Mind & Metaphor

Rupture and Repair: What the Series "Catastrophe" shows us about Long-Term Love
Mind & Metaphor · 01 March 2024
The story of a couple whose capacity to survive and grow through life's 'catastrophes' shows a fundamental aspect of long-term, relationships - the value of rupture and repair.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt: A Metaphor for Trauma and Healing
Mind & Metaphor · 18 January 2023
The children’s story, ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,’ by Michael Rosen, offers a good metaphor for the journey we take towards healing. In this article, I use this classic piece of children’s literature to illustrate the internal conflict within our minds that often trips us up.

New Year Reflections: How Helpful is Hope in a Time of Crisis?
Mind & Metaphor · 07 January 2021
At New Year it is traditional to make hopeful promises to ourselves and to others. Hope seems to mark the possibility of change and something better, more love perhaps, less suffering. But how helpful are messages of hope in times of crisis?

What if Going Back to Normal is Not What You Want?
Mind & Metaphor · 04 June 2020
Lockdown restrictions in the UK are beginning to ease; but what if going back to normal is not what you want? Using dream images, I explore the protective inner world 'psychic lockdown' that may dominate our inner life when we are troubled by anxiety, and explain why questions may be the key to finding a new normal.

Can we Compensate for our Loss of Touch during a Pandemic?
Mind & Metaphor · 16 May 2020
Touch is the underdog of our senses. Vitally important to our mental and physical wellbeing, yet undervalued in a society that upgrades ‘touch-screens’ and downgrades skin-touches, we generally discuss touch when it is abusive or intrusive but speak less of it as a requisite need. Here I explore whether we can compensate for our loss of physical touch with psychological touch, through our use of technology.

Mind & Metaphor · 14 February 2020
To fall in love is to enter into a vulnerable, giddy, preoccupied state of mind. We take the person we love unbridled into our dreams and fantasies and feel a loss of control as our mind wanders mischievously away from mundane aspects of the everyday onto a fantasied exciting future with our new love. It is delicious yet maddening. But how does this maddening, chubby love uncurl into a mature love that lasts? And what can porcupines tell us about love?

Mind & Metaphor · 03 April 2019
Netflix series Russian Doll, released in February 2019, plays with the psychological concept of ‘repetition compulsion’ to produce a dark comedy that offers an apt metaphor for the re-emergence of childhood trauma in adulthood.

Why Does the Past Matter?
Mind & Metaphor · 28 January 2019
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is sometimes associated with undesirable notions of ‘wallowing in the past’ and ‘digging up old wounds.’ When you come to therapy, you want to know how to feel better. Looking at the past may seem incongruent with your current difficulty. You can't change the past, so why does it matter?

Mind & Metaphor · 30 November 2018
Anger tends to hold negative connotations with ‘badness,’ being so often associated with damage, pain and destruction. Yet this emotion is an essential part of our feeling self. How do we embrace our anger so that we can use it as a positive force? In my article on Welldoing.org, I explore how we can harness our anger as a tool for change.

Mind & Metaphor · 15 May 2018
The film ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ has been discussed as a metaphor for abuse, but it is also, I think, a metaphor for the turmoil of our inner world when traumas from our past impede our capacity to live an authentic life in the present.

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