Philip Larkin’s poem Afternoons ends with a line that has stayed with me for many years. Describing a group of young mothers, he writes that they are being pushed “to the side of their own lives.”

As both a therapist and a mother, I find myself returning to those words from time to time.

Not because motherhood is something to be mourned. Far from it. Many of the women I meet in my practice speak about the deep love, joy and meaning they find in raising their children. I recognise those feelings in my own life too. But alongside them there is often another experience, one that is spoken about less openly: the feeling that somewhere along the way, parts of yourself have quietly slipped out of view.

Motherhood asks a great deal of us. Whether we are balancing work, family life, relationships and the endless mental load that comes with keeping a household running, or whether we are caring for children full-time, there is a constant pull towards the needs of others. Days can become organised around everyone else’s priorities. It can be hard to hear your own voice amidst the noise.

In the therapy room, I often hear my clients speak about feelings they have not felt able to share elsewhere. Loneliness. Exhaustion. Frustration. A sense of loss for the person they once were. The pressure of feeling responsible for everyone else’s wellbeing. These feelings can sit uncomfortably alongside love and gratitude, leaving many women wondering whether they are somehow getting motherhood wrong.

What strikes me is how often mothers feel they should be coping better. As though everyone else has found a way to manage effortlessly while they alone are struggling. Yet beneath the surface, so many women are carrying similar doubts and fears.

There are also the judgements that seem to accompany motherhood whatever path we take. Mothers who return to work can feel guilty for not being present enough. Mothers who stay at home can find themselves viewed as fortunate or privileged. Yet from my experience, both professionally and personally, life is rarely that straightforward. Decisions about work and childcare are often shaped by practical realities, financial pressures and what is possible for a particular family at a particular moment in time. What appears to be a free choice from the outside can feel much more complex from within.

Perhaps this is why I find the work of the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott so reassuring. Winnicott introduced the idea of the “good enough mother”, a concept that remains remarkably relevant today. He understood that children do not need perfect parents. In fact, perfection is neither possible nor desirable. Children need parents who are present, loving and human.

Part of being human is getting things wrong.

One of the most liberating aspects of Winnicott’s thinking is his recognition that ordinary parental failures are not signs of inadequacy. We lose patience. We misjudge situations. We miss things. We become overwhelmed. We say the wrong thing. We cannot always meet every need at the precise moment it arises. None of this means we have failed as parents. It means we are human.

I know how difficult it can be to hold onto that idea. Like many mothers, I have spent periods of my life trying to get it all right. Trying to be the perfect mother, while also attending to relationships, responsibilities and the countless demands that arise in everyday life. And like many mothers, life has had its own plans. Curve balls arrive. Circumstances change. Expectations must be adjusted. There have been moments when I have had to return, sometimes reluctantly, to Winnicott’s wisdom and remind myself that “good enough” is not settling for less. It is recognising the reality of being human.

Perhaps that is what Larkin was noticing all those years ago. The way that caring for others can sometimes push our own needs, ambitions and identities towards the margins. I do not believe the answer lies in asking mothers to do more, achieve more or somehow become better versions of themselves.

Instead, I think many mothers need permission.

Permission to acknowledge that motherhood can be both wonderful and difficult. Permission to love their children deeply and still miss parts of their former lives. Permission to feel tired, frustrated or overwhelmed. Permission to have needs of their own.

And perhaps most importantly, permission to be imperfect.

The women I meet in therapy are rarely failing. More often, they are holding extraordinary amounts together while quietly questioning whether they are enough. If there is one message, I wish more mothers could hear, it is that being a good mother was never about getting everything right. It was never about perfection.

It was always about being human.

And sometimes, in a culture that asks so much of mothers, remembering that may be one way of finding our way back from the side of our own lives.

Artificial intelligence has become part of everyday life for many of us.

Perhaps you use it at work. Perhaps you use it to help organise your thoughts, answer questions, or make decisions. Perhaps you’ve even found yourself turning to it when you’re struggling emotionally and want somewhere to put your thoughts.

If so, you’re not alone.

Many of the people I work with tell me they use AI in different ways. Some use it before therapy sessions to help clarify what they want to talk about. Others use it between sessions to reflect on difficult experiences, understand their emotions, or explore patterns in their relationships.

