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When Did Normal Childhood Behavior Become "Undesirable"? Redirect parental energy to the progress of their journeys.

Psychotherapy for those that need it now., organized by Alan Archibald Hi all, I'm Alan. I run a small Psychotherapy service in Central London. I c… Alan Archibald needs your support for Psychotherapy for those that need it now.

Why So Many Men Are Lonely ... and 6 steps for making deeper connections.

I know its a difficult time for most. I hope that some that have more can give something for those that have less. If you can donate great and if not please share.

Psychotherapy for those that need it now., organized by Alan Archibald Hi all, I'm Alan. I run a small Psychotherapy service in Central London. I c… Alan Archibald needs your support for Psychotherapy for those that need it now.

Archibald Psychotherapy updated their business hours.

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Archibald Psychotherapy updated their info in the about section.

A link to a new article I have written on what conditions do psychodynamic psychotherapist treat. A good short read.

https://healthhubble.com/article/what-conditions-do-psychodynamic-psychotherapists-treat.html

What Conditions do Psychodynamic Psychotherapists Treat? | HealthHubble | HealthHubble What conditions or illnesses do psychodynamic psychotherapists treat and what does treatment involve? It’s not an easy query to answer, so let's reframe this question to what ingredients are involved in making psychotherapy a beneficial experience.

For anyone who wondered what psychodynamic psychotherapy was about in everyday terms. An easy read article that I wrote for www.HealthHubble dot com

https://healthhubble.com/article/what-is-psychodynamic-psychotherapy.html

What is Psychodynamic Psychotherapy? | HealthHubble | HealthHubble What is psychodynamic psychotherapy and what does it involve? Discover how using psychodynamic psychotherapy can help you work with a therapist to unpack, understand and process personal issues and challenges in a safe and protective environment.

Website updated so why not take a look?

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Therapy | Archibald Psychotherapy | England London Online Archibald Psychotherapy - Therapy for depression, anxiety, feeling sad, relational difficulties by a BPC registered psychodynamic psychotherapist

feelingsad

Johns blog continues this week in the subject of s*x and how it feels to be a man today within the context of this. It may contain content not suitable for children. Hopefully more PG than R. Just to update as well as I am aware that people have not followed johns blog from session one and so maybe dont know who or what this is.

Johns blog is an anonymous blog from a male collegue and friend about his experience as a man today and how he expresses how he feels. It is open and I thank John for being so honest with this. I hope to host more blogs with both men and women from various backgrounds and experiences but always with more than a hint of mental health and emotion. I hope you enjoy! Always available free on a sunday at www.archibaldpsychotherapy.co.uk and then monday on .

Johns Blog. S*x

Where should I start this week? I felt an inevitability that we would eventually end up here. The often joked about, embarrassed silences, red faced chit chat that ends in either awkward moments or charged conversation. Yes I’m going round the houses of s*x to avoid talking about it it seems... its difficult isn’t it? To have a frank conversations of the ins and outs of s*x, so to speak. Strange it seems that way as it infiltrates all of our lives and without it we would not be here. I guess because it’s more than just a random biological act of function and we can sometimes, hopefully more often than not, gain pleasure from its act.

Is it any different gender wise? How can it not be. The possibilities are endless of course and too many to count and cover today. Instead I will just cover my experience and what it means to me personally as a heteros*xual man.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that my opinion about s*x comes from a long line of history, events, connections and experiences. When I think of what s*x means to me then it is very much dependant, I think, on my experience, knowledge, things that have happened to me and around me in short. The way I perform, the way I receive and the way I adapt. S*x began for me, like many men I guess as a first time. And before the first time was the imagined first time. Society (i.e.: my friends and some not so good friends) told me, it seemed to me, that I needed to have s*x and the quicker it happened and the younger I was the better. That as a male this was part of the initiation into being a man. I think in more primitive times, and in some cultures even today, something marks the journey a man makes into adulthood. Boy to man as it were. It began before the act itself as an idea. Initially impregnated into my mind by society, media (although less so when I was growing up as media was restricted to newspapers, 4 TV channels, and gossip in the school yard, and maybe the odd book from the library that you could manage to sneak past the disapproving eyes of the librarian (who seemed to know exactly what your were thinking and she thought it was wrong). The embarrassment of an unexpected er****on at a saucy romantic film while sat as a family carefully and quickly hidden with a cushion. As I was saying, as I have the tendency to wander, everything that happened before s*x happens for the first time has an influence on what is to come.
I also find it difficult to write this as a man (perhaps a s*xist point) as every word becomes innuendo and much like a carryon film.

