Can you tell the difference between…

• A client who is experiencing a healthy release of locked up emotion, and a client who is re-traumatising themselves and reinforcing past traumas?
• Touch that loosen muscle, and touch that specifically impacts the emotional centres of the brain?
• Clients that need to connect with their breath and body, and those that might be psychologically contraindicated?
• Clients that are “going with” your touch, and those that have “gone away from” the touch?

These are four key issues for every practitioner to be confident identifying – let me explain more:

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN: a client who is experiencing a health release of locked up emotion, and a client who is re-traumatising themselves and reinforcing past traumas…

All healing walks a tight rope between what is known as a healthy release of repressed emotion and what is merely adding yet another traumatic experience to the client’s history. After more than 30 years of clinical experience I am convinced that trauma lies at the root of 80% of the reasons why clients come to see us. Many distinguished writers and psychotherapists agree with this position (Van Der Kolk, Robert Scaer, Pat Ogden, Peter Levine).

On my forthcoming Neuroscience of Touch workshop you will learn how to distinguish between the two and what to do with the client who is merely re-traumatising themselves with no therapeutic gain.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN: Touch that loosens muscle, and Touch that specifically impacts the emotional centres of the brain…

For clients to return and recommend you to their friends and family they literally need to be “touched” by you. This means using an approach to touch that validates the emotional reality of our clients as well as their physical state. Very few Massage training schools address this issue.

The Neuroscience of Touch explores exactly what touch reaches into these emotional centres so you can incorporate it into your work with great benefit for your clients.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN: Clients that need to connect with their breath and body, and those that might be psychologically contraindicated…

Touch is phenomenally powerful. It can heal but it can also destabilise our clients. Running a safe practice for both yourself and your clients means that it is vital to recognise the  signs that indicate a psychological  contraindication to touch. At the Neuroscience of Touch workshop I present a simple model that will enable you to do this.

1. How to deal with Traumatised Clients

2. How to remove traumatic triggers from your clients with just 10 minutes of touch

3. How to protect yourself from your clients’ trauma

I consider these three skills to be among the most important skills for every therapist to have and I’m committed to making learning these three skills as accessible as possible.  Fundamentally, if you wish to become a confident and successful practitioner, or want to maintain the success you already have, then you must know how to deal with all three of these. Read on to discover why…

How to deal with Traumatised Clients

This probably constitutes 90% of your clients. Working therapeutically, we are often ‘lifting’ such trauma out of the unconscious into the conscious mind and you may not even be recognising this each time it happens.

Spotting what is going on will enable you to adjust your treatments accordingly. This is the single most important reason why ’techniques’ often do not work – unremembered and unconscious trauma. Knowing what to do when it ‘lifts’ is vital to our success and credibility as therapists.

How to remove traumatic triggers from your clients – with just 10 minutes of Touch

When clients arrive traumatised or trauma erupts spontaneously from your therapeutic work, it is vital that you know how to immediately remove the triggers of that trauma. The neuroscience has shown us exactly how to do this with touch. This is a life skill that everyone needs to learn.

How to protect yourself from clients’ traumas

Burn out is almost inevitable for therapists. This is why the professional life span of most therapists is just a few years.

By learning a simple technique to clear yourself of any trauma that you have accumulated whilst working with clients you can prolong your career and learn how to stay healthy in this very demanding work.

As I said at the beginning of the article, I’m committed to making learning these skills as accessible as possible for you – which is what my Neuroscience of Touch seminars are all about. These days are relevant for you if…

• You are the sort of practitioner who likes to learn practical tools that can be used with your clients the very next day
• You wish to build up your confidence and increase your success rate with clients
• You want the latest neuroscience to empower your work with clients
• You want a face-to-face training to learn about touch and have your touch felt by real people, plus have your unique and individual questions answered by a real, live human being

You can find more information about the day including dates and locations here. Some venues are already fully booked and the dates are coming up fast – so if you want to join me to learn these vital skills, do get booked in now. I look forward to seeing you there!

