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…
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.
Beneath the Noise Around Masculinity: What I Actually See in Therapy
Public debates about masculinity often focus on ideology and cultural conflict. In therapy, the picture is usually different. Many men are not driven by hostility or dominance, but by loneliness, shame, and uncertainty about how to talk about vulnerability.
What Depth-Oriented Therapy Means
Depth-oriented therapy focuses on the emotional processes beneath patterns of anxiety, avoidance, and repeated relationship difficulties. Rather than offering short-term coping strategies alone, it works with the underlying emotional states that shape behaviour and experience.
Why People Repeat Relationship Patterns
Many people notice the same emotional patterns appearing in their relationships. This article explores why relationship patterns repeat and how emotional capacity gradually makes different experiences possible.
Mer de Noms: The Sea of Names and the Problem of Identity
A psychodynamic exploration of Mer de Noms by A Perfect Circle, examining themes of anger, desire, misattunement, and emotional emptiness. The album becomes a lens for understanding projection, repetition, and the struggle to symbolise overwhelming internal states.
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.
What It’s Actually Like to Stand Between Two Ways of Working
What happens when the model that once organised your work no longer feels sufficient? Insight may be present, yet under pressure little changes structurally. This reflection explores the shift from meaning-making to structural thinking, tracking anxiety, understanding defences, and building capacity before integration. For therapists between modalities, this uncertainty can signal development.
When Conspiracy Thinking Becomes Emotional Avoidance
Conspiracy thinking is often treated as a belief issue. In therapy, it can function as emotional avoidance. By understanding the anxiety and vulnerability beneath rigid certainty, people can begin to build the capacity to stay present with uncertainty rather than defending against it.
Wuthering Heights and the Psychology of Haunting
Why does Wuthering Heights still feel so emotionally powerful? This reflection explores how stories can mirror unresolved emotional states and repeating relational patterns, and why therapy helps turn reaction into understanding without removing intensity.
Women’s Mental Health Right Now: Why So Many Are Exhausted, Anxious and Still Telling Themselves They’re Fine
Many women appear to be coping while carrying ongoing emotional strain. This article explores how anxiety and exhaustion can grow from constant emotional labour, and why therapy can offer a space to slow down, reconnect, and rebuild capacity.
What My Vinyl Collection Taught Me About Memory, Regulation, and Meaning
Organising music by emotional function rather than genre revealed unexpected parallels with therapy. This reflection explores memory, nervous system regulation, and how meaning develops gradually when experience is allowed to settle without pressure.
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 the Latest UK Therapy Data Really Tells Us and What It Means If You’re Thinking About Therapy
Therapy has quietly become mainstream in the UK, with more than a third of adults having tried it, and most finding it helpful. But beneath anxiety and stress, loneliness is often the real driver. As therapy moves online and into everyday life, this piece explores why human connection still matters, how to choose support wisely, and what actually makes therapy work.
Four Thousand Hours: A Reflection on Depth, Distance, and the Digital Room
After thousands of hours of online therapy, this reflection explores what makes emotional depth possible through a screen. It looks at how anxiety, defences, and emotional capacity show up in online sessions, and why presence and consistency matter more than physical location.
The Therapist’s Silence: What It Really Means
Silence in therapy can feel uncomfortable, but it is often intentional. This article explores how therapeutic silence supports emotional awareness, slows automatic responses, and creates space for feelings to become clearer. It explains what therapists are usually doing internally during quiet moments in session.