Everyone gets angry including your therapist: “if you’re not pissed off you’re not paying attention” as the direct action news-sheet Schnews used to put it back in the day. And let’s face it, there’s a lot to be angry about, whether that’s on a global scale or just in the day-to-day annoyances of keeping the wheels on the trolley of life. In this blog article I’ll explore what anger is, what it might be telling you, and how to harness the power of anger so it becomes a friend not a foe.

“CBT is only a sticking plaster, it doesn’t go deep and doesn’t create long-lasting change. CBT is delivered by emotionless barely adult robots. CBT blames me as the client when I don’t feel any better. CBT feels mechanical and superficial, it doesn’t see me in all my complexity. CBT doesn’t do emotions or warmth. CBT isn’t interested in relationships it’s all tools and technique….”

In the second part of this two-part blog post, I’ll bust some of the common myths about CBT and explore where they might have come from and why.

“CBT is only a sticking plaster, it doesn’t go deep and doesn’t create long-lasting change. CBT is delivered by emotionless barely adult robots. CBT blames me as the client when I don’t feel any better. CBT feels mechanical and superficial, it doesn’t see me in all my complexity. CBT doesn’t do emotions or warmth. CBT isn’t interested in relationships it’s all tools and technique….”

These are some of the many myths that you’ll hear about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy if you do a quick Google on the subject. My favourites are the expletive littered Mumsnet ones. In this two-part blog post I’ll bust some of the common myths about CBT and explore where they might have come from and why.

“If only I’d done X instead of Y. My life was so much better back then, how did I end up like this? What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening to me? It’s my fault that I am in this mess, I’m a terrible person and everyone hates me, I should have known better, I’ve messed up my life, things will never change…” Does this sound like you? You may be ruminating and it will be taking a serious toll on your physical and mental health.

In this blog post I offer some ways out of the rumination trap and explore how therapy can help with rumination when it shows up in your life.

It’s really hard to be kind to ourselves. We are brought up in a competitive culture that tells us to strive harder, do better and to sacrifice our physical and emotional wellbeing in order to achieve (outward) success. Burnout, busy-ness and overload are almost badges of pride. Tearing each other down to get ahead, whether that’s in the workplace, neighbourhood, politics, academia or via a social media pile-on is simply seen as the “way things are.”

It’s no wonder that self-compassion is seen as somehow soft or self-indulgent; if we’re too busy wafting around being kinder to ourselves then someone else is going to grab that job/gadget/partner/piece of the pie and leave us in the dust. In this blog post I explore some of the common obstacles to self-compassion and how in fact, being kinder to ourselves sets us up to function much more healthily in the toxic systems we live within.