So at the beginning I reached a point that I had finally found a girl stupid enough to want to be with me (at the grand old age of 23) and we were dating. This was as close to s*x as I had been (bar a few light petting incidents at the cinema and once with a girl named Margaret at the local swimming baths which ended rather disappointingly for all concerned). So for me as a male there was a mixture of feelings involved. Firstly there was a part of me that was saying to myself, ‘Finally, after tonight, you can call yourself a man and get on with your life’ and part of me that said,’ my god I really have no idea of what I am doing here but I know that I feel comfortable enough with this girl (we will call her Pat) that she will be the one to guide me into manhood. There was no thought however that this was a deep and meaningful experience. No expectations that she was ‘the one’ or that I even cared if we survived the aftermath of whatever was to occur that night. It might seem cold and calculating but I really just wanted to experience it and get the first time over with and move on. I didn’t think Pat looked too bad and she was what my friends would have considered an 7 or 8 so I was comfortable with my decision. That you see if where I was at being 23, not deeply emotional and ready to connect to my soul mate, ready to have a go at what I had longed for in many a year previously.

S*x then for me started as a bit of fun that ended in me feeling content that I had lasted longer than 15 minutes without coming and Pat seemed vaguely satisfied. That was it for the first time. A safe missionary, maybe a bit of doggy style, the obligatory (at least in my mind at the time) oral s*x but all calculated and not really enjoying the moment and savouring the closeness of Pat and my physical awakening. That was my experience that I could finally say to anyone of my mates that asked the day after, ‘yes I did it and yes she wasn’t bad I suppose’ would be the line I thought. Now that is how it started, shallow and meaningless in the true emotional sense.

What I have learned over time is that s*x can be anything you want it to be really. After a failed marriage and numerous s*xual partners behind me I have come to realise that s*x can be a real moment of connection between me and another person. A moment that can define a partnership, a moment to define how you feel about the other person in a fanfare of passionate fireworks that ignite each other like nothing you have seen over the London eye at new year, a caring and slow burn of connection that allows you to show how much you adore and appreciate them in caresses and kisses that praise there very being. Or it can be a quickie with a complete stranger drunk after a night out that ends up on the heath and just seems to end the night nicely with a story to tell the lads the next day.

The pressure though to perform, to please your partner, to have the perfect body and to be the Karma Sutra king is always somewhere in the background. Not that I think every woman expects this but as a man that is the pressure that is expected by me. The little voice in the back of my head that says ‘you should be like Ron Jeremy (minus the hair obviously) not p*e wee Herman’. It feels like anywhere you look now the pressure to perform is there staring you in the face. On the cover of ‘a popular woman’s magazine’ 10 places your man should know about to make you scream or on the cover of a popular men’s magazine ‘exercises to make you last all night’. S*x has the fun sucked right out of it by this relentless pressure it feels. As a man now in his late forties I’m just glad I still can and do have s*x. Now it’s a mixture of emotionally important moments that do actually mean something to me and allow me to feel connected to the other person and important in their life, to some, yes insignificant and purely physical experiences that are mainly about enjoying myself and with little thought about the actual woman in front of me (or on top).

It is hard then to be a man today and be honest about these things. Yes a man thinks about s*x a lot, people might say that they are programmed to by society, history and misogynistic indoctrination, but there are also ways in which s*x is one of the few ways a man can show how he feels in a real and deeply connected way. A way that I have been able to show a woman I cared about that I loved every part of her. That when I caressed her legs and down to her feet it wasn’t actually because I liked her feet (because I really don’t like feet) but that I knew she didn’t like her feet and I wanted her to see that it was okay and to feel desired in her entirety. Now this is just my opinion and feelings. It is one man’s view and feelings on it and not every mans, but it is mine and I hope that it hasn’t been too embarrassing and cringe worthy.

Online Psychodynamic Therapy Near Me | Archibald Psychotherapy | England Archibald Psychotherapy - Therapy for depression, anxiety, feeling sad, relational difficulties by a BPC registered psychodynamic psychotherapist

I have the pleasure to announce that I will be hosting poetry by Hayley Day an aspiring Welsh poet. I will be posting on www.archibaldpsychotherapy.co.uk blog and also on my page. She will be adding to her collection and sharing some of her pieces that we feel are relevant. I am a massive fan and feel that she really captures in her words experience and emotion, both personal and shared. I hope you like her too and I will post soon the first piece My Senses.

feelingsad

Johns blog continues this week in the subject of s*x and how it feels to be a man today within the context of this. It may contain content not suitable for children. Hopefully more PG than R. Just to update as well as I am aware that people have not followed johns blog from session one and so maybe dont know who or what this is.

Johns blog is an anonymous blog from a male collegue and friend about his experience as a man today and how he expresses how he feels. It is open and I thank John for being so honest with this. I hope to host more blogs here with both men and women from various backgrounds and experiences but always with more than a hint of mental health and emotion . I hope you enjoy

Johns Blog Session 7 Sports

Happy new year to you all firstly, even with lockdown etc. I thought I’d look at sport this week as it does have a profound impact on my life as a man. At first I thought that perhaps I just loved sports and that was just how it was really but then after a few moments of reflection I realised that it’s a lot more than just a love of doing something. It’s more than just something to watch on television. It’s more than just a game.

I started with sports I think with my Father. He was a big football fan. I won’t say which team because it can cause all sorts of feelings (hence not just a game). Even before I was crawling or walking I had a logo on my baby-grow that signified a great deal to my father. It meant to him a number of things I think before it meant anything to me. For him it meant that he could share something with me, that I was a part of his team, his gang you might say. I think that it comes down to something very base and direct for me as a man. It means 1) I belong to something and 2) it means that I have a connection to others without really having to say anything. No need for words, feelings or thoughts just facts and a common direction. My father didn’t even know if I’d like football but it was bred into me I think over time. It started with the suggestion that it wasn’t really an option. It would also classify me as a man. I know that sounds s*xist even as I say it, but that’s what I think it meant for him and now in part to me too. How many times as a man do you ask what team do you follow? And if the answer is ‘I don’t really like football.’ There follows an awkward silence as if they have just said that they don’t really like breathing or drinking.

So why does football as a sport mean so much to me? Why does it affect who I am and how I define myself? I think that in part it allows me to express how I feel in a socially acceptable way without really being too obvious about it... I mean if my team lose a big championship and I’m at the game then I might just shed a few tears. Do people around me look at me as if I’m an alien or any awkward silences? No. If this was in a cinema, a favourite film that ends in the lead character getting killed off and no chance of any further films coming out with them in it and I cried.... completely different story. It is changing I know. The modern man can cry and show his feelings but at my age and in my mind that’s not where I’m at. To be excited and jump around like a mad thing, to shout aggressively at the ref because of a bad decision, to hug my mate and jump around screaming when my team score, all acceptable. Obviously the hug ends with a quick breaking away and often a swift and hearty slap on the back to just add the manly full stop but still able to express something of how I feel. When you look around and half the stand is in tears or shouting together it gives you permission. It almost becomes a group mentality that allows you to suddenly express how you feel. I think if this happened outside of football or other sports then I’m sure I wouldn’t be quite so hung up about being able to express myself and would just get on with living but that isn’t the case.

The other thing I suppose is that my father and I could share this together. It didn’t quite work out like that after a while. I think when I started to have my own opinion about the team and it differed from his it started to become less of togetherness for him. It did allow me though to have a relationship with my father. One that was based on pretence of sport and something we shared. It feels like this framework of sport, teams, and players provides a structure for me to be able to work around the adage that we need to express how we feel really. Like in the previous blog I said about the separation with my ex and that when I went round my mates we very quickly went from an awkward ‘That’s terrible mate’ to ‘Do you want a beer? The match is on’. This allowed me I think to be able to be with my mate, to share something together and to not have to talk about the fact that I felt my heart was ripped in two. The way in which a cloak of invisibility around the actual exchange of emotions was involved helped me to be there and tolerate what was happening inside of me, and I think helped my mate too (although I’ve never really asked him about it since).

