How Therapy Can Heal A Community

Here at 96 Harley Psychotherapy, we are proud to be supporting many different people from many different walks of life. We consider we are privileged to be allowed just a small glimpse into other people’s world and would like to share with you some of their comments on how they have individually benefited from specialist psychological care. Kay Lawrence tells of her personal experience working with these clients.

"Last Thursday’s pay packet was the best money I ever earned!  It was clean and I made it from my own hard work," said the young man referring to his £6.40 an hour pay. He was comparing that sum with his previous earnings of some £1,000 a day as a drug dealer. 

The young man was part of an employability scheme which helps people back into work, having served custodial sentences, or having been homeless, or both.  He was one of many being offered a second chance in transforming his life. The scheme called itself an employability scheme but was it just a job he was being offered? 

"I never thought anyone would help me after I lost my kids, my home, and my freedom," said a 30-something woman who found support after serving a prison sentence. The charity which helped her is committed to finding a way of decreasing reoffending rates by helping women find another way of living that allows them to leave the "revolving door syndrome". 

"Seeing the sunlight through the cracks of a shipping container and being in the sunlight as a real person in my own right is something that I can never truly describe," was the reflection of one  young woman in her 20s who had been trafficked into sex and domestic servitude. She is now being supported as she receives trauma counselling and learns to adjust to her new life, living safely in the UK. 

“No-one else would have been willing to take me on, train me up, and never mention my offences ever again,” said the man in his early 50s who is now part of a charity working with people who have years of repeat offending behaviour, culminating in homelessness, mental health difficulties and addictions. 

“I’m now training to become a coach to motivate kids, who are just like I used to be!  It all makes sense now.  If I can do anything to help those kids achieve their real potential, then my own wounds were worth it,” said the young ex-gang member who is now coaching young people who have been failed by the "system". He and the team are helping to heal their clients’ unresolved traumas and working with them for the common good.

The connection with the "end users`' of all these charities and the charities themselves have a goal in common: they long for transformation and a "better way".

If I can distill equality down to its most pure form, I would suggest the key is that we should all have access to the things that give us the qualities of living well. Fairness, opportunity and parity are the common ground, as is the practical need for food and shelter. However, our emotional and psychological needs also need to be looked after. Who are we without acceptance and respect? Who are we if we are not seen and heard, valued and appreciated?

There is so much good news that can be found in surveys revealing the outcomes of charity work and community projects. We know it may not work for everyone but, if one person in a generation changes the course of their life path, then that sets about a systemic change for their descendants too, as well as those around them. I find this prospect very exciting!  Supply the right conditions, and people who wish to embrace a new way will put in the leg work and do so.

Through our clinically and therapeutically informed work with charities and community projects, 96 HS remains committed to being a part of this good news. Partnering with organisations, we support the lifecycle of change, restoration and transformation in whatever capacity we can provide.

I asked a question at the beginning of this piece: Is it just a job? From my point of view, it is so, so much more.

By Kay Lawrence

These are some of the amazing groups we have been involved with since 2010. 

• Pret Foundation 
• London City Mission
• Justice & Care
• Tamar
• Caring for Ex-Offenders
• Working Chance
• Women in Prison
• Prisoners’ Advisory Service
• Restart
• Leap
• Talitha Arts
• William Wilberforce Trust
• Holy Trinity Brompton
• St Anselm Community, Lambeth Palace
• Dulwich Picture Gallery

Photo 1  Silhouette of woman: Steven Lasry on Unsplash

Photo 2 Homeless man: by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

A new peer counselling initiative for North London

My GP practice in North London is pretty switched on, by my estimation (which is, of course, not to say that it necessarily is). So I was intrigued to discover a new initiative starting up in which patients registered at the practice can join a group called 'Talk for Health', billed as 'a programme for emotional wellbeing'.

