JD Psychotherapy - LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy

JD Psychotherapy - LGBTQ Affirmative Therapy Providing compassionate and inclusive psychotherapy for LGBTQ+ individuals aged 21+. Safe, affirming, and confidential care.

As the realities of climate change become increasingly difficult to ignore–increasing average global temperatures, incre...
31/01/2026

As the realities of climate change become increasingly difficult to ignore–increasing average global temperatures, increasing sea-level, more extreme weather–many people are experiencing profound emotional responses to environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and an uncertain future. These responses are often described using terms such as eco-anxiety and climate grief. While not psychiatric diagnoses, they reflect understandable psychological reactions to chronic, global threats. Psychotherapy has a growing role in helping individuals make sense of these experiences, reduce distress, and develop sustainable ways of living with uncertainty.
What Is Eco-Anxiety?
Eco-anxiety refers to persistent worries, fears, and feelings of helplessness related to climate change and environmental collapse.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

A Relational, Humanistic Critique of the “Dopamine Hole”SEO meta descriptionA concise relational, humanistic critique of...
24/01/2026

A Relational, Humanistic Critique of the “Dopamine Hole”
SEO meta description
A concise relational, humanistic critique of the popular “dopamine hole” self-help video from Newel of Knowledge, exploring what it gets right, what it oversimplifies, and how people in distress might use it safely.
Keyword phrase
dopamine hole relational humanistic critique
The video in brief
The video “How to quickly escape a dopamine hole” (YouTube) can be viewed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXQ3VVRuy1I

The presenter speaks to viewers who feel “flat, foggy, and fried” and names this a “dopamine hole”, caused by “cheap pleasures” such as scrolling, po*******hy, junk food, and gaming. He reassures viewers that:

- “You are not broken”, only overstimulated.
- A dopamine hole is not laziness, weakness, or a fixed flaw.
- You can escape within one to three days by unplugging and using a structured method.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

The emergence of artificial intelligence that can update itself, modify internal models, and act with partial autonomy r...
17/01/2026

The emergence of artificial intelligence that can update itself, modify internal models, and act with partial autonomy raises a set of questions that sound surprisingly familiar to psychotherapists. Concerns about misalignment, harmful optimisation, or systems losing contact with reality mirror well-known clinical struggles. When a person becomes disconnected from feedback, distrusts others, or develops a self-reinforcing internal narrative, the therapeutic task becomes one of reconnection, grounding, and restoring reflective capacity.

This article summarises key ideas from recent discussion about data integrity, autonomy, and the potential for harm in advanced AI systems. It reframes the issues through a psychotherapeutic lens, treating them as questions of relationality, conscience, and boundary-setting rather than as purely technical challenges.
Data Contamination as Epistemic Drift
The problem often called “AI slop” refers to synthetic output contaminating future training data.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

This article offers a reflective review of Therapy for Perverts, Weirdos and Crazy Cat People: A Lived Experience Introd...
12/01/2026

This article offers a reflective review of Therapy for Perverts, Weirdos and Crazy Cat People: A Lived Experience Introduction to Gestalt Therapy by John Gillespie, an independently published introduction to Gestalt therapy rooted firmly in lived experience. I was tempted into reading this book, as the author is likely to feature in my training and I wanted to find out what sort of person was coming along.
Rather than presenting Gestalt therapy as a technical model or professional framework, the book invites the reader into the author’s personal journey. In doing so, it challenges many of the unspoken norms around who therapy is “for”, and gently but clearly resists the shame that so often accompanies difference, vulnerability, and non-conformity.
The Nature of the Book
This is not a textbook, nor does it claim to be. Gillespie describes the work as an “educated layperson’s introduction”, and that framing is important.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

IntroductionWorking with clients who carry a persistent sense of shame often reveals how deeply these experiences are ro...
04/01/2026

Introduction
Working with clients who carry a persistent sense of shame often reveals how deeply these experiences are rooted in early relational patterns. Patricia DeYoung’s Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame (2015) offers a thoughtful and clinically grounded account of how this form of shame takes shape and how it can be approached in therapy. Her writing brings together relational theory and neurobiological insight in a way that illuminates what many clients describe only as a quiet, longstanding feeling of being “wrong” or fundamentally unacceptable. The book has been a useful companion in reflecting on how I identify and work with chronic shame in the therapy room.
What Chronic Shame Means in a Relational Context
DeYoung describes chronic shame as a relationally formed experience of the self as unworthy, fragmented, or fundamentally “wrong”—usually originating in repeated misattunements rather than overt acts of shaming. This resonates strongly with my clinical work.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

Ware’s Sequence is a well-established concept within Transactional Analysis (TA) that explains how individuals move thro...
28/12/2025

Ware’s Sequence is a well-established concept within Transactional Analysis (TA) that explains how individuals move through ego states in predictable ways when stress, conflict, or relational pressure builds. Originally described by Paul Ware in the early 1980s, it remains a useful and clinically relevant model for understanding interpersonal patterns and for guiding therapeutic intervention.
What Is Ware’s Sequence?
Ware observed that when people experience increasing tension or relational stress, they tend to move downward through ego states in a consistent sequence. This sequence reflects attempts to reduce discomfort, re-establish safety, or regain control.
The pattern follows four stages:
1. Adult
The individual begins in Adult, responding with grounded awareness, reasoning, and present-moment processing.
2.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

