Reason or Excuse? Featured

Reason or Excuse?
In the Counselling Room I often have people come along who are troubled by an activity they are doing which they feel is counterproductive to their wellbeing. Some examples of this are: getting into bad relationships, abusing alcohol, over spending, using illegal drugs, overeating or getting little or no exercise. Maybe not surprisingly I view these activities as more of a symptom of their issues rather than the root cause. Over the past two years…
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Hiding in Plain Sight Featured

Hiding in Plain Sight
In the brilliant cops and robbers classic film `The Italian Job` (1969) starring Michael Caine, there are many clever and memorable scenes involving the trio of red, white and blue Mini Coopers that whisk away stolen gold from under the noses of the Italian authorities. One of these scenes shows the Minis being closely chased by the police around a large car sales site. To evade capture the Minis race into a British sales area…
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Small Steps: A Brief Look at Change Featured

Small Steps: A Brief Look at Change
The first signs of the New Year that most of us see are often the fireworks over Sydney Harbour in Australia that illuminate the iconic Bridge and Opera House a good ten hours before we celebrate the occasion here in the UK and this year has been no exception albeit slightly muted. It’s likely that people will not mourn the passing of 2020 too much with memories of the Covid-19 epidemic reeking chaos and misery…
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Isolation: Why It Feels So Strange Featured

Isolation: Why It Feels So Strange
The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 is the biggest and worst threat to our health and wellbeing in living memory. The previous one being the H1N1 Flu virus of 1918-20 which infected an estimated 500 Million people worldwide and killed somewhere between 17 to 50 Million. Here in the UK, as in many other countries we have been living with measures put in place to reduce the spread of the virus, this has included staying at…
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Embracing Uncertainty: We Look At Leaving Our Comfort Zone Featured

Embracing Uncertainty: We Look At Leaving Our Comfort Zone
For most of us there’s often an element of uncertainty in our lives: we never quite know what’s around the next corner. We could experience this in our family life, in our recreation or in our work. This unknown aspect of our existence can add spice and interest to otherwise ordinary days or can cause unease and disquiet, depending on one’s outlook. In the world of counselling and psychotherapy it’s no different, one never knows…
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Bereavement: Making Some Sense of It Featured

Bereavement: Making Some Sense of It
It’s almost certain that at some point in our lives most of us will experience bereavement. It might the loss of our parents, spouse, children, friend, colleague, neighbour or someone that we feel we know like a TV star, celebrity or even royalty. Whoever it is, they will leave a void in our lives consistent to their importance to us. This article is intended to make some sense of what happens to us when someone…
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The Rationale Behind Talking to a Counsellor Rather Than Friends or Family Featured

The Rationale Behind Talking to a Counsellor Rather Than Friends or Family
Back in 2012 I wrote an article about how it’s far better for someone in distress to talk to a professional counsellor than a friend or family member. Now seven years later it feels right to update and expand that piece in line with current attitudes and ideas. Since my original post we have seen views about mental health and personal stories being expressed more openly, often by celebrities like actors, musicians, sports stars and…
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Farming: We Reveal the Dark Side Featured

Farming: We Reveal the Dark Side
Travelling around Somerset and our neighbouring counties it’s easy to become accustomed to the lush pastures, rolling hills, woods, hedgerows and huge areas of arable land that make up our wonderful environment. To us it may just be the backdrop to our busy lives but to the operators of one of the biggest and important industries in the UK, it’s their workplace. We are talking of course about farming and the men and women who…
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Understanding And Managing Emotional Baggage Featured

Understanding And Managing Emotional Baggage
All of us, as we travel through life, acquire emotional and psychological baggage; unwanted stuff from painful events and times in our lives that we have not been able to get rid of. We drag this burden around month after month, year after year, often unaware that these negative feelings are shaping and influencing who we think we are and the choices that we make. Some of this baggage is overt and plain to see,…
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The Psychology of Hoarding Featured

The Psychology of Hoarding
In counselling and psychotherapy as in many other walks of life, one can never be sure what problem or issue our next new client will bring through the door. In this hectic paced life with it’s stress and pressure, anxiety is often the fundamental subject of concern for clients, although this may be cloaked or concealed, masquerading as something else. So before us we have the overt and obvious and then we have the concealed…
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Royal Speaks Out On Mental Health Issues Featured

