Psychotherapy Blog
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Understanding Shame: A Whole-Person Approach
Understanding Shame: A Whole-Person Approach
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Shame is the painful feeling that something about you is wrong, broken, or unworthy. It’s different from guilt, which is about actions (“I did something bad”). Shame goes deeper—it’s about identity (“I am bad”).
Therapists who work from an integrative perspective understand shame as layered and complex. It often shows up in four key ways:
• In relationships: Shame can begin in early experiences of rejection, criticism, or feeling unseen. It often grows in environments where love or safety felt conditional.
• In the body: Shame isn’t just a thought—it’s a physical experience. You might feel it as heaviness, tension, collapse, or the urge to hide.
• In your story: Shame can be tied to personal or family history, especially if you’ve been told you were “too much,” “not enough,” or had to hide parts of yourself.
• In culture: Shame is shaped by messages from society—about race, gender, ability, class, or other identities.
These messages can be internalized over time.
Getting Curious About Shame
Therapy invites you to explore shame gently and with compassion. Some questions we might explore together:
• Wh... -
Creative Therapy for Young People: Healing Through Art, Journaling, and Metaphor
How Expressive Therapy Supports Mental Health and Identity Exploration
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For many young people, traditional talk therapy can feel limiting. When emotions are tangled, words may not come easily. That’s where creative therapy steps in—not as a replacement, but as a doorway. Whether through art, journaling, music, or metaphor, expressive therapy offers young adults a way to process feelings, explore identity, and reclaim agency.
What Is Creative Therapy?
Creative therapy refers to styles of therapy that use artistic and symbolic expression to support emotional healing.
This includes:
Art therapy: Using drawing, painting, collage, or sculpture to explore inner experiences.
Journaling for mental health: Writing prompts, freewriting, or letter-writing to clarify thoughts and emotions.
Expressive therapy: A broader term that includes movement, drama, music, and storytelling.
Symbolic reframing: Using metaphor and imagery to reinterpret symptoms, memories, or relational patterns.
These styles of therapy are especially powerful for young people navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, identity shifts, or neurodivergent burnout.
Why Young People Choose Creative Therapy
Young adults often seek therapy not... -
Eating Struggles and the Language of Love
How Food Behaviours Can Symbolise Unmet Needs or Protective Rituals
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Disordered eating and emotional eating are often misunderstood. Beneath the surface of food struggles—whether it's binge eating, food restriction, or disordered eating patterns—there may live a symbolic language of unmet emotional needs, protective rituals, and survival strategies shaped by trauma.
Food as a Messenger, Not a Mistake
In therapy, we view eating behaviours not as failures, but as adaptive responses. These behaviours often emerge in response to emotional neglect, attachment wounds, or chronic stress. They carry meaning—sometimes more than words can express.
• Restrictive eating may symbolize a need for control in a chaotic environment, or a way to shrink emotional overwhelm into something tangible.
• Binge eating disorder can reflect attempts to self-soothe, reclaim pleasure, or fill an emotional void left by unmet childhood needs.
• Avoidance or sensory aversion may be linked to trauma responses, where food becomes a battleground for autonomy and safety.
• Orthorexia or obsession with “clean eating” might echo a yearning for purity, moral worth, or safety in a world that feels contaminated or unpredict... -
When Relationships Hurt and the Past Still Echoes
Therapy for Men Navigating Relationship Struggles and Childhood Trauma
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You might be searching for:
“Help with relationship problems and communication.”
“Therapy for childhood trauma I never talked about.”
These two often go hand in hand.
Many men find themselves stuck in relationship patterns they don’t understand—withdrawal, shutdown, conflict, fear of intimacy. And beneath those patterns, there’s often a history of emotional neglect, father wounds, or trauma that was never named.
Unspoken Childhood Trauma
You don’t need a dramatic story to carry trauma.
Growing up with emotional neglect, criticism, or absence can shape how you relate to others. You might:
• Struggle to express emotions
• Feel unsafe when someone gets too close
• Avoid conflict or shut down during arguments
• Feel like you’re “too much” or “not enough”
Therapy for childhood trauma helps men explore these patterns with compassion—not blame.
Relationship Struggles Aren’t Just About Communication
You might think: “I just need to communicate better.”
But often, the issue isn’t technique—it’s emotional safety. If you’ve never felt safe being vulnerable, communication... -
When Your Mind Won’t Stop and Your Heart Feels Heavy
Therapy for Overthinking, Low Mood, and the Pain That Has No Name
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You’re not alone if you’ve ever typed:
“Can’t stop overthinking everything.”
“Why do I feel sad all the time but nothing is wrong?”
These are some of the most common phrases men use when searching for therapy. They reflect a kind of quiet suffering—where the mind is loud, the body is tired, and the heart feels heavy without a clear reason.
In therapy, we honour these questions as emotional signals, not signs of weakness. They often point to deeper patterns of stress, emotional neglect, or unresolved grief that haven’t yet found words.
