Moya Sarner
Writer at Freelance
"Sarner is beset by a gnawing doubt" -- The Sunday Times NHS psychodynamic psychotherapist Guardian columnist Author of When I Grow Up
Articles
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1 week ago |
theguardian.com | Moya Sarner
Many of us tend to diminish ourselves and others with some snappy, reductive phrase rather than dig more deeply in search of understanding. Enter the idea of the “people pleaser”. The term has a ring to it; it rolls off the tongue and its meaning seems self-evident. It feels comfortable and anodyne. We know where we are with a people pleaser. But do we really? I hadn’t taken the time to think about it until recently.
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3 weeks ago |
theguardian.com | Moya Sarner
There is a national conversation – or perhaps more a national talking at each other – taking place at the moment, about an “overdiagnosis” of mental health conditions. The health secretary, Wes Streeting, is concerned too many people are being “written off” in this way. I spend quite a lot of time thinking about this subject, alone, with colleagues, with patients as a therapist, and as a patient in therapy myself.
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1 month ago |
theguardian.com | Moya Sarner
I don’t remember the context in which my psychoanalyst first brought to my attention how much I hate to feel disappointed. I do remember that I laughed. Who doesn’t hate it? That’s why it’s called disappointment, as Seinfeld would say. But then I reflected on what she had said, and it really made me think. I began to wonder why it is that disappointment is so particularly loathsome for me – even more than grief, or pain, or envy.
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1 month ago |
theguardian.com | Moya Sarner
During lockdown, I was sitting on my balcony in the sunshine one morning when I witnessed a brutal killing. I heard a loud, mechanical-sounding buzz behind me and went to investigate. I found a fly caught in a web, buzzing and shaking, fighting to escape. I watched as a spider darted from one side of its prey to the other and back again, using its legs to wrap its silk round and round the fly. At first, the fly seemed to buzz more and more loudly and shake more and more vigorously.
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2 months ago |
theguardian.com | Moya Sarner
The other night, I got home from work feeling very tired. It was really cold and what I really wanted for dinner was a jacket potato. In fact, I wanted two. So I heated the oven, slathered my potatoes in oil and sea salt and cooked them for an hour and 20 minutes. I was so tired that I neglected to complete the final step, an error that risked turning this very ordinary dinner into an explosive disaster: I forgot to prick my potatoes. Guess what happened.
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This week's column is about how we have a tendency to use diagnoses, incl but not ltd to ADHD, to close a door to our own minds - but it doesn't have to be that way. One way to open that door & develop self-understanding is psychodynamic psychotherapy https://t.co/PWrKRWddFZ
This week's column is about how frightened we can be of feeling disappointed- constantly denying, falsely reframing or trying to avoid this feeling that is actually the foundation of good mental health. With added Seinfeld and Oedipus https://t.co/H5lrIYraQi
RT @JonathanShedler: Some therapists think the purpose of psychotherapy is to enhance personal agency and help you to change Some think yo…