I think it is important to acknowledge this reality rather than pretend it isn’t happening.

There is nothing shameful about using AI. It is increasingly woven into the way we live, learn, work, and communicate. For many people, it can be genuinely helpful.

It is available at any time of day. It can offer information, suggest coping strategies, help people find language for experiences they have struggled to express, and provide a space to think things through. I can understand why people are drawn to it.

At the same time, I often find myself reflecting on the difference between receiving a response and being in relationship.

For me, therapy has never been primarily about advice, information, or even insight. Those things can be valuable, but they are not what makes therapy meaningful.

What matters most is the experience of sitting with another human being.

Whether therapy takes place in person or online, there is something profoundly important about being with someone who is genuinely present with you.

A therapist notices the hesitation before you speak.

They notice when your words say one thing but your face suggests something else.

They hear the change in your tone of voice when a difficult subject arises.

They may gently wonder about the tears that appear unexpectedly, the smile that briefly crosses your face, or the silence that settles when words become difficult to find.

Often the most important moments in therapy are not the ones that were planned.

They emerge in the space between two people.

Therapy is not simply a conversation about your life. It is a relationship in which your experiences, thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, and vulnerabilities can be explored with another person who is paying close attention.

It is a place where you do not have to work everything out on your own.

AI can offer reflection, but it cannot share your experience.

It cannot feel the emotional weight of what you are carrying.

It cannot notice the expression on your face when you talk about someone you love.

It cannot sit alongside you in the way another human being can.

For me, that human connection remains at the heart of therapy.

This doesn’t mean AI has no place. I think it can be a useful tool, and many people will continue to find value in using it. It may help you reflect, learn, organise your thoughts, or prepare for difficult conversations.

But I see it as something that can sit alongside therapy rather than replace it.

Perhaps the more interesting question is not whether AI is good or bad, but what we are looking for when we turn towards it.

Sometimes we need information.

Sometimes we need clarity.

And sometimes what we need most is another person.

Someone who can see us, hear us, respond to us, and meet us as we are.

As technology continues to evolve, my belief about therapy remains unchanged.

Human beings heal in relationship.

The opportunity to be genuinely seen, understood, challenged, supported, and accepted by another person is, in my view, one of the most powerful aspects of therapy.

AI may increasingly be part of our lives, but the heart of therapy remains what it has always been:

One human being meeting another.

I’ve been noticing how completely my life has shifted into a different part of its arc – one that is less about becoming and more about belonging to what has already been built and what is now unfolding beyond me.

My children are grown now, living full lives of their own. And with grandchildren having arrived, something in me reorganises again. I can feel my place in the larger lineage of my life changing shape. I am no longer the centre of the family in the way I once was. I am becoming part of the wider ground they stand on, part of what they come from rather than what they orbit.

There is a strange and beautiful disorientation in that. Not loss exactly, but repositioning. A quiet reorientation of purpose.

And alongside that, there is a fact I can no longer avoid: I am closer to death than I am to my birth. That isn’t said with fear so much as with clarity. It changes how I listen to life. It changes what I can pretend matters and what I can no longer uphold as important.

What I find myself asking now is: who are my guides in this part of the journey?

Because I am entering what our culture has so few honest images for – this time of elderhood, cronehood, cronedome. A stage that is often spoken about, but rarely truly inhabited in public without distortion or invisibility.

And I can feel how much of the culture around me is still deeply afraid of age. It resists it, edits it, manages it, fights it in quiet and visible ways. It is hard not to feel pulled into those currents – into the pressure to remain presentable through youthfulness, to soften or disguise the changes that are simply part of being alive long enough to have lived.

There is a tension here: between what feels natural in me and what is culturally rewarded around me. Between what it might mean to truly inhabit age, and what it means to try to remain acceptable within a framework that was never designed to honour elderhood as power, presence, or beauty in its own right.

And I notice the emotional complexity of that most sharply around visibility and attractiveness. The experience of no longer being automatically positioned as “physically desirable” in the way younger women are often conditioned to be seen. That shift can land as a kind of grief if it is measured only through the old lens.

But something else becomes possible when that lens begins to loosen.

