are you sure about that?

PERSON-CENTRED THERAPY AND TRAUMA   A PERSONAL VIEW   By Christopher Murray I am a person centred, humanistic, psychodynamic, counsellor, psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, 35 + years in practice. I call on a range of approaches in my practice. I can talk Psychodynamic, I can talk Transactional Analysis, I can talk Existentialism, I can talk Gestalt, I can talk Jungian Creative Therapy, I can talk the Person Centred Approach, I can talk Solution Focused Brief Therapy, (a bit). I can talk trauma, depression, sexual abuse, suicide, relationships, psychiatric illness, neurosis, psychosis, narcissism, projection, introjection, attachment, dissociation, free association. Boy can I talk the talk. But my experience of working with trauma in Northern Ireland has often silenced me. This is not a piece aimed at contradicting existing research, nor is it claiming the efficacy of any approach. It is not research in the traditional sense. It is research from a phenomenolo...

The next Person-Centred Gathering will be held on 16th November at Tobar Mhuire retreat, Crossgar. 9.30am to 4.30pm The theme is ‘Shared Space.’ The gathering is based on a tried and trusted model that occurs regularly in the Person-Centred community worldwide. It is an opportunity for personal and professional growth, self-awareness, and the understanding of others while meeting new people and having a good time. The focus is on Being, processing in the here and now, and engagement with others. The structure of the day will be the same as the first gathering where we began by acknowledging the theme for the day; checking in within the group and coming together in a variety of ways. Materials will be available for those who want to work creatively and you are invited to bring along anything that you might want to share. There will be times to process our experiences within the group. Tea/Coffee and lunch are provided and we can agree times at the start. We as...

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How we can change our history? I guess at times we can have the experience of regretting parts of our lives whether through something out of our control or as the result of a decision or choice that we took. Hind sight is a wonderful thing and if we use it to learn and teach ourselves it can help to change our history that is yet to happen.  We cannot change our history that has been but we can change the history that is yet to come. In thinking about history that has passed we can become bogged down in 'if only,' 'what if?' 'I wish I had to do it again.' Those thoughts can stop us being in the present or moving forward as if tied to the past with a bungee chord.  I like the idea that we can create our own history accepting that at times we will be effected by events our of our control such as accidents, ill health, bereavement, redundancy and so on. But where we have choice and where we can learn from our own and others histories, we can effect t...

Locus of Evaluation and Mindfulness: a recipe for increasing self-esteem. In this piece, I want to look at the relationship between Locus of Evaluation, Self- Esteem and Mindfulness. I will present something about Locus of Evaluation (LoE) and something about Mindfulness, followed by a way of bringing them together, meaningfully.   I am not sure if this correlation exists already. Locus of Evaluation (LoE), was posited by Carl Rogers in the 1950’s and is one of a series of ideas that formed a Person Centred Approach to therapy. It helps us to understand that where we look for our conditions of worth can affect self-confidence and self-esteem and general mental health. Rogers (1951) defined the locus of evaluation as ‘the extent to which [one’s] values and standards depend upon the judgements and expectations of others, or are based on a reliance upon [one’s] own experience’ (p.156) Albert Ellis (2000) from a Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy stance support...

I have recently begun to read 'Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey into Story Telling' by John Yorke. I am reading it on Kindle, on the train to and from work. I find it fascination and stimulating. He methodically explores and explains through multiple examples, the development and structure of story telling in art, literature, cinema, television and so on. I like his suggestion that storytelling is a fundamental expression of human narrative. Each story that follows his suggested structure takes us through a journey with a protagonist and an antagonist. There is something that we desire, the holy grail, love, gold, and the antagonist is there to prevent our achieving this goal. In the story there is usually a crisis where we do battle to attain the desired goal and some sort of climax following the battle. The end is a resolution and redemption. Story structure is based upon physics, there is a beginning, middle and an end. It seems to follow a 'classic good versus evi...