Depression can snag us, and take us down. It seduces us to shrink from the world and hide away. While summer’s balm welcomes us, winter pushes us back into our homes, toward comfort, known quantities and isolation. Here are five ideas that can help you challenge the call of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) depression. Take regular exercise outside. Push yourself, …
Narcissist Survivors' Club – Depression
I’d like to talk in this article about a specific kind of depression, linked with the stresses of growing up in the shadow of narcissistic parents. As I wrote in my last article “What is Narcissism”, a narcissistic parent is akin to Geocentrism: they have an insistent need for the Universe to revolve around them, and a concurrent, linked need …
Narcissist Survivors' Club – What is Narcissism?
A couple of years ago, I wrote a small article with this title, and it must have found a home somewhere on the internet, because I regularly receive enquiries about it. I decided it was high time I followed it up, so here goes. The concept of narcissism has moved mainstream, which can only be good news in my opinion. …
What Would Jung Make of 2018?
Even if you don’t agree with every detail of Carl Jung’s writing, he’s worth reading out of consideration for an alternative point of view on our present cultural situation. Jung lived and wrote through the Second World War, a time when hate and tribalism erupted into destruction. His conclusions don’t really appear as a part of our dialogue in our …
Othering: Beneath the Tentacles of Discrimination
This week, I came across an “ism” that surprised me. The word I found was “sanism” – the prejudice and discrimination against those who suffer from mental illness. Why hadn’t I heard this word before, I thought? After all, I’m a psychotherapist, and the ill-treatment of those who are suffering in the sphere of mental health is hardly foreign territory. …
Loneliness, Belonging & the Hunt for Admiration
We are tribal creatures. For thousands of years, human beings have depended upon living in groups in order to survive. When we exist successfully with other people, we gain a deep sense of belonging that is fundamental to human wellbeing. When we gain true acceptance, we don’t have to compulsively seek attention. We can just be. This kind of belonging …
Objectification: Monster in the Shadows
Current events in our culture or family lives can lead many of us to raise our hands in despair, and ask: “Why do (other!) people never learn?” Things can seem so bad, on so many fronts that we can feel overwhelmed and powerless. This article is intended to highlight a connection between prevailing problems we encounter in apparently unrelated areas …
Seniors and Depression
Until recently, in our society, we seemed to equate getting older and retiring as slowing down. We expected that as a person would age, they would slow down, sleep more, go into retirement and just fade into the background. That is not the reality today. Seniors are living longer, are in better health, and seem to be able to conquer …
The Narcissist Survivors' Club
This is the phrase I sometimes have in my mind when I think about my practice, and about therapy in general. It doesn’t describe everyone who comes to therapy, but both the incidence and the suffering involved are considerable. It is deeply instructive to me that so many people facing struggles in life have suffered at the hands of narcissistic …
Scapegoating & Group Narcissism
We tend to look at the great societal challenges we face in isolated, fragmented terms. Racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, sexism, inequality, organized crime, nationalism – individual fights and movements are underway in courageous attempts to make the world a better place, but they are issues that are often seen as distinct, separate in their identity, as if they had nothing …