There is a slow, sometimes reluctant, refinement of what beauty actually means. It stops being something granted by external agreement and starts becoming something perceived through depth, presence, character, and attention. Something that is less about being looked at and more about how one sees, and what one chooses to honour in others and in oneself.

This is not an easy transition. It asks for honesty. It asks for the release of certain forms of validation that were never fully stable to begin with, even when they were abundant. And it asks for a different kind of grounding, one that is not dependent on being mirrored in a narrow way by culture.

At the same time, something in me resists the idea that this is about disappearance. It feels more like reorientation than erasure. A widening of what counts as meaningful, a deepening of what counts as beautiful, a shift in what I am willing to answer to.

And underneath all of it, there is this question that keeps returning in quieter and quieter form: what is my life’s purpose now?

Not productivity. Not appearance. Not even legacy in the conventional sense. But something more lived and immediate than that – how I am present, how I love, how I meet what is here, and how I allow myself to be changed by time without trying to negotiate my way out of it.

If I am honest, there is grief in this passage. And also a kind of liberation I am only beginning to understand.

Because if I am no longer trying to secure my worth through how I am seen, then I am left with something both simpler and more demanding: to locate my worth in being itself. 

And that, more than anything, feels like the terrain of elderhood I am only just beginning to learn how to walk. It is not easy.

There was a time when my body stopped feeling like a place I could trust.

It happened in a single moment, the kind that divides life into before and after. A bike accident. Impact. Shock. Pain arriving faster than understanding. In that moment, everything I thought I knew about control disappeared as I hit the ground. Afterward, my body was still mine, but it was no longer predictable. It could fail me. It could be hurt. It could be taken from ease into injury without warning.

But in truth, the accident didn’t begin anything. It deepened something older.

It took me back.

To a childhood where safety was not a given condition, and letting go was not something I had learned how to do. I was hypervigilant for as long as I can remember – prepared, alert, always adjusting, always scanning. Not because I chose to be, but because it was how I stayed steady in a world that didn’t always feel steady itself.

So I learned early that surrender was not safe.

And without realising it, I carried that forward into adulthood. I mistook vigilance for strength. I mistook control for safety. I mistook adaptation for limitation.

Then came the accident – and it confirmed everything my body already believed. That it could be fine one moment and broken the next. That preparedness was never enough. That control had limits I could not see until I was already falling.

After that, surrender became even more impossible. Because surrender, once you’ve been hurt, can feel like forgetting what protects you. Like letting go of the only thing that might keep you intact.

So I didn’t.

Not just physically, but in all the quiet ways life asks us to release. I held on emotionally too – in relationships, in rest, in asking for help, in anything that required trust in something outside of myself.

I didn’t notice I was doing it. I only knew I felt safer when I stayed slightly braced, slightly prepared, slightly in control.

For a long time, I thought this was just who I was. Careful. Controlled. Unable to let go in the ways other people seemed to manage so easily. I didn’t question it because it felt like truth. I had never learned how to fully trust myself –  not my body, not my balance, not my capacity to catch myself if I fell.

And then I tried to do a handstand.

It was simple, almost ordinary. A moment that asked nothing more than an experiment in balance. But the moment I lifted my legs, something familiar happened. One leg found the wall immediately. The other searched for air, for space, for the possibility of lifting fully. But I didn’t let it. I couldn’t. There was no trust that I would stay up without contact. No internal sense that my body would hold me if I let both points of support go.

So I stayed there – half inverted, half anchored. One foot pressed into the wall, the other reaching upward but never fully released into the unknown.

And I realised that this was not just a physical hesitation.

It was the same pattern I had lived in for years.

Not trusting that I could hold myself. Not trusting that the ground, internal or external, would be enough without something to brace against.

In that moment, the handstand was not an exercise. It was recognition.

This was how I had always lived.

One part of me reaching for freedom, expansion, possibility. Another part refusing to let go of contact, because contact had always meant survival.

And yet, something shifted while I stayed there.

I didn’t force myself out of it. I didn’t push both legs away from the wall. I didn’t turn it into failure. I simply noticed what was happening: that I was not broken for needing support. That I was not weak for not fully releasing. That my body was doing exactly what it had learned it needed to do in order to stay safe.

