Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

A man goes to a club alone for the evening. While there his drink is spiked and he is taken home by a stranger and raped. In the morning he is made breakfast and dropped off at the local train station.
Does this shock you? If so why?

Could it be the mindset of the perpetrator? This man must have been targeted and stalked with clear intention and purpose by the perpetrator. The perpetrator feels confident enough to take the victim home knowing that he will be able to do whatever he wants to do with the man with no punishment.
Is he relying on the perceived vague distinction between consensual and non consensual sex?

Is the victim so compliant that he cannot complain? Is he is scared of the perpetrator that he feels unable to do anything. If he does want to to go to the Police does he think he is going to be believed?

Many survivors of sexual abuse keep the secret for many years. They are distrustful of others, and find it difficult to make healthy sustainable relationships. They  can find themselves at the mercy of strong feelings of rage and impotence using sex, drugs and alcohol to manage these strong emotions.Their ambivalence in seeking help is strong, realising in some way that the psychological wound runs deep with intensity and complexity.

Trauma is traumatic, and the psyche uses many ways to protect itself form that trauma. It bundles and packages it up in a disguise and buries it deep where it cannot be easily reached. It takes a courageous person to look at themselves and to try and understand the trauma they have experienced.

The above scenario has been anonymised to protect confidentiality.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

IUD Colorado

An anonymous donor funded free IUD contraception for the women of Colorado for 23 million dollars.    
The teen birth rate dropped by 40% saving the state in 2010 alone 42 million dollars in health care costs!
St Louis Missouri implemented a similar scheme with similar results. IUD Colorado

The main issue is the source of the funding. The anonymous donor had a single plan that could be implemented in a straightforward way with direct results. There was a need for young women to be offered IUDs for free and they took them. Safe, convenient, and reversible contraception at no cost. Focusing on the more simple implementation of a physical health service compared to the complexity and grey areas of a mental health service.
Who wouldn’t want to access this service?
IUD Colorado

This type of service would be usually funded through statutory money or tax payers’ money! This means that the anonymous private donor bypasses the political and the difficult to fund areas of public health. The opinion of the religious population has no impact on the anonymous donor money: but can demonstrate and influence the way tax payers’ money is spent.

The impact of the worst recession in modern times in the US might be a factor on people not wanting children. Affording having children in a recession means that people think twice and use contraception more deliberately in hard times!

Yet there is a lot more to the service. Young women have made the psychological decision to go along to the clinic having already made the choice that they want to continue having sex but want the choice of having children or not. This seems a complex multi-layered decision which women have made from a population who have fewer educational and work opportunities. The idea that young women who have no way of gaining social status other than by getting pregnant might be misplaced.
IUD Colorado

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

Scotland No Yes
As we all know 55% of Scots voted to stay in the union of the United Kingdom.

Here in the UK we are of an un-dynamic nature, not liking radical change, conservative with a small c. This is the strength of the union: it is stable. The currency likes it, the markets rise. Investors like it so the money keeps on going around.
Scotland.

What was noticeable was that neither side no or yes could predict what were the pros and cons of being independent, or staying with the union. There are too many variables. There are the obvious variables like the Westminster Parliament, Scottish MPs, Trident, Supermarkets, Big Business, Border controls, & Currency.

The less obvious variables are how are people going to feel once the situation settles down? How is Westminster going react? Is it going to keep its promises? This is all held in the biggest variable of all: time. We do not know how we are going to be tomorrow, next year, next decade.

So we make choices about how we feel and what we want in a particular time, even in a moment. A lot of people were undecided until they actually found themselves alone in the ballot booth, with paper and pen.

What we think we might think changes over time. Next year the same problem might not be seen in the same way or might not even exist. Our brains are constantly trying to process information. If we are clever and pause away from the 21^st Century dictates of occupied time, status and money, our psychology will take care of everything.
A pause to reflect can change our attitude even to ourselves.

