Tag: avenue psychotherapy services
-
Why Guilt Can Be So Difficult to Let Go Of in Psychotherapy – Part 5
Working with guilt in psychotherapy is rarely a matter of deciding whether the patient should or should not feel guilty. The experience is usually much more complicated than that. Sometimes the patient has done something they genuinely regret. Sometimes the responsibility has been greatly exaggerated. Sometimes the event itself is unclear, but the patient still…
-
Why Guilt Can Be So Difficult to Let Go Of in Psychotherapy – Part 4
Patients often begin psychotherapy by describing guilt connected with events outside the treatment. They may speak about something that happened within a marriage, a family, a friendship or a working relationship. They may explain how they hurt somebody, failed to act when they believe they should have acted, or remained preoccupied with something they did…
-
Why Guilt Can Be So Difficult to Let Go Of in Psychotherapy – Part 3
People do not all experience guilt in the same way. Some are able to recognise that they have made a mistake, feel remorse, try to repair the situation and eventually move forward. Others can remain preoccupied with guilt for months or years, even after they have apologised or done everything reasonably possible to correct what…
-
Why Guilt Can Be So Difficult to Let Go Of in Psychotherapy – Part 2
One of the first difficulties in working with guilt is establishing where it comes from. Sometimes the patient can point to a clear event and describe exactly what happened. At other times, the guilt is much harder to connect with anything definite. The person may feel deeply responsible, ashamed or frightened by what they believe…
-
Why Guilt Can Be So Difficult to Let Go Of in Psychotherapy – Part 1
Guilt is a fairly common presenting problem in individual psychotherapy. Some patients come to psychotherapy because they are unable to manage a persistent feeling that they have done something wrong. They may feel responsible for hurting a husband, wife or partner, disappointing their children, neglecting a family member, behaving badly at work or causing difficulties…
-
What Long-Term Psychological Change Actually Looks Like in Psychotherapy
One of the most common expectations people have when they begin psychotherapy is that psychological change will happen quickly. Many hope that after several sessions they will feel noticeably different, their distress will disappear, and the problems that brought them into therapy will have been resolved. Although meaningful improvements can sometimes occur relatively early, genuine…
-
Why Emotional Patterns Persist for Years in Psychotherapy
Many people enter psychotherapy asking the same question: “Why do I keep reacting in the same way, even when I know it isn’t helping me?” They may recognise that certain situations repeatedly lead to anxiety, conflict, emotional withdrawal, guilt, self-criticism or relationship difficulties. They often understand intellectually that these reactions are causing problems, yet they…
-
Repetition and the Compulsion to Repeat in Psychotherapy
Memory has fascinated physicians, neurologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts for centuries. Long before modern neuroscience was able to examine the living brain, clinicians were trying to understand what memory actually is, how it develops, why some memories remain vivid throughout life while others disappear, and why certain experiences seem to return repeatedly despite a person’s efforts…
-
How Trauma Appears in Psychotherapy
When most people hear the word trauma, they immediately think of war, serious accidents, violence or other catastrophic events. These experiences undoubtedly have the capacity to leave profound psychological scars. However, psychotherapy shows us that trauma is far more complex than the event itself. Two people may live through the same experience yet emerge with…
-
How Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Manifests in Psychotherapy
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is one of the more complex psychological conditions encountered in mental health practice. Although many people associate OCD with repeated handwashing, checking locks or arranging objects in a particular order, these behaviours represent only one part of a much broader psychological picture. OCD exists on a spectrum, varies considerably from one person…