And in that noticing, something softened.

I began to understand that trust is not a single act of surrender. It is not a leap into nothing. It is something built in layers – negotiated between safety and risk, between what is known and what is not yet safe enough to release into.

There are moments in life that invite full surrender. And there are moments that ask for contact, for grounding, for one point of stability while the rest is explored. Wisdom is learning the difference without turning it into self-judgement.

For a long time, I thought my inability to let go meant I was closed. But now I see it differently. I was not closed. I was consistent with what I had learned. I was adaptive in a world that had taught me, through experience, through impact, through repetition, that certainty could not always be trusted.

Recovery, then, is not about becoming someone who trusts without hesitation. It is about slowly expanding what trust can feel like in the body. It is the re-learning of safety in small increments. The return of choice where there was once only protection.

It is discovering that the body is not only something that can be injured, but something that can re-learn steadiness. That not every imbalance becomes collapse. That support can exist without total surrender. That it is possible to stay in relationship with uncertainty without being consumed by it.

And so I return again to the handstand.

Not as metaphor imposed from outside, but as something lived from within.

One foot on the wall. One foot reaching.

Not a failure to balance. Not an inability to let go. But a truthful expression of where trust currently lives in me.

And maybe that is what healing looks like after everything has been disrupted: not the sudden arrival of complete surrender, but the gradual permission to not rush it.

To stay half in contact, half in possibility.

Until, slowly, the body learns that it does not have to choose between safety and freedom – it can learn how to hold both.

As I walk through the park, I find myself reflecting on the year 2020 – when COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, and how it felt as though the world changed almost overnight. There was no warning that felt sufficient, no gradual easing into it  – just a quiet, collective shift that altered how we lived, moved, and saw one another. The familiar became uncertain, and the ordinary suddenly carried weight.

Back then, stepping outside felt like both freedom and risk. I became acutely aware of my place in the world, of the space between myself and others. Every passing stranger was no longer invisible; we acknowledged each other through careful distance, small adjustments, silent agreements to protect not just ourselves, but one another. It was a strange kind of togetherness – one built on separation.

What that time reminds me, even now, is how quickly a life can narrow. The world we had known – full schedules, open movement, assumed futures, contracted into something much smaller. As I walk here today, noticing the continuity of the park and the ordinary movement of life around me, it strikes me that this kind of sudden shift is not unique to a global pandemic. Lives can change in a moment in countless ways – through illness, loss, unexpected news, or events that stop us in our tracks and alter our direction entirely. COVID was simply a shared experience of something deeply human: the loss of control, the confrontation with uncertainty, and the need to adapt.

Now, as I continue walking through this same park, the urgency of that time has softened, but its imprint remains. The world has opened up again in many ways, yet something in me has stayed changed.

In the work that I do, I am reminded again and again that each of us encounters moments where life, as we know it, is suddenly thrown into disarray. Clients speak of the point at which everything shifts – when the trajectory they had imagined for themselves quietly, or sometimes violently, changes course. There are the more recognisable losses: a job gone, a relationship ended, the death of someone deeply loved. But there are also the moments that may seem smaller from the outside, yet carry just as much weight – the musician whose bows are accidentally broken, the loss of a much-loved animal, the unexpected diagnosis that arrives without warning and reshapes everything that follows.

What unites these experiences is not the event itself, but the way it stops us – the way it interrupts the flow of a life we thought we understood. In those moments, we are confronted with what we cannot control, and often cannot yet make sense of.

Most of us struggle with uncertainty. Yet part of my work is to gently remind clients that uncertainty is not an interruption to life, it is woven into the fabric of being alive.

So as I reflect on this,  I find myself returning to a quiet understanding: that whatever happens to us, however suddenly life changes, we are asked, again and again, to meet what comes.

To notice what we lose, but also what remains. And sometimes, what emerges that we could never have anticipated.

What I know is that there will be moments for all of us, when everything feels undone – when the ground beneath us no longer feels steady, and the life we knew seems out of reach. In those moments, it can be hard to believe that anything solid still exists.

But perhaps it is here that something else begins. Not certainty, but trust. A trust that, even in the midst of disarray, we can find within ourselves a willingness, however small, to begin again.

