A Curious Route

Tag: therapy

  • Sensing Out Life: Making Sense of Our Senses and Practical Adjustments

    As human beings our sensory experiences, capacities and abilities help us to navigate and enjoy the world. They illuminate our experience of it as immersive and kaleidoscopic, and they can be vastly different from one another (think of colour blindness). In some modalities, they pale in comparison to the abilities of the creatures we share…

  • Some People Are the Glue that Hold a Group Together

    I wrote this matter-of-fact title as a reflection. A latterly response to a past significant bereavement. It has until now, remained penned, but undeveloped. Stated, but unexplored. Before revisiting it now, it felt less a contemplation, more an obvious fact of life. What more was there to say about it? That was that. At the…

  • Thirteen Realities We Discount Because We Can’t Always See Them

    Some human experiences we can dismiss as unimportant or non-existent, especially in comparison to visible or quantifiable evidence. Here are thirteen common ones I’ve noticed. Take these as a reminder not to ignore or discount their impact on your own or others’ wellbeing. Executive function and processing capacity. These abilities and our style naturally vary greatly…

  • A Conversation at the Nail Shop: Seeking Certainty

    One afternoon a couple of years ago, I overheard a conversation in a nail bar between a technician and a customer. At the table next to me they were discussing the latest Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid, in which Ariel is played by the mixed-race actor Halle Bailey. They talked about the controversy surrounding her…

  • If The Roles We Fall Into Were Hats

    The strong one A victim The Hero Tyrant Sick role Good or bad patient Provider Nurturer Passive Leader We often go about our lives, moving through the hours of our days, automatically or more consciously slipping into roles. We are cast into them by our experiences, history, societal and family expectations, traditions, culture, and our…

  • Plausible Deniability and Truisms: The Art of Swaying you with the Benefit of the Doubt

    In many situations, if you are on the receiving-end of disagreement or conflict, giving others the benefit of the doubt helps to preserve the relationship and let go of hurt feelings. Moving to a place where we can discount the possibility of the other persons bad intentions towards us, helps to preserve an agreement and…

  • Procedures in Cognitive Analytic Therapy: Tools to Tend Gardens

    In Cognitive Analytic Therapy, the next important key idea to Reciprocal Roles (RRs) is procedures. These are the patterns we currently use, that we have personally developed over time, to cope with the impact and influence of our relationships upon us – on our identities, emotions and how we relate ourselves and others. Our past…

  • Managing uncertainty: when not knowing is sometimes the sensible decision

    In my undergraduate degree research, the ‘p-value’ was a number that came from statistical analysis. It was a long time ago now, but from my basic understanding and memory, the p-value gave an indication of how probable it was that the results were related to chance, rather than to the relationship between the conditions being…

  • New publication: ‘When Healthcare Communication Makes Patients Feel Like They Do Not Matter’

    Just a quick post to highlight a new publication of mine, available on Psychreg. I wrote this piece drawing from personal, professional and third-party experiences of care within healthcare services. I thought it could be helpful and interesting to speak from both perspectives: as a professional who has worked within healthcare systems for many years,…

  • Deserving

    I often hear people casually talk about whether they or others deserve this or that: whether we deserve a sweet treat or takeaway depending on how much exercise or dieting we have done, whether we deserve a break, rest or a holiday depending on how hard we have worked; whether we deserve something good or…