Concentric Counselling
0
ConcentricCounsellingLogo.jpg

Journal

 

welcome to the concentric journal

 
Featured
Fat Bubble: Bethany Rutter
Fat Bubble: Bethany Rutter
Why Bingeing is Only Half the Story
Why Bingeing is Only Half the Story

When people come to Concentric Counselling with a history of bingeing, they are often surprised that one of the first things I ask them is how often they restrict their food intake. To them, they are coming because the issue is bingeing. But what continues to reveal itself in the therapy room is that for many people that struggle with bingeing these episodes punctuate long periods of restriction.

The Heart of Body Collaboration - Intentions and Inspirations
The Heart of Body Collaboration - Intentions and Inspirations

Let me share with you some more details of the exciting model that I’ve been developing. Called Body Collaboration, it has emerged from my practice over the last ten years, a compassionate response to clients sharing a persistent issue - ‘I’m trying to hate myself into being ok with myself’. Body Collaboration is a pushback to a kyriarchal culture that teaches us to admonish ourselves rather than accept ourselves. It’s a radical practice of gathering in the most abandoned parts of ourselves, and offering them healing. And it’s a lovesong to what I think is the most powerful thing on Earth – partnership, collaboration, working together for the good of the all.

Sitting in the corridor - why it's a necessary part of recovery
Sitting in the corridor - why it's a necessary part of recovery

I often meet clients when they're in a particular spot... they’ve turned their back on intentional weight loss, knowing that going back into that way of life will only cause harm and open them up to risk. At the same time, they don't know how to transition into a space of body acceptance, knowing that there will also be loss in that decision.

From apology to entitlement - battling body assumptions
From apology to entitlement - battling body assumptions

In my corner of the world, we talk a lot about anti-fat bias or fatphobia and, more broadly, how it is to live in a body that is marginalised by dominant culture – through race, gender and sex, body size or shape, or disability.

Sometimes our conversations about anti-fat bias can take on a very theoretical and abstract form – as a systemic issue, of course we often look at it through a wide-angle lens. More recently, though, I’ve been thinking more and more of the individual impact of anti-fat bias – what it really means to live in a fatphobic culture.

Sensory Five - safety at your fingertips
Sensory Five - safety at your fingertips

Overwhelm and burnout don’t just happen in Covid times – these are themes I’ve been working for since the very beginning of my counselling career. It’s when our nervous system becomes overloaded, and we really struggle to regulate ourselves; feeling either anxious and agitated, or zoned out and flat.

Introducing A Modern Practice - Let Me Tell You More
Introducing A Modern Practice - Let Me Tell You More

For those of you who follow me on Instagram or subscribe to my mailing list you will know that I have been building towards a space for therapists to come together and connect. I’m so happy today to be able to outline this a little more, and introduce this idea to you.

Lessons from the ebb - how to get through when life draws back
Lessons from the ebb - how to get through when life draws back

We're in an ebb season, collectively, I think. And we're not encouraged to think about this at all. The effects of the pandemic, here in the UK, have been upon us for eleven months. And what’s been so surprising is how little accommodation we will often make for this. We’re living in a global tragedy – a collective trauma. Life has, necessarily, had to recede. We have had to lean hard on our internal resources – our patience, our hope, our tenacity. Understandably, we’re feeling a little depleted.

Embracing a non-diet new year - setting body positive resolutions 
Embracing a non-diet new year - setting body positive resolutions 

The relentless treadmill of diet resolutions is about to crank itself up again, at the start of the new year. After all the festive food adverts, Boxing Day onwards will see the focus shift instead to weight loss programmes, diet foods and new ‘healthy eating’ cookbooks, sold to you by slim people. It is a predictable, exhausting cycle, which perpetuates unhealthy ‘all or nothing’ thinking, and punishing and unsustainable restriction.

A beginner’s guide to developing body acceptance
A beginner’s guide to developing body acceptance

And so begins December, the month where dominant culture tends to deep-slide into a clarion call for ‘indulgence’ before, as regular as clockwork, the adverts and articles that promise ‘new year, new you’. Christmas is an exaggerated example of the pendulum swing that diet culture encourages; ricocheting between too much and not enough – all governed by a deep fear that we ourselves are not enough.

Legacy - walking in the footprints of female healers

Happy International Women's Day to you all! One of my favourite days of the year; the chance to celebrate the special women in our lives and in our public sphere, and to acknowledge the contributions of women to our culture and society. These are the women, named and unnamed, who are working tirelessly to #pressforprogress, toadvance true gender equality, for the benefit of all. 

This is an idea that has particular significance to my work, because it is the inspiration of these women that I inform my work. Every day, I call on the women who have come before me.

This idea is nothing new; without naming it, we are inspired every day by the people we have met and the stories we have heard. My own inspiration for this came from Maya Angelou, talking about the rainbows in her clouds; it's a beautiful video, only two minutes long:

Just like her, this is how I start my day; I think of the long line of women who have come before me, and I imagine taking my place at the very end of that very long trail. Named and unnamed, I think of the countless women who have administered healing throughout the centuries: through their emotional awareness and medical knowledge; through their advancement of the political and legal rights of women; through their activism. I think of Maya, the Pankhursts, Audre Lorde, Bertha Pappenheim, Millicent Fawcett, Kimberle Crenshaw, Judith Lewis Herman, Emma Gonzalez, Joan Baez, Malala, the suffragettes and suffragists, and all the forgotten names who have worked and sacrificed to press for progress. Mentors, teachers, colleagues, community workers, aunties, sisters, mothers, friends. I think of all the counsellors and preachers and storytellers and troubadours; all the wisewomen and midwives and witches and nurses who have supported and nurtured and cared for others as a calling and a vocation. And I draw on their strength, and on their wisdom, and ground myself, ready for my work. And like Maya, I say, 'come with me, I need you now'.

One of my favourite therapy books is Judith Lewis Herman's book, Trauma and Recovery, and it was there that I first read about Bertha Pappenheim. I was struck by this excerpt:

“ Her dedication, energy, and commitment were legendary. In the words of a colleague, “A volcano lived in this woman... Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.” At her death, the philosopher Martin Buber commemorated her: “I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit. Pass on her memory. Be witnesses that it still exists.” In her will, she expressed the wish that those who visited her grave would leave a small stone, “as a quiet promise . . . to serve the mission of women’s duties and women’s joy... unflinchingly and courageously”.”
— Judith Lewis Herman, trauma and recovery, about bertha pappenheim

My work is my small stone - Happy International Women's Day.

Vicky Bellmanwomen, international womens day, feminism, female healers, maya angelou2 Comments