post-traumatic stress – Ian Pittaway Therapy

The childhood blueprint

Ian Pittaway attachment, change key factors, counselling, emotions, feelings, parenting, post-traumatic stress, psychotherapy, racket emotions, Transactional Analysis, transference, trauma 3rd July 202126th June 2026

Photos from Unsplash: Caleb Woods, Abigail Keenan.

One of the key insights in psychotherapy is that an event in itself doesn’t have meaning: events gain meaning through the personal filter of the experiencing individual. Four people at the same event, because they have four different filters or expectations, will experience it in four different ways. Using the imaginary example of observers of a fight in a car park, this article explores personal filters and their role in making meaning. We conclude with an explanation of what this means for the process of emotional healing in psychotherapy.

Body calming exercise – with downloadable MP3

Ian Pittaway alienation, anger, anxiety, body calming exercise, calming exercise, counselling, depersonalisation, depression, dissociation, emotions, fear, feelings, hypervigilance, panic, panic attack, post-traumatic stress, psychosomatic responses, psychosomatic symptoms, psychotherapy, sadness, self-alienation, transference, trauma 20th April 202115th May 2026

A panic attack is an experience of being overwhelmed by unresolved emotional trauma, an event in the past revisited in the present as if it is happening again. The long-term therapeutic resolution of that trauma is personal and therefore different for each person. In the short-term, the psychosomatic (emotional and physical) alarm response may be calmed by an exercise which brings the person back into the safe here and now. The first part of this article explains the therapeutic theory behind the body calming exercise; and the second part is the exercise itself, available as a downloadable MP3.

Hope in the therapy room

Ian Pittaway anxiety, bereavement, change key factors, depression, family issues, hope, loneliness, low self-confidence, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress, relationship issues, trauma 1st January 201917th May 2026

A question I am sometimes asked by clients, usually in the first few sessions, is “Is there any hope for me?” It is a fundamental question which goes to the heart of therapy. A way of understanding the question is ‘Will I be able to grow beyond my present state? Is change really possible?’ The answer is an emphatic ‘Yes’.

Psychosomatic symptoms: are they all in the mind?

Ian Pittaway alienation, bereavement, counselling, depersonalisation, depression, dissociation, hypervigilance, hypochondria, immune system, neuroscience, post-traumatic stress, psychosomatic responses, psychosomatic symptoms, psychotherapy, self-alienation, trauma 1st October 201816th May 2026

‘Psychosomatic illness’ and ‘psychosomatic symptoms’ are commonly-used terms. In everyday language, they are typically used to dismiss both the symptoms and the person, with phrases such as ‘It’s all in the mind’, often meaning, ‘It isn’t real: this person is imagining it’.

This article outlines why such ideas are mistaken, the importance of understanding the unity of mind and body, how trauma splits mind and body, and the role of psychotherapy in reuniting them safely.