Therapy can make you less nice
16 August 2020
"I'm discovering that therapy can make you less nice."
Anonymous client
Becoming ‘less nice’ isn’t something that most people who go into therapy expect, or are looking for. But it’s often an unexpected consequence, which brings new freedoms and possibilities.
So, what do I mean by becoming ‘less nice’? For me, it’s about a combination of things. These include becoming more aware of our feelings and therefore of what really matters to us, and by discovering our deeper desires and values we gain the courage to say ‘no’ to people whose demands don’t match our values.
Accepting our foibles
19 July 2020
“One of the most important moves in psychotherapy is to take whatever is presented and simply hold it and give it a place.”
Thomas Moore
I like the above quote because it is counter cultural, in the sense that it pushes back against the dominant message we get that problems are there to be fixed.
We go to our doctor to fix a problem and many of us start therapy with the same attitude. Of course, that is completely understandable. We are in mental pain of some kind and we want a cure - who wouldn’t?
Perfect love, imperfect relationships (book review)
5 July 2020
Perfect love, imperfect relationships is a great book on relationship psychology. It’s written by John Welwood, a psychologist and author who tried to bring together psychological and spiritual ideas.
One of the central ideas in the book is that we expect too much of our partners and are invariably disappointed when they don’t match up with our expectations. According to Welwood, this is the human condition.
It’s definitely something that resonates with me as I often find myself resentful when I don’t feel understood or valued by my partner and then it can become about trying to somehow ‘get’ them to behave in the way I want. That rarely works, of course, because people usually don’t respond well to pressure or manipulation of that kind.
Read more: Perfect love, imperfect relationships (book review)