In The Photo: Heads Together: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry working to Eliminate Stigma around Mental Health. Photo source: https://www.headstogether.org.uk/
Like a breath of fresh air Prince Harry this week has spoken out about his own mental health issues in the years following the death of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales when he was 12 and the positive results he received from counselling. In the past we have heard honest and in depth accounts of mental health problems from celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Ruby Wax who have done much to bring to…
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Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Types of Unhelpful or Irrational Thinking Featured

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Types of Unhelpful or Irrational Thinking
In the modern world of counselling and psychotherapy, a leading tool used by therapists is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This works by the client being shown by the therapist the link between events that happens in our life, our beliefs associated with those events and our resulting emotions and behaviour. A key aspect of CBT is the Types of Unhelpful or Irrational Thinking that we might employ when we try to process what is happening.…
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Getting Older - Cause for Counselling? Featured

Getting Older - Cause for Counselling?
If one is lucky enough to be blessed with reasonably good health and also survive what life throws at us in our younger years, we will enter into a bizarre experience called `Getting Older'. This is unavoidable by the very fact that if we are still breathing, we are still alive and so getting older will happen. Often with youth comes the certainty that one is invincible and this heady intoxication of indestructible self assurance…
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Employee Assistance Programmes Featured

Employee Assistance Programmes
Here in the UK, we are currently seeing many areas of growth and development as many companies publish encouraging figures for 2014. This feeling of optimism and positivity carries with it the knowledge that these high performing firms have often nurtured a special employer/staff relationship, where we see the employee valued by the company and vice versa. Enlightened management have long understood the importance of a happy and healthy workforce and many will have put…
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Stress at the Top and the Benefits of Employee Assistance Programmes Featured

Stress at the Top and the Benefits of Employee Assistance Programmes
It’s likely that in this affluent and flourishing country of ours that many of us will know someone who has risen to dizzy heights in the business world or professions, we might even be one of those high achievers our selves. If however we observe this elite world from the outside we may feel it’s straightforward to spot the outward trappings and signs of the archetypical successful person as we view the expensive car, nice…
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The Origins and Contemporary Significance of CBT Featured

The Origins and Contemporary Significance of CBT
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) To understand Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) better, we must be aware of it’s origins and how it has evolved over the years from different schools of thought. It’s foundations can be found back in the early part of the 20th century with the work of Pavlov and other Russian researchers and later with Joseph Wolpe who developed Behavioral Therapy (BT). This was seen as a challenge to Freud’s Psychodynamic Approach and…
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We humans, the games we play:Transactional Analysis Featured

We humans, the games we play:Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis is built on the theory that there are three areas or states of the human personality and these are represented in diagrams and text books by three vertical circles. The top circle is the parent, the middle the adult and the bottom one is the child. A Transaction is an exchange between people – a person says or does something and the other person says or does something back. A simple Transaction between…
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Alcohol: The Big Question Featured

Alcohol: The Big Question
It is said that those of us that were around at the time can remember where they were when they heard of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. For me it’s also true of the death of John Lennon and the invasion of the Falkland Islands. These events, although mostly not linked closely to our own families leave their marks on us and time stamp our brains. Other landmarks are also etched in…
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Somerset based Integrative Counsellor David Trott MBACP Dip couns on Integrative Counselling Featured

Somerset based Integrative Counsellor David Trott MBACP Dip couns on Integrative Counselling
In his most recent Counselling and Psychotherapy blog, Somerset based Integrative Counsellor David Trott MBACP Dip couns, talks about Integrative Counselling, Counselling, and Psychotherapy. David has a specific focus on integrative counselling, integrative counselling and psychotherapy, the integrative counselling model and the integrative counselling approach. Keep up-to-speed with David's integrative counselling and psychotherapy blog that explores integrative counselling case studies, integrative counselling in action, integrative counselling courses, integrative counselling skills in action in pdf and…
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Find a British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) qualified Counsellor and Therapist for Counselling & Psychotherapy in Taunton, Somerset Featured

Find a British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) qualified Counsellor and Therapist for Counselling & Psychotherapy in Taunton, Somerset
If you are based in and around the beautiful county of Somerset in England, and are looking for a British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) qualified Counsellor and Therapist for Counselling & Psychotherapy in Taunton, Somerset, you can connect with Somerset based Integrative Counsellor David Trott You can log on to the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) web site to find David Trott by clicking right here: https://www.itsgoodtotalk.org.uk/therapists/in/309cdb/somerset/taunton/david-trott David is based at…
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