Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

Secondary emotions are a display of hate, fear or anger that sit in front of pain. The psyche’s primary function is to avoid loss & hurt. We maintain these secondary feelings to avoid admitting hurt & shame.
It sounds a simple thing to say – but humans make lives out of avoiding hurt. Out of awareness we create complex systems of fantasy to avoid the pain of reality.

To the mathematical mind if you are 30 years old you have survived 262,800 hours of life. Or this number of hours of living within a psychic system that is invisible, will try to hide from you, to protect itself from scrutiny. Scrutiny is death to the psychic system. It wants to avoid examination & challenge. Or what Freud called making the unconscious conscious.

People come into the therapy room would like to dismantle their psychic system and rebuild a new one to suit their lifestyle and goals. To rid ourselves would mean death. The first task is to see how it deflects and avoids us: as this is what we are doing daily.
The self-help industry would have you believe that a change of your basic character is possible? Up to you.

The biggest political revolution would be for populations to come to terms with pain and loss.
No Brexit or Populism. The propaganda of a return to an old world to soothe our loss & pain would not be so attractive. We dealt with it – the hook is blunt.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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” … I love him so much: I’ve never been so attracted to anyone like this before. He’s exciting ….. we have such deep conversations … Great sexual energy … He’s all that I could ever want”
Rumi is a 32yrs old woman who is looking for a long term relationship. The man she is talking about here gives her little. He tells her that he is no good for her, and she should find somebody else. She deserves it. He regularly sees other women: and does not commit to her or any of them.

She tries to date other men – but all her attempts are spoilt by the intensity of the relationship with this man. Her friends understand but are weary … hearing about the intense monthly liaisons which come to nothing.

We need to have good & bad relationships to find out where we are hurt. The hurt attracts a compensation, deflection, avoidance which triggers all the physiological systems which ensnare us in bad relationships. To judge relationships as good and bad can be unhelpful. Both are learning relationships giving us an opportunity to see how we unconsciously are attracted to others.

With awareness we can come to terms with what we are attracted to in old pattern repeats – and come to a new perspective of the fight inside us of what is healthy or not healthy for us – by calming the old energies so that they are not so attractive to us.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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The ability to suspend yourself is a trick: a psychological challenge.

It is not to disappear, suppress your feelings or be detached from life. To create a small space to see what happens and how you react to what happens. The space can allow you to observe yourself apart from your thoughts, emotions or impulses.

If you are disappointed with somebody you might feel anger, contempt or withdrawal. Suspending yourself resists the automatic need to blame the other person, as you feel they have wronged you. You suspend this dynamic to allow the feeling to exist without immediately acting upon it.

When our expectations are strong to suspend is more difficult.  We may assume unconsciously that others understand us, rescue us, reassure us: to reinforce the internal template of how relationships should work.
When our expectations are not met – the default is to judge reality rather than examine ourselves.

Suspending ourselves is a rebellion against the system, the state. A Humble Enquiry. A Freedom that allows curiosity rather than certainty. The problem is our whole being fights this suspension. To look at ourselves from a separate view point reveals something that wants to remain hidden. Our Self.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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Furasato – Home
Perhaps easier for our distant ancestors – the notion of Home – belonging, safety, warmth, comfort. They lived in the same place, same time with the same people. Held in nature & the Stars. Maybe more manageable – maybe it never crossed their mind to have a Home or belong somewhere – they just lived.

Modernity has given us choices of travel to other countries, to make relationships with others of different races & cultures. Creating complexities that our ancestors did not have to deal with.

Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote about Home as the place where we started – created by a good enough parent. Psychotherapy training teaches the offer of a safe holding space – the session. Good intention – but most feel unsafe & un-belonging in the re-creation of Home in the therapy session. Clients fight to make the session unsafe – because it is familiar, and more compatible with their early experiences at Home.

To challenge this idea: Is the notion of home plausible? Is it now a social construct so that we can find who we are? We are so lost, and modern life is so incompatible with our primitive selves that we need the idea of Home to belong?

Existence is not enough. We have to be somebody. The responsibility falls on the nuclear family for the success of our Home. The family – a condensed version of the village.
Was it meant to be like this?

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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Kali cried “I wish I could speak to my Dad again, I know I can’t, but I wish I could …”
I Wish.

In polite conversation the listener might move the speaker along. Trying to appease, or comfort both parties rather than dwell on what’s not possible or feasible. The wish lament holds an intolerable energy of regret, nostalgia, & loss.

Yet with courage wishes can tell us who we are. Kali grieves her deceased Father, who she was close to.
She continued ..” It’s so pointless having these feelings – what are they for?” As a reminder that loss is painful: and that we are all conditioned to avoid pain.

To reframe: we all have our parents inside us. They are our creators. They stumble, they fall, they disappoint us – yet without them we are not. So we have two choices: suppress avoid for the energy to leak into other spaces. Or learn to face & integrate the loss within us as a friendly wound. For Kali her Father was a wonderful man: complicated by her inadequate spiteful mother. She holds him like a warm fire in the cold world of her childhood.

And why not. We get through reality, by imagining the best version of ourselves who everyone loves & admires. Reality is rough & tough with only our flawed selves to navigate it. Our wishes help us to imagine what reality might be, rather than what it is. That energy can create ideas, ambition, creativity good and bad.

