Lockdown is evoking a curious sensation in us all, of feeling unremittingly under pressure but simultaneously rather bored. On the...

Some of my clients are experiencing a sort of numb boredom, which is not the consequence of having nothing to do, but of feeling...

This week, several clients have told me that they are finding lockdown difficult but feel they cannot complain about it because other...

As 2021 dawns, my thoughts have turned to the question of how we can persevere in the face of so much anxiety. Nothing will magically...

Matisse’s dancers seem at odds with the year 2020. Their exuberance, self-expression and harmony do not match these days of lockdown and...

Sometimes we must seek a temporary respite from fierce and difficult emotions. This morning as I walked by the sea in Hove, the water...

Van Gogh painted this autumnal scene, ‘Leaf Fall,’ after he admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital in 1889. His correspondence at...

This is Maria de’ Medici, eldest daughter of Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo, painted by Bronzino in 1559. Maria was 11 at the time, a...

My friend Claire has just celebrated the beginning of Passover with her family. She shared photos of their seder, of drinking from the...

We all have our own Achilles’ heel, by which I mean our own specific point of weakness, that spot that when pressed, hurts more than any...

‘Little girl in the forest’ is a painting by the Cuban artist Eduardo Abela. It speaks to me of our collective sense of confusion and...

This week, we counsellors have been doing three things:  addressing our clients’ heightened anxiety in the face of the Corona virus,...

When I look at Rembrandt’s self-portrait of 1669, I allow myself to believe that this was a man who lived a life of great psychological...

Enquiries about starting counselling surge around the Christmas and New Year period. This is often attributed to the fact that Christmas...

Artist Emma Middleton and a group of care leavers created this art installation currently on display at the Foundling Museum in London....

The pressure to keep moving and stop thinking (and we could add feeling, sensing, perceiving and so on) is a very real one, and in this...

Perhaps one of the hardest things for clients to tolerate is the feeling that therapy isn’t getting them anywhere. They complain of a...

This image, by my photographer husband Simon Roberts, is a composite of old Italian postcards that were sent to relatives in the UK by...

Clients come to therapy looking for answers to their misery and confusion. They want to know why they’re depressed, for example, and...

This screen print was created in 1964, by Sister Corita Kent, an American nun who produced dazzling Pop Art, much to the displeasure of...