Scotland No Yes

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

Scotland No Yes  Scotland No Yes

BBC1 Secrets                                                                                                                                     

In the episode titled The Lie a married woman with a daughter receives a phone call about a blood test for her son.
No she does not have a son: but her husband does with another woman. So she discovers her husband is leading a double life. The added twist is that the other woman is a therapist: who the wife arranges therapy sessions with to see what she is like!
BBC1 Secrets -The Lie

This is one of five half hour dramas associated with TV drama in the sixties and seventies.
Fascinated with the intrigue of affairs, and the insecurity of love the series seems out of place in 2014. In the sixties and seventies the population was on the brink of a sexual revolution which could potentially reach every household. In another way the sixties and seventies were still buttoned up so it was seductive to watch fantasy people leading fantasy lives. But what is the attraction now? In this intensely competitive culture is it Schadenfreude? Is it the joy of seeing others’ pain at a distance? The eking out of pain that in reality is so intense and personal? BBC1 Secrets

Then there is the fact that when you see your job being acted in a TV drama: you realise how the poetic licence is a slave to the drama and manipulates the truth. In this episode the therapist sits at the kitchen table across from the client making notes in a notebook easily seen by the client! What are they doing sat at the kitchen table? Why is the therapist writing notes during the session? The banality and phoney sincerity the actor employs to play the therapist is so exaggerated it mocks of the profession. Why not? Our profession needs more mocking to dilute the pervasive intense sincerity, and lack of a sense of humour about the work. But I don’t think that was the drama’s intention! Then the therapist’s partner interrupts the session to say he is taking their kid out! The therapist answers normally – and then apologises for the interruption! Wow! Boundaries!

Perhaps it is a sign that therapy is so common that people understand what it is about? A little manipulation will not put anyone off because they know it is just telly! That is not my experience in the multi ethnic high churn rate populations of inner city boroughs!

Well maybe the ethnic inner city population is not wringing its hands with the love problems of the middle classes. Anyone for therapy?
BBC1 Secrets -The Lie

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

BBC1 Secrets BBC1 Secrets

Summer Holiday
Summer Holidays are greatly anticipated. Time in the sun, with loved ones, family and friends, or perhaps you are not able to afford to go away. The Christmas break is well recognised for being stressful. But there is less recognition of how stressful summer holidays can be. There is already the stress for families with kids over the long school break coping with occupying their time.

But leaving your home to spend time with your partner, family and friends can be very stressful.
Two weeks away: the equivalent of four and half bank holiday weekends, over three Easter weekends, or two long Christmas breaks. There is not a lot of recognition of the stressful summer break. In a strange land, strange accommodation, and eating habits: away from the distractions of work, hobbies, cinema, friends, family or the shed.
No wonder people want to come home and separate.
The weight of work culture with people working more and more for less increases the pressure put on recovery time. The concept of TGIF  invented in the industrial age, city breaks, spas, high risk sports sex, drugs and rock’n’roll all to counteract the obsessive world of work.

So no distractions and forced to spend exclusive time with people you are not used to spending time with! No wonder the cracks in a relationship kept in the dark by the normal routine, are revealed into the light by long summer breaks. A time to talk about the quality (or lack of it) rather than quantity of your life. A time to talk about unrealised dreams and plans made last year in the space of a long summer break. A time to realise that the person you are, or who you are with is not enough, or simply your life is not enough.
Summer Holiday

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

Mediterranean Boredom
Much is made of the Mediterranean diet and how much healthier it is than the northern European diet.
Perhaps more significant is the Mediterranean lifestyle outside the big commercial centres. People who are living close to work without the hassle and fatigue of commuting. Having a siesta in the middle of the day to recharge the batteries is an unaffordable luxury in the northern europe.
But maybe it is to do with the heat but there seems to be an expertise in doing things slowly, allowing a lot of time, without there being a pressure to being particularly occupied. Mediterranean Boredom.
In fact there is an openness to not being occupied with anything to do in the hotter climates of the Mediterranean. The theory about tribes in cold climates having to huddle together on the ice against the cold occupied with staying warm does not hold as the Mediterranean have cold winters to contend with.
But there is something in having long parts of the year in extreme heat where to do anything is difficult. It forces its populations to learn to tolerate boredom and being unoccupied. This is an opportunity to muse, dream and to be with the self in a way which is compatible with the lifestyle. The lifestyle does not have to force to make time to be with the self. The lifestyle has the component of being unoccupied with the self, incorporated in it.
Do we recognise this in our quest for the sun? Could it not only be about the status of a tanned skin? But also an opportunity not to have to think about anything except lying down, and staying cool at the beach? We have to fly south to live a Mediterranean lifestyle with Mediterranean boredom!