Capitalism is fuelled by unresolved loss. That energy is mitigated by shopping, what we stick in our mouths & bodies. How we act out our fear of death by accumulating wealth/life insurance/stocks & shares we will never need. We create groups of avoidance in sport, religion, & complaint. With our avoidance of the pain of loss we are open to manipulation of rescue, being led by despots promising a bright future past.

To attempt to come to terms with our loss is a radical act: a rebellion, a protest.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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Agnotology is the study of ignorance. Blurring the truth, creating false data to influence us to fight each other & buy products that might not be good for us. Once a truth is undermined, and little interest shown to correct it: then sensation becomes the new truth.

Propaganda, Political influence, mistruths grow in times of collapse. A past set of truths die, leading to a nostalgic longing for a return to a perceived stability in a previous era of truths.

This works so well with humans is because our psyches thrive on ignorance. An ignorance of ourselves seals us into a view of ourselves formed in our personal cultures/families which suits the function of the group. The idea of our sureness (ignorance) in knowing keeps us alive.

This knowing poem gives us the idea of developmental stages of knowing as we grow from childhood to adulthood. Yet our ignorance would counter this. We mature through time not an awareness of our ignorance.
The passing of time/ageing does not defy ignorance. Some might say the opposite. Perhaps for the human psyche the job of dispelling our own ignorance has no purpose. Ignorance keeps us sheltered & safe.

But here we are. We find ourselves in a world where the human psyche is so stretched & torn having access to billions of social contacts with the ability to only have 150. For safety we have to hold onto our ignorance to protect us from the infinite number of views & ideas.
The world is propelled through a universal ignorance which leaves the owners of unfettered technology a clear path to ………..

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View at Medium.com

Adam is a Handsome man. Adam Handsome.
The story of his mother’s traumatic pregnancy with him, terrified cortisol flowing from her to him through their umbilical cord set the dye for an emotional life in conflict with Adam Handsome.

Social media well documents men’s treatment of women as appearance objects, with women wanting to be themselves. This dynamic cannot be swapped round with equality: but creates another set of issues.

Adam’s life experience is a mixture of adulation and fear. He finds that he is given roles to play by both men and women based on his appearance, and their interpretation of his appearance.
Men expect him to be heroic, strong, competent, successful with women within the confines of the male domain. Women expect him to be heroic, strong, nice, invulnerable within the confines of the female domain.
He fears interaction with both as no win.

Both genders expect a simplistic clear version of Adam Handsome. In therapy Adam uncovered that if he goes out of these confines: he is met with disappointment, passive aggression, a fall from grace.

He is seduced into playing the part of Adam Handsome with all its benefits. Yet the cost of not being able to be authentic – brews a lingering depression interrupted by sabotaging outbursts of anger & helplessness.
His Mother & Father treat him as a handsome object, not wishing to see the person who might remind them of this traumatic episode at the start of their married life.

Adam Handsome is caught in the Person-Handsome Loop. How will Adam Handsome find his way out?

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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We think we can choose relationships. We have criteria encouraged by social media.
We think most of our decisions, but take delight when we are attracted, or fall in love through instincts. Creating a comfortable feeling that we are sure we can invest in.

The fever of love is to heighten the temperature so that we are distracted from the reality that we couple with our wounds not with what might be good for us.

We are stamped like a coin early on in our lives with early relationships & dynamics. We know nothing else. We reject anyone or anything that does not copy the stamp. The fever is to distract us from showing us the copy – making us feel like we are doing something outside the stamp.

We feel like we are being adult. Not like others. Free to choose. Independent. Autonomous.
Like the shopping cart: we reject with criteria – however unpalatable – that replays the stamp.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality

Suffering is the aim of therapy. Or as Freud said a common unhappiness. Well not quite?
To suffer efficiently is to suffer in a way that suffering can be put aside.
Generally we are trapped in a pleasure / suffering loop. We reach for pleasure to avoid suffering. When pleasure is unreachable we suffer.

To be comfortable in our suffering creates a lessening of suffering but not a disappearance. But it can allow us to focus on something beyond ourselves.

Imagine your suffering self in a cinema blocking your view of the screen. We become concerned with the suffering self, blocking the screen and how it feels. We move to see the screen but our suffering moves to block the screen. At times the suffering is delayed – pleasure – the full screen in view. Only to move back into block.

If we can befriend the suffering self, it can move & sit next to us in the same row allowing more of a view of the screen. The screen creating something bigger than us.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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Laura reasoned:  “Well I hope I can change. I’m very hopeful for the therapy” 

We are told to be hopeful. Hope is one of these words that it is difficult to argue with.
To be hopeful, optimistic, is seen as a positive trait in our us, our colleagues, friends and family.

There are words brought to therapy: like love, happy, productive, married, relationship, fulfilled, progress – that have a universal meaning that we all understand & assume – but emotionally they have many different meanings.

Laura continues around the same loop of dating unsuitable men who show little interest in her. Her hope is that this will change. Without her doing anything to change it. Here hope keeps her stuck. In the same place. On repeat.

To describe hope as a social taboo is more helpful. It is a way to protect us from despair, pain, & misery. Or so society would tell us. Even in parts of this profession.

But it is exactly the avoidance of despair, pain, & misery and the hope that they will move on away from us, that maintains us in despair, pain, & misery.

Laura’s painful discovery that her investment in uninterested men is the way she was taught to view herself from a little girl. The pressure put on her to be happily married with no positive role models of that experience is defended against. To not be married is the emotional response to protect her from her dysfunctional family.
With hope alone: this will remain hidden.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2026
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality