Sandplay is a therapeutic modality that employs simple tools to enable people (particularly the young) to express themselves from the deeper levels of the psyche.
The concept of the self is relatively new within psychotherapy. It is largely due to the writing of Carl Jung who sought a word other than ‘soul’ to describe the whole nature of an individual beyond the tripartite structure of Ego, Superego and Id proposed by Freud.
Self-image refers to the way in which we see ourself, both immediately and though the eyes of others.
It has special importance in terms of how we relate to our own physicality and self-presentation. Our self-image is often also further affected by marketing images of the 'ideal person' in our modern society.
Self-Knowledge
Self-knowledge may be defined as a confident sense of thorough familiarity with your emotional responses, reactions, and tendencies and what causes them, creating a secure feeling that you are living with a sense of emotional control.
Self-love is the capacity to offer yourself care, acceptance, forgiveness, and respect. It is, as Maya Angelou writes, knowing that "you alone are enough. you don't have anything to prove to anybody".
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a mindfulness-based method that is done in a highly collaborative manner and includes liberal amounts of psycho-education as well as somatic education.
Sexual abuse, particularly when we are young, has lasting negative effects on our lives. It affects our capacity to trust, to distinguish between love and sexual activity, and to make our own choices in how we live.
In psychotherapy, shame refers not to the simple reactions we all endure for having done said or thought something foolish or uncaring.
Rather, it refers to the deep scarring of our personality that arises from our having been unfairly treated by others who have power over our emotions and use it unfairly.
Silence is an important aspect of therapeutic communication.
Silencing Response
“The Silencing Response is a reaction based on a series of assumptions which guide the caregiver to redirect, shutdown, minimize, or neglect the disturbing information brought by the individual [or situation] to the caregiver.†(Baranowsky,1998)
Skype psychotherapy uses video and audio software like FaceTime and Skype that allows you and your therapist to see and hear each other over a secure connection. It is a simple way to work with a therapist who may be too far to visit regularly.
Sleep disorders are a group of conditions characterized by difficulties related to sleeping.
These include difficulty falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at inappropriate times, restlessness, excessive total sleep time, or abnormal behaviors associated with sleep such as nightmares and sleepwalking.
Solution-focussed brief therapy (SFBT) is an outcome-directed collaborative approach to creating psychotherapeutic change. SFBT focuses on understanding what a client wants to achieve or the outcome they would like to experience.
Somatoform Disorder describes a group of conditions in which the physical pain and symptoms a person feels are related to psychological factors. It is a body sensation that appears to not be connected to an obvious physical problem and is believed to have psychological origins such as emotional and/or physical trauma that is expressed through unusual bodily sensations.
Sigmund Freud, already a neurologist and physician, described himself as a ‘Seelenarzt’ or ‘soul doctor’ when he embarked on the development of psychoanalysis. He believed in the primacy of individual existence.
Spiritually-oriented Psychotherapy acknowledges the metaphysical/spiritual level of the human experience, including quantum concepts and phenomena such as healing energy, intentionality and consciousness.
The Striving Styles Personality Systemâ„¢ is an effective method through which qualified psychotherapists can enable their clients to identify their deeper primary emotional needs, thus stimulating self-awareness and expediting their personal development within the framework of psychotherapy.
A fairly recent concept in psychodynamic psychotherapy is the notion of subjectivity and its related term, inter-subjectivity. Within the North American schools these concepts signal a distinct departure from traditional and classical views of the defenses first described by Freud.
When someone we are attached to commits or attempts to commit suicide, those left behind are sometimes referred to as suicide survivors or completed suicide survivors.
