In-person Counselling and Psychotherapy for Adults Therapy in Manchester provides short- and long-term counselling and psychotherapy for adults in the heart of the city. I established Therapy in Manchester in 2011 and, for eight years, worked from the vibrant community of Chorlton in south Manchester, growing and developing the practice. In 2019, I relocated […]
A phobia transforms anxiety into fear by attaching it to a very specific object or situation. Almost any object or situation can be used to form a phobia – spiders, snowman, buttons, open spaces, enclosed spaces… By transforming anxiety into a concrete fear of a tangible, nameable object that can be avoided, a phobia […]
Self-Recognition and Therapy How Do We Develop a Sense of Identity? In his concise and accessible book on the unconscious, Anthony Easthope asks: ‘How is it that within five or six years the newly arrived [baby] you bring home with you from the hospital has become a person, who speaks your language, shares […]
Many people seek therapy because their day-to-day life has become disrupted by a symptom. The symptoms therapists work with, however, are not medical in nature. This is why therapists do not require medical training. Rather than evidence of an illness or biochemical imbalance, therapists see a symptom as a message—a way of letting ourselves […]
I recently gave a talk on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 psychological thriller Suspicion, starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. This classic film, set in 1930s England, explores themes of authority, marriage, doubt, and the fine line between suspicion and madness. Hitchcock’s Suspicion follows Lina (Fontaine), a single woman who impulsively marries Johnny (Grant), a […]
An Explosion of Depression? Google’s release in 2017 of the UK’s popular search terms led ITV News to claim, ‘Britain amongst the most depressed and anxious countries in the world.’ In an article based on figures from NHS Digital, also released in 2017, BBC News reported anti-depressants to be the most common treatment […]
Therapy Can Help You Complete What’s Only Half-Said When people hear of ‘repression,’ they often imagine something buried deep within themselves—something that might take years of therapy to unearth and bring to the surface. Yet, as this blog suggests—using examples from talk shows—signs of repression often hide in plain sight, expressed in ways that […]
Anxiety Anxiety generally refers to both a state of mind (unease, apprehension, worry, fear) and bodily states (such as breathlessness, tension, nausea, dizziness). Anxiety can be free-floating and constant (generalised) or acute and temporary (panic). Anxiety is something we seek to avoid at all costs. Outside of our awareness, we develop symptoms that serve to […]