I used to play in a five a side team after work. Not anymore as my knees, and belly, couldn’t quite manage it now. I used to meet up with the lads once a week on a Friday after work and we would have a kick about and prepare for the Sunday five aside league that we were in. We didn’t do too badly and were always in the top three in the league. That aside, being in the team allowed all sorts of feelings and expressions to take form and be expressed. I think that it provided closeness for me to my friends above and beyond just belonging to a team. It allowed me to be able to dip in and out as well. For example, the five a side practice was for 60 minutes on a Friday evening. The weekend league was for about half the day but could be down to just the match time. The evening after the match was of course mostly reserved for drinks and meandering about town looking to be as loud and obnoxious as we wanted to be (not the sole purpose or even pre planned but tended to happen when we were in our high spirits and chanting our football songs). It did allow me though to have an outlet for how I felt. I maybe didn’t express exactly how I felt in meaningful words but I did find that I was able to express something of the pent up frustrations, excitements, loneliness and feeling lost. These feelings of loneliness and feeling lost were almost completely dissolved when with my sports mates. So sports seem to have the function for me of allowing me to express things in a organised/disorganised way.

The last little bit I wanted to talk about is the following of a team. A family you might say that is reliable (unless they go downhill and start losing too many matches), always there for you to watch, stand by, be proud of, be disappointed in and have common ground to be able to start a conversation with anyone (belonging to the same team or opposing) and have a way of connecting. I know that sport isn’t just football but that’s my experience of sport. I’m sure other sports have similar and different experiences involved in them but this is mine. In saying that it is mine it reminds me as well about the feeling of ownership. Ownership over I am part of a team. That is my team and i belong. It allows a more base feeling of me being a man that there is little space for now in modern society. Well that’s it for this week so I will catch up again next week. Hope you have enjoyed it and speak to you soon.

www.archibaldpsychotherapy.co.uk

Online Psychodynamic Therapy Near Me | Archibald Psychotherapy | England Archibald Psychotherapy - Therapy for depression, anxiety, feeling sad, relational difficulties by a BPC registered psychodynamic psychotherapist

https://news.sky.com/story/father-calls-for-more-postnatal-depression-support-for-men-after-having-breakdown-12020397?fbclid=IwAR3uJkZbHEv83H0O26BJMx9GISiC6EqPRtcbBj8AnpfGddTT546jK4JBTSM

A very interesting article and something I hadnt thought about previously, but will be now.

Father calls for more postnatal depression support for men after having breakdown Up to one in 10 new fathers suffer from postnatal depression after having a baby, research shows.

Johns Blog Christmas and me week five

I thought it appropriate to look at christmas this week and the influences it has on me as a man. Its a difficult one this week as I have never been a great fan of Christmas. Im not religeous and I hate the whole pressure of getting the right present for the right person. It always ends up more of a stress for me than a holiday. The only exception from this is my daughter. So perhaps thats where I should start. As I said before im divorced and try to see my daughter as often as possible. Christmas is one of those times. I could go right back to my choldhood christmas, and perhaps ill take you on a breif travel holiday there as we go through this particular part of the journey, but for now lets look at what christmas means to me as a man and as a father.

Firstly its the obvious feeling I have that I need to provide. This ingrained and often torturous part of me says in plain language that I must provide a gift for my child that makes them happy and keeps the imagined santa clause image alive. Even though shes too old for that now. Now dont call me a grouch, even though i might very well be. The need for people to be happy at christmas is phenomenal and for a father not to be happy, jolly and the antithesis of playfulness leads to a pressure I think that leaves little room for sadness, reflection or reality. You see as a child I had parents that did value christmas, at least the commercial side. I never went to church so that part has always been missing. They always supplied the family with festive cheer, dad would dress as santa clause, which we all knew he did, and come down stairs on christmas morning with our presents. He would laugh with a jolly ho ho ho before handing out our long awaited and anticipated gifts. You see there was a set gender roles as far back as I can remember. Dad was supposed to be holly jolly santa and mum would cook, clean and organise things. Dad was old fashioned and still is. Anyway ive gone back to something I said we would just visit breifly so lets take a trip back to today.

