Stimmung Therapy Services

13/08/2025

04/08/2025

How often have you used the phrase, “walked right in…”? When have you thought, “I just found myself….”? As if you had no control over how you got there. As if your feet just took you there. Whose feet are they?

31/07/2025

Once you’re wet, you’re wet. Once you’re born, you’re ageing. Embrace life toward death. Celebrate life as you age. In your own way.

28/07/2025

An autoimmune diagnosis this year, and persistent nitrous injections of chronic pain flare ups have forced me to go more slowly for the last few years - and I remain slower as I enter my 60th year. I’m still able to push boundaries, buck the system, cause havoc and mayhem, though, in the world of psychotherapy, but in a more considered way. At least you can rest assured that if I’m being a nuisance these days, I’ve really thought it through😎🙃🤩😝

16/07/2025

Some people love a drama, and habitually create some to give their relationship some oomph! or spark. It can become a habit. Each party is responsible for maintaining such a dynamic. How about exploring what would happen without the drama?

03/07/2025

“Identity is the way in which individuals understand themselves and their communities within a historical context. Yet rather than accepting identity as something historical or static, it is most helpful to recognise that it continually evolves. Identity, like culture, must be responsive to remain relevant.” This I read during my visit to the National Museum of Mexican Art in the Pilsen district of Chicago. What do you say? The question “Who are you becoming?” Comes up a lot in Existential Therapy, I find.

26/06/2025

At Northwestern Univerity, Evanston, Chicago for the RO DBT Conference with my psychological therapies colleagues. Catching up with new research on this effective treatment for maladaptive over control, and enhancing adherence to this innovative model and its novel mechanism for change.

10/06/2025

Being closed to the emotion of joy reaffirms your misery and will feel authentic, but actually you just become wedded to your depression, and emotionally lonely. I’m not advocating disingenuous expression, I’m advocating full spectrum human experience. Think dialectically, and try holding two apparently opposing paradigms: validate your low mood state while being open to genuine laughter.

04/06/2025

Sometimes it’s best to stop trying to stay in relation with someone. I’m not necessarily talking about implementing a rule such as “3 strikes and they’re out”. I’m talking about calling quits on the physically and emotionally draining, pervasively effortful, I’m-doing-all-the-work-here relationships that may well not be serving you. Ask yourself: what’s in this for me? If you like a one way street of hard work with little return - you carry on, but some relationships aren’t worth saving. Maybe you need to burn a bridge.

29/05/2025

This comes from the book of “How To Make It About You When Your Grown Up Child Opens Up To You About Something Difficult Going On In Their Life”. This is a great example - a real one - of what RO DBT calls a Don’t Hurt Me response. It’s can only halt conversation unless the other is skilled or determined to stay on track. It’s invalidating, self focused and controlling.

23/05/2025

Outdoor swimming saved my sanity through the pandemic lockdowns of Great Britain. A bit of guerilla swimming keeps my spirit burning 🤗

21/05/2025

Part of my training as an Existential Therapist was to not leap ahead of the client with solutions, soothing, interpretation(s), but to metaphorically sit side by side them, at least early on in therapy, to see the world as they see it. The image of a narrowboat waiting the other side of a lock for one just coming through so that the two boats can travel alongside one another is apt, particularly because I then went on to live on the inland waterways, and have done for the last 16 years. I wonder who it was that used this simile🤔 (So sorry about the sound! The last all-important word is clipped too: “therapist “🙄)