do you feel you are no longer in control of your emotions, feeling overwhelmed, no longer involved in life, stressed and anxious?

Are you seeking change, feeling that there is a more meaningful and satisfying way to live in this world?

My name is Sinead. I am a BACP (British Association of Counselling Practitioners) registered counsellor with a speciality in trauma and I work to help you to restore balance, meaning and harmony in your life.

I run my own successful private practice and, over the coming months, I will be posting evidence-based words of guidance and hope that have helped my clients. I hope that these will reach those who may or not be able to access therapy and may be finding themselves in a time of difficulty.

www.artisan-therapy.com

**Please note that the contact page of the new website above is operational as of 26 January 2023. If you have sent a contact message prior to this date, my apologies. Please do resend and I will be in touch with you shortly.