Category: Psychologists

Q & A – what are Internal family systems

 

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a type of therapy that is based on the idea that each individual has different “parts” within them, and that these parts can become conflicted or imbalanced, leading to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and relationship problems. IFS is a type of therapy that helps individuals understand and work with these internal parts to improve their overall well-being.

In IFS therapy, the therapist helps the individual identify and understand their internal parts and their relationships with one another. These parts may include “protectors” that are designed to keep the individual safe, “managers” that help the individual cope with difficult situations, and “exiles” that carry painful emotions or memories.

The goal of IFS therapy is to help individuals better understand and manage their internal parts in order to reduce internal conflict and improve mental health. This may involve techniques such as mindfulness, guided visualization, and dialogue with internal

 

©Linda Turner http://parentalalienationpas.com 2023

Q & A – Family systems therapy

Family systems therapy, also known as family therapy, is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on the relationships within a family and how they impact the psychological well-being of each family member. The goal of family systems therapy is to help family members better understand and communicate with each other in order to resolve conflicts and improve relationships.

Family systems therapy is based on the idea that the family is a complex system, and that the behavior of each family member is influenced by the behavior of other family members. In family systems therapy, the therapist works with the entire family, rather than just one individual, to identify and address the underlying issues that are contributing to family conflicts or difficulties.

Family systems therapy may involve a variety of techniques, including:

  1. Structural therapy: Structural therapy involves observing and analyzing the patterns of interaction within a family, and working to modify these patterns in order to improve communication and relationships.
  2. Strategic therapy: Strategic therapy involves developing specific interventions and tasks designed to address the specific issues identified within the family.
  3. Narrative therapy: Narrative therapy involves helping family members reframe their experiences and view them in a more positive and empowering light.
  4. Solution-focused therapy: Solution-focused therapy involves focusing on identifying and implementing solutions to specific problems within the family.

Family systems therapy can be effective in treating a wide range of issues, including communication difficulties, relationship conflicts, behavioral problems in children, and mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. It’s important to work with a trained family therapist who can help identify the most appropriate approach for your specific needs.

©Linda Turner http://parentalalienationpas.com 2023

Q & A – What is Trauma Typology

Trauma is a complex and multifaceted experience that can take many different forms. Trauma typology is a way of categorizing different types of trauma based on their source, duration, and impact. Here are some common types of trauma:

  1. Acute trauma: This is a single, brief event that causes intense distress, such as a car accident, physical assault, or natural disaster.
  2. Chronic trauma: This is ongoing trauma that occurs repeatedly over a period of time, such as living in a war zone, experiencing ongoing abuse or neglect, or being in a long-term abusive relationship.
  3. Complex trauma: This refers to exposure to multiple or ongoing traumatic events, often beginning in childhood, that have a cumulative impact on an individual’s emotional and psychological wellbeing.
  4. Secondary trauma: This occurs when individuals are exposed to the traumatic experiences of others, such as healthcare providers working with trauma survivors or first responders witnessing traumatic events.
  5. Vicarious trauma: This is a type of secondary trauma that occurs when individuals develop their own trauma-related symptoms as a result of repeatedly hearing about or witnessing traumatic events.
  6. Historical trauma: This refers to the collective trauma experienced by a group of people, such as the intergenerational trauma experienced by Indigenous peoples as a result of colonization and forced assimilation.

It’s important to note that these types of trauma are not mutually exclusive and can overlap in different ways. Understanding the different types of trauma can be helpful in identifying appropriate treatment approaches and supporting individuals in their healing journeys.

©Linda Turner http://parentalalienationpas.com 2023

 

What’s the point of talking about the past?

When old ways of doing things are no longer helpful

So, our past experiences – and especially those from childhood – can lay down patterns for how we see and respond to the world, how we see ourselves and the relationship we have with our own feelings.

Whilst these patterns may serve us well for a time, there can come a point where they no longer fit or their effectiveness starts to wane.

For example, if we’re used to shutting down our feelings, we may find they eventually start to bubble up dressed as anxiety, depression, rage. If we experienced pain or abandonment at the hands of others, we might have learned to minimise the risk of this happening again through avoiding making meaningful connections, leading to difficulties sustaining relationships in adulthood.

So, whilst it is true that ‘dredging stuff up’ won’t change the past, talking about it can help us understand why we are the way we are and do the things we do. In turn, this insight can help put us in charge of how we live our lives going forwards.

Continue reading “What’s the point of talking about the past?”

Cognitive Restructuring

You Are Not Broken

Always By Your Side

Linda Turner – Counselor, Therapist & Coach – Qualifications

I offer professional counseling with real life experience.

  • Eye Movement Desensitisation And Reprocessing Therapy EMDR – CPD accreditation Certification
  • Certified NLP Practitioner – CPD accreditation Certification
  • Hypnotherapist – CPD accreditation Certification
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapist CBT – CPD accreditation Certification
  • Cognitive Behavioral Hypnotherapy (CBH) – CPD accreditation Certification
  • Life Coaching Diploma – CPD accreditation Certification

I can offer you a unique therapy and counseling service, whether it be on a 1 to 1 basis all carried out face to face online. I can offer you support on a regular basis.

I cannot guarantee that I can reconcile you with your child(ren) , but I can help you to understand yourself better and put you in a much happier place.

I can offer my full support and help you to become far more tolerant with your situation. I have “been there” and recovered, so can you!

Linda – Always by your side.

