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
media depth emotion anxiety betterhelp reflections quizzes
What Changes When You Stop Avoiding Feelings
Stopping avoidance does not usually make anxiety disappear straight away. What often changes first is the relationship to feeling, anxiety, and internal pressure. Over time, this can create more clarity, more space, and less need to move away from what is being felt.
Why Anxiety Feels Random (But Isn’t)
Anxiety can feel as though it comes out of nowhere, especially when the trigger is not fully in awareness. Often, what feels random has a sequence behind it that has not yet become clear. Understanding hidden triggers can make anxiety feel less mysterious over time.
How Anxiety and Avoidance Work Together
Anxiety and avoidance often do not happen separately. A feeling begins to surface, anxiety rises, and avoidance brings relief by moving attention away from what is being felt. Seeing this loop more clearly can help explain why anxiety keeps returning over time.
Why Emotional Change Feels Slow
Emotional change often feels slow. This article explains why change takes time, how emotional capacity develops gradually, and how patterns begin to shift as feelings become easier to tolerate.
How Therapy Gradually Builds Emotional Capacity
Emotional capacity can develop over time. This article explains how therapy supports this process by helping people stay with emotional experience in a manageable way, allowing feelings to become easier to tolerate and understand.
The Role of Anxiety in Emotional Tolerance
Anxiety often rises when feelings begin to exceed emotional capacity. This article explains how anxiety affects emotional tolerance, why it appears, and what happens when emotional experience becomes difficult to manage.
Why Some Feelings Feel Overwhelming
Some feelings can feel overwhelming, confusing, or difficult to manage. This often happens when emotional experience exceeds current capacity. This article explains why feelings can feel intense and what is happening in those moments.
Structural Thinking in Psychotherapy
Structural thinking in psychotherapy shifts attention away from content and toward process. By observing how feelings, anxiety, and defences operate in real time, therapy begins to support deeper change through increased capacity rather than insight alone.
Mentalisation and Emotional Fragility: Why Reflection Can Collapse Under Stress
Mentalisation helps us think about feelings and relationships, but this capacity can weaken when stress rises. This article explores emotional fragility, reflective collapse, and how therapy gradually helps emotional experience become more thinkable.
Why Repetition Happens: The Emotional States Behind Repeating Patterns
Repeating patterns often reflect earlier emotional states rather than simple habits. This article explores why repetition develops, how symbolic carriers recreate emotional experience, and how reflective capacity gradually allows those patterns to loosen.
State vs Symbol: Why Some Emotional Experiences Are Hard to Put Into Words
Some emotional experiences are felt long before they can be understood. This article explores the difference between emotional states and symbolic thinking, and how developing reflective capacity gradually allows those experiences to become recognisable and easier to think about.
Why Emotional Change Takes Time
Many people expect emotional change to happen quickly once they understand their patterns. In reality, emotional change usually develops gradually as people build the capacity to experience feelings, anxiety, and relationships differently.
Mentalisation and Fragility: Reflections from a Workshop
When working with emotional fragility, strengthening the capacity to think under pressure often comes before deep emotional work. Mentalisation, understanding behaviour in terms of thoughts and feelings, provides a stabilising foundation for therapy. When affect rises too quickly, reflection can narrow or collapse. Slowing the process and restoring shared thinking allows emotional work to unfold more safely.
Emotional Fragility and the Need for a Raft in Intensive Therapy
Written for therapists, this article explores emotional fragility in depth work and why building containment before intensity prevents collapse. A practical reflection on capacity, countertransference, and why slowing down often protects both therapist and client.
What Happens When You Finally Feel a Feeling You’ve Avoided?
Avoided emotions often feel intense when they first appear. This article explains why anxiety rises as feelings come closer to awareness, how emotional capacity develops in therapy, and why learning to stay present with emotion gradually reduces the need for avoidance.
What Therapists Feel But Rarely Say
Therapists do experience emotional responses during sessions, but those reactions are used carefully as part of the work. This article explains countertransference, why therapists rarely talk openly about their own feelings in sessions, and how emotional awareness helps guide the therapeutic process.