The first thing I would suggest is that your therapist is a member of a regulated body. It doesn't mean that they will be good, but it does mean that you have someone to complain to if they practice unethically, and that they could be removed from that regulatory body for poor practice. The main regulatory bodies in the UK are the BACP, the NCPS, and the UKCP. There is increasing expectation that therapists are Accredited with these bodies, rather than just being a member. Pe

I love the poetry of Philip Larkin, and have been re-reading his Aubade , one of the last poems he wrote towards the end of his life. Larkin's gift for poetry had left him, which caused him great distress, but it reappeared for this extraordinarily honest poem. Alan Bennett remembers this as the last time that a new poem was news. I will write it out below. It deserves to be read in all its glory. Aubade I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless

My favourite painter is Johannes Vermeer, the great Dutch artist of the 17th century. We only have 37 or so paintings that have survived and one of them is lost after being stolen. I could have written about any of Vermeer's artworks, and probably will, but I think The Geographer , which can be seen at the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt, illustrates best Vermeer's ability to summon the entire world in one painting; and I have been reflecting on Therapy's ability to do the same. V

Recently, I listened to a production of the Moomin book, Moominsummer Madness , which involves a floating theatre. There’s a quote in it that stopped me in my tracks:   ‘A theatre is the most important sort of house in the world, because that’s where people are shown what they could be if they wanted, and what they’d like to be if they dared to and what they really are.’   Tove Jansson   It made me reflect on my love of the theatre, which Tove Jansson elsewhere described as a

In the October Half Term holiday, I took my son to the Netherlands to see the Van Gogh Museum. We spend most of the time in the wonderful, child-friendly exhibition of Van Gogh's paintings of the Roulins family, who were friends with, and supported Van Gogh when he lived in Arles. Van Gogh moved to the Asylum at St Remy in May 1889, and created some of his greatest work there. He was going through a period of despair when he found out the news that his brother, Theo's wife Jo

Music can speak to the part of us that wants to survive, when we sometimes feel that the part that wishes to die is stronger.