Concentric Counselling
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welcome to the concentric journal

 
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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.

Introducing A Modern Practice - Let Me Tell You More

EDIT: This community space is now open. To join, please click here to request membership.

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. 

In March I will be launching A Modern Practice – a community space for therapists and aligned professionals to meet, build relationships, develop our work and ground ourselves in collective empowerment.  

I believe that we build what we need, and after the last year I need connection! I so value my client connections, and my connections with fellow professionals – I'm so fed by the wisdom that we all hold as a group, and I would love a place to share and explore this more. I’m more grateful than ever to others for sharing the resources that support their work, and I’m more inspired than ever by other people’s focuses and passions. And, if I feel this way, I have a deep trust that others are seeking this too. A Modern Practice hopes to contribute to this. 

Collaboration, and collective care, has developed into a real focus for me recently, valuing the wisdom of others, and having confidence in my own offering. After nearly four years of ‘growing up’ in my private practice, I’m now craving ‘growing out’, and holding space that will serve both our therapist community, and the communities we serve. 

I’ve had the most wonderful time recently allowing myself to be inspired; at the potential of a community of modern therapists. I’ve long been inspired by adrienne maree brown’s book, Emergent Strategy, and the scope for building networks in a new way; building networks that are facilitative and adaptive and that ‘cultivate solutions’, rather than competitive scarcity-driven groups – a way of working that adrienne describes as ‘anti-nurturing’. So I’m inspired to create a nurturing space – where we nurture our individual potential and that of the group. 

In one of Kelly Diels’ posts recently, she spoke about idea creation as being like ‘braiding whispers’ and this resonated so deeply with me, and helped to give a name to the stage of the process I’m currently in for A Modern Practice. As a visual person, having an image of the process was a great guidance, and has helped to name the three main ‘hanks’ of this offering. 

Business development 

I’m craving contact with fellow therapists who want to build forward thinking, progressive practices. Perhaps, like me, you were taught during your therapeutic qualification to diminish the business aspect of our work; that somehow it doesn’t align with a profound desire to support our communities. But, through my own experience, I’m convinced that having a good understanding of the business of therapy supports us in offering smooth and useful service to our clients. I know how much streamlining my business processes (in collaboration with the wisdom of others – the value of community!) has lifted my therapeutic work. I know we have wisdom to share, and the spirit to share it – that we can be confident in our offering so that sharing info and resources with others doesn’t feel threatening to our own success. I know we can help each other shine.

Professional growth 

With clear boundaries and awareness of confidentiality, I imagine that this will also be a space for us to share resources. Our work lights us up, right?! So let’s share what we love, sustaining our passion by sharing it with others. I know we’re interested in what each other is reading, what podcasts we’re listening to, what Instagram post or TikTok video has sparked some awareness for us. A Modern Practice is a place to come together and get excited about the work we love. 

Social justice 

At the centre of a modern practice, and at the centre of A Modern Practice, is a recognition of the challenges facing us culturally at the moment, and a heart for a communal response. I have a strong hope that this space will be an opportunity to really consider how we can shape practices that can meet the issues we’re facing. Whilst the old way might have been to always maintain therapeutic neutrality, I believe that a modern practice, and A Modern Practice, incorporates a social and political understanding to support our work. I have long appreciated this article in the New York Times; written in 2016, it’s only more relevant to us in the last five years.    

My positionality is as a white, mid fat, cis het woman, and I’m committed to understanding the privileges and limitations that those various intersections afford me. As a community, seeking diversity and prioritising inclusion, we will have an expectation that those who are choosing to be in the space are also choosing to do the work in being brave and inclusive, and there will be clear guidelines for respectful interactions. As my supervisor Hilary Kinavey says, our aim is to be hard on systems and soft on people. It seems to me that some of this work will be implicit, in sharing guiding value systems, and some of this work will be explicit, in our commitment to doing the personal development work that supports us in: 

“practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world”
— adrienne maree brown

A Modern Practice is not a place for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia or religious intolerance. A Modern Practice is a place for us to sustain each other in building inclusive, brave and resilient practices that can make a meaningful contribution to our communities. As Lindo Bacon says in ‘Radical Belonging’, ‘resiliency is inherently social and political in nature’; my hope is that this space will contribute to our resilience, and to our social justice lives, through collaboration, collective care and sharing. 

“There is a whisper we keep hearing; it is saying we must build in us what we want to see built in the world”
— Sonya Renee Taylor

The specifics 

Who – The space is designed for counsellors, therapists, coaches, and other professionals in the helping disciplines, who are in private practice or wanting to build one. Students very welcome. If you would like to talk more about whether this community feels like a good fit for your work, please contact me on hello@concentriccounselling.com. 

What – an online community space for therapists and aligned professionals to meet, build relationships, develop our work and ground ourselves in collective empowerment. Developing modern practices, practised in a modern way. 

Where – the group will use Facebook as its platform. Alongside this, A Modern Practice has accounts on Instagram, where I love to hang out, and Twitter. The group is UK based, for therapists and practitioners worldwide. 

When – we will be launching from the 8th March.

So I suppose this article is, like Kelly Diels’ Sunday Love Letters, a love letter to our potential, and to our potential together. It won’t be for everyone but, like Ray Dodd said in a recent Instagram post, ‘you will have a deeper impact in your business if some people don’t like you’. Well, I hope A Modern Practice can have a deep impact. It’s ok that it isn’t for everyone. I trust that it’s for the right people and that, if you’re drawn to find out more, you’ll head on over to Instagram and Twitter and connect. I’d love to be in contact with you. 

EDIT: This community space has now launched, please click here to request membership.

A Modern PracticeVicky BellmanComment