We all work from a set of assumptions – mainly without being aware of what they are. Here I talk about a recent insight that reminded me of the importance of raising them to our awareness.
We get what we try to avoid
Have you ever had the experience of seemingly getting in life exactly what you didn’t want? Or where you know you want something – like promotion, or to pass an exam, but your behaviour somehow sabotages it? This is something I call the Therapeutic Paradox, and this podcast explains how it works. We get what […]
Using Polya Patterns in your Suggestions
For many years I’ve worked on the principle that something doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be plausible – something I think I got from some research from Xerox into how we go about making buying decisions. I’ve found this to be very useful in therapy; the world we live in, and […]
What you’re listening for…
I’ve found that one of the hardest things people find when they begin working as a therapist is how to sort the information they gain from the client. In fact, even before then, how to hear what the client is telling them in a way that leads somewhere useful. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed, […]
The Bruce Lee Approach to Therapy
Everyone knows of Bruce Lee as a kickass martial artist. As a child I was mesmerised by his skill and dreamed of running away to the Shaolin Temple that Kwai Chang Caine waited outside in the TV series Kung Fu. Sadly my Mum wouldn’t give me the bus fare. Despite that inauspicious start I still […]
The Therapeutic Paradox
Miss X arrives in my office complaining that she never meets nice men. Investigation uncovers her fear of being hurt. How is it that with this fear she keeps ending up in abusive relationships? Mr Y finds himself increasingly isolated socially because he smokes, yet we establish that his unconscious motivation to smoke began when […]
Reconsolidation Theory and the Point of Therapy
Most of us have a sense of our own history, our successes, our failures, our ups and downs. Our memories form an intrinsic part of our self-identity; that elusive entity that helps to give us a feeling of coherence as we navigate through time. But how reliable is this sense of our past? Is who […]
Regression, the Butterfly Effect and You
On those occasions when I’ve been on the Motorway alternating between 60mph and zero for no apparent reason, I’ve often wished I could be in a helicopter watching the traffic acting like one of those slinky springs that used to make their own crazy way down our stairs when I was a child. I find […]
The Biology of Belief
I’ve mentioned this book at length in a blog article called the Psychobiology of Suggestion. I found the first half of the book an utter revelation as Bruce Lipton shatters the central dogma of biology – that genes drive behaviour, by showing intriguing evidence for the primacy of the environment. If he’s right it offers […]
Mind Sculpture
Ian Robertson does a fabulous job of bringing the ‘trembling web’ of the brain to life. He gives a real sense of its plasticity and our ability to grow it productively. I first read it about three years ago and I still find myself recommending it to my students on a regular basis despite having […]