And we do not have to do that alone.

Therapy can offer a space where someone walks alongside us through that uncertainty. A space to make sense of what has been lost, to gently recognise what remains, and to begin, piece by piece, to rebuild meaning. To hold hope, even when it feels distant. To find it, even in the places that feel empty.

Two Day Sacred Circle workshop – An experiential Healing Journey – One space left

I am  excited to be offering a two-day non-residential workshop taking place in Hove on the 21st/22nd November, 2026 at a cost of £250.

This experiential workshop, for women, is designed to create a strong foundation of trust, connection and psychological safety, supporting participants to engage in meaningful and transformative exploration.

Day one focuses on building trust, strengthening connection, and cultivating psychological safety within the group.

Day two builds on this foundation, inviting deeper and more vulnerable exploration.

Across the two days, we will explore:

• Communication and deep listening
• Fear, shame, and guilt
• The mirrors we hold up for one another in relationship

Fear, shame and guilt shape our lives in profound and often unseen ways. Fear can limit our willingness to take risks, speak honestly, or fully show up. Shame can erode our sense of worth and belonging, while guilt can keep us tied to past actions or expectations. When left unexamined, these experiences can quietly influence our behaviour, relationships, and sense of self. By bringing awareness to them in a supportive environment, new possibilities for freedom, compassion, and more authentic connection can emerge.

This workshop offers a thoughtfully held space for reflection, insight, and personal growth. Whether you have attended personal development workshops before or this is your very first experience, you are warmly welcome.

Spaces are limited to eight participants and are offered on a first-come first-served basis. If you have any questions or would like to talk things through, please contact me on Juliette.clancy@mac.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

The Warm Waters of Healing

Being a therapist there is sometimes the myth that our lives are in some ways ‘sorted’ and that if they are not we are not meant to expose the messiness of life to our clients. I have thought long and hard before posting the below on my website. I have put it up and then taken it down for fear of I am not sure what. Today I have decided to share my human experience so as to move past my own feelings of shame, but also to show that I am also willing to walk the talk and share something difficult in the hope that my healing continues as I truly believe that the thread of truth is our lifeline.

The rape and murder of Sarah Everard rocked Britain, leading to an outcry over women’s safety on the streets. The shock that it was a former Metropolitan police officer reverberating throughout society.  Andrew Wheeler, a paramedic, was jailed for 21 years for raping and sexually assaulting several of his patients. Although more and more individuals in a position of trust are being prosecuted for sexual offences, the statistics show that the stigma of sexual assault means that most people do not report crimes and that those who are brave enough to face the system rarely get to see their perpetrator(s) in court.

Not so long ago, I was involved in a serious accident whilst on my bike – the ingrained memory of that moment is seeing a car driving straight towards me whilst I cycled for my life to get out of his way. I felt whispers of terror as I lay under a stationery car and powerless as others decided the course of action needed to get me to the hospital. It was then, in my most vulnerable of moments, on the way to the hospital, that I was sexually assaulted by one of the paramedics who abused the privilege and credibility that wearing his uniform naturally bought him.

This pivotal moment changed my opinion about the meaning of safety and challenged me not to disappear into a chasm of shame and rage. Instead, I battle daily with the concept that I will heal by keeping my heart open and speaking my truth no matter how uncomfortable that might be.

I recently read a piece written by Kate Griffiths speaking about her abusive former husband and how she felt that if she hadn’t gone public with her experience, she would have been failing every victim of abuse who had put their faith in her. Although our stories are different, I feel the same way, so I am moving through the fear of what others will think, especially as I am a therapist, to write this piece.

As mentioned above,I believe that by remaining silent, I not only betray myself, but I collude with systems that repeatedly fail to protect and support those whose lives are shattered by perpetrators. In addition, I hope that by speaking out, I indirectly speak to others who are struggling with similar  experiences and gently remind them that they are not alone.

It has been months now of working to recover physically. As my body has started to heal I have turned my attention to the psychological trauma of both the accident and the assault. I have had to love myself with extra tenderness and care as I have recognised the pull to sink to the bottom of a dark pit and am grateful for the threads of strength that have held me together and given voice to my silent cries and wish to be heard.

