The Therapy Journal
This is where psychotherapy steps out of the session and into conversation. From our defences that shape our daily lives to the emotions that drive our choices, these pieces explore the human mind through a psychodynamic lens.Whether clinical or cultural, every post asks the same question: what happens when we stop avoiding our feelings?Where therapy meets everyday life…
What Therapists Feel But Rarely Say
Therapists don’t stop feeling; they learn how to use what they feel in service of the work. Beneath the calm exterior, we experience sadness, frustration, protectiveness, and even love. What matters isn’t suppressing these emotions but knowing how to hold them, translate them, and keep the client at the centre of the story.
You’re Not Relating. You’re Re-Enacting…
When you repeat old emotional patterns in love, are you really failing? or are you re-enacting? These reactions are survival strategies wired into your body. Healing means recognising the pattern, regulating before reacting, and building relationships that respond to the present instead of replaying the past.
The Therapist’s Silence: What It Really Means
A therapist's silence can feel uncomfortable, but it’s rarely empty. It’s a tool for reflection, containment, and growth. Silence invites awareness where words often defend, a quiet that allows feeling to emerge, safety to build, and the self to hear itself.
What Your Therapist Really Thinks About You
Your therapist isn’t judging you, they’re tracking you. They’re listening for the story beneath your story: the shame that hides in your silence, the fear behind your anger, the longing buried inside your defences. Therapists feel things too that’s called countertransference. It’s not gossip; it’s guidance. Their emotional responses help them understand what’s happening in you and between you.
They don’t see you as broken. They see someone brave enough to let another human witness what was once hidden.
When you wonder, “What must they think of me?”
The real answer is simple:
They think you’re worth the effort, every minute of it.
Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story: When the “Monster” Speaks
We’re drawn to monsters because they show us what we deny in ourselves. Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story reveals how empathy, horror, and truth coexist in the human mind.
When Growth Feels Like Collapse
Periods of exhaustion or confusion often signal growth, not regression. When the nervous system can no longer sustain old patterns of survival, it begins to reset its baseline, a process psychologists call ‘allostatic reset’. This is the body recalibrating toward safety, learning that rest and calm are no longer threats. Growth happens here, in the stillness between what was and what’s coming next.
What Cures in Therapy Is Truth…
Therapy helps when we stop avoiding what we fear. Research consistently shows that facing what triggers our anxiety leads to genuine improvement. In practice, this means working through the tension between feelings, anxiety, and defence until what’s true can finally be felt and expressed. Truth restores coherence to the mind and body, the moment of quiet honesty when something long denied can finally be seen.
The Man in Black: How Johnny Cash (and My Therapy Uniform) Teach Us About Containment
Why I wear black for every session, and what Johnny Cash’s Man in Black reveals about presence, containment, and the unspoken language of therapy.
The Song That Saves You: What Johnny Cash Can Teach Us About Authenticity in Therapy
In Walk the Line, Sam Phillips tells a young Johnny Cash, “I don’t believe you.” The moment he stops performing and sings something real, he’s reborn. Therapy asks the same of us: to stop trying to sound right, and instead speak from where it truly hurts. Because only what’s real has the power to heal.
The Psychology of the Inner Critic: How the Voice Inside You Took Power
The inner critic isn’t just all about self-doubt; it’s a survival strategy born from fear, shame, and unmet needs. It once kept you safe, but now it keeps you small. Understanding how it formed is the first step in taking your power back.
Why We Repeat What Hurts Us: The Pull of Familiar Pain
We don’t repeat painful patterns because we’re broken. We repeat them because we’re trying, unconsciously, to master something that once overwhelmed us. The mind repeats what it didn’t get to resolve. Therapy helps to make what we are unaware of into awareness (unconscious into conscious) so we can finally stop mistaking familiarity for safety and start choosing something new.
The Therapy FAD? Rethinking our Feelings, Anxiety and Defences Across Modalities
Every client’s struggle follows the same human sequence: feelings trigger anxiety, and anxiety triggers defences. The “Therapy FAD” reframes this not as pathology, but as survival. When therapists learn to read defences as signals of unprocessed feeling, and regulate anxiety rather than chase thoughts, therapy becomes a space for transformation, not resistance.
From Pain to Possibility: What Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral Teaches Us About Being Human
Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral is so much more than an industrial rock classic; it’s a brutally honest journey through the three great fears of humanity: the fear of our own feelings, our fear of closeness, and ultimately the fear of ourselves and our own shadow. Each track is a window into the defences we build, the critical voice that controls us, and the loneliness that follows. Yet, it still ends in possibility instead of despair. Therapy follows the same path: facing the spiral, not avoiding it, and finding hope in the very place we fear most, our pain.
Why Therapy? The Real Question Nobody Asks
Depth therapies are not about solving problems. They are actually about discovering how much capacity you have to sit with something painful, feel it fully, and resist the urge to avoid or numb yourself. That capacity changes everything: your relationships, your choices, and your sense of self.
Most people come to therapy thinking it’s about fixing symptoms. Anxiety. Depression. Relationship struggles. But under the surface, therapy is asking a far more important question…
Two Types of Emotional Avoidance in Relationships and Why It Hurts So Much
Many of us are terrified of our own feelings, relationships, and even ourselves. Emotional avoidance is one of the biggest ways this fear shows up. But not all avoidance is the same. One comes from old wounds—childhood environments where emotions were shut down or punished. The other hides behind toxic positivity or manipulation. Both cut us off from connection, but for different reasons. If this feels familiar, therapy is a place to finally face these fears, instead of endlessly running from them.
The Power of Coming Back: Lewis Capaldi, Vulnerability, and the Quiet Strength of Resilience
Resilience rarely arrives with noise or drama. It grows quietly, moment by moment, through support, honesty, and courage. Watching Lewis Capaldi return to the stage after facing his mental health challenges was a moving reminder that what heals us in therapy is what heals us in life: connection, patience, and belief in ourselves.
Your Defence Mechanisms: A Self Discovery Quiz
When you think about your emotional defences, what comes to mind? Many of us imagine walls, shields, or barriers – but here's something fascinating: your defence mechanisms are actually clever ways your mind handles difficult feelings! Think of them as your emotional immune system, automatically protecting you from psychological discomfort.
We all have these defences, and they're completely normal. In fact, they're pretty ingenious when you think about it. Maybe you crack jokes when things get too serious, throw yourself into work when you're hurting, or find yourself being extra nice to someone who's upset you. These aren't character flaws – they're sophisticated strategies your mind developed to help you feel safer with challenging emotions…