The 3lack 3ox.

Power and hypnosis belong together .  Hypnosis is so often described as a trance state, or as something that happens to someone else. It has a comedic and uncanny aspect. Meanwhile hypnosis seeps like a fog over the boundaries of normal, allowing the realms of shaman and manipulator, to merge and submerge everyday reality. Is it true to say that power works through hypnosis? Is it true that for hypnosis to occur, power must be given away?  Subspace was certainly a hypnotic state, and it required nothing except the surrender of self... So, how true is it to say that power is at the heart of hypnosis, and that power works through hypnosis? And in terms of therapy?  We use or abuse, or ignore power at our peril!  Because a person with power has the ability to seriously elevate or destroy your day, your life, your ability to ever be powerful in your own right; to be heard... What part does this phenomenon called hypnosis, play within power dynamics? I'm thinking that hyp...

The 23rd of May has been an an overly significant date, too many times! Without doubt memory is the key to trauma and I'm really grateful for the EMDR I received over a year ago now. The trigger memory for treatment was the sound of the gate and my husband standing there. Waves of disapproval rolling off him, telling me I should not be burning things in the garden...who later that night would be tricked into going round to her house.  Where her husband was waiting... His car was a write off afterwards.  The photo reminds me of how much better I felt. Gaslighting ended. The earth was the earth once more, the sky only sky... Truth, even the worst truth is so much better than lies. But the 23rd. Between the garden gate and the car, there is the tree. The memory joins and flows into the feeling of walking out of Kit's room for the last time on the 23rd. The end, Muxia...too close. No smashed car moment, no sense of finally getting the truth. As I sat by the tree, as I walked away ...

 "I am the slaughter at your altar. That's where my need for you begins..." M. Gira. The Beggar.  "I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about my principles, my ethical rule, that once a client always a client because you never know what the future is going to bring, and people do come back" I could not understand for the life of me why Kit thought I'd ever return as a client? But then... he wasn't 'talking about me '.  Whilst at the same moment, talking to me  This erasure, this double bind, this? Well what on earth is it when a person uses the term 'you' and then makes clear that they don't mean you? Anyway! This led to me feeling so utterly rejected, disliked even. I'd dismiss it as utter ignorance on the part of the speaker...but, he is a therapist. and he doesn't think there is any need for apology. or reparation, so? So I blog. It was such a corrosive poison it has taken - I was about to say, it has taken this bl...

The joy of postmodern therapy, for both clients and therapists is in how a postmodern approach gives value to inspiration, creativity and the imagination. For we seek to recast the future and the past in ways that enable, and no longer disable. For us, the concept of mental illness as a loss of contact with reality, begs the question - whose reality? And that question, because it places power at the core of diagnosis, really bothers the postmodern therapist.  My core tasks are to help my clients reclaim power, to reconstruct their identity, and to become aware of other possibilities. To do that I need to merrily sidestep the knee jerk conclusions based on binary oppositions, and map out the power dynamics in this client's situation.  Fantasy really isn't the problem, fantasy can be piggybacked into becoming an intervention; the question 'what do you suppose...' is an invitation to the sandbox, to liminality, to use fantasy, to ask what if... Such questions about the pr...

I work with people who are, more often than not, experiencing or processing coercion and terror by others. And I do this because actually, most of what therapy is, is about is this! But therapy didn't used to be about this or even for this, once upon a time people believed that there were deep and dark secrets in how they really processed information. As if there is something about them that is wrong - and this leads to concretising concepts such as 'personality disorder', and citing developmental issues, as the reason for things going wrong. It is analogous to the concept of obscuration in Buddhism, that we need purification , so that we can see clearly...It can't just be random misfortune, or someone else - because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you didn't spot the narcissist. More than once! It must be something about you... Must it? Really? As self-blame is safer, and seems kinder and more reasonable than getting mad at the randomness of th...