We’re currently living in an age where Touch is far too often sexualised, demonised or massively discounted. There’s been a slow creep towards this point, over several centuries, and I believe we are a hair’s breadth away from losing touch (no pun intended) with the incredible therapeutic power of the whole range of Touch, from the deepest to the lightest. To me this is devastating.

Ironically, the recent advances in neuroscientific research are just beginning to catch up with what Touch Therapists have seen time and again in their treatment rooms. Powerful healing reactions from clients can now be seen in the context of scientific understanding of the brain. And with that, I believe we have a real chance to reclaim Touch and bring it back to the very heart of a thriving, connected and creative approach to the wellbeing of ourselves – and the planet.

It has taken decades of research to reach this point (both within the more mainstream arena, and by Touch research pioneers such as Dr Tiffany Field) and I have spent months finding, comprehending and contextualising this academic research to extract the key elements which will be most effective, most quickly, to bring an added dimension to clinical health and wellbeing professionals – whether already using Touch in their work or not.

To me a fundamental element of this new shift, this new unified theory of healing, is that it is shared and used by a community of people who have had the opportunity to understand the information, ask questions about it, talk about it with their peers, put it into practice within a safe training environment and feel confident taking it back to their essential work with clients. Your essential work with clients. Which is why my first step is to invite you to my Neuroscience of Touch seminar. Here you will have a chance to do all those things with professionals from your region and to truly understand how we can bring Touch back into centre stage as the integral part of human survival and thriving that it truly is. I hope you can join us.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my recently announced Neuroscience of Touch seminar (running across the country, in Morecambe, London, Exeter, Birmingham & Glasgow) so below you’ll find further details – if you’ve still got questions, do get in touch or to get booked in, click here. Hope to see you there! Gerry

WHO IS THIS DAY USEFUL FOR?

If you work with touch or with traumatised clients then this day will enable you to see the role that psychologically informed touch can provide in your work.

If you already do Massage or Bodywork, this day explains just how touch affects the brain of our clients and how this can help us to understand so many of our clents’ different reactions.It will also give you the  tools to deal with any ‘live’ psychological trauma reactions your clients may have to touch.

If you do not currently use touch in your work, then this day will give you new insights into the new role that simple and safe touch can play in the treatment of traumatised clients. You will learn the tools to remove traumatic triggers from your clients in less than 7 minutes.

OVERALL APPROACH OF THE DAY:

This day consists of presentation, group discussions, demonstrations and practical exercises. Certificates of Attendance will be issued at the end of the day.

If you’ve spent the past couple of weeks reading up and reflecting on whether THE KNOWLEDGE is for you, you need to make a decision now.  It’s coming up to crunch time – and this video is designed to help you decide.
My mental health spectrum (that I refer to in this video) is well worth a look if you haven’t already seen it. Click here to access it 

And if you want to get booked in now is the time to act – while the price is still less than HALF what it will be on January 1st – which means you can still save over £1200 if you book now. This is a unique launch year offer and will never be repeated again.

What if there was a “toolkit” for life and it had three key compartments? What if it really was as simple as A, B, C:

• Awareness
• Boundaries, and
• Connection

Learn more about my reasoning behind these three compartments – and how they might help you make more sense of your own life.

This cartoon highlights a well researched topic: positive thinking.

Numerous studies have been done that highlight the negative impact that ‘forcing’ ourselves to think positive can have on our health and lives. A good book to read on this subject (written by a psychologist) which covers the research on this is Julie Norem’s The Positive Power of negative Thinking. The actual well researched truth is that thinking positively only works if you are already predisposed to feeling and thinking positively!

But doesn’t that mean that positive thinking only works for those people who don’t need it?

The good news is that the reason for us having a negative response to positive thinking is actually very simple and has been well known by Transactional Analysis psychotherapists for over 60 years. It’s called LIFE SCRIPT.

We now know that if there is a LIFE SCRIPT belief which contradicts the positive thought we wish to hold, then it is actually held somewhere deep in our unconscious mind. We may not even know about this contradiction. We only get to know about it when we find ourselves right back again in the “same old, same old.” This is because…

Embedded in our MASSIVE unconscious mind is a contradictory idea that simply won’t go away, no matter how often our tiny conscious mind tries to suggest otherwise. It is like a mouse trying to push an Elephant out of the room….

This is why sometimes, ‘positive thinking’ can actually make us worse – as this cartoon suggests! The more we ‘push’ at an idea that conflicts with our life script, the more our unconscious actually has to resist it. One study showed that some of the women who successfully lost weight during a weight loss programme actually harmed themselves badly after their ‘success’ at making this weight change*. This would be because of their life script. This is why we have to be INFORMED about changes we wish to make. In some cases it can even be a ‘life and death’ matter.

Although funny, the cartoon above captures this poignant human tragedy. As he doggedly continues to  push himself towards his goal of weight loss – he has given up trying anything that might work, for the absurd “One Day Diet” book – he is experiencing what I call ‘The Script Back Lash’.  This script back lash will only increase in intensity the harder he tries unless he actually understands what is going on. One look at him and we can all guess where he is actually headed…

 This is why we need to have a clear idea of just what our life script consists of so we can manoeuvre successfully through life…

After all, if you are a cab driver and you know there are roadworks in Pimlico, you can still get to your destination. You just need to know a different route, perhaps one that takes you through Victoria. This is what THE KNOWLEDGE does – helps you identify where the roadworks in your head are, and it points out a few smart alternatives so you don’t get stuck in the traffic.

“LIFE SCRIPT lies at the very heart of THE KNOWLEDGE. Identifying the key features of our life script and learning ways to ‘drive around it’ actually begin on day one and then continues throughout the training programme.  You simply cannot learn this material in a book, on a video, alone or even quickly. Anyone who tells you otherwise is most probably – as the cabbies would say – “‘avin’ a giraffe!”   –   Gerry Pyves

(* described in:  Bessel Van Der Kolk (2014) “The Body Keeps The Score”)

Getting a new job can take months, even years.

Getting greater clarity about what you are bringing to your existing work that could be creating the problem in the first place can change your work situation overnight! This is because the only things in your control are your thoughts, feelings and behaviour.But with a little understanding, these can all change instantly!This drawing of mine shows how unlikely it is that we ever really see ‘the full picture’:

In truth, we only allow ourselves to ‘see’ that which fits into our LIFE SCRIPT. If my life script only allows me to see myself as a bad person, then no matter how many people tell me how much they value my help (green, black and blue), I only see the ‘red’ colour because that was someone who complained about something I did.

This idea that we filter out anything that does not fit into our scripts was first developed by a psychotherapist called Jacqui Schiff when she coined the phrase “Frame of reference”. Our frame of reference protects us from anything that does not fit in with our life script. The frame of reference in this drawing is actually represented by the ‘script’ glasses which have a red filter that only lets in ‘red’ light.

Only by seeing ‘the full picture’ can we truly see what we are bringing to a situation and how we can change that. In order to see this full picture we need to know what it is that we are ‘filtering out’. This is why learning about LIFE SCRIPTS in general and about our own particular life script in particular is vital for succeeding in life.

In the example above, if I do not believe I am a good person, I  may overwork to ‘prove’ my value to those around me and end up getting ill with exhaustion. With this knowledge of my life script, instead of complaining that I am a ‘victim to an impossible job,’ I am able instead to monitor my work load very carefully. Instead of complaining to my colleagues, I am able to get support from them by explaining this pattern to them. I can use their ‘reality’ to check out my own and discuss my work load and schedule with them.They are only too happy to point out that it is not necessary to “work my fingers to the bone” and to advise me on changes I need to make to my diary. 

Nothing actually changed in my work situation, but my work situation changed completely!

“The ‘Frame of Reference’ is just one aspect of the psychological model we call LIFE SCRIPT in Transactional Analysis. In truth, this one idea of life script permeates ALL of the other ELEVEN models that I teach on my psycho-educational programme, THE KNOWLEDGE. We use all of the other models to help discover just what the key components of our life scripts are. Once we have this information it is relatively easy to make changes that enable us to succeed in life.”    –   Gerry Pyves

Understanding just what can go wrong at work can make a massive difference to our success in life.

Learning the core psychological models that explain just what goes wrong at work can give us ‘the edge’ that we all need in order to succeed. These models can actually help us to ‘sidestep’ potential disasters before they even happen and find effective ways to make a difference. This is what enables you to build the type of reputation that means people take more notice of you and what you are doing, and recommend you to others. In other words, it can be the difference between success and failure.

This cartoon specifically refers to the psychological model of The Stroke Economy that was first described by Claude Steiner  – a psychiatrist who was one of the early pioneers of Transactional Analysis (TA). The Stroke Economy is now one of the most well used and well proven psychological models that can be found anywhere in the world – with over 20,000 business consultants, educational experts and therapists using it.

The Stroke Economy explains how each of us needs a certain level of stimulus in order for us to thrive in life. A ‘stroke’ simply means that we have either given or received ‘a unit of recognition’. These ‘units of recognition’ can be given in ways that are both positive and negative – as shown vividly and dramatically above!

However, The Stroke Economy is actually about the many different ways that strokes are given and received and why some strokes will work for some people and not for others. Learning that there are in fact SIXTEEN different types of stroke (positive and negative being only two types) and the different impact that each of these sixteen strokes can have on our clients, colleagues, employees and superiors is actually vital information that we all need if we wish to succeed in our work.

“This ‘Stroke Economy’ is just one of TWELVE different psychological  models that are taught on my psycho-educational programme, THE KNOWLEDGE. Each and every single one of them is as important as the ‘Stroke Economy’, for understanding and changing what goes on at our work. I believe that learning this information is one of the most effective ways in which we can all succeed more. It really should have been taught to us all at school!”    –   Gerry Pyves

UNDERSTANDING IS THE KEY…

One of the biggest problems I have with ‘lofty’ concepts and ‘spiritual’ ideas is that I am left wondering how any of them change the way I actually “butter my bread.” Don’t get me wrong – I love the great feelings that these ideas can generate within me when I read them or hear them.

However, at root, I guess I believe I am a ‘doing’ kind of a guy. I believe that good ideas should change the way we are with others and the way we do what we do. In other words, great sounding ideas and important concepts are really only significant if they have a beneficial impact on the world we live in. A really good idea will change the way I do the next thing I am planning on doing, or the way I talk to the next person I meet. This is how we make the world a better place. Unless this happens, then frankly, such spiritual sounding ideas are just ‘hot air’ to me.

So in this video, I talk about how easy it is to think that all that we need in order to be content or fulfilled or happy lies “out there.” This materialistic approach to personal growth and happiness is certainly what the advertisers would have us all believe. Judging by much of what I read on social media, even the famous ‘Law of Attraction’ has been contaminated by the idea that I must “attract” to me the things I need for my happiness from “out there.” All of which suggests that the core psychological belief that many of us are operating from contains strong elements of “I am not enough.”

Of course the simple truth is that we are enough within ourselves. But then how does this profound idea – that we are enough just as we are right now – translate into everyday life? As nice as the idea “I am enough” sounds, if we wish to “butter bread” with this idea, then the first thing that needs to happen is I need to understand just how come I have spent so much of my life believing that I was “not enough.” This means only one thing…I must stop looking “out there” and instead, look within.

To me, looking within means UNDERSTANDING who I am and how I came to be who I am and why I am the way that I am. We cannot truly accept ourselves if we do not know “who” it is that we are accepting. Without this understanding, our self acceptance can simply become an empty exercise where we just mouth hopeful platitudes. No amount of positive thinking will actually change this – our unconscious is way too smart for that!

The models that the psychological professionals have developed over the last 200 years enable us to truly incorporate a good idea into our everyday behaviour. This is why I created my psycho-educational programme, THE KNOWLEDGE – to provide this necessary psychological information for those of you who wish to truly “butter bread” with all these great ideas.

There is much debate about the value or accuracy of much psychiatric diagnosis and labelling as expressed in the doctor’s mental health ‘bible’ of the DSM V  (this is the fifth version of the American Psychiatric Association’s ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’.) These are my reflections.

LACK OF CAUSATION

Many psychological professionals now regard DSM V as simply a list of observable symptoms – so that if you have enough of them, you can then be labelled and funded to be given the correct regime of drugs. The DSM V is an attempt to bring the scientific accuracy used for physical medicine into the realm of mental illness.

It should be noted that the DSM V is only the view of one particular Psychiatric Association and one that relies heavily on the approach of Psychopharmacology – the use of drugs to address psychological problems. However, Psychopharmacology is only one of only three approaches to mental health. The other two can be summarised as Psychotherapy (or the talking therapies) and Somatotherapy (the body based therapies).

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 66%?

As far as Psychopharmacology and the DSM V goes, the idea that our unique and complex emotional and psychological histories can all be treated by simply swallowing a pill has been disproved by the sheer numbers of people still walking around with unresolved mental health problems. Without doubt Psychopharmacology is a valuable tool for some people, at some points in their mental health – but it is not a cure-all. The mistaken belief that we can solve everyone’s emotional and psychological issues by swallowing a pill is seductive – but simply not true.

NOT AN ILLNESS OR ‘DISEASE’

What is clear is that, over the last 30 years, the discoveries of neuroscience have shown conclusively that DSM V diagnoses bear no resemblance to any observable patterns of brain activity.

What neuroscience has noticed in that time is that the impact of early trauma repeatedly shows the same structurally visible brain pattern changes across a wide range of individuals and a very similar cluster of symptoms. This is directly correlated with a reduction in our ability to cope with everyday life and a lowering of our resilience to trauma later in life.

This means that much so-called mental health ‘diagnosis’ may have simply missed the key point – that all our difficulties have their source in the effects on our brains from early or later trauma*. This now makes the treatment of trauma the most important activity of our times – for everyone’s mental health. It also means that using the ‘disease model’ for mental problems is outdated and more or less disproved. Not a single ‘disease’ has been found despite decades of brain scanning!

MODELS THAT WORK

Encouragingly, neuroscience has also shown that for the vast majority of problems, the human brain can mend itself from within far more effectively than from chemical interventions from without. Interestingly, psychologically focused SOMATIC therapies have been proving themselves to be highly effective in helping people resolve and heal their mental health problems long term. This is being done through some very simple ‘re-wiring’ of our neural connections through a combination of both somatic and psychological interventions. This is in striking contrast to the drug dependency (often life-long ) created by the Psychopharmacological approach.

For the vast majority of us, these drugs neither build our long term resilience nor are most of them necessary for our long term mental health. Many of them can in fact be damaging and harmful.

A VERY good book to read… 

This excellent book lifts the lid on the ‘insanity’ of continuing to use the outdated and scientifically discredited ‘disease model’ for mental illness. This book also suggests that soothing touch based therapies (like NO HANDS Massage) can have a massive impact on healing trauma.

WHO AM I TO COMMENT?

Health and wellbeing has been my career and my life for over 3 decades – first as a Massage therapist, then a Psychotherapist and now as a trainer and supervisor of other therapists. I’ve learnt many lessons along the way – among them, that one size certainly doesn’t fit all. Another lesson is the immense power of psycho-education for genuine personal empowerment.

Each of the three approaches to mental health has its place – but none deserves to be lauded over the others to the extent that Psychopharmacology has been. My passion now lies in bringing together proven and effective tools from Psychotherapy and Somatotherapy and creating a supportive community for health and growth through THE KNOWLEDGE.

*This is the reason why the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCSTN) in America is now running trials on a new and simple diagnosis coined ‘Developmental Trauma Disorder’ (DTD) that could encompass 80% of so called DSM V ‘mental health disorders’. Such a ‘causative diagnosis’ could pave the way for a significant increase in Government funding for both psychotherapeutic and somatotherapeutic approaches.

Being Human is not always as easy as we think!  You might even be quite surprised to discover just where ‘normal’ sits on my unique Mental Health Spectrum – check it out!

Understanding just how to manage the various drives and impulses that can surge through our whole being should not just be left to ’trial and error’.

Since the time of Freud, psychologists and mental health professionals have been working away at precisely this question – “What does BEING HUMAN really mean?” Although their answers may have differed in the detail and even in their reasoning, certain core essentials have emerged and re-emerged again and again.

One of the key ideas is that we all tend to follow certain patterns of behaviour, thinking and feeling in response to certain situations or stimuli. Some call this ‘compulsions’ and some call it ‘narrative’. In Transactional Analysis we call this ‘Life Script’.

Almost all psychological professionals agree that much of this script is written by the age of THREE! This means that most of us are victims to the lottery of the previous generations of our family – the only ‘school’ we had at that age. So the big question there is, “how well did that turn out for them?”

All of which means that if we want to ‘update’ this narrative, then we need to do something really smart. This is because we are dealing here with the immense power of our UNCONSCIOUS mind. Whilst we can make some changes through sheer grit and determination, the sad truth is that for the really important issues of Health, Relationships and Work it is more often a case of “one step forward and two steps back” as far as our unconscious goes.

So you can probably see how changing this script narrative really should not be left to random chance. So who knows this information? The answer of course is the psychological professionals – but they tend to only be available for people who are in serious difficulties with their mental health.

This is the reason why I created my psycho-educational programme called THE KNOWLEDGE. Unless we want to be a victim of our family history, then we need to access the last 200 years of psychological research and clinical understanding in order to make the most of our lives. This knowledge is well known to psychological professionals, but I believe we ALL need this to function at our very best in life.

The reality is that many of us in the helping professions or in leadership roles need this knowledge – for ourselves! The stresses and strains of leadership and working in the helping professions are enormous. In addition, the more we can understand what works and WHY it works, the more impact we can have on others.

I regard Eric Berne (the founder of Transactional Analysis) as ‘The Einstein of psychotherapy’ because he was able to take the most important ideas that he had come across in forty years of study and clinical experience as a psychotherapist and then…

COMMUNICATE THEM TO THE REST OF US IN A SIMPLE PICTURE OR DIAGRAM

How many of us have found ourselves sabotaging our health, our relationships or our jobs by behaving like a young child? In fact neuroscience and psychology is now confirming that most of our decisions are actually made UNCONSCIOUSLY.

The problem with this is that it is our Child Ego State that largely ‘rules the roost’ of our unconscious through what we call THE LIFE SCRIPT.  In fact,  Berne went even further by writing that this Child Ego State is in fact “The Emperor of life itself”.

By this he meant that it is precisely this part of the human psyche that decides that the insanity of war is a ‘good idea’, or that makes politicians decide that the interests of the self over-rule the needs of society, or that means we say “No” when we really should be saying “Yes”.

If you want to see this Child Ego State in action, simply listen to the whining child-like voice of Donald Trump and then examine the track history of the many crooks and charlatans he has surrounded himself with as his closest advisors

The power of this Child Ego State to rule our lives is why I decided to put this cartoon on the front of my book, BEING HUMAN.  Learning how to understand and influence this Child Ego State  is precisely why I wrote this book and created THE KNOWLEDGE – to help give you greater agency and control over your life and the direction you are heading in. Click here to find out more

It is well accepted that we need to exercise and eat well to keep our bodies fit, but do you ever wonder what you should be doing to take your mental health more seriously?

• Ever wondered about the state of your mental health? Ever wondered if you are just dealing with the normal ups and downs of everyday stress or you are perhaps a ‘bit crazy’?
• Did you know that most ‘physical’ problems and many chronic illnesses can be simple manifestations of an imbalance in your mental and emotional state?
• Did you know that most so-called mental ‘illness’ is simply the result of early (and often long forgotten) trauma?
• Did you know that recent neuroscience has discovered how this trauma can be effectively dealt with through a combination of simple bodywork and psychological techniques?

This innovative mental HEALTH spectrum is designed to help you place yourself accurately across the spectrum of mental health from ‘dysfunctional’ to ‘healthy’.

Click to download the Mental HEALTH Spectrum

Use the complete spectrum to assess whether or not there could be value in learning more about what makes you ‘tick’ and how to take greater charge of your physical, emotional and mental health. Simply circle the number in the top section that seems to fit best overall as an ‘aggregate’ of your current situation.

