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Why Therapy for couples experiencing difficulties with substance use and/or ADHD?

Along the years working with people using substances and/or having ADHD I heard ever so often accounts of the issues they encounter in their relationships. But the step to engage in couples therapy seemed often too scary. Substance use is often … More

Why taking time to “get over my anxiety” is nonsense or what I learned from my figure skating coach as a psychologist

While preparing for my second ice skating test I once had a nasty fall and a brain concussion. When I went back on ice after a few days my coach asked me straight away to do again that exercise. My immediate reaction was to tell her that I didn’t want to do that one yet as I needed more time to get over my anxiety. To which she replied: More

All I want for Christmas is to stop wanting to always be happy

So often I hear people saying that they should always be happy, always perform well, and so on, and this is something about the messages that we get from everywhere is our society.

Sometimes substance abuse of any kind is a way of entering a bubble where these things seem to be all true. Or at least a bubble… More

Anxiety and excitement are like the tail and the nose of a skateboard

There is something exciting and fulfilling about pushing through your limits, being bold and finding an expression of what you feel in your body. It goes well if you can bring some calm into the madness with enough sanity, if you can take the signals of your anxiety seriously when you are about to push it too far and do a stupid thing, if you can bring yourself from recklessness back to courage and the healthy dose of adrenaline. But there is also that point where… More

What’s worse: A ‘gambling problem’ or a ‘cocaine addiction’?

Someone once said to me: “I’d rather have a cocaine addiction than this gambling problem, because you can’t physically use that much cocaine to make you go bankrupt”.

My first impulse was to explain him that this is not a great deal either, and to tell him about heavy cocaine users I met who wished they had lost all their money in their younger years and so had been forced to stop using long ago and be now in good health. More

Painting with mirrors

For me therapy is often about holding a mirror in front of the client, a mirror which reflects an additional shade of their story inviting a rethink. The story I hear, see and feel in front of me goes through the filters of my own perception and interpretation, sometimes through my own language skills, before coming back as a reflection to my client. And they will take the challenge to dare a re-construction of their story if they feel connected. More