It requires monumental courage to emerge from the shadows of assault and confront the perpetrator. Walking in integrity, I have been willing to go the distance and face the police and the ambulance service. My experience of trying to get justice has been one of the most intense trials of my life. It has been soul-destroying and disheartening. I have had to reach deep into the bowels of my being and walked the fine line between hope and despair as I faced legal procedures and institutional processes.

Reading responses from the ambulance service filled with lies and half-truths has left my soul gasping for air and me never feeling lonelier. DARVO is the gaslighting response so often used by perpetrators of sexual crimes. It is an abbreviation for deny, attack and reverse the roles of victim and offender. This has been my experience when confronting the ambulance service and reading the perpetrators responses when challenged about his actions.

We only need to look at the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein to see how DARVO plays out. It is far easier to play ignorant, or the victim than to face the appropriate scrutiny and consequences of actions. So often, this manipulative strategy disarms the accuser, and as a result, they back away blamed and not believed. Through the experience of trying to get justice for myself and protect future victims from a similar experience, I have been left feeling unheard and mistrusted with nowhere to go. Failed by a system that by using delaying tactics and DARVO have no doubt hoped all along that I would eventually give up and fade away.

The feeling of injustice is deeply distressing as I have been left feeling insignificant – in a bubble of isolation. I feel that my own experience has been gaslighted, and a part of me is left wondering if I have not done myself more harm by speaking out than I would have if I had quietly retreated, saying nothing. There are days when I can find myself walking through a hall of darkness fearing that there will be no shard of light found to guide me out. I do not want to be forever marked by this event.

What I know to be true is that there is no healing when suffering in silence. Talking about our problems and our emotional pain has been a source of relief for centuries.If I didn’t believe this whole heartedly I would not be a psychotherapist as I see time after time the healing powers of speaking. I have been grateful for the tender hearts of those who have lit the path towards my healing. They have encouraged me  to speak about what happened and checked in on me. I appreciate deeply their ability to look beyond the image that appears as if my life has returned to normal, as they know that this ordeal cannot but have seeped into my daily existence. I feel blessed and yet know that for many, this is not their experience.

Clients talk about how reactions from their loved ones can inadvertently continue the process of shame and isolation. So often, based on not being sure what to do or say, deeper harm is caused by blaming, minimising, ignoring or not acknowledging what has happened. If I could say one thing that could have potentially changed my darkest moments, we need to break down the barriers and offer our presence to those who have suffered from sexual trauma. There is no need to know what to say, but there is a need to have people willing to sit with us at whatever stage of our recovery journey we are. By putting our discomfort and feelings of inadequacy to one side, we offer a lifeline to those feeling isolated and disconnected from the world they had once known. From that place of connection, we can offer them a way back into the sunlight of their lives from where they can see that they are still loved and loveable, swimming in the warm waters of healing.

In the meantime my healing continues

During the first lockdown I spent an enormous amount of time walking as all the gyms were closed. Exercise has always been a large part of my life. It was a soulful and filling experience as, in the silence and in amongst nature, I was able to reflect quietly on topics that so often emerge in my therapy room.

During the summer months I invested in a bike and my journey exploring the further parts of London began. Again, I was able to touch a quiet part of myself that started to consider putting my thoughts to paper. Having not really ‘achieved’ academically at school, I had to move through all sorts of messages that were telling me that ‘I was not good enough’. ‘I didn’t really have anything to say’ and that it was ‘best that I continue to do what I have done throughout my life, which is to let other people speak and as they do, fade quietly into the background’.

This book doesn’t really say anything new or different to many similar books. What is has are my reflections, as each word was considered, and each thought carrying the utmost respect for those who have sat with me and shared their stories.

I hadn’t really considered that my essays would go anywhere really or that they would become public, but I was approached after a few of my essays had been read to take on the challenge of writing a book. Challenges of a physical nature have always been something I have risen to. I am an endurance person at heart and have completed many amazing endurance treks, which include walking to the North Pole, climbing a few mountains and training as a Genghis Khan Warrior in Mongolia, to name a few. Challenging myself so publicly at an intellectual level saw me have to dig deep and practise what I so often say to my clients about choosing how we want to live, think, be.