IntroductionThis Christmas, a friend made a lovely gift for her son-in-law. When he showed it to his parents they delibe...
28/12/2025

Introduction
This Christmas, a friend made a lovely gift for her son-in-law. When he showed it to his parents they deliberately broke it. Now Christmas gatherings can often amplify long-standing relational patterns. When in-laws deliberately damage or sabotage a gift given to someone else, the act is rarely about the object itself. Within a Transactional Analysis (TA) framework, such behaviour can be understood as a relational manoeuvre that invites blame, retaliation, or withdrawal. This article explores how holding the “I’m OK, You’re OK” life position can support adult responses, protect dignity, and reduce escalation when all parties involved are adults.
The “I’m OK, You’re OK” Life Position
In TA, life positions describe fundamental assumptions people hold about themselves and others. The “I’m OK, You’re OK” position reflects an internal stance of self-respect and respect for others. It does not imply approval of harmful behaviour, nor does it require passivity.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

IntroductionThis Christmas, my sister-in-law made a lovely gift for her son-in-law. When he showed it to his parents the...
28/12/2025

Introduction
This Christmas, my sister-in-law made a lovely gift for her son-in-law. When he showed it to his parents they deliberately broke it. Now Christmas gatherings can often amplify long-standing relational patterns. When in-laws deliberately damage or sabotage a gift given to someone else, the act is rarely about the object itself. Within a Transactional Analysis (TA) framework, such behaviour can be understood as a relational manoeuvre that invites blame, retaliation, or withdrawal. This article explores how holding the “I’m OK, You’re OK” life position can support adult responses, protect dignity, and reduce escalation when all parties involved are adults.
The “I’m OK, You’re OK” Life Position
In TA, life positions describe fundamental assumptions people hold about themselves and others. The “I’m OK, You’re OK” position reflects an internal stance of self-respect and respect for others. It does not imply approval of harmful behaviour, nor does it require passivity.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

People whose internal world is organised around a schizoid process often experience ordinary questions as criticism. Th...
17/12/2025

People whose internal world is organised around a schizoid process often experience ordinary questions as criticism. This reaction is not about being ‘overly sensitive’, nor is it a sign of interpersonal indifference. Instead, it reflects deep relational learning, shame vulnerability, and a protective stance developed early in life to guard against intrusion, engulfment, and misattunement.

This article explores why questions can feel threatening in the schizoid experience and how therapists can work with this sensitively within a relational, attuned, humanistic framework.

Early Misattunement and the Threat of Intrusion
Many individuals with a schizoid organisation have developmental histories marked by intrusive, evaluative, or unempathic caregiving.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

Ware’s Sequence is a well-established concept within Transactional Analysis (TA) that explains how individuals move thro...
10/12/2025

Ware’s Sequence is a well-established concept within Transactional Analysis (TA) that explains how individuals move through ego states in predictable ways when stress, conflict, or relational pressure builds. Originally described by Paul Ware in the early 1980s, it remains a useful and clinically relevant model for understanding interpersonal patterns and for guiding therapeutic intervention.
What Is Ware’s Sequence?
Ware observed that when people experience increasing tension or relational stress, they tend to move downward through ego states in a consistent sequence. This sequence reflects attempts to reduce discomfort, re-establish safety, or regain control.

The pattern follows four stages:
1. Adult
The individual begins in Adult, responding with grounded awareness, reasoning, and present-moment processing.
2.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

A Neurodiversity-Affirming Reading List for Therapists and ClientsI was chatting with some other therapists about good b...
02/12/2025

A Neurodiversity-Affirming Reading List for Therapists and Clients
I was chatting with some other therapists about good books for neurodivergent folk. They came up with a list. This aims to be a curated, community-informed reading list for therapists and clients exploring neurodivergence. All books listed:

- support the neurodiversity paradigm

- offer lived experience or neuro-affirming perspectives

- avoid deficit-based or pathologising narratives

- were positively received in the peer discussion

- exclude authors or titles noted as problematic

Books for Autistic and Otherwise Neurodivergent Clients
Untypical
Wharmby, P. (2022) Untypical: How the World Isn’t Built for Autistic People and What We Should All Do About It. London: HarperNorth. ISBN: 9780008529307.
A clear and affirming account of autistic experience in a neurotypical world, offering practical insights for clients and clinicians.
The Umbrella Picker
McNeice, J.

Offering face-to-face psychotherapy in Carmarthen and Swansea, specialising in LGBTQ+ and ADHD: trauma, anxiety, and depression. Your path to healing and self-acceptance starts here.

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19 Uplands Crescent
Swansea
SA20NX

Opening Hours

Tuesday 9:30am - 12:30pm
Wednesday 10am - 3pm

Telephone

+441269508064

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