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Why Clients Don’t Change Without Us
It’s an interesting question. Since clients know they want to change, and often know how they want to change, why don’t they? There’s a more complex answer to this, but let’s start with the simple one. They do. Most of the changes our clients make are changes we never get to see. Our clients are…
Feeling Is The Secret
I like to use imagination to help trigger memory reconsolidation. It’s not the only way to generate mismatch experiences, but it’s readily available. Another advantage is that it interacts directly with the nervous system. We all know this. Who hasn’t woken from a nightmare with their heart pounding? A nervous system response to mere imagination.…
Was Roger Federer a loser?
Roger Federer is one of the greatest tennis players of all time. He won Wimbledon a remarkable 8 times! The man was a machine! Yet he only won 54 per cent of the points he played. That’s right. Even Roger Federer would lose almost half of the time. And that is exactly the problem with…
But my therapist said…
I notice how often people mention what their therapist told them to do. "I wasn’t sure this was the right career move for me, but my therapist said I should appy for the promotion." "I felt uneasy about my forthcoming date but my therapist said it would be good to explore it further." "I wasn’t…
The Interpersonal Laws of Physics
I was never a fan of physics in school. I’d even find ways to get out of lessons. As a result, I know almost nothing about physics. Yet in an applied sense, I’m an expert in physics and have been since I was very young. Here’s an example, I learned very early that if you…
The Problem With The T-Word
How do you remove trauma response? There is only one brain mechanism we know of that can – memory reconsolidation. You either trigger that and remove it. Or you don’t and, well, you don’t. But here’s the thing. Memory reconsolidation doesn’t just remove trauma response. It removes all kinds of emotional learning. Despite this, we…
Don’t be The Jerk
In Steve Martin’s comedy, The Jerk, his character Navin Johnson was the target of a random assassin. As the sniper fired at him, an anxious Navin ran around the gas station where he worked. The sniper kept firing and missing. Instead, he’d hit the oil cans. Then the cola cans. And that’s when Navin realised…
The sounds of silence
Chris McCausland is a well-known comedian from my home city of Liverpool. He is also blind. In a recent interview, fellow funnyman Rob Brydon mentioned how, before a show, he will step into the empty performance space and get a sense of it. The size, the shape. I do this as a musician too. Some…
Are you stuck on unnecessary steps?
Most of the quibbles that therapy approaches have with each other are about unnecessary steps. Think of it like this. Two people are stood in front of a door debating how to open it. One says: you have to clap your hands twice, do a starjump, put the key in the lock and turn it.…
You’re not running for election
When election time comes around all the politicians get to have their moment, debating this and that. They are each engaged in a campaign to persuade you of some case or other. Therapists and coaches can slip into campaign mode too. We learn that the brain needs mismatches for change to happen. So whenever we…
Why Clients Don’t Change Without Us
It’s an interesting question. Since clients know they want to change, and often know how they want to change, why don’t they? There’s a more complex answer to this, but let’s start with the simple one. They do. Most of the changes our clients make are changes we never get to see. Our clients are…
Feeling Is The Secret
I like to use imagination to help trigger memory reconsolidation. It’s not the only way to generate mismatch experiences, but it’s readily available. Another advantage is that it interacts directly with the nervous system. We all know this. Who hasn’t woken from a nightmare with their heart pounding? A nervous system response to mere imagination.…
Was Roger Federer a loser?
Roger Federer is one of the greatest tennis players of all time. He won Wimbledon a remarkable 8 times! The man was a machine! Yet he only won 54 per cent of the points he played. That’s right. Even Roger Federer would lose almost half of the time. And that is exactly the problem with…
But my therapist said…
I notice how often people mention what their therapist told them to do. "I wasn’t sure this was the right career move for me, but my therapist said I should appy for the promotion." "I felt uneasy about my forthcoming date but my therapist said it would be good to explore it further." "I wasn’t…
The Interpersonal Laws of Physics
I was never a fan of physics in school. I’d even find ways to get out of lessons. As a result, I know almost nothing about physics. Yet in an applied sense, I’m an expert in physics and have been since I was very young. Here’s an example, I learned very early that if you…
The Problem With The T-Word
How do you remove trauma response? There is only one brain mechanism we know of that can – memory reconsolidation. You either trigger that and remove it. Or you don’t and, well, you don’t. But here’s the thing. Memory reconsolidation doesn’t just remove trauma response. It removes all kinds of emotional learning. Despite this, we…