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Understanding Shopping Addiction

Spending too much, too often, goes by several names: “shopping addiction”, “over-shopping” or “overspending”, “compulsive shopping”, and “oniomania”. People even designate themselves as “shopaholics”. Definition Donald Black, a doctor and professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, describes compulsive shopping and spending as “inappropriate, excessive, and out of control. Like other […]

Counselling Dilemma: Confidentiality Issues with a Teenager

You work as a counsellor for an organisation that offers counselling services to the general public. The free service is aimed at community members who cannot afford counselling services otherwise. You start counselling a young man who made an appointment with the service when he saw the advertisement in the local community newspaper. In your […]

Graduate Story: Stephen J Hawkins

AIPC Graduate Stephen J Hawkins shares his story… “Looking back as a Therapist over the last 6 years or so of my life, I must confess that if someone came to my office and shared the same story with me, I probably wouldn’t believe them!!!! My skepticism wouldn’t surround the person, or even the storyline, […]

Lifestyle Interventions for Depression

Treatments for depression or anxiety, also called “interventions”, fall into one of three categories, and often several are recommended to be taken up at once. These main groupings are: Medical interventions; Psychological interventions; and Lifestyle interventions. In this post we overview a range of lifestyle interventions therapists can suggest when treating depression. Bibliotherapy What is […]

A Summary of Eight Counselling Microskills

In this post we summarise the following eight fundamental skills that alone or together can help a client to access their deepest thoughts or clarify their future dreams: Attending Behaviour Questioning Responding Noting and Reflecting Client Observation Confrontation Focusing Influencing Attending Behaviour Attending behaviours encourage clients to talk and show that the counsellor is interested […]

Defining Intimacy

“Intimacy demands the highest risk but yields the richest reward. Intimacy is the driving force which makes the painful grit of life worthwhile. Intimacy is the life-giving beam of light, whereby we discover each other from the inside out, never quite fully, never entirely, but enough to find an exquisite inner oasis that replenishes us […]

Book Review: The Gentle Self

Schoen, G. (2011). The Gentle Self: How to Overcome Your Difficulties with Depression, Anxiety, Shyness, and Low Self-Esteem. CreateSpace. I think everyone’s a little narcissistic. We all have moments when we wish everyone would be more like us?when we get upset that no one seems to care about what we are feeling.? We also often […]

A Personal Development Project

Self-improvement is paramount to personal success. And it is all about developing positive habits, and eradicating those habits and behaviours that are not conducive to growth. With that objective in mind (of creating “good” habits and eradicating “bad” ones), Benjamin Franklin developed a framework for personal development (which he coined “Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection”) consisting […]

Positive Psychology and Resilience

What makes one person ‘bounce back’ following adversity and another person seem to ‘crumble in a heap’? This question has always posed a fascination for me. I have often wondered whether individuals are simply born with the skills to cope with the difficulties that life often presents or whether there are a set of stress-coping […]