I now feel that I am expected to carry the lantern of drinking a little too much wine, playing santa and making sure that enough is supplied to enjoy everything thats wanted. Granted now with the divorce thats a bit tricky, I cant really cook and the flats not that clean but the pressure to provide for my daughter says that I need to make this place like a winter wonderland of joy. It was a little different when I was together with my ex of course. She would supply the necessary female ingredients that made sure that the remaining gap could be filled with the money I supplied from a very profitable job, the decorations would be the best money could buy and I felt I needed to put the star ontop of the tree. She would cook a great christmas lunch and I would inevitability fall asleep in my chair after a long and exhausting trip around the lounge with my daughter riding my back as if im the number 10 favourite at chepstone. This was managable I think because of the different roles and this seemed to work. But now I think about the gap. What role did I play and what do I need to fill in now?

As I said I dont enjoy christmas but for my daughter I make the effort. It reminds me though of the feelings that I, perhaps not just as a man but certainly has a strong factor, have to push down and ignore. I have to be there for my daughter and be jolly while I really feel very lonley at christmas. Most of my friends are with there family apart from the ones that are also divorced, but even they have seemed to find a way to pass the time without being too glum about it. Maybe its all show and they feel the same as me but im not going to know. We dont really talk about it as men. We might say were a bit down about something but more likley we will make a joke of it or just put it down. Bloody christmas , dont see the point, or one good thing about xmas is that i dont wake up next to my ex, or just tell terrible dad jokes and play the fool. Alcohol suddenly becomes more socially acceptable and this does not help one little bit. Its easy as a man to drink to avoid how you feel. I dont know if its the same for women although i expect it isnt that much different. As a man I can block out how I feel and get a bit drunk. Not too unusual at christmas and also blocking out and pushing down how I feel is what I suspect my dad has done all his life. Growing up I never once heard him say he was struggling with some feeling or other. My daughter , now thats a different thing altogether. As she grows older she does talk to me a bit about how she feels. It amazes ne and intrigues me that she finds it so easy. As a bloke I dont think ive ever had any converstations with my father about how I feel. This does make me think that it would make a good present to recieve that this year. Someone to listen to how I feel. However this blog will have to do and even this has been incredibly hard to write down how I feel as a man and how all sorts of things have influenced my hiding how i feel away, or at least feeling that i need to hide it. Especially at christmas. Dont feel too bad for me though because I can also delve into the stereotypical male pass times at christmas, eat and drink too much, provide too many gifts for my daughter and drown myself in her smile and happiness that her dad has provided at least some christmas cheer.
Ill end this week on that note of indulgence I think and with the expectation and hope that people get what ever they have wanted and asked for this year.

Just to add that it wouldnt be a bad to take a close look at those around you and if there is some thing hidden behind the smile that looks a little darker to offer an ear or a way out of the stereotype that everyone should be happy at christmas. It may just give someone the best gift they have ever recieved- freedom from expectation.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year what ever tier you happen to be in x

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Johns Blog Christmas and me, a story of one mans thoughts around being a man today through his eyes.

Johns Blog week 4 Relationships

Well relationships is quite a wide topic. I thought that I needed to cover relationshiops of both a romantic sense and a little about my mates too. The way in which I relate to others, the same of many people, is based on both past experience, early experience in childhood and observation of others mixed in with a generous dose of what ever my urges, needs, fantasies and anxieties happen to be at that time and age.

