feeling sad

How does psychotherapy work?

Ian Pittaway anger, counselling, emotions, feeling sad, feelings, psychotherapy, relationship issues, script, script backlash, Transactional Analysis, transference

Someone who has never experienced psychotherapy may understandably have questions about what it is like, how it works, and why it works. While psychotherapy sessions are different for every person, tailored to a client’s needs, based on the person’s biography and the issues they present, there is nonetheless a general pattern that a series of sessions follows. This article sets out that pattern, intended as a guide for clients.

The general principles of therapy are set out, and we see what that might look like in practice with a fictitious client, Steve, whose relationship is on shaky ground because he repeatedly has arguments that don’t make any sense to himself or his partner.  

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The Drama Triangle: reinforcing the unresolved past

Ian Pittaway anger, anxiety, co-dependence, co-dependency, counselling, Drama Triangle, ego states, emotions, Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self (FDIS), family issues, family roles, FDIA, FDIS, fear, feeling sad, feelings, Munchausen syndrome, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, parenting, Persecutor, projection, projection and denial, projective identification, psychotherapy, racket emotions, relationship issues, Rescuer, sadness, shame, Transactional Analysis, transference, Victim

One of the roles of psychotherapy is to offer the client new ways to understand their emotional dilemma, with the aim of resolving the impasse. When someone keeps replicating the same pattern of discontent, a repeating carousel of unhappy relationships which reinforce the same fear of rejection, or sadness, or anger, it is a potential sign that the Drama Triangle is being enacted.

This article explains the origin of the Drama Triangle in childhood; its three positions – Rescuer, Victim, Persecutor; what the Drama Triangle looks like in practice; and how this can be worked through and resolved in the therapy room.

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Letting go and grieving well

Ian Pittaway bereavement, counselling, depression, endings and beginnings, feeling sad, grief, loneliness, psychotherapy, relationship break-up

We tend to think of grief and bereavement as something we experience only when someone close to us has died, but the bereavement process can happen with any deep and significant loss: the death of a person, the end of a relationship, significant loss of health, the loss of a limb, the end of a career, etc.

This article outlines what to expect in any grieving process. My aim is to show that difficult experiences are normal processes of adjustment to a new situation involving loss.

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Is counselling or psychotherapy for me?

Ian Pittaway affairs and betrayals, anger management, anxiety, bereavement, counselling, depression, family issues, feeling sad, low self-confidence, low self-esteem, panic, psychotherapy, relationship issues, sadness, trauma

For many people, the first question when reading this website will be, ‘Is counselling or psychotherapy for me? Will it help?’ The aim of this article is to address what therapy is like and what it can offer.

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Seeing what we expect to see: the magic lamp and the circle of trauma

Ian Pittaway anxiety, counselling, emotions, family issues, feeling sad, generalised anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, panic, parenting, psychotherapy, relationship issues, sadness, trauma

Recently I’ve been doing some work on my house and much of my furniture has been moved to accommodate the changes. I walked into the darkness of one room and reached out to turn on a lamp in the place it used to be. It wasn’t there. But for a split second, as if by magic, I really did see it in front of me. I then turned to reach for it in the place I had moved it to, and realised the importance of what had just happened when applied to psychotherapy: expectation plays a fundamental part in experience, and it is the expectation of reliving events that is at the root of emotional trauma.

 

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