Claire Firth
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clairefirth.bsky.social
Claire Firth
@clairefirth.bsky.social
Bird enthusiast, mum, fascinated by the mind in all its complexity, always curious. PG Dip Psychotherapy student at Leeds Beckett University. She/her
Hi folks, my conversation with Psychotherapist Tom Welch is now on Substack - open.substack.com/pub/clairefi...
A chat with Psychotherapist Tom Welch
As a trainee therapist, I am keen to engage with psychotherapists to explore what informs their practice, how their life experiences have shaped them & what it’s like to be actively working in the fie...
open.substack.com
November 27, 2025 at 10:59 AM
“After all research on psychotherapy is accounted for, psychotherapy still resolves itself into a relationship best subsumed by the word love”
- Arthur Burton (1967)

#psychotherapy #humanisticpsychology
October 6, 2025 at 3:43 PM
“Phenomenological investigation demonstrates that, once our sedimented outlook is ‘opened up’, numerous perceptual possibilities become available which can be repeatedly turned to for experiential verification” - E. Spinelli

#ErnestoSpinelli #existentialpsychotherapy
October 2, 2025 at 7:58 PM
“Be thoughtful, of course, but be courageous. If you have any anxiety when you’re practicing, that’s good...Take risks. If you’re never afraid and you’re just offering soothing, comforting things you’re probably not giving the person everything that person really needs.”
#KarenMaroda #psychotherapy
October 2, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Claire Firth
He who does not read, at 70 years will have lived only one life, his own! He who reads, will have lived 5000 years: He was there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia, when Leopardi admired infinity... Because “Reading is backward immortality”.
-Umberto Eco
writingforwellbeing.co.uk
#books
September 30, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Included in this episode, the Jungian Analysts discuss how empathy is sometimes overused to avoid conflict in a therapist & client context, & that it can be important to allow a conflict to happen for the possibility of growth to occur from the strife.
#KarenMaroda
open.spotify.com/episode/0DBn...
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF STRIFE: What Lies Beneath Our Conflicts?
open.spotify.com
September 30, 2025 at 1:33 PM
‘Chaos is full of paradox. Its own character is ambiguous & contradictory; nature can be both deterministic & unpredictable. Randomness & structure can co-exist. Simplicity & complexity are not mutually exclusive concepts; instead, they exist in a state of tension’.

#ChrysaPlymaki #existentialism
September 15, 2025 at 5:59 PM
‘If we believe that the “Oedipus Complex” implies only that little boys want to kill the man they know is their father & marry the woman they know is their mother, then our understanding is based on an extreme simplification of the myth’

Freud And Man’s Soul -Bettelheim
#OedipusComplex #TheSphinx
July 21, 2025 at 3:47 PM
‘The aim of therapy is not primarily to achieve specific ‘’insights’’ into oneself or one’s past…but to develop the capacity or function for self-awareness: to identify feelings, thoughts & impulses, to put them into words’
Jeremy Holmes - The Search for the Secure Base
#Attachment #Psychotherapy
July 10, 2025 at 11:00 AM
The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings….this freedom cannot be achieved if the childhood roots are cut off’

Alice Miller - The Drama Of Being A Child
#depthpsyhology
#DrAliceMillerPsychologist
June 28, 2025 at 4:58 PM
‘I distinguish between ego & the self, since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious. In this sense the self would be an ideal entity which embraces the ego’
Jung 1926
#Jung #depthpsychology #psychotherapy
June 27, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Really grateful to @k8lister.bsky.social & Emily Van Dyne for shedding light on Sylvia Plath’s complex & creative life, & for challenging presumed narratives about her, thank you!

#SylviaPlath #BetwixtTheSheets
June 19, 2025 at 10:42 AM
In this episode the Jungian Analysts explore differences with thoughts & feelings, & how being stuck in a complex can distort an individual’s thinking

#ThisJungianLife #CarlJung
#depthpsychology

open.spotify.com/episode/7vpk...
IDENTITY CRISIS: When Our Story Falls Apart
This Jungian Life Podcast · Episode
open.spotify.com
June 19, 2025 at 9:31 AM
I definitely haven’t seen as many Swifts this year….time for some Swift brick action 👇
Swifts’ decline: how can Britons help these remarkable birds?
Campaigners are calling for compulsory ‘swift bricks’ in new homes to provide nesting sites
www.theguardian.com
June 17, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Claire Firth
Birds
June 3, 2025 at 1:07 PM
‘Only ‘’children & fools’’ tell the truth, since their persona has not developed to the degree expected by society’

Shame & The Origins of Self-Esteem by Mario Jacoby offers detailed insights on how shame fundamentally affects an individual’s sense of self & perspective
#psychotherapy #Jung
June 5, 2025 at 4:05 PM
‘We may be familiar with our acceptable qualities, but literature can help us to accept aspects of our personalities that it can be very hard to bear on our own’

Kate Barrows - Ideas in Psychoanalysis: Envy

#psychoanalysis
#depthpsychology
June 2, 2025 at 5:57 PM
What a wonderful idiom!
June 2, 2025 at 1:28 PM
‘A good therapeutic outcome is a person’s sense of humour improving’ - Peter Fonagy

In this episode Peter Fonagy touches on the roots of MBT & how this evolved in working with individuals with BPD
#mentalisationbasedtherapy
#psychotherapy
#BerlinPsychoanalytic

open.spotify.com/episode/2vrT...
Interview with Peter Fonagy
Berlin Psychoanalytic · Episode
open.spotify.com
May 28, 2025 at 3:24 PM
‘The crumbling of the false self occurs through awareness of its manifestations, not through the substitution of some underlying “truer” personality’

Mark Epstein - Thoughts Without A Thinker

#psychotherapy #depthpsychology
May 28, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Claire Firth
📢 We need your help to monitor Nightjar for the Heathland Birds Survey! Find a priority site near you ➡️ www.bto.org/heathlan... #Ornithology #UKBirding

A huge thank you to all volunteers participating in this project!

📷 Nightjar by Mike Toms
May 17, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Facing Rejection explores the concept of reclaiming & integrating denied parts of the unconscious mind

#CarlGustavJung #CarlJung #depthpsychology

open.spotify.com/episode/27ZM...
FACING REJECTION
This Jungian Life Podcast · Episode
open.spotify.com
May 23, 2025 at 4:11 PM