A connection to the Mediterranean and mental health?
Mediterranean Boredom

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

Wounded Leaders
Nick Duffel argues in his article on Wounded Leaders that the political elite’s private boarding schooling educational experience creates a person who has to reinvent themselves. They go onto make poor political decisions that impact on all of the UK population. He writes “As socially privileged children, they were forced into a deal they did not choose: trading an ordinary, home and family-based childhood for the hothousing of entitlement. All boarding children have to survive this.”
7 year old boys are taken from their homes and put in an environments like
Shrewsbury School where they are forced to survive. A traumatic break in attachment has to be survived. But how? They have to create self-reliant pseudo adults as an avatar to present to the world. Empathy, compassion and vulnerability are not on the menu.
Wounded Leaders

Dangerously the boarding school 7 year old boy “has to believe his own self-invention, which is the most dangerous, for it allows him to do anything without conscience.” As adults the little boy inside is put on hold not wishing to appear vulnerable or stupid against a bullying competitive hothouse environment.

Everything is willing to be sacrificed to stay out of trouble. Nothing can be appear to be wrong. A sense of entitlement is created and hard to give up: a compensation for a childhood without love or family.
The effect is that key political decisions are made by people who are unable to relate to them! The impact of policies on people is not important. The only important thing is that 7 year old boarder has to survive. Not to look stupid or vulnerable.
The way the UK is governed needs to change.
Wounded Leaders

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.

The much maligned prawn cocktail has a history: apparently started by a 19th Century Californian miner!
Seen as a retro meal along with chicken in the basket and steak and chips.
The prawn cocktail is having something of a comeback.

Enjoy
6th August 2014

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

prawn cocktail

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.
prawn cocktail

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.
prawn cocktail

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

A Wedding
Weddings – social control or public declaration of love and trust?
The popularity of weddings waxes and wanes with the state of the economy. In the boom years weddings are affordable. In recession they become expensive! In these secular times the UK population is drifting away from organised religion and the church. As a counterweight parts of the world are prepared to kill and die in the name of religious fanaticism.

Whatever your view – the event of going to a wedding of family member or close friends dissolves any cynicism. Going to a wedding – people are happy, ready to celebrate a union between two people. This public declaration of love is so open-hearted and pure. The wedding party gets swept up in a positive upswing of good feelings and wishes towards the about to be married couple.

Whatever the formal signing of the contract involves: the wedding party usually ends up sitting down to eat together. Everyone in the group has one aim: to celebrate the union of the couple. People love groups with a single unifying aim. It brings people together. People sit together with friends and family. Once the crowd has had something to eat or drink people start speaking to strangers at other tables. They are welcomed as another witness to the celebration of the union.
Then there’s the sight of grown men and women dancing late into the evening.
Congratulations Simon and Cayte. Love to you both.

 
Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

James Garner died Sunday July 19th 2014
Garner married for 57 years said about the institution
“Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you’d be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist.”

One of his most famous roles was playing Jim Rockford. The character was not good or bad, or nice or nasty. His short temper, and complaints about being made to work came across as human and gave the character a depth and complexity unusual for television at the time. You couldn’t totally like him, but you could not hate him either.
James Garner R.I.P

 
Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2014
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.

James Garner died July 19th 2014
Garner married for 57 years said about the institution
“Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you’d be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist.”

His most famous role was playing Jim Rockford. The character was not good or bad, or nice or nasty. His short temper, and complaints about being made to work came across as human and gave the character a depth and complexity unusual for television at the time.

James Garner died July 19th 2014
Garner married for 57 years said about the institution
“Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you’d be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist.”

His most famous role was playing Jim Rockford. The character was not good or bad, or nice or nasty. His short temper, and complaints about being made to work came across as human and gave the character a depth and complexity unusual for television at the time.