The BBLtherapy Blog

23 March

Top 10 tips for choosing you Counsellor or Psychotherapist

An article I recently submitted:
Top 10 tips for selecting a Counsellor or Psychotherapist.

Depression is currently affecting one in 10 people every year. With the pledge to tackle the shortage of “Talking Therapies” available to people suffering from Depression currently being discussed some people are not waiting for their treatment through the GP services and are looking to get help much sooner by paying for private counselling and psychotherapy. Having therapeutic treatment is an investment in your own wellbeing. It is a really important step to take. Bernadette Brady Lockwood of BBL Therapy has prepared this guide for people thinking about what to look for when choosing a therapist and what questions to ask them and yourself to get a good idea if this is a person you can trust and work effectively with.

What education and training do you have? This sounds like an obvious question to ask but it is really important. Anyone can advertise themselves as a Counsellor, Hypnotherapist or any form of Therapist and have no formal training to actually do the job. Ask them about their Diploma or Degree and where they studied because you can always contact the training institute to check out what they tell you if you feel they were not being clear with you.

What professional registration do you have? If they are a counsellor or psychotherapist there are two British registering bodies that have regulations for joining; the BACP British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists and the UKCP United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapists. To be registered with one of these the Counsellor or Psychotherapist must have had accredited training, insurance to work with clients and have completed the minimum requirements for their qualifications.
What experience do you have working with? Depression, bereavement, childhood trauma or working with Couples, Individuals or whatever kind of issues it is you are seeking a Therapist for. The training Counsellors and Psychotherapists receive covers many areas of application and they can work with a vast range of different issues with clients very well. Some continue to have professional training in areas where they have special interest such as childhood trauma or PTSD for example so it’s well worth asking them what experience they have in working with different clients.
What are your fees and why? Being the most expensive or cheapest is not a gauge of how good or well trained the Therapist is or how effective they will be in working with you. Remember ANYONE can advertise themselves as a Counsellor or Psychotherapist. Ask them if they offer concessions for clients and under what circumstances they do, many have a structure for giving concessions and if your financial position changes you will want your counsellor or therapist to be able to offer you a concession so you can carry on with your treatment.
What is your Model of Psychotherapy or Counselling? If I said to you Transactional Analysis, Person Centred, Integrated, Gestalt, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy what would you understand about each one? Does it sound like a different language? There are many models of Counselling and Therapeutic training that people choose to study and all of them have their merits. The Therapist will have chosen their modality because its the one that appealed to them and you need to ask them which one’s they have studied and what it means and how it works with people that come to them as clients.

Once you have spoken to a few different Counsellors or Psychotherapists a few good questions to ask yourself are?

Did I feel like this person heard what I was saying? The answer needs to be yes so that you can work with this person and know that they will listen to what you are telling them.

Did I like what they told me about themselves? If you didn’t feel comfortable with them how are you going to work with them over the long term comfortably?

Did I feel they respected and understood the issues I spoke to them about? This needs to be yes; they must be respectful of you as a unique and different person and have a good understanding of working with people.

Where they happy to help me to understand them and the way they work or were they trying to sell me something? You need to understand them too if they can’t let you know about themselves clearly how can they help you to understand you in a therapeutic relationship.

Do I think this person will be good to talk to and professionally strong enough to trust with my most deep and private issues? You must feel confident in their ability to work with you therapeutically, you will be working with this person to identify and work through what may be some very painful and traumatic personal issues.

For more information on Counselling and Psychotherapy you can visit the BACP website at www.bacp.co.uk or the UKCP at www.psychotherapy.org.uk. There is currently no independent statutory regulation to help protect clients of therapy from malpractice, and it is really important to select your Therapist very carefully.

www.bbltherapy.com

13:11 GMT | Read comments(0)

16 March

Shame. A poem by Rutsala

At the weekend I read this poem by Rutsala (1986) and it really touched me because it describes for me the kind of shame about self that goes unnoticed yet deeply felt by many.