So I made a choice to take my courage in my hands, take a deep breath and trust that I need not be perfect, nor did it matter if others didn’t see value in my words. It has been terrifying, but more importantly, a lived in experience of how we have the possibility to move the metaphorical mountains that we carry with us from our past about who were are or should be.

I am shy when it comes to self promotion so share with you a few words written by my publisher :-

‘As waves of Covid Variants sweep across the globe, testing our souls and dampening our spirits, piggy backing upon the other challenges in our lives, enter in the Essays of Juliette Clancy, to give us a small island of true decency and heart. Thoughts from the Couch wraps its arms around the reader and gives them hope – in sharing with others – for a way forward.

As publisher of books in the field of Gestalt therapy, I also edit a Newsletter, Gestalt News and Notes which goes out to over 6000 interested Mental Health practitioners all over the world. Contributions, in the form of short essays began to appear in our “InBox”, they were received with enthusiasm and welcome in our Covid times, and by the fifth one they pointed their way to a deeply cherish-able little book.

I say “little,” Thoughts is indeed large in scope and wonderment, but because it is of a friendly size, small enough to tuck in your bag or pocket, to be brought out and read any time, any place.

Like her worldwide explorations, which informs her work as a therapist, in these essays, Juliette dove bravely into a world of publishing, formerly unknown to her, and was co-contributor and book artist from start to finish.

The world of counselling and mental health and love of books, thanks Juliette Clancy for her work, for words softly spoken, for nerves of gold and for a book one is reluctant to put down.’

If you feel drawn to purchase it I hope you enjoy.

As a trauma therapist, I have a front row to suffering that on occasions leaves a lasting impression on me.  I am exposed every day to the distress of others that has me bear witness to traumatic, terrifying and cruel events that can include images, some of which have left me haunted years after my client has left. I have not been immune to the complication of an individual trauma morphing into something collective with my own demons re-activated by a clients experience. I am aware that to be able to support and be present to and for my clients fully I need to take care of myself and this is something that I now recognise as a priority that in my earlier years I didn’t take into consideration.

I am not sure that anyone mentioned secondary or vicarious trauma in my earlier trainings to be a Psychotherapist. It was only when doing a specific trauma training with Babette Rothschild that I really understood the risks of developing traumatic stress disorders that can mimic the PTSD of clients as a result of listening to their trauma narratives. Up until then, there was undoubtedly an unspoken expectation I had of myself that I ‘should’ be able to cope with every story. I hadn’t stopped to consider that, whereas a client has to come to terms with their individual trauma, I would be exposed to dozens if not hundreds of traumas. 

The ‘should’ became more about my own self care as part of being able to manage the inevitability of haunting stories and images that would, on occasion, penetrate me to the core. Personal therapy, supervision and talking with trusted colleagues has been a way I have found to decompress, offload and gain perspective instead of repressing the traumatic content for it to emerge for rumination at a later stage. Without finding our own way to take care of ourselves working with trauma can change the way, we view the world as our clients unknowingly plant lasting images in our minds that can leave us deeply troubled. By taking care of ourselves, we are then able to hold and contain the horrors that our clients have endured so that they can find a way back to their lives.

There is no doubt that we cannot help but have moments where we are deeply impacted by our clients stories – what has been done to them as well as what they have done. Many clients who have been severely traumatised have never had the reality of the horror validated. Learning to hold the balance between being impacted and at the same time responding to our clients traumas with empathy and poise without retreating, or changing the subject, takes awareness of our own triggers and vulnerabilities. It is also an active intervention as by being able to meet as well as validate strong emotions and challenging stories we are showing our clients that their feelings, although they might feel dangerous and overwhelming, are welcome despite their intensity.