Did you know?

300,000 people leave their jobs each year due to mental health issues

Mental health issues lose the UK economy £99 BILLION per year

A recent BBC news article highlights the massive cost to our economy of brushing mental health issues under the carpet.

Even more importantly, it highlights the personal suffering and pain to so many people through not understanding how to keep our mental health stable and how to maintain our resilience.

What the world needs right now is people who understand  this information through THE KNOWLEDGE.

Be the change you want to see in the world!

Click for more details on Gerry’s year-long training, THE KNOWLEDGE – a course that puts you in control and gives you the tools to improve your own mental health, as well as those around you

There are loads of vlogs, blogs, articles and discussions about what you might want to change – but here I look at the way we change and our need to understand how this works.

Is it really “one size fits all”? Hardly!

One of the most common reasons we fail to make the changes we want to our lives is simply a lack of accurate information. Very often, the map we are following is only a fragment of the full map. Once we get hold of the full map and work out where we are, it is easy to get to our destination.

This is why I  created the unique Mental Health Spectrum – so you can assess just where you are on this spectrum of mental health, resilience and success and see how THE KNOWLEDGE can help you travel to where you want to be in your life.

Imagine trying to drive from London to Paris with just a map of Camden Town. Actually, you could spend years trying to even reach the channel!

If you really want to support yourself in making effective change, Gerry’s new programme, THE KNOWLEDGE, offers you a map that has been built up, bit by bit, by qualified and experienced psychological professionals over the last 200 years. Until now, most of it has only been made available to the professionals – Gerry aims to change that…

Gerry has been active as both a clinician and trainer for the past 30 years – but ultimately the value of training is always best described by participants. We’ll let the students speak for themselves:

I valued Gerry’s time and energy to listen to our questions and the space and thought he gave to each of us to answer our questions. I found it fascinating and enjoyed Gerry’s approach which was welcoming, encouraging and made me feel very comfortable. Rachel Wayte 

The biggest value for me is how practical and easy it is to translate the theory into my life. Obviously it will be difficult to untangle the puzzle of my mind but I feel I have useful tools to help me do so. I feel empowered.  Jana Dosoudilova

I have realised so very much about myself, it’s very exciting. I have loved the group support which I felt from everyone! I’m fascinated to learn more about how I can recover AUTONOMY. Michelle Doughty 

I really valued the interaction in small groups looking at different views, how I can use it in everyday life and the lightbulb moments on recognising my own patterns. I also enjoyed the  structure of how one subject easily led to another to reinforce my understanding. Karen Godfrey

Being able to look at my own life and how TA can explain, and help, my journey and ongoing development (like why I feel so stuck right now). I valued being able to ask in-depth questions which clarified my learning. Your warmth and great amount of knowledge was really helpful and useful. PS I’ll definitely be back to learn more.  Emmy Yeadon

The models were kept simple with valuable exercises that allowed everyone to walk through the content and bring it to life. The pace was great and the breaks were valuable in further exploring ideas with the group. Shared group experiences stretched my thinking. It was a really safe environment and your training was high energy and engaging. Keeping it fun helped people to keep interactive and learning. Sarah Bean   

I was not sure what to expect from this course, I just knew that it intrigued me! At first, flicking through the folder I found it daunting and wondered if I would be able to understand it all, but Gerry’s humour and slow pace and extensive explanation made it all unfold beautifully. I found myself bouncing through internal emotions and discoveries all along the way. For me it has very much been a “journey” and I feel will continue to be for many years to come. I now need to process and re-read information and put it into practice! Miranda Davis

I enjoyed the energy and didn’t feel as if I was learning some “stuffy” info. It felt fresh and new. I valued how we could talk about transferring our learning to both work and personal lives. I look forward to the next few weeks…changing script behaviours & beliefs. I felt safe and comfortable. Kate Schaeffer

I valued the honest and open communication about topics that were at times personal, confusing, disturbing and illuminating. The subjects were very emotive but were handled in a supportive and safe way. Sara Renyard

Click for more details on Gerry’s year-long training, THE KNOWLEDGE