Psychotherapy is a waste of time it always ends in a history lesson. Self-awareness as a recording of the past. How can that information become a kind of feedback? How can the awareness that I have done something also become part of me not acting like that again? Knowing is not enough. What don’t I know?

Sometimes a person understands that as a child they did things they regret. ‘I was only a child’ they might say. A child is not responsible for their actions in the same way that an adult is. But concluding that a child cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way as an adult runs the risk of missing something vital. As an adult, that child needs to find a way of taking responsibility for the task of not continuing to in some way do what they did as a child.

Addressing childhood trauma is so difficult, not least because it calls on whoever suffered the trauma to explore the effects of that trauma on their life, now; and how it shapes their future, and the future of those connected to them.

This can be so lonely and frightening, loosening the knot tied years ago. A good psychotherapist is mainly a companion. Someone you can travel with.