The idea is that those who wish to be involved are invited to participate in four training days, which will then lead into what is described as 'ongoing support in a peer counselling group'. The group will cover:

'...thinking about yourself, understanding and talking about your feelings and listening in a helpful way. It offers an opportunity to explore and resolve current dilemmas and struggles in your life.'

Clearly the practice is seeing a lot of people with mental health issues, and good for them for taking the bull by the horns and looking at creative ways of helping them process their difficulties. Group counselling, in my experience, is a powerful tool, but I do find myself wondering how this might play out among participants who are not necessarily in one-to-one counselling and will have only the benefit of four days of preparatory 'training'.

What kind of training might that be? Presumably a crash course in the principles of humanistic counselling, maybe some education around what constitutes a boundary - who can tell? What concerns me somewhat is the implication that anyone can be a counsellor after a few days of instruction - the democratisation of a vocational skill which takes years to develop and hone.

We see this happening in all walks of life now - in my own field of writing I note that people with very little experience and a one-day workshop under their belts are purporting to be professional writers. All of this is a consequence of the commoditisation and consequent mushrooming of vocational qualifications. That is to say, if you can pay for one of the vast number of qualifications now on parade, then you can have it, rather than there being a limited number of qualifications, delivered by bona fide institutions, which are earned by merit.

This effect is unlikely to go away any time soon, and so we will likely see more and more 'professionals' who are less and less qualified and a dumbing down of the quality of any particular service. In the case of counselling and psychotherapy, we are likely to see more individuals earning their (poor quality) qualifications simply by paying for them and, as we all know, it takes life experience, deep self-examination and many years' experience to become a truly helpful instrument in this field.

Don't get me wrong; I do believe there's a balance to be struck here - is it better to have some kind of forum to help people struggling with emotional difficulties than not? A resounding yes from where I stand. But let's not get the idea that after four days of training that these individuals can acquire the skills needed to  do very much more than provide a sounding board and fellowship for each other.

That said, the value of being among others who share similar kinds of difficulties cannot be underestimated, as is clearly shown by the 12-Step movement (the system upon which Alcoholics Anonymous is based). The simple act of coming together to form a community carries the potential for  considerable therapeutic benefit, which may indeed be the case with the peer counselling group due to start at my local practice.

Perhaps if we understood the value of communication within community, GPs would have no need for such limited solutions.

Written by Jacqui Hogan 

Introducing The Relationship Group at number 96

Communication is vital to building healthy relationships, on that everyone can agree. The Relationship Group at 96 Harley Psychotherapy is one of the psychotherapeutic community’s best kept secrets, offering, as it does, a weekly encounter with powerful group psychotherapy for those struggling to maintain loving communication within relationships of all kinds.

Led weekly on Thursday evenings by Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Dr Robin Lawrence or Psychotherapist Sue Sutcliffe (the pair alternate the co-ordinating role), The Relationship Group enables individuals whose budgets may not stretch to individual psychotherapy to access the skilled intervention of two of the UK’s top psychotherapists at a world-renowned London address.

The sessions work on a bidding system, whereby individuals arrive on the night and place their ‘bid’ for a topic they’d like to have addressed. ‘Even if your bid is unsuccessful, the system works for everyone, since topics generally apply to everyone and everyone gets to hear what they need to from participating in the work of others’, says Tom Jones, Practice Manager at 96 Harley Psychotherapy, who takes bookings for this increasingly popular group.

Among the topics discussed are healthy boundaries, speaking up, respect for privacy, personal responsibility, commitment, finding common ground, cultivating support systems outside the relationship, negotiating disagreements and what constitutes a healthy relationship.

The Relationship Group starts at 7pm and runs for an hour, at a cost of £35 per session. If you would like to attend, please speak to Tom Jones (details here). 96 Harley Psychotherapy also operates a low cost psychotherapy service, staffed by supervised junior therapists, making access to quality psychotherapy affordable to most, consistent with the practice vision.

Written by Jacqui Hogan