Most people don’t start looking for therapy because they’ve neatly named the problem. It’s usually more like: something doesn’t feel right. You might be getting on with life on the outside, but inside there’s a sense of strain. Anxiety that keeps returning. The same relationship situations playing out again. Or that frustrating gap between understanding yourself and actually feeling different. I’m Ben Jones, a BACP-accredited psychotherapist. I’m based in Nottingham and I work online with...

At some point, many people realise they’re living life slightly at a distance. They’re doing what needs to be done, saying the right things, getting through the days, but not really feeling in  their life or fully themselves. That moment, when you first notice that gap, is often what brings someone into psychotherapy. We learn how to get through Most of us didn’t choose to live this way. We learned it. We worked out early on what was safer to show and what was better to keep to ourselves,...

This is something I’ve been sitting with recently, especially in conversations with clients who are trying to make sense of their ADHD. For many people, the diagnosis brings a huge amount of relief. It gives language to experiences that never quite added up, and it helps explain why life has felt harder than it appeared from the outside. It can open doors to support that was missing for years. But alongside all of that, I’ve been wondering about something that often sits underneath the...