Moya Sarner's profile photo

Moya Sarner

London

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

  • 2 weeks 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.

  • 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.

  • 1 month 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.

  • 1 month ago | theguardian.com | Moya Sarner

    Many of us suffer from a wish to be special. We toil away in the unconscious belief that a special person is a better person, and a special life is a better life.

  • 2 months ago | theguardian.com | Moya Sarner

    In 2023, I was in the top 0.05% of Spotify listeners of Manic Street Preachers. It was one song on repeat. I would bet good money that there is no one in the world who has listened to their cover of Burt Bacharach’s and Hal David’s Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head as much as me. No one except my daughter, who was also there as it played through the night, and through every nap, too, for the first 15 months of her life.

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Moya Sarner
Moya Sarner @MoyaSarner
21 Apr 25

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

Moya Sarner
Moya Sarner @MoyaSarner
7 Apr 25

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

Moya Sarner
Moya Sarner @MoyaSarner
28 Mar 25

RT @JonathanShedler: Some therapists think the purpose of psychotherapy is to enhance personal agency and help you to change Some think yo…