This is the shame of the woman whose hand hides her smile because her teeth are bad, not the grand self-hate that leads some to razor or swan dive off beautiful bridges however tragic that is. This is hte shame of being yourself, of being ashamed of where you live and what your fathers paycheck lets you eat and wear. This is the shame of the fat and the bald, the unbearable blush of acne, the shame of having no lunch money and pretending your not hungry. This is the shame of concealed sickness-disease too expensive to afford, that offer only their cold one- way ticket out. This is the shame of being ashamed, the self-disgust of the cheap wine drunk, the lassitude that makes junk accumulate, the shame that tells you there is another way to live but you are too dumb to find it. This is the real shame, the damned shame, the crying shame, the shame that's criminal, the shame of knowing words like "glory" are not in your vocabulary though they litter the Bibles your still paying for.. This is the shame of not knowing how to read and pretending you do. This is the shame that makes you afraid to leave your house, the shame of food stamps at the supermarket when the clerk shows impatience as you fumble with the change. This is the shame of dirty underwear, the shame of pretending your father works in an office as God intended all men to do. This is the shame of asking friends to let you off in front of the one nice house in the neighborhood and waiting in the shadows until they drive away before walking to the gloom of your house. This is the shame at the end of the mania for owning things, the shame of no heat in winter, the shame of eating cat food, the unholy shame of dreaming of a new house and car and the shame of knowing how cheap such dreams are.

04:12 GMT | Read comments(0)

12 March

Life Script

What is our life Script

Societies and cultures have a story of how they came to be, where they are going and what it means to live in that society. In a very similar way, some individuals are said to also have a life story or myth that they believe to be true for themselves. This is what the theory of Transactional Analysis (TA) calls a “script” or “life script.” Created early in life to make sense of our world, shaped by parents and experiences, and often completely unconscious by adulthood, scripts can be either negative or positive. We use them unconsciously to explain to ourselves our place in the world and our own individual meaning. A positive life script can help us reach our goals, while a negative one potentially dooms us to sabotage ourselves, to rationalise our world-view. However, any script, good or bad, carries the risk of limiting us living our lives to its fullest potential.

How We See Ourselves

Canadian-US psychologist Eric Berne started to develop the idea of a life script while outlining the principles of transactional analysis. TA, as described by its founder Berne, is a method that attempts to analyse human interactions (or transactions) for determining emotional dynamics. One of TA’s ground principles is that all people are born with a sense of entitlement, which is then potentially eroded by bad parenting and unpleasant experiences. (A follower of Berne’s who went on to write the popular book “I’m OK, You’re OK” maintained the exact opposite though, that people are born “not OK” and spend their life trying to find entitlement.)

Regardless of which point one starts from, TA maintains that human beings are well adjusted and psychologically healthy when they reach the state of accepting themselves and accepting the not-themselves: the people, society and world around them. Anything less could mean accepting society/mankind as having worth, but not one’s self (i.e., depression, low self-esteem); acceptance of self, but not of society as worthwhile (i.e., psychopathic, destructive or criminal behavior); and finally accepting neither self nor society as worthwhile (complete despair, psychosis, suicide.)

Which of these stages we get stuck on, on the way to accepting both ourselves and the world around us, depends on what we believe the story of our life to be about.

Who Writes Our Script?

Life scripts are said to be determined early, as early as age six or seven.
By that time, children are said to have an underlying idea of whether they believe themselves to be worthwhile or not, and these ideas are then steadily fed by the environment around them. Many of the negative ideas individuals have of themselves (Don’t do anything, don’t stand out, don’t grow up), contrast with the wishful thinking of parents (You should be/do/deserve to be X) and then again with various statements provided by the environment (Be strong, be perfect, hurry up, etc.).

Statements made by parents, teachers and friends all contribute to the way we see our life and can become a part of the script. These are statements Berne believed to be key motivators in the creation of a life story.

Try your best, boys don’t cry, don’t have sex before marriage, money makes the world go round, money doesn’t grow on trees, your brother David always does better in school because he’s smarter than you, you can become anything you want, are all examples of ideals and values that may become etched into minds from early childhood. Though they generally disappear from conscious thought by adulthood, these judgments all contribute to help us make our own impression of who we think we are and why we are that way.

Article adapted from www.wakate.com

03:56 GMT | Read comments(0)

10 March

People are complicated

A Nifty little youtube video link about TA.

11:43 GMT | Read comments(0)

Talking about YouTube - Are You OK? - the essential video on transactional analysis

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YouTube - Are You OK? - the essential video on transactional analysis

11:34 GMT | Read comments(0)

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Bernadette Brady-Lockwood Psychotherapy & Counselling