Articles on psychotherapy, emotional wellbeing and personal change

Reflections on anxiety, relationships, grief, life transitions, body, identity and the work of therapy.

Matrescence: The Overlooked Transition to Motherhood

Matrescence: The Overlooked Transition to Motherhood

Becoming a mother changes a woman at every level: body, brain, relationships and sense of self. There is a word for this transition to motherhood: matrescence. Coined by the anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s and brought into wider public conversation by the writer Lucy Jones in her book Matrescene, it names a developmental passage as profound as adolescence. Yet maternal mental health during this passage has been strangely neglected, hidden behind the comfortable idea that motherhood is simply ‘natural’.

Therapy as a Place for Complexity

Therapy as a Place for Complexity

“Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.”
– Fernando Pessoa

My thoughts after this week of psychotherapy work: how much comfort certainty can bring. And how much it can sometimes rob us of the fullness of life.

Psychotherapy, Counselling & Coaching | Esher, Surrey

How Psychotherapy Works: Why Relationships Heal

How psychotherapy works is something many people wonder about before starting therapy. What is it about sitting with another person and talking that can make things feel different?

From the outside, psychotherapy can look quite simple. Two people meet regularly and talk about what is happening in your life, your relationships, your feelings, your past, your worries, your patterns. But therapy is not just a kind conversation. It is not only empathy, reassurance, or someone listening politely.