Thinking About Therapy

In this last episode we move from focusing on you developing your own psychological formulation to thinking about on ideas, interventions, strategies or goals that you might or might not find helpful.

This episode focuses on exploring experiences, actions and interactions that help (‘protective factors’) when problems arise.

We also think about what you and other people experience or do that hinders or contributes towards problems getting worse or sticking around for longer (‘precipitating factors’).

This episode invites listeners to think about triggers and button pushing interactions or events that occur immediately prior to experiencing distress or difficulties.

In episode #2 we focus on ‘predisposing factors’ or past life experiences that contribute towards strengths and difficulties in adulthood.

Episode 1 - Problems

Hello, I’m Dr John Mulligan and I’m a Clinical Psychologist and therapist. The plan with the following five ‘Thinking About Therapy’ episodes is to give you a decent idea about what I tend to do alongside people in the first few sessions of therapy.

The episodes will also give you the option of developing your very own ‘Psychological Formulation’ if this is something that you are interested in doing.

These podcast episodes do invite you to think about potentially distressing problems and topics, so caution is warranted. If thinking about past and current difficulties can or might be upsetting, or if you feel you need actual therapy or input from a trained mental health professional, then please take care of yourself, try to get the right support if needed and give serious thought to avoiding listening to these episodes.

Also if you are thinking about trying therapy and first listen to my ramblings, then please don’t let me put you off. These episodes are just about my way of supporting people as best I can in therapy. There’s an abundance of therapists with their own styles, theoretical backgrounds and experience to choose from out there. So if looking, I hope you find a therapist who’s a good fit for you and you find the experience of therapy helpful.

If I can’t upload the formulation templates I mention during episodes on this website then I may use Twitter: @ThinkingAboutTherapy

or a Reddit thread which I have set up under the ThinkingAboutTherapy heading. In addition to sharing the resources, there’s the option of using Twitter or Reddit as forums on which listeners might want the option to interact, discuss and support each other alongside or subsequent to listening to the podcast episodes.

Anyone interested in hiring a fantastic sound engineer and musician, then my colleague David Beatty can be contacted directly on [email protected] David dramatically improved my appalling D.I.Y. recordings and created the music to accompany the episodes, so he comes highly recommended.

We hope you find the following episodes helpful.