The Self Critic

What do we mean when we talk about the self critic? Too many of us are quietly, privately, hard on ourselves. We walk around with an inner critic, telling us we’re not ‘good enough’ and never amount to anything. It shouts at us after a difficult run in with our…

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Self-Compassion Tools

This is the third in a series of blogs about self-compassion, which focuses on self-compassion tools. As a therapist, I can honestly say, in my experience, that it is one of the best practices available - based on many years of solid scientific research. It can make a huge difference…

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Self-Compassion

In her popular book, Self-Compassion, psychologist Kristin Neff, Ph.D., describes how she used years of research to develop a simple model of self-compassion with three elements of learning to be kind to yourself.  Self compassion isn’t a practice that we do naturally - in fact we are much more likely…

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Being Passive

This is part of a series of blogs which look at patterns of communication in relationships. Some common, but unhealthy patterns include being openly confrontational, avoiding conflict, being passive and being passive aggressive. This includes all our relationships, not just with romantic partners.  What is meant by being passive? Being…

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Competitive Confrontation

This is part of a series of blogs about communication in relationships. My previous blog looked at four common ways of handling conflict and this focuses on competitive confrontation.  What does this mean? Competitive confrontation is a common response to conflict. It describes our behaviour when we are forceful and…

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Conflict Avoidance

This is part of a series of blogs about communication - focusing on the ways people handle conflict, more specifically, conflict avoidance. People who are conflict avoidant avoid addressing that conflict AT ALL COSTS! They are experts at changing the subject, focusing exclusively on the positives, ignoring a problem or…

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Building strong relationships

My previous blogs looked at the findings from relationship research carried out by Dr John Gottman and what he calls “the four horsemen”: these are patterns of behaviour which accurately predict relationship breakdown: criticism and contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. Gottman also put forward what he termed the antidotes to the…

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