Decisions Making!

When we make decisions, we’re not always in charge. We can be too impulsive or too deliberate for our own good; one moment we hotheadedly let our emotions get the better of us, and the next we’re paralyzed by uncertainty. Then we’ll pull a brilliant decision out of thin air—and wonder how we did it. Though we may have no idea how decision making happens, neuroscientists peering into our brains are beginning to get the picture. What they’re finding may not be what you want to hear, but it’s worth your while to listen.

Spots on Brains 

Eye-popping color images of brain scans in the popular press imply that scientists are pinpointing the precise location in the brain of feelings like fear, disgust, pleasure, and trust. But the researchers doing this work are highly circumspect about just what these colorful spots show. The two most common scanning methods, PET (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), offer only approximations of what’s really going on in the brain. PET, the older and less popular of the two, measures blood flow in the brain; fMRI measures the amount of oxygen in the blood. Local blood flow and oxygenation indicate how active a part of the brain is but offer a crude snapshot at best. These scanners typically can’t see anything smaller than a peppercorn and can take only one picture every two seconds. But neural activity in the brain can occur in a fraction of the space and time that scanners can reveal. Thus, the splashy images we see are impressionistic, and the conclusions researchers draw about them are usually qualified—and often disputed. Like the images themselves, the details of brain function are just beginning to come into focus.

https://hbr.org/2006/01/decisions-and-desire

A Bout of Delusional Jealousy

In his 1921 article focusing on the psychoanalytic examination of the psychic mechanisms of jealousy, Freud distinguishes between three “layers or grades of jealousy [that] may be described as
(1) competitive or normal, (2) projected, and (3) delusional jealousy.” [39][39]Freud, S. (1922). Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy,… In delusional jealousy, the subject and his object are of the same sex, its development requires a strong homosexual impulse, against which the subject defends himself by contradicting the fantasmatic statement that “may, in a man, be described in the formula: ‘I do not love him, she loves him!’.” [40][40]Ibid., p. 224. In this perspective, Freud presents the case of a young man suffering from attacks of delusional jealousy, which

32[…] regularly appeared on the day after he had had sexual intercourse with his wife, which was, incidentally, satisfying to both of them. The inference is justified that after every satiation of the heterosexual libido, the homosexual component, likewise stimulated by the act, forced an outlet for itself in the attack of jealousy. [41][41]Ibid., p. 224.

33Hence, for the subject, a crisis of delusional jealousy constitutes clinical incidence of sexual satisfaction. Freud then adds that the subject “had made no friendships and developed no social interests; one had the impression that only the delusion had carried forward the development of his relations with men, as if it had taken over some of the arrears that had been neglected.” [42][42]Ibid., p. 226.
Freud attributes to the delusion the function of allowing the subject to assume what initially was missing. But what was it precisely? On the one hand, Freud speaks about the absence of the father and a strong attachment to the mother – an attachment he had already underlined in the 1915 case of the young professional woman – and, on the other hand, about the existence of a homosexual trauma dating from the subject’s childhood, a traumatic nodal element in his doctrine of the psychoses. The new observation corroborates Freud’s theorization, insofar as the persecutor would be the subject’s most loved object of the same sex.

https://www.cairn.info/revue-recherches-en-psychanalyse-2011-2-page-197.htm

A Case of Paranoia in a Young Woman Patient

In 1915, Freud reports another observation of the onset of psychosis. Embarrassed by one of his clients’ complaints about the persecution she has suffered at the hands of a former lover, a lawyer initiates a meeting with Freud, to whom the young woman tells her story. After she had been courted for a certain period of time by a colleague at work, she finally agrees to meet him in his flat. During their lovemaking she is surprised by a noise – “a kind of knock or click.” [33][33]Freud, S. (1915). A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the… On her departure she runs into two men who seem to whisper to each other as she passes them, one of them hiding a camera. The woman remembers the noise she heard in the room and imagines that the man must have taken intimate pictures of her. Concerned, she presses her lover with questions, but is not satisfied with his answers and eventually contacts a lawyer.
Since the woman’s account first seems to contradict his conception of paranoia, Freud asks her for another meeting. The young woman then changes her first version slightly and tells him that it was in fact only during the second encounter with her lover that she was disturbed by the strange noise, to which she then attached her suspicions: they have set up a trap in order to compromise her. Freud also learns that the day after their first meeting, the young woman saw her lover at work, in a conversation with her female superior. Observing the scene, she became certain that the man had revealed the secret of their love affair, or worse, that he is having a love relation with her superior as well. According to Freud, the superior represents a maternal figure and the lover, in spite of his young age, a paternal one. He thus refers the triad composed of the young woman, her lover and the superior to the Oedipus complex. Although the young woman is attracted to the paternal substitute, she remains no less under the domination of her maternal attachment, here figured by the superior, towards whom she harbors homosexual feelings. She is therefore confronted with an impossibility – her love for the man – which the delusion is trying to solve: “The [delusion] was at first aimed against the woman. But now, on this paranoic basis, the advance from a female to a male object was accomplished.” [34][34]Ibid., p. 270.
Thanks to this observation, Freud finds a way to confirm his main theses: the subject and his persecutor are of the same sex and the triggering of paranoia functions as a setting up of a defense against an excessively strong homosexual attachment, the latter representing “the paranoic disposition in her.” [

https://www.cairn.info/revue-recherches-en-psychanalyse-2011-2-page-197.htm

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