Here at Counselling Connections this week one of our partners was away at an important business meeting and her return to the office was anxiously awaited. When she got back we sat down in the kitchen to catch up. ‘I’ve been really anxious to know how you got on’ I said. ‘Yes’, she replied; then paused and said ‘I wonder if this is how clients and their partners feel after a therapy session’. News of the business meeting would have to wait while we teased this out and spoke of our clients’ experiences of this phenomenon, the experience of being debriefed.

It is not unusual for a partner of a client to be waiting anxiously for their return from a counselling session and to expect to hear in great detail what had transpired. There are many questions about what the therapist is like, what they said and what did they expect you to talk about. And what did you talk about? The discourse in therapy is different to ordinary social interaction; it is so much more about being listened to than an everyday social exchange. It takes a little getting used to; it is new. A loved one will have an interest in hearing about how you begin to deal with the issues which caused you to begin the therapy in the first place. As we discussed this we realised that there was a range of different feelings associated with this therapy ‘debriefing’ and they’re not all positive.

From time to time in therapy the facing of a ‘debriefing’ from a partner on returning home can cause a real difficulty. You have to feel able to say anything that comes to mind in your therapy. It works best when you feel free to speak of your worst fears and traumas, of strong feelings, of love and hate, of jealousy, of rage, of loss and regret, of dreams, disappointments; anything and everything really. It is harder to speak freely of these things without censor if you feel you have to report on them afterwards.

Additionally, something of the power of the feelings in therapy can be lost; diluted maybe when they are repeated outside of the therapy room. Your partner may feel threatened if you don’t tell them about these things but working through them may have to be done without your partner’s active involvement. This may leave them feeling left out, or even that they are not being heard themselves.

Sometimes a relationship is not good or supportive and the partner can make hurtful remarks or insinuations about the therapy. The therapy itself can become a safe sanctuary for these feelings. At other times a loved one may feel a little threatened or envious of the therapy. They may wonder that a stranger, the therapist, is hearing intimate details of their loved one’s life, things that they may not know of themselves. After a while in therapy, noticing changes in their loved one may also evoke some feelings of anxiety. A partner who starts to become more self reliant or who no longer reacts to things in the same old ways causes an adjustment in a relationship. When thing are going well this is a wonderful process; but it still means a change for the partner.

At times therapy can mean trawling over details of very upsetting things from the past. This can create special challenges for loved ones. Sometimes it is really comforting, having revealed something distressing in therapy, to have the love and support of a friend or family member who may know a little but not a lot of what is going on but who makes it clear to you that they are there to support you as you go about your difficult journey. This represents a change in the nature of ‘debriefing’ where your loved one understands that you are working through some difficult things; doesn’t enquire as to the details but remains steadfast in their support. This is a wonderful addition to the work of the therapy.

There is so much more that we could say about this. Reading back over what we’ve just written we realise that this is addressed to the loved one as much as it is to a client. I suppose that is appropriate. At times a client will have little support outside their therapy. At other times their partner will feel threatened by the whole process. Sometimes the important people in your life will try to undermine your therapy, for a range of reasons, some benign and some less so. In any event all these things can be talked about in therapy as you negotiate the changes in your life and your relationships. It is primarily a personal process, about your self and your choosing the best ways to proceed in love and in life.

Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

In other offices people gather around the water cooler or meet over a cup of coffee and discuss the latest office gossip and organisational intrigue. And we at Counselling Connections are no different. Regular readers will know how partial we are to a cup of coffee and also how sometimes, because of the nature of our work, our coffee break chats turn to all sorts of eclectic subjects. This week is no different. We are branching out into addiction counselling and we’ve been reflecting on ways in which addiction behaviour can become a fundamental part of a family’s way of being. This can permeate the minds of individual family members and can have lasting and catastrophic effects on the way they love and allow themselves to be loved, or not, as the case may be.
If this all sounds a bit vague lets try to make it a bit clearer. The coffee break musings that we are talking about began with a question posed out of the blue. It was ‘do you think some girls grow up believing “I know how to love daddy better than mammy does” ‘? The question relates to the situation that we are all familiar with of a woman who seems to gravitate from one abusive relationship to another. She might escape an alcoholic, abusive or violent husband or partner only to find herself not too much later in a similar, damaging or abusive relationship. It seems counter intuitive and it can be a confusing, disorientating experience for the woman concerned. What we are trying to visualise is the process of thought that a little girl goes through as she grows up in a house with a violent abusive father.
There are a number of points of interest. First among these seems to be a learned ability to tolerate and excuse the worst of behaviour in the father. It is like his violence or abuse presents his daughter with a riddle. To solve the riddle would be to end his bad behaviour before it begun. This would present her with the loving, caring daddy of her dreams. But first she must roll up her sleeves and work hard at trying to figure out how to get on his good side. It is clear that when he comes home late that he and mammy fight and in the little girl’s mind the idea forms that this is the wrong way to go about things. She may even get to feel that her mammy gets it wrong by saying anything critical to her father, anything at all really that might draw out his anger. Her fantasy of a beloved, caring father demands that she overlook his part in these nocturnal arguments and in this the seeds are sown of a life of heartbreak, of hopeless forgiveness and even of facilitating another generation of addiction.
In psychoanalysis a pattern of bad relationships is sometimes attributed to something called a repetition compulsion. In simple terms we feel compelled to repeat previous mistakes. Again, this seems to be counter intuitive and it certainly baffled Sigmund Freud when he saw it in his patients. Indeed, the professor had to tear up the rule book and start again and incorporate the compulsion to repeat in his theories of the mind. If we pass our scenario through the test of this theory of repetition it seems that what happens is that the girl puts herself unwittingly in the same abusive situation again and again in order to try to work out exactly why it didn’t succeed the first time, the most important time, with her father.
She has followed her childhood logic of ignoring, excusing and forgiving bad behaviour in her loved one and for some reason which she can’t quite grasp it doesn’t turn him into the loving, caring partner of her dreams. It is our sad task in psychotherapy to break it to her that she has been basing her relationships on a faulty premise. This can be a difficult thing to face up to because it also involves letting in the understanding that her father behaved badly. It can be very difficult for us in life and in therapy to let go of the fantasy of a loving parent and face the reality of their human failings. Sometimes the worse the behaviour of the parent has been makes for stronger resistance to face up to this. This is something that has to be dealt with slowly and sensitively.
So, the childhood idea that ‘I can love daddy better than mammy can’ will provide a child with some confidence that they can cope with a difficult situation in the home. But it can also lead to difficulties in that it facilitates a tolerance of abusive behaviour and an almost masochistic determination to overcome the worst of situations. This is just one scenario that we have discussed here this week. There are many other similar possibilities including trying to cope with an alcoholic mother. What we see is that an addiction in a family can pass from a substance addiction to fixed way of behaviour. Initially these are set in place to help us cope but they don’t adapt well to later situations. Whatever your interest is in exploring these issues we’d be glad if we could be of some assistance to you and we have added an addiction counsellor to our team to help with this work.
Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

Here at Counselling Connections this week we have been reviewing how we communicate with you and ways in which we can reach out and explain counselling better. It seems to us that there are barriers which may stop you from coming to counselling. Our strategy is to explain counselling as best we can in plain English and also with the website and all of that to make getting in touch as simple as possible. Lots of you make your first contact with us through our website and send us an email with some of your questions. Practical matters like the cost of sessions and availability of suitable appointments are normally secondary issues. Understanding what counselling might do for you seems to be the top question. Not only is it the most difficult question to answer but it also seems to be the most difficult one to ask.
There may be lots of different reasons for this. Let’s give you an example: while walking up to the town recently we met a friend who asked how we were getting on. When we said that we are doing well and that we are quite busy he said ‘oh, oh dear that’s terrible’. This made us laugh but we knew what he meant. We are glad to be able to say that a busy counselling practice, far from being a terrible thing, is in fact a very positive one. It means that lots of people have come to a point where they decide they want to change things and are slowly going through a process of transforming their lives. Rather than add to any unhappiness that might be around we like to think that we reduce it. In fact, with the help of our clients, we are sure this is the case.
So, how do you go about making that first contact? And how do you know what to say? Well, it’s not unusual for someone when they come to see us first to say ‘I don’t know what is wrong with me’. And that’s as good a place as any to start a counselling relationship. It gives us a beginning, something to talk about. Sometimes people can be upset because they’ve never asked for help before and they see coming to counselling as a sort of failure of their coping skills. It’s fair to say that people quickly get over this once they become engaged in the counselling process and start talking about their lives.
There may also be an element of stigma. You hear some funny, well actually not so funny, things said about counselling by people who’ve never been. Labels are without doubt a big part of this and are perhaps the biggest barrier to starting counselling. There is a natural fear of ‘mental illness’ or being considered mad or crazy and people often joke about this nervously when they come to see us first. That nervous laughter is a good way to bring up a difficult subject and we are glad to take the time to explain that we don’t diagnose and we don’t attach labels. Our concern is simply to hear you talking about what is affecting your life and begin a process of exploring things and imagining changes.
One of the things about counselling is the idea of ‘not knowing’. You may not know how to get in touch. That’s okay; we’ll try to make that as straightforward for you as we can. You may not know what is wrong. And that’s okay too; it gives us a starting point, somewhere to begin. For our part we will not know any of the details of your life or the ways in which they have impacted on you. You are the expert on these things and you can fill us in as time goes on. I suppose that ‘not knowing’ is something which makes us all feel uncomfortable and that to some extent counselling is about looking into the unknown and trying to get to know it. In that way we hope that together we can relieve the discomfort of not knowing and facilitate a change to a more confident, secure way of being.
Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

Here at Counselling Connections we stood for a few minutes this morning looking out over the garden. We are lucky to have a large green garden with trees and shrubs and secret nooks and crannies. The lawn, however, is, to be honest, a little mossy and in need of some gardening expertise. This latter point causes a slight shudder when thoughts turn to firing up to old lawn mower again one more time. This act is the renewal of an annual rivalry now entering its eighteenth year. The lawn mower, you see, has developed a personality; a wilfulness which will only submit to a knowing adversary and only after testing that adversary’s resolve to the limit. It may need a little attention with an oily rag, perhaps a new spark plug; definitely a fresh drop of oil and then and only then will it cough and splutter into life raising it’s objections in clouds of grey and white smoke which take ten minutes to clear. Once these preliminaries are dispensed with it will work but only on condition that it is not asked to do too much. Wet and long grass is for young mowers and ours is seventeen which in lawnmower years is about a hundred and nineteen years old.
The thing about this relationship of course is that it is with an inanimate object. Albeit that anything that has an internal combustion engine can appear to take on human, often feminine, characteristics it is still only a machine. But we grow fond of them; think of a relationship with an old car. There is tremendous satisfaction to be got from the annual ritual of starting up a cantankerous old lawn mower for the first time. And for all that it would only cost a few hundred to replace this would seem like an act of disloyalty to an old comrade with whom many campaigns have been endured. This is perhaps an example of projecting human characteristics into different situations where we then master them and become secure in our position with the outside world. How this works with family pets is the subject of a whole different discussion which we’ll save for another day.
A wider look at the fun we have in our relationship with our lawnmower has us thinking about ways in which we adapt to our environments. Sometimes these can be enriching but it has to be said that perhaps also they can be maladaptive and facilitate unhealthy behaviour. For example, replace the cantankerous lawnmower with an equally contrary relation, say a grandparent. This fictional relation may live in the family home and may have been present when the children of the family are quite young. These children will learn to adapt to the vagaries of mood of the older person. This could be a vey positive addition to the child’s life growing up as they forge a relationship with an older person outside of their parents. Children make allowances for and learn to help the other to cope and lean how to be in a relationship with another.
The same ability to adapt which is a natural part of living in a family group is also brought to bear in situations where the other person, whoever that may be, is a malign or negative influence. For whatever reason this person may be jealous or nasty and the people around them can be forced into to trying to placate their moods. When this happens on an ongoing basis it can leave unhealthy coping or adaptive strategies in place in the minds of individual family members. This is something which we have to be careful of in relationships. It can create patterns of bad relationships which are repeated and which often cause people to seek therapy to learn how to change. It is possible to track back through old relationships to see where adapting to others may have caused us to allow respect for ourselves to be shelved. Becoming aware of this in ourselves is the first step on the path towards a new assertiveness which, though it can be difficult to practice to begin with, can lead to fuller more respectful and enriching relationships.
Counselling Connections, Dundalk.

Here at Counselling Connections we are without water this week. It could be an awful lot worse because we have a mains supply but we turned off the water and drained the system before the Christmas break as a precaution on account of the sub zero temperatures. It’s just as well we did because we had a frozen pipe which has burst and when the thaw came, because of our foresight we avoided a calamitous flood. We just need to get our friendly plumber to call and fix the leak and we can safely turn the water supply back on. Others were not so lucky and we are aware of colleagues whose premises have suffered bad water damage over the holiday.
Before coming to work this morning I cleaned up after breakfast, loaded and flicked on the dishwasher. Its something we do without giving it a thought nearly every day of the year. It is so easy to take a supply of clean running water for granted. We expect it to be there and we feel a bit cross and put out when it is cut off. The same goes for central heating and for electricity which we have come to regard as basic requirements. We are not accustomed to doing without these things which in the space of a couple of generations have gone from ‘mod con’ luxury to basic requirements.
Our grandparents’ generation and their parents in particular would have had to manage without these things. One topic of conversation this week among those whose water has been cut off is how to fill the cistern and how to manage the toilet. It seems many have resorted to supermarket bottled water for flushing the toilet. It would be interesting to hear what a great grandparent would have to say about this were they alive today. We are living in a time of convenience and of plenty where our needs can largely be met at the local supermarket. The weather induced deprivations of the past few weeks have reminded us to appreciate the basics that we have come to take for granted.
There has been an admirable level of stoicism and even good humour surrounding these difficulties. Some were laughing at the incongruity of boiling the Christmas Brussels sprouts in bottled water while we heard of another joking boastfully of mopping the floor with a brand of French mineral water! A spirit of neighbourliness has abounded with the old Irish ‘meitheal’ co-operation being found in stories of friends and communities giving each other a hand through the weather related difficulties. Ironically, given the talk of how previous generations would have taken these ‘deprivations’ for granted the internet and social network sites have facilitated some of this spirit of neighbourliness.
Our hope for the New Year is that we will all maintain an awareness of each other and that a spirit of neighbourliness and of passing on some of what we have to others and to new generations will thrive. In this, in good natured getting on with it, and in bringing this spirit to commerce in particular we will find a way past the challenges facing our country and our world. We can start small, start local, enjoy and embrace life and reject the temptation for stagnation and depression in favour of moving on, living and sharing.
Happy New Year.
Dundalk, Counselling Connections.

I was reluctantly walking up from the counselling centre here in Seatown Place towards Dundalk town centre yesterday at dusk. The footpaths are hard to negotiate with compacted snow and ice. That fear of falling is one only an adult can comprehend… I saw a little toddler running along gleefully in front of his Mammy, not even considering the possibility of a fall for a second and I thought of how we lose those childlike qualities.
I was very struck by the number of older people who were out getting their few bits and pieces, two ol’ fellas having a chat and a laugh, no hurry on them. I particularly noticed one old woman who was walking slowly along with her tartan shopping trolley (you know the kind I mean). I was cold, my feet like blocks of ice in my new purple (Lidl) wellies bought just for the snow….she smiled the broadest smile at me, no words passed between us, just a nod. As I walked on I found myself wondering what sort of Christmas she was going to have, if there was anyone to get her shopping on a day like this?. Had she any relations, any children, grandchildren even? Or did she just want to get out and be independent? She might even have been getting a pint of milk and a loaf of bread for her even more elderly neighbour, I don’t know her story but for sure she has lived through many Christmases….
It got me thinking about how Christmas is ever changing for us as we continue through life. From being the child whom Santa (hopefully) came to, through to the woman of eighty odd years I met on the street. How many Christmases had she loved, endured, been in love through, had babies, excited toddlers and indifferent teenagers? Had she a loving husband, was he still alive? Maybe she had had a difficult marriage and was glad it was no more. She might have remained single … was she lonely or content with the choices she had made? How did she feel about this Christmas approaching?
Life is ever changing, nothing stays the same….people leave us through illness and death, babies are born, new relationships bring the oddest of families together, separation and divorce divide families and create new ones, people grow apart and remain under the guise of marriage, children will grow up, leave home, start their own families, maybe emigrate. Christmastime can magnify our ‘situation’; it can highlight the pain that is already there, the loneliness that we are busy ignoring. On the other hand it can make us really appreciate the relationships we’ve got, imperfect and all as they are…
Maybe Christmas is a time to be honest with yourself, accepting where you are at and doing the best you can. Sure, you may wish some things were different but for now it’s enough of a starting point to want things to change in the future. You are where you are at as a result of your experiences in life. Like the woman I met on the street, her life of eighty odd years has led her to be out in the snow, doing her own shopping in Dundalk, kind enough to give me a smile when there was nothing I could see to smile about! Knowing and accepting yourself and your situation is essential to effecting change. There’s nothing to be gained from beating yourself up about it. Forget about putting huge demands on yourself. Be kind to yourself and this will reflect in your relationships with others. If you are lucky enough to have children in your life be proud that Santa is surely on his way in these recessionary times, bringing what he can. Of course spending time with children is more important for them than all the toys. The benefits for adults are immeasurable too and it can be just what we need to bring us back to ourselves, like the toddler in the snow, unafraid of falling, uninhibited by fear.
Counselling Connections.

What a week we’ve had in terms of Irish politics…..the lies, the cover ups, the calling in of the IMF to rescue us…. There’s a sense of unfairness and injustice for us as ordinary people being punished for something we didn’t do. We seem to have little or no control over the immediate future and we have lost our trust in those who tell us it will be okay in the end.

It’s not a nice feeling when the safety net is pulled. We can be left feeling insecure and wary of everyone around us. The world is not to be trusted. The only person we can really rely on it seems is ourselves. We feel safe when we are in control of our lives, financial stability playing a big part in the developed world. However, we often hand over our control to other things in life. This may be allowing another person to control you, a partner, a parent or an adult child. It may be the obvious ones like drinking or doing drugs. There are more subtle ones like food and weight control. While these may feel good in the moment they are ultimately a handing over of your person to these things. You are no longer in control of yourself if your life centres around any of these because they take you away from your real self. These are ways of detaching from yourself often to avoid emotional pain from hurts inflicted on you by others or through losses in life.

And here’s the thing….we all have it in us to be happy, to be in control of ourselves and our lives by really tuning into the person inside. Listening and trusting that quiet voice inside of you is the first step to healing hurts from the past.  When we learn how to do this all things outside of us become not so important, like the bail out and the country’s economic crisis. These things while important at a national level do not define us individually. In times like these, there is always an opportunity to come back to yourself and to recognise what is important in your life. Separating out the state of country from you as a person can help give you a sense of stability. It is reported that there is a calmness at the centre of a hurricane even though there’s chaos all around….you can be that centre for yourself amidst all the national uncertainty. It is what happens inside of you and subsequently the knock on effect in your relationship with others that matters. I’ve heard so many people say this week that they weren’t going to listen to the radio or TV anymore, that they’ve had enough… So in this quiet time with the telly off you might ‘tune in’ to yourself and have a listen. You might be surprised at what you hear……and how it makes you feel…

MMG

Communication, when apart, has become very immediate these days with twitters, texts, blogs and emails. The immediacy of this form of communication allows people the freedom to say whatever they want, however they want, without mulling it over and without having to face the other’s reaction in person.  It gets it ‘off the chest’ so to speak and on to the screen of the recipient….It can be so easy to press ‘send’ and can induce a great sense of relief in doing so. However it might be wise to pause before you send . . .

For the recipient it can be hard to know what the tone of a text is at times and so the sender of the text is open to misinterpretation. The mood of the recipient can also influence the way a text is understood. How many times have you received an ambivalent text and read too much into it, only to discover that’s not really what the person meant?. Or better still sent a ‘do you love me?’ text, only to receive a reply a day later due to busy networks ( if only you had known this at the time it wouldn’t have spiralled into a major row with your partner!). When sending a text it may be worth asking yourself what it is you expect to hear back, if there is a need in you that you are hoping the other will fulfil in their response. What happens then, when you don’t get the response you had hoped for?

As we reread old stored texts (that we were keeping as evidence!) they can resurrect old feelings of resentment, anger and hurt. Here in counselling connections, we can see the parallels in therapy where past hurts revisited can bring up old feelings which are difficult to deal with, which is why we bury them in the first place. These feelings, while difficult to face, keep us trapped in past hurts and hold us back in relationships and in life in general. To move on and be free of the past it is necessary to allow those feelings to come up, to be dealt with. Anger and frustration left unexpressed can become low mood and depression when turned in on the self (Jacobs, 1998). Psychotherapy offers you a safe place to deal with these emotions at your own pace, where you won’t be overwhelmed. We have heard so many people say they are afraid to cry in case they won’t be able to stop. The reality is you will.

Therapy isn’t as immediate as pressing ‘delete’ on your phone or laptop but over time it will help you to sort out the folders in your mind so that what you keep stored away in your ‘saved messages’ are only those positive ones that make your life better. It doesn’t mean that we forget, rather that thinking about these experiences doesn’t hurt so much anymore.

Reference

Jacobs, M. (1998). The Presenting Past. Open University Press. London.

MMG, Counselling Connections.

I’m wondering if anyone goes out on a Saturday night anymore. It seems that the X Factor has captured the attention of many of us (11 million viewers tuning in last Saturday night to the live shows) and that weekends are now centred around this essential viewing. Let’s take a look at what it may be about the show that captivates and entertains us.

It’s not just the singing we’re interested in…..we’re curious about the sort of people we’re dealing with and voting for. There’s Mary Byrne, the Irish woman from Ballyfermot who up until a few weeks ago was singing her way through her day as a cashier in Tescos. She hasn’t had it easy in life, a single Mother struggling to bring up her daughter and working away to make ends meet. There’s something in us that makes us feel she deserves a lucky break. I’m reminded of the fairy tale ‘Cinderella’ and the Rags to Riches element to the story. Bruno Bettelheim, a Viennese Psychoanalyst who wrote about the psychological meaning of fairy tales (1991) believes that an intrinsic part of their message is to get across that difficulties in life are unavoidable but that if one keeps trying, she will be victorious in the end, just like Cinderella who after a difficult life got the man, the money and the castle! (Winning out over her two ugly sisters). So a happy ending for Mary would sit well with a lot of people, particularly those who can identify with her life to date. And to be fair, she can surely sing.

Then what of ‘Gamu’, an African girl with a great voice and a sad life story who didn’t make it through to the live shows. There was hysteria among the general public and a campaign to ‘Save Gamu’. We find it difficult when the fairy tale is axed half way through and doesn’t make it to the happy ending. It’s like reading Cinderella up to the point where she can’t go to the ball and leaving it at that. No fairy godmother, no carriage, no glass slippers and no prince!

Watching shows like the X Factor allow us to hope and dream of having a better life. It’s within the grasp of the ordinary person and we are certain of the ending……..a happy one for one contestant who dared to dream.

So if you’re a fan of the show, sit back and be entertained on Saturday night and let your thoughts drift to your own hopes and dreams and how you might go about making them real….

There was cause for optimism and indeed celebration this week in Seatown Place when a neighbouring business opened.  Riva Townhouse has opened across the street from us in the premises formerly occupied by Mizu who we were all very sad to see having to close in August of this year. We wish the new venture every success.

Quite apart from adding the welcoming aromas of freshly brewed coffee to our end of the Street it also gives us here at Counselling Connections the opportunity to reflect on the value and comfort we get from a simple cup of tea or coffee. In fact, its something we’ve made a bit of a study of!

Clients who are coming to therapy on a regular basis frequently develop a ‘therapy routine’.  This often revolves around a hot beverage or treat either before or after their weekly session. It’s not unusual for a client to arrive clutching a freshly brewed coffee. Indeed, far from discouraging this, here at Counselling Connections we have tea and coffee making facilities should anyone wish to help themselves.

Being in the business of teasing out and trying to understand psychological issues we find ourselves asking what it is about a cup of tea or coffee that seems to give so much succour.  We asked a group of people a little while back to say the first words that occurred to them when we said ‘tea’ and the responses were, ‘comfort’; ‘home’; ‘relaxing’ and ‘aaaah!’. It evokes feelings of home and of comfort, safety and relaxation.

We’re inclined to the belief that a cuppa is a ‘transitional object’ for grown ups! A transitional object is a term first used by the British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott. The best known examples of it are a comfort blanket and later a teddy bear. In a nutshell the theory goes that the object forms a comfort for a child, a transition between the child and its mother when they are apart. The child derives some of the satisfaction and comfort that is normally provided by a loving mother from the comfort blanket or other object. Among other things it is about coping with being alone. Here at Counselling Connections we are of the belief that an adult taste for a tea or coffee, especially during times of stress, is a grown up example of this childhood phenomenon.

Frothy, milky, sugary beverages like lattes, mochas and cappuccinos could easily be seen as substitutes for mother’s milk and may explain the psychological comfort and satisfaction they give above and beyond the actual physical taste and textures.

So, enjoy your tea or coffee; savour it and consider the extra comfort you can draw from being a loving mother to yourself, comforting the child within.