I’m often asked what the difference is between counselling and psychotherapy, so I thought I’d offer my take. The short answer is that today there is a great deal of overlap between the two. In my view, what matters far more is how a therapist works than whether they call themselves a counsellor or a psychotherapist.* Psychotherapy emerged from Western medicine in the late nineteenth century and became associated with doctors such as Freud and Jung, who used psychological methods to treat...

This short post offers a piece of practical advice, grounded in Buddhist psychology, to help with troubling thoughts. It’s very easy to believe that our thoughts have some kind of fixed or definitive nature. We all do it. I must do that, I should do this. However, when we hold onto our thoughts too tightly, we can suffer. A simple mindfulness technique for changing our relationship with troubling thoughts is to label them “thinking” as they arise. This can interrupt the usual cascade of...

Have you heard about the mental health benefits of psychedelics and want to know more?