Peninsular Psychology

At Peninsular Psychology, Umina we are dedicated to providing psychological counselling services of the highest quality. Psychologists at Peninsular Psychology are all specialists with post-graduate training in their field of psychology.

Our psychologists are continually improving their knowledge and keep their training up to date. They use only treatments that are based on sound research.

To make an appointment call ph. 02 4344 3594 and let our friendly staff assist you. Alternatively ask your GP about the Better Outcomes in Mental Health and a referral.

Peninsular Clinical & Forensic Psychology BLOG

See http://peninsularpsychology.blogspot.com/

consequences of childhood sexual abuse 06/05/2012

a recent interesting client...She presented about six sessions ago and spoke about sexual contact she had had with her older step brother when she was a child. The contact was not well defined, not well recalled and never spoken about before. It seems to have been made up of hand-genital contact and some oral sex.

The lovely woman wondered and worried about the limits of this contact and about the possibility of other more confronting "memories" yet to be "discovered." She was also curious about the connection between her childhood sexual abuse and her adult sexual interest. She, as an adult, had become dependent on alcohol or drugs to have sex with her husband of thirty years.

She had a belief when she began therapy that she just needed to disclose the abuse and then it would all be fixed. of course this didn't happen. She spoke about the early sexual contact and constructed the disconnected bits of memory into a narrative, yet she still felt that she needed to have a drink or joint on "sex nights." other nights she, with relief, has no need of alcohol or drugs.

so she needed to understand the connection. she needed to understand that the connection is very strong but travels through a couple of other factors along the way. her abuse does affect her adult sex life but via her adolescence. It turns out that she from the very first time needed to drink or smoke to have sex because of her horror and disgust with sex. As a teenager she reached for alcohol because she felt so sick about her childhood experiences. She never had sex straight. never. so in a sense she set up a "superstition" that she could only have sex drug or alcohol affected. She has developed some OCD-type beliefs that she it is the alcohol that enables sexual contact, without it she panics and avoids. Just like someone who needs to wear a green and red sock to win at soccer or someone who must clap three times before entering a room. she has never done it without so she never checks if her superstition is true. Thirty years is a a long time to do the same thing every time.

So yes her abuse did "cause" her adult sexual behavior but indirectly. More ...

"Road Rage" 13/04/2012

I've just read an interesting article published in "Psychiatry, Psychology and Law" the journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. It is written by Carroll, Davidson and Ogliff all associated with Monash University. It is called, "Characteristics of Perpetrators of Serious Violence on the Roads." (It is amazing how psychology can make interesting sound so boring).

Anyway questions behind the paper are actually very interesting. The paper looks at whether or not the people who are violent behind the wheel of a car, are different from people who are generally violent. I suspect that many of us believe that driving behavior is somehow more excusable and somehow different from our every day lives.

The study looked at people who had been convicted of a violent act while driving and compared them with people who had been convicted of a violence not driving. Both groups did not know their victims. Their age, education, gender, marital status, mental health history, and criminal history were all compared.

According to the article, "The key finding of this study is that there were no major differences between the demographic, criminological and psychiatric characteristics of road violence in general. Thus, the data were consistent with the hypothesis that the characteristics of road violence offenders do not differ significantly from those of other violent offenders who are aggressive against strangers. Overwhelmingly, the offenders in both groups were young unmarried men although there were slightly more non-anglo-celtic driving offenders. Most of both groups had prior violent and non-violent offences recorded and equally small numbers had completed secondary education. A small but equal number of offenders had a psychiatric history.

So what are the implications of the research? I guess the first that sprang to mind for me is that we need to face that our behavior is fairly consistent across situations. if we are aggressive while driving we are probably aggressive at home. It must be said, though, that this study only looked at serious offences that lead to conviction so generalisations to "the normal" end must be made carefully.

The other implication discussed by the authors is that it is no good changing road conditions to get more peaceable driving. You cant expect that everyone will play nice if we make the roads easier to negotiate or we just take the driver's licence away. They are likely to violent anyway.

Isn't psychology just fascinating? More ...

