Life in a Bind – BPD and me

My therapy journey, recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I write for welldoing.org , for Planet Mindful magazine, and for Muse Magazine Australia, under the name Clara Bridges. Listed in Top Ten Resources for BPD in 2016 by goodtherapy.org.

Tag Archives: twitter chat


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Connecting in therapy – here is the Twitter chat!

Earlier this evening, psychotherapist Alison Crosthwait (from The Good Therapists) and I, had an interesting Twitter chat on the subject of ‘Connecting in therapy – do touch and love have a place?’. The ‘story’ of our chat can be found here:

https://storify.com/lifeinabind/connecting-in-therapy

I’m grateful to Alison, as ever, for her open and honest views and the way in which she shares them. These are tricky subjects which can arouse strong feelings among both therapists and clients, and even within our small discussion and those who joined it, there was a divergence in theory and practice. However, ultimately, as Alison very helpfully commented, “It is crucial to remember that therapy is two human beings. Theory is only concepts”. Even where therapist and client differ on these subjects, the quality of the relationship can outweigh those tensions, and the therapy can still be successful.

We ended the chat with numerous ideas for the next occasion, which we plan will be on a Monday in July. Further news on that in due course, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy our chat!

 


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Twitter chat 6 March: Connecting in therapy – do touch and love have a place?

I’m really looking forward to my Twitter chat with Alison Crosthwait today, on the subject of connection, love and touch in therapy. Please do join us at 9pm GMT/ 4pm EST if you can, using #therapyconnection !

Life in a Bind - BPD and me

It’s been ten months since psychotherapist Alison Crosthwait and I held a Twitter chat on the subject of therapy breaks; we said then that we enjoyed it so much we would do another one, and finally, we’ve set a date, time and subject!

Our next chat will be called ‘Connecting in therapy – do touch and love have a place?‘  and it will take place on Monday 6 March at 9pm GMT/4pm EST. We will be using the hashtag #therapyconnection.

I believe these are difficult and contentious topics, for both therapists and clients, and I’m very much looking forward to discovering Alison’s take on them. From a personal perspective, they are subjects I have struggled with in my own therapy, and touch, in particular is a ‘live issue’ for me at the moment. But I won’t be bringing my therapy into the chat – the…

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Twitter chat 6 March: Connecting in therapy – do touch and love have a place?

It’s been ten months since psychotherapist Alison Crosthwait and I held a Twitter chat on the subject of therapy breaks; we said then that we enjoyed it so much we would do another one, and finally, we’ve set a date, time and subject!

Our next chat will be called ‘Connecting in therapy – do touch and love have a place?‘  and it will take place on Monday 6 March at 9pm GMT/4pm EST. We will be using the hashtag #therapyconnection.

I believe these are difficult and contentious topics, for both therapists and clients, and I’m very much looking forward to discovering Alison’s take on them. From a personal perspective, they are subjects I have struggled with in my own therapy, and touch, in particular is a ‘live issue’ for me at the moment. But I won’t be bringing my therapy into the chat – the aim of these chats is that they are an ‘equal’ exchange of views, looking at a subject from different perspectives. They are about therapy, but they are not therapy, and both Alison and I are careful to avoid ‘falling into’ our respective roles of therapist and client, which, as I personally discovered during our last chat, is a real temptation!

We would love for you to join us in our chat, and let us know your thoughts, whether you are a therapist or a client. Please do just ‘turn up’, even if you feel more comfortable observing rather than joining in. If you’re interested in the chat but will not be around during that time, we will be publishing a ‘transcript’ using ‘Storify’, shortly after the chat.

We look forward to seeing you there!


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Therapy breaks – here is the Twitter chat!

Just over a week ago, Alison Crosthwait (from ‘The Good Therapists‘) and I, had a fantastic twitter chat on the subject of ‘Therapy breaks’. For more information on Alison, and on why we chose that subject, please see this post, which I wrote prior to the chat.

Using the wonders of Storify (and a few minutes spent trying to figure out how it worked), I put together a ‘transcript’ of our chat, which you can find here:

https://storify.com/lifeinabind/therapy-breaks-what-do-they-mean-to-you

Please accept my apologies if any sections are hard to follow or if questions appear to come out of the blue! Due to the natural pauses while one of us was replying to a question, we sometimes found ourselves with more than one question on the go at once, and so reconstructing a particular thread was not always easy! However, I have done my best to keep portions of the same conversation together, as far as possible, and this is why the tweet ‘time stamps’ don’t always follow strict chronological order.

We were hoping to use the subject of therapy breaks to explore a number of areas, including change and attachment. We covered how both clients and therapists can feel during a break, and the different strategies they may employ to manage the break, including transitional objects, email contact, or, occasionally, back-up therapists (a concept I had not come across before!).

I think Alison will forgive me for speaking on her behalf to say that we both enjoyed it enormously and hope that you will enjoy reading through our conversation. We are keen to try this again sometime, and it would be good to hear your thoughts on subjects you would like us to explore (and that YOU would like to explore – please join us!) next time. Speaking personally, though we spoke about ‘attachment’ during therapy breaks, I felt that we didn’t really get a chance to talk in depth about the subject of change, and that is something Alison has written about, and that I would love to discuss with her. It is also something which is particularly pertinent for me at the moment, as my therapy went through significant (positive) changes just before, during, and after the Easter therapy break.

But all suggestions are welcome, and we both love creative ideas, so do feel free to put forward anything therapy-related that you have an interest in! I’m already getting excited at the thought of creating a list 🙂