A young woman entered psychotherapy with a seemingly simple goal: to fulfil her training requirements. She believed her childhood had been "perfect," convinced that trauma only happened to "others." What she uncovered, however, was that her belief was a pure fantasy—one that had masked a lifelong erasure of her identity. In clinical terms, what she experienced as "love" was actually a form of narcissistic parental over-investment; it was the dissolution of her boundaries as a

Contrary to popular belief—which often casts personality disorders as something "exotic" or distant from the average person—the reality is strikingly different. In clinical practice, personality disorders essentially denote substential impairments in personality functioning. This refers to deep-seated difficulties in how we experience ourselves, how we perceive others, and how we emotionally navigate the world. These impairments are frequently the silent engine beneath the s

The use of psychedelics for the purpose of therapy and personal growth has seen a significant increase in recent years. While the body of research supporting their therapeutic potential is expanding, much of the discussion regarding effectiveness and adverse effects remains reliant on the subjective, personal experiences of users. While some data suggests favourable outcomes in treating mental health issues such as depression, PTSD, and substance use, questions remain regardi

Parentification represents one of the greatest challenges in psychotherapy from the perspective of resistance to change . The internal desolation and identity diffusion it creates, coupled with a pervasive unconscious attachment to past traumatic experiences of being unseen, unimportant, non-existent, and required to attend to others, forms some of the most persistent resistances to the psychotherapeutic process. These dynamics underpin deeply entrenched self-sabotaging ten

Modern masculinity, emotional disconnection, and the hidden cost of societal expectations.

Chloe was a single, independent, and successful businesswoman who had travelled the world as part of her expat career. She was a...

Perfectionism, workaholism, and high performance are traits often caused by the childhood trauma of parentification.

Attachment to trauma is an emotional attachment to childhood trauma that may be continuously re-enacted in adult relationships.

Dependency, often confused with dependent personality disorder (DPD), is a broader term. It's defined by a person's reliance on...

Codependency is a controversial mental health concept more often used in colloquial rather than professional mental health settings. It...

The sense of meaning and purpose is, in various forms, one of the most common themes in psychotherapy. For many, it is present as they...

It may seem that a person who avoids commitment may have nothing in common with someone that continuously clings to others. Or, yet...