Unintended Consequences 02/04/2012

it has been a while...about four weeks i think. I have been a little gun shy about the whole blog thing because for the first time writing the blog has caused a problem rather than just writing about a problem. never in a million years would i have predicted (stupid i know) that writing about one person would have had a negative impact on another. i had written in the hope that others would be inspired and encouraged. I had written in the hope that i could also teach a little and share some experiences. i am so very sad that writing about one person would make another feel unloved and unsupported. It has taken this long to write because that last thing i want is to cause further sadness. please world (and all my clients) know that my intentions are always good. I only ever want to help.

Next post will about another success along the way... More ...

how people fall through the cracks II 08/03/2012

fantastic!!! She came back today with books bought and pages completed. goes to show what a bit of support can do. The books she bought provided great teaching pages but she still required a bit of additional support, just to push through the pain and discomfort and to understand some of the more difficult language. But it is looking good - like we can do something good! More ...

how people fall through the cracks 05/03/2012

another story about education (kindof). I have a beautiful sixteen year old client. She is open, smiley and obviously bright. She is a little "quirky" and i refer to her as my flower pot because she radiates like a bunch of chaotic, wild flowers. Her childhood unfortunately was dreadful. Her heroin addicted father was a self harmer - often in front of his child. her mother was abused as a child and so has few coping skills of her own, somehow making her sixteen year old responsible for the family's emotional well being.

Hardly surprising, my client was bullied through late primary school and early high school. She became so traumatised by life that self harming and then suicide attempts seemed a reasonable option. By the time i met her things were pretty dire indeed.

Today we sat down to work through an application for year ten by distance education. A certain level of mathematical ability is required for the application form. Her knowledge of mathematics stopped at year four. This is when maths stops being just addition and subtraction and moves into decimals and fractions. How in gods name did this happen? how did a child manage to learn so little and no one seem to be able to do anything about it? She is so overwhelmed and embarrassed that she refuses to acknowledge that she knows anything at all. She reverts to a humiliated twelve year old who just looks out the window. Catching up that much missed mathematics is not easy. But it is in a way the missing bit. she is off today to buy herself (with borrowed money) a text book and hopefully with a lot of encouragement, faith and determination she will relearn enough to start year ten maths. what a project! More ...

its really us (the parents) who need the training 10/02/2012

my beautiful 12 year old has just started high school. oh my god what a transition! a lot like starting school in kinder, no one could prepare us for the change we would have to manage. i use "us" advisedly. while it is, i know, huge for him it is also huge for the mummy getting him there and supporting this big change. he it is true is managing text books, a locker, real homework daily, attending meetings, remembering things, a diary, new friends, new serious uniform and a school bus for the first time. school starts an hour earlier than it did last year. everything he thought he knew about school is different. the poor little thing is worried his brain will explode.

but we need the training too. we need to manage the kids to get them off in the morning without screaming and crying. we need to work calmly on a new routine. we need to maybe get up a little earlier, give them more responsibility and let them do whatever they are capable of doing. we need to train ourselves to better manage uniform, to manage homework and to supervise social media use. surviving this transition is an achievement for all of us. More ...

the decline of violence 27/01/2012

I have just begun reading a fascinating book with a bit of crappy (or at least obscure) title. it is "The better angels of our nature" by a Harvard Cognitive Psychologist, Steven Pinker. This book examines the (for many people) surprising observation that from a historical perspective violence has seriously and dramatically declined in our society.

This book is particularly relevant for the anxious amongst us who argue till they are blue that we live in a violent and frightening world and if it wasn't for their excessive hypervigilence we would all be murdered or raped and our children stolen.

Anyway... Professor Pinker provides considerable information to demonstrate that we in the early 21st century in western countries live extremely peaceful lives by historical standards. We are dramatically less likely to die early fro violence than in any other period of our history. he reviews the kind of violence experinced in prehistory, ancient greece and rome, in the early christian era, in the middle ages and also in early europe and america. All these times of history are demonstrated to be considerably more dangerous than today. People were very easily murdered raped and totured in these periods without much of a fuss at all. it was considered commonplace.

He spends considerable time on the "the civilising process" that he considers an important part of the change in people that have lead to the decrease in violence. He proposed that over around five hundred years from the middle ages European people learned to manage their impulses, look to long term consequences and thought about other people's thoughts and feelings. This civilising began in the aristocrats but eventually became a part of the whole society. According to Pinker the civilising process occurred because government got its act together over this time, smaller fiefdoms and baronies combined into nations that could support and organise police and military. It also occurred because commerce developed so that work was rewarded over theft and violence.

so far..so interesting... much much more to come!!

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