Reflections
July 2025
Assisted Therapy
There is an interesting article in the latest edition of ‘New Psychotherapist’ magazine* about the newly emerging field of animal assisted therapy and the first master’s degree available in this area of therapeutic work.
There is a significant historical precedent. Sigmund Freud’s Chow Chow dog: Joti, was often by his side during therapy sessions. He claimed she was an excellent time-keeper and knew when the 50 minutes of the session had expired. He also believed that dogs could sense human emotions and gauge the levels of anxiety they were experiencing.
It is not a requirement that a dog has specialist training, in the same way an assistance dog might have, engaging freely and willingly, rather than performing. the benefit being derived from the dog demonstrating many of its natural characteristics, including their authentic communication and willingness to bond.
From a therapeutic perspective, dogs can help clients connect with grief and loss, and help them become aware of their attachment patterns in an experiential way.
Ultimately, the aim of animals to assist therapy should be to simultaneously benefit both the human and the animal. The little therapy dog in my practice is always keen to help if he can!
*From the article: ‘Animal Magic’ by Susanna Wright in the Summer 2025 edition of ‘New Psychotherapist’ published by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).
June 2025
Being Present
I have recently made the decision to stop working online with therapy clients. This wasn't a quick or easy decision with many factors that needed to be considered.
The process started from a very personal perspective. When doing online sessions I started to experience increasing physical discomfort from sitting in front of a screen for long periods of time. Afterwards I began to experience headaches and aches across my shoulders and neck. Psychologically, it became more challenging to maintain the degree of focus needed to undertake therapeutic work. In addition, I was experiencing increasing stress relating to the various, and unpredictable, technical issues that frequently occurred and pulled the whole endeavour away from a therapeutic focus, and sometimes de-railed the process altogether. I concluded that working in this way seemed to be a very poor substitute for the rich experiential in-person client work I had been trained to do and found fulfilling.
These personal experiences led me to consider the value of working in this way from a wider perspective. Therapists were forced, overnight, into working online when the first Covid lockdown occurred in 2020.The alternative was not to work at all. Therapists had to adapt quickly, which proved to be a very steep learning-curve. Little consideration was given as to how this way of working might be reversed in order to return to the proc ess of working with clients in the therapy room. For many, it simply became the norm and the way they now preferred working.
it was never the preferred way of working for me. I craved to get back to the richness of the encounter of working with clients in-person. To experience them as a multi-faceted human being in the room – rather than a flat blurry entity on a screen. To utilise all the information that is available. The ability to pick up on all the nuances and subtleties in verbal and non-verbal communication. To be able to experience in the room, the mutual holding of difficult and challenging material, and the creating and sustaining of an ever-evolving relationship with the client, that is impossible when working online. that is only possible when you are present with them in the room.
This leads me to wonder if it is even possible to do therapy online. Counsellors might be able to provide something that the clients find helpful or beneficial in some way, But since it lacks so much, it will never be able to create the conditions that allows therapy to reach its full potential.