When I was growing up I had a number of influences around me. Uncle Daniel was obviously one influence. As I said in week two he never married. As a consequnce he had a number of girlfriends. As a young child I dont think I took a lot of that in but then again maybe I did. As a man growing up after Uncle Daniel died I guess I did think that perhaps it was normal. Normal to have a number of different girlfriends and not to settle down too much with any of them. This didnt always sit easy with me. I guess I was also a romantic. This I think came from watching too much TV and movies. Its a strange contrast and conflict that part of being a man. On the one hand I wanted and desired to have a settled and loving relationship and on the other the frame set of Uncle Daniel had a hold on me. I think now that my early days of numerous one night stands and short term relationships were a way for me to feel closer to Uncle Daniel. A way to keep him alive. I could hear him in my mind saying ‘nice one John another girl tonight?’ I think as a girl I would have had a rather different experience from people socially. It doesnt seem fair but also I know that during that time I was conflicted and looking for comfort, love and companionship in all the wrong places. I beleived, I think, as a young man that was how you were supposed to behave. No-one seemed to criticise me at the time but I do remember a gap inside of me. A sense of hollowness that follwed me from one relationship to the next. Dont get me wrong. It wasnt all like that. There were a couple of relationships that meant a lot to me. Not that I would have let on at the time about. I felt as a man you dont really have the room to grieve for a relationship breaking down. How many of my mates at the football or down the pub would welcome me crying over some girl that I felt I loved and she didnt feel the same. I suppose some of you are reading this and saying that what im calling relationships were in fact just s*x. Perhaps you are rght in one respect. That a lot of my early relationships were just that, s*x. Not long term loving relationships with deep and meaningful connections, perhaps these are two ends of the spectrum. Perhaps though as well it illustrated the conflict for me at the time that I wanted to be a ‘man' ‘Jack the lad' ‘Alfie' but I also craved more than this. My romantic past is a bit of a mess to be fair. Im divorced and single which is perhaps where my path is meant to lead given my mirroring of my Uncle. This blog is perhaps too short a piece to really explore in depth what romantic relationships meant to me growing up and what they mean to me now. Jack the Lad and Alfie are all fine and well in your teens twenties and maybe even early thirties but then it just becomes a bit sad. I guess what time has done has given me the excuse and opportunity to be the man i want to be with, hopefully, at some point in the future, the woman I want to be with. I think having my daughter, now nearly 13 it has put things into focus. Now I look at images and carbon copies of myself at there age starting to stare at girls and think to myself (well if I was to tell you perhaps you would be worried about what I said and so Ill stop at that. Survice to say that I wouldnt take kindly to them if they were to hurt my daughter. I can love now. I can focus more on what is important to me in relationships but it has come with a long time line and consequences.

Relationships with others have never been difficult with my male friends. It isnt complicated really. We dont sit down and talk about how we feel, how much we regret things or how we wished we had been different with the girls we had seen and then split up from. We talk about football, Rhianna, maybe a bit of politics, and beer. Maybe too something about the next Tv were going to buy or complain about the exwife but thats about it. Now any men reading this will know thats bo****ks really. Yes its true that our conversations tend to be a little shallow at times and mainly related to sport or women but there is a way in which I talk to my friends that does mean a lot to me. When I split with my ex I had nowhere to go. I had to leave the family home and my daughter and didnt really know were i was going to go. I ended up phoning my mate Paul. I told him that I had split with chelsea and he never paused for a second before saying no problem mate you can stay here for a while. All I needed to do was bring some beer and a kabab on my way over and I would be welcome. The great thing about Paul and most of my mates is that we dont really need to talk about it, at least thats what I tell myself. After I got there he just opened the door, ‘sorry about whats happened mate’ then after me saying rather lamely ‘yea its a bit sh..’ a breif awkward silence and then we cracked open the beers, sat with a kabab each and popped the footy on. A few beers later and there you have it. Except I was dying inside. I needed a hug, I needed someone to say it was going to be okay. That it might work out yet and wasnt too late. That the affair my wife had might just be a short fling and everything would be fine in a few weeks. That didnt happen, I didnt forgive her, mainly due to my pride, and ive been single since. Heartbroken and single. Not that I feel I can talk to my mates about that because it just dosnt work like that. The primary response ive learned over time to cope with not having an emotional outlet like my mates to talk to is to push it down and suck it up. It simply does not feel natural to talk about how I feel to my male friends. Or infact my female friends. After all Im the one they should be using as a shoulder to cry on not the other way around. That does need to change though. The amount of male suicides is frightening. I think one of the factors that would push me over the edge is just that, no one to open up to and speak. If everyone had that then perhaps it would be easier to get up in the mornings without the weight of past hurt, damage, regret and mistakes weighing heavily with very little outlet.

After all as a man I feel im expected just to cope, laugh it off and just get on with it.