Abusive relationships: Trauma bonding

Ever wondered why you've stayed in a relationship you know is bad for you? Or why it's hard to shake off an abusive ex-partner months or even years after you've broken up? 

Bonding is a biological and emotional process that makes people more important to each other over time. Bonding is cumulative and grows with spending time together, living together, eating together, making love together, having children together, and being together during stress or difficulty. Experiencing extreme situations and feelings together tends to bond people in a special way, which may be healthy or unhealthy.

Relationship difficulties? Watch out for these dynamics

If you're having difficulties in your relationship and find yourself going round in circles and resolving nothing, the Karpman Drama Triangle may help you to get a handle on the dynamics and help you to make healthy changes.

NHS reliance on CBT fails up 84-87% of patients

According to a new major report, "Commissioning Effective Talking Therapies", published by the Centre for Social Justice, the NHS is failing people with emotional difficulties by relying on too narrow a range of psychological therapies. The existing approach favours the disproportionate use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which fails 84-87% of patients, whilst invalidating the wide range of other successful therapies available, and wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money in the process.

Postnatal depression in men?

This morning I had the misfortune of stumbling upon an article in the Guardian, entitled "Postnatally depressed dads? - Give me a break". The purpose of the article, written by Barbara Ellen, was, I think, to criticise the use of the term "PND" to describe the symptoms some men experience after the birth of a child. However, she was also particularly dismissive of men who experience depression postnatally, using terms such as "Pissed off, knackered and yearning to be carefree again" and "exhausting narcissists"  and "men incapable of hiding their sulky self-absorption".