I have witnessed the transformative effect of trauma therapy on many clients and believe in the importance of pacing trauma work appropriately. There are vital steps to put in place mainly as it is commonly acknowledged that those with PTSD have a susceptibility to becoming traumatised again, hence taking time to establish suitability is imperative before even considering addressing trauma. By the time a client comes to therapy, there is often a sense of urgency to resolve their issue. I am so aware of my own curiosity when meeting a new client and am mindful of how much detail my client shares with me, especially in the first few sessions. It is a fine balance between what information and detail of a trauma is helpful for the client and where it is perhaps not only unhelpful for the client, but also for myself as a therapist. This is an area where we need to be guided by our intuition and be clear that any question we ask is for the benefit of the therapy, not just to feed our curiosity.     Peter Levine in his book ‘Waking The Tiger’ talks about how we need to ‘gently slide into trauma and then draw ourselves gradually out.’ Confronting trauma head on often results in immobilising us in one way or another and can, in some instances, pose a threat to life, the pacing of trauma therapy is fundamental to its success or not.  

Creating a safe container is of paramount importance so that a client feels safe enough to start to venture into territories that hold traumatic memories for them. The relationship between client and therapist is a partnership where both decide and agree together the direction and focus of the therapy rather than the therapist taking control of what the client ‘should’ do. As each of us is different, I believe it is essential for us to be flexible in our way of working, tailoring the therapy to the needs of our client. Although there is much value in models, theory and techniques, we need to be able to put all those to one side and meet our clients where they are and go at a pace that keeps them safe and contained. 

Many of us have disconnected from our felt sense as a result of traumatic experiences, and so starting to re-connect can be challenging and needs to be taken slowly. Rothschild speaks to the importance of supporting our clients in understanding the workings of their sensory nervous system. She advocates the importance of dual awareness – the balancing of both interoceptors and exteroceptors. She maintains that if the traumatic hyper arousal goes too high, the client is not going to be able to think, nor digest and integrate the therapy and the possibility of re-traumatisation increases. Rothschild talks about ‘putting on the brakes,’ which is vital to ensure that clients can participate in therapy without becoming hyper aroused and part of my role is to be able to intervene at any stage in order to maintain emotional and physical safety. 

Teaching our clients to pay attention to their internal experience as well as paying attention to their external environment enables clients to make a connection with the here and now, which is especially important when working with trauma. As clients learn to identify times when their nervous system becomes too aroused versus when their nervous system relaxes they can gauge what is beneficial and what is detrimental to them. They can learn how to move from interoceptor to exteroceptor, or to alternate between the two as a way of keeping safe. 

Due to the stressful nature of working with trauma, we need to be able to do what we ask of our clients. In moments of stress we need to be able to track what is happening in our bodies and our own emotional responses incase countertransference, vicarious trauma or a trigger sets us on the path to be in a worse emotional state than our client.Thus, understanding our nervous system is vital for both therapist and client as it makes the therapy safer for the both of us. Most of us take our breath for granted. We don’t stop and think about the depth or quality of our breath. Working on keeping our clients safe, in order to do trauma work, teaching them how to take deep breathing seriously as a way of calming their nervous system is one of the most helpful and natural interventions we can do.

Considering that most clients come to therapy once a week, there are many hours whereby a client will need to find alternative meaningful and helpful ways to manage both the intensity of the sessions, as well as life outside of the therapy room. With this in mind working with our clients to develop a toolbox of alternative resources, outside of therapy, that they can identify and cultivate enables them to feel more in control of their lives.

Most clients unknowingly already have a fair few resources that they can rely on to help calm their autonomic nervous system and that offer moments or feelings of calm, safety and support: family members, friendships, community, place of work and workshop. Hobbies, meditation, communing in nature, animals and inanimate objects are only some of the things that come to mind. With our help, clients can start to consider and expand on what they already have available to them along with perhaps developing new resources.

One of the resources I often use with my clients is having them take time to establish in their minds eye a place of safety. I get them to describe it in detail. What they see, hear, smell and feel. As a resource, knowing that we can find a place of safety inside of ourselves at any given moment, enables our client to trust that if they find themselves feeling overwhelmed they can use this or any of their other resources to calm and comfort themselves. 

For me, as I sit with my clients, I feel held in the knowledge that there is an old black and white photograph taken over fifty five years ago of my sister that sits on a shelf that at a glance I can see. She died when a little girl ……… an enormous loss for me. She is looking directly into the camera, which seems as if she is looking directly at me. In my moments of anxiety, hyper arousal or distress, I glance up at her and breath in the gift of her look that I believe says ‘you are not alone …….. all will be well …….. breath.’