The Loop of Overthinking
Overthinking isn’t just a habit—it’s often a nervous system response. When the brain doesn’t feel safe, it tries to solve, scan, and prepare.
You might find yourself:
- Replaying conversations
- Imagining worst-case scenarios
- Struggling to make decisions
- Feeling mentally exhausted but unable to switch off
This mental loop can be a form of emotional hypervigilance—especially common in men who grew up in unpredictable or emotionally unavailable environments. The mind becomes a guard dog, always on alert.
Sadness Without a Story
Feeling low without a clear... -
Neurodivergent and Navigating
Neurodivergent and Navigating: Therapy for Identity, Burnout, and Belonging
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Understanding Masking, Executive Dysfunction, and Sensory Overload in Young People
More and more young people are entering therapy not just to “cope,” but to understand who they are. For neurodivergent youth—those with ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, or other cognitive styles—therapy becomes a space to unmask, decompress, and reclaim identity. This isn’t just about diagnosis. It’s about dignity.
What Does Neurodivergent Mean?
Neurodivergent is a term that describes people whose brains process, learn, and respond differently from what’s considered “neurotypical.” This includes ADHD, autism spectrum conditions, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and more. But for many young people, it’s not just a label—it’s a language of self-understanding.
The Pressure to Mask
Masking is the act of hiding or suppressing neurodivergent traits to fit into social norms. It’s often unconscious, and it can be exhausting:
• An autistic teen might force eye contact or mimic social scripts to avoid judgment.
• A young person with ADHD might overcompensate with perfectionism to hide executive dysfunction.
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Life as a Chess Game
Life as a Chess Game: A Gentle Look at Healing and Strategy
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Sometimes life feels like a chess game. Not because we’re trying to win, but because every move matters. Every pause, every shift, every choice—it’s part of a bigger picture. In therapy, this metaphor can help us make sense of emotional patterns, inner conflict, and the way we show up in relationships.
The Board: Your Inner World
Think of the chessboard as your emotional landscape. Some squares feel safe and familiar—like comfort, hope, or confidence. Others feel harder to stand on—like grief, shame, or fear. Therapy helps you notice where you land most often, and what it takes to move gently across the board.
What emotional “square” do you find yourself standing on lately? Is it soft, tense, or somewhere in between?
Pieces: Parts of You
Each chess piece can represent a part of you. The Queen might be your intuition. The Knight could be your protector. The Pawns? Maybe your tender beginnings—the parts that are still learning. In trauma recovery, we get to know these parts, not to judge them, but to understand what they need.
Which part of you feels loud right now? Which part feels quiet or overlooked?
The Clock: Pressure and Pacing
In chess, the... -
Life as a Mario Game
Life as a Mario Game
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A Therapeutic Guide for Teens Navigating Real-World Levels
Keywords: teen mental health, emotional resilience, symbolic healing, trauma-informed care, growth mindset, healing journey, anxiety support, self-reflection for teens
If you’ve ever felt like life drops you into strange worlds with no map, no manual, and a timer ticking down—you’re not alone. Sometimes, it helps to imagine life as a video game. And not just any game: Super Mario. Yep, the one with mushrooms, lava pits, and castles that never seem to hold the thing you’re looking for.
But what if Mario’s journey wasn’t just pixelated chaos? What if it was a metaphor for growing up, healing, and finding your way?
Let’s press start.
Level 1: You Wake Up in a World You Didn’t Choose
Just like Mario drops into a new level without warning, you’re born into circumstances you didn’t design. Family dynamics, school pressures, identity questions—they’re the terrain you learn to navigate. Some platforms are stable. Others crumble when you step on them.
Therapeutic truth: You’re allowed to name what’s hard. You’re allowed to pause before jumping.
Power-Ups Are Real (Even If They Don’t Glow)
In Mario’s world, mushrooms... -
Navigating Loss Through Absence
Grieving the Unheld: Navigating Loss Through Absence, Relationship Breakdown, and Emotional Endings
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Grief is not always loud. Sometimes it arrives as a quiet ache, a hollow space where connection once lived. It doesn’t always follow death—it can bloom in the wake of emotional abandonment, relationship breakdown, or the end of a significant connection.
Understanding Grief from Absence and Emotional Neglect
Absence is a subtle but profound form of loss. It’s the grief of what never was, or what was never sustained. The emotionally unavailable parent. The friend who disappeared without closure. The partner who was physically present but emotionally distant.
This kind of grief is often overlooked in traditional mental health conversations. Yet it’s deeply valid. Therapy recognizes that emotional neglect and relational absence can leave lasting wounds.
Naming this grief is the first step toward healing.
Healing After Relationship Breakdown
When relationships fracture—through betrayal, miscommunication, or unmet needs—the grief is sharp and disorienting. It’s not just the loss of the person, but the loss of emotional safety, shared meaning, and the version of yourself that existed in their presence.
Relational tr...