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A piece about nourishment, possession, and the wish to matter — and how easily care can become hungry. With Sendak and the Grimm tales in the background, it traces the tension between supporting another’s growth and needing to live inside it.

When I was a child, I desperately wanted the Flower Fairies fairyland home. A girl round the corner had one. I would go to her house and play reverently, careful not to break anything. I was afraid that if I wanted it too much, or said the wrong thing, I wouldn’t be allowed to play at all. One day we went rogue. I turned up and she was mid-war with her brother. We must fight. Alongside the ears on her Care Bears collection, we cut all the hair off the fairies. We were liberat

“Lies, my boy, are known in a moment. There are two kinds of lies, lies with short legs, and lies with long noses.”— Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) A discussion has been circulating online recently about what counts as “honest” when describing one’s NHS experience. The question seemed simple: is it misleading for a clinical psychologist to write, for example, “ten years’ NHS experience” on a professional profile if only one or two of those years were post-q

In the old versions of Cinderella, before the glass slipper and the pumpkin coach were polished into Disney sheen, there is grief. The loss of a mother and the intrusion of an unchosen life. The fairytale begins with Cinderella. A girl desperately alone, unhappy, and dreaming of escape. She has been thrust into a new reality and yearns to return to normality, attend the ball, and live a more self-determined life. Perhaps even with a happily ever after. But before she can appr

Everything Can Be a Defence One thing you learn quickly in analytic work is that anything and everything can be a defence. The healthy eater, the over-eater, the atheist, the devout believer, the gender abolitionist, the gender essentialist, even the one who insists they have no ideology at all. In the analytic frame, we are not looking to categorise or judge these identities or positions as inherently healthy or pathological. What matters is not the content, but the process:

The story of Rapunzel has been passed down for centuries. From Persian epics to Italian folktales to the Grimm Brothers’ more familiar telling. But this isn’t just a bedtime story of damsels in distress and princes. It’s a symbolic tale of entrapment and longing, of psychic inheritance and separation. It’s about the architecture of captivity, and the complicated relief of release. In today’s context, particularly for newly qualified clinical psychologists navigating the NHS,

mem When the Body Won’t Stay Quiet Fairy tales say things our theories often cannot. They bypass the defended mind and speak in symbols, archetypes, and the secret language of the body. Lately I have been thinking about a lesser known fairy tale: The Singing Bone. Collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, it is not a story of heroism or redemption. But of betrayal, lies, and what happens when a group mistakes performance for truth. To me, the singing bone is not merely a met

The Overlooked Child’s Burden “It happened again,” you wrote. Another crisis—urgent, unavoidable. “There was no one else. I’m sorry for wasting your time.” I pictured you: 9 p.m., shift long over, still on your phone, fielding emails, still working. A team in crisis, and you didn’t say no. The impact still taking its toll. Your loyalty heavy. Others’ needs putting your own in shadow. Last time you’d said: “It’s about responsibility. If not me, who?” I had shrugged. Your fac

“The wish to be endlessly needed is one of the most exhausting forms of love.”—James Hillman We inhabit a care system that is fracturing—not merely from budget cuts or staff shortages, but under the weight of its own mythology. The National Health Service (NHS)—a vast, intricate weave of human effort, compassion, and suffering—transcends its role as a healthcare institution. It has become a psychological crucible, reflecting a deeper crisis: the fantasy of limitless caregivin

During life in Lockdown, I found myself watching a considerable amount of television. One story I enjoyed watching was the compelling UK television series ‘The Fall’. It tells the story of a detective superintendent's battle (both personal and professional) as she tries to investigate a serial killer who is living a family-man existence. At the heart of ‘The Fall’ story is a violent and abusive man who was sexually abused as a child. Yet he is also someone who is compelli

Growing up I loved watching old films. One story that grabbed me and never really let me go, was the 1948 movie ‘The Red Shoes’. The story follows Victoria Page, an aspiring ballerina who auditions for a world-renowned Ballet company. The director at one point asks Victoria why she wants to dance. “Why do you want to live?” Vicki replies; within this exchange it is clear that the director sees something of promise, and so invites her to study with his company. She is ambiti

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were enough princesses, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess. One evening a terrible storm c

By Dr Libby Nugent, First Published Aug 12 2021 01:26PM Recently, I have been thinking a great deal about the tale of Rumpelstiltskin. It is a story I was told regularly when I was in a Jungian analysis and I return to it often. The story of Rumpelstiltskin – albeit under a different name – is thought to be about 4,000 years old and is one of the earliest known stories in Western literature. Something about this story has stuck in our collective conscious and it is not letti

By Dr Libby Nugent, First Published Jan 4 2020 10:30AM For a short time I had a daydream about running a coffee shop. I thought I could make it a community psychology project. It would be a kind of cake and therapy combination. I took this project up with various degrees of earnestness: at one point I bought a book “setting up your own coffee bar”. I kept it by my bedside table unopened whilst I engaged in trialling various coffee making paraphernalia and eating a lot of cake

By Dr Libby Nugent, First Published Sep 1 2019 12:42PM In my therapeutic work as a clinical psychologist I have regular supervision. In fact it is a professional requirement. It is essential to my work and keeps me focussed on what is going on as well as providing me with great insight and support. One of the most valuable lessons I have been offered, over and over is this: it is not about me. This sounds obvious. I’m there to support people. It's the client who is the center

By Dr Libby Nugent, First Published Aug 15 2019 08:59AM “It is through the alignment of the body that I discovered the alignment of my mind, self, and intelligence.” B.K.S. Iyengar “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.” Carl Jung Like many other white, middle class, women, I am a fan and intermittent practitioner of yoga. There is so much structural racism in this phenomena to unpack, but if you can bear with me, I wil