Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ

Editor’s note

Last month’s report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is yet another piece of solid, scientific evidence that, if we humans continue to consume at our current rate, we will destroy the ecosystems necessary for our survival.

It is small wonder, faced with the likelihood of real extinction, and not just our existential fears about it, that the topic of climate change and its likely effects comes creeping into our counselling rooms. Steffi Bednarek robustly dismisses the notion that there is such a diagnostic category as climate-change anxiety and seeks to open a discussion about how we respond to these very real fears and their effects when clients bring them into the room. Indeed, arguably, climate-change denial can be understood much more readily as a pathological response to an unbearable threat.

This month we celebrate worldwide Men’s Health Week (10–16 June) with Jason Spendelow’s feature on men and coping. The article provides a refreshing change to the weary acceptance that men ‘don’t do emotions’ and ‘don’t do therapy’ by offering a way forward. Be curious, explore how they already manage life’s challenges and use this to help them devise better ways of dealing with relational and other crises.

And for a wonderful description of how counselling can help couples break out of the fixed positions to which they have retreated in the face of stress and conflict, turn to anonymous blogger Girl on the Net’s wise advice. Relationships are hard work, and where is the shame is getting some help from a counsellor?

Catherine Jackson
Editor

A good case story always contains something new to learn or think about.

We have a particularly fascinating one this month. Member Jane Francis shares the case of D with us and how she encouraged him to draw on his passion for comics and graphic art to illustrate the darkness that lurked in his inner world. So, he created a set of ‘Marvel-ous Avengers’, bringing his characters into therapy to help him articulate his feelings and peel away the layers of his distress. A deeper story unfolded, of how fear had effectively locked him in, and other entangled emotions like anger, sadness and grief were blocking his attempts to escape his past and move on.

His graphic depictions of the configurations they explored together are simply breathtaking – so much so that you feel you could be a fly on the wall of their therapy room. It’s a work in progress, but already D is ‘beginning to integrate and accept those parts of himself that were previously hidden or hated’. 

Rachel Shattock Dawson
Consultant Editor

Disclaimer and copyright