The #TherapistsConnect Podcast
The #TherapistsConnect Podcast
Jeremy Sachs is interviewed by Dr Peter Blundell for the #TherapistsConnect Podcast
Dr Peter Blundell (@drpeterblundell) interviews Jeremy Sachs.
Jeremy Sachs is an integrative psychotherapist and lecturer—originally from London, now based in Glasgow—specialising in trauma recovery with a deeply intersectional lens.
He's also a Narrative Exposure Therapist who has worked extensively across challenging contexts, including caring for pre-teens and adolescents with HIV, individuals experiencing homelessness, and survivors of sexual abuse across genders.
For six years, Sachs led recovery groups for male survivors of sexual abuse (including boys, trans, and non-binary individuals) at SurvivorsUK and has since continued developing inclusive therapeutic programmes.
He contributes to psychologically informed research—consulting for organisations like the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Movember, and Younger Lives—and lectures at institutions such as the Tavistock Relationships and the London Diploma in Psychosexual and Relationship Therapy.
He writes regularly for publications including BACP’s Private Practice Journal, Therapy Today, and Happiful Magazine, and sits on the BACP Research Committee. He’s also a trustee at Wellbeing Scotland, a charity providing trauma-informed support, and hosts The Trauma Talks podcast.
#TherapistsConnect is a platform for connecting therapists.
Website: www.Therapists-Connect.com
Twitter: @Therapists_C
Instagram: @TherapistsConnect
Facebook: @TherConnect
Origins of #TherapistsConnect
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Therapist Connect podcast. My name is Dr. Peter Blundell, and today I'm back interviewing therapists about their life and work. So the therapist I'm interviewing in this episode is Jeremy Sacks. Jeremy is a therapist from London but is now based in Glasgow since the 2010s. He's run services that support individuals living with trauma or marginalization, helping them to connect and find community. In 2016, he focused on developing therapy services for men, boys, and trans people who have survived sexual abuse and rape. He runs recovery groups in a private practice, both online and in person. And he is on the board of Trustees for Wellbeing Scotland and a lecturer at the Na OS Institute in London. Jeremy has a new book out called An Intersectional Guide for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Their Allies, masculinity Reconnected, which is published by Routledge, and the book aims to examine male sexual abuse through three lenses, the impact of abuse at different developmental stages, intersectionality and transformative justice. So it's a really interesting conversation with Jeremy today, and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did recording it. So Jeremy, welcome to the Therapist Connect podcast. And thanks so much for giving up your time to come and chat to some of our listeners and.
Jeremy Sachs:Oh no, it's an absolute pleasure. As you said we've sort of orbited each other and, uh, it's really nice to have the luxury of sitting down and talking to you.
Dr Peter Blundell:That's brilliant. So the question I ask everybody to start off with, and it, it kind of helps our listeners to get to know you a little bit if they haven't heard of you before. Can you tell us a little bit how you became a therapist in the first place and kind of what drew you to the profession?
Jeremy Sachs:Yeah, of course. You sent the, the questions through and I was like, I'll look at them and sort of get the answers. And I really stumbled on the first one. You know, I think there's such a temptation to, to look back and create a narrative about it.'Cause we're humans, right? We look for these patterns, but actually I really did stumble into the profession. So the choices were part accidental and part convenience and part necessity. I think I started life working on building sites and hard landscaping or and I did that for years and I think that. That sort of early experience got me very interested in people because one thing you do on building sites is you chat a lot of shit. And there were, and I was really aware, there was some chat that I really enjoyed and some chat I was just bad at, you know, it was just sort of young, queer guy working on these sort of sites and paying attention I suppose. What that does is you pay attention to other people and you pay attention to yourself in environments. So you go, well, why am, why am I interested? Why can't I get in on this con, but I can do this, and what about these other people? Why are they talking to me? But, but not, you know, so you sort of, it, I think in a roundabout way was quite informative. And while I was doing that, I was, I was also working in the arts, so I'd go from. Building site to a theater or to a gallery or something like that. And I did that for quite a few years and, and then transitioned to working in charities or health services. So I'd be running different always groups, always sort of psychosocial groups. Um, so I worked with families of men in Brixton Prison who have been deported to even Nigeria or Jamaica. I ran the UK's only HIV aware group for 10 to 12 year olds, and then a adolescent service for young people living with HIV. And then eventually ended up running for groups for a male sexual abuse charity. Um, so we developed a group work program for men for boys aged 13 and upwards, and trans and non-binary people. At that point, uh, after doing this for a long time, so I would, you know, there's not a lot of career progression in the charity sector, unfortunately. It is, it is competitive and small and, and, and, so actually the, the only way to, to do the sorts of things I was, I was doing, but I enjoyed for relational stuff was to look for either, uh, well, you either, um. Sort of get a senior management position, third sector, which I didn't want. Or you trained to be a social worker. A psychotherapist. A counselor, you know, so it, it, it sort of felt like, okay, if I want to take this further then that was the slightly obvious route for me at that point.
Dr Peter Blundell:Um, it sounds like you had a wealth of experience before you even went down that route, being a therapist.
Jeremy Sachs:A well, yeah, well, a wealth of falling into different things and not really having, I think I had a younger version of me always had drive, but perhaps not a direction to to drive toward, you know, so. Absolutely, building work and the arts takes some sort of drive, but also not having a, an end goal or a sense of place within either of these industries within sort of running health services going, okay, I'm enjoying this in the immediacy, but these are sectors where perhaps there isn't the progression and the safety that I wanted. So psychotherapy for for now absolutely feels like a, a, the first job that's felt like a home form.
Dr Peter Blundell:That's lovely. I was really struck by those two images of the building site and the arts and really how different they, they seem to me there's probably a lot of stereotypes coming up for me as to, to what they look like. But, um, it sounds like you felt like a bit of a uh, I dunno, distance between those, those two roles.
Jeremy Sachs:Yeah, I mean it's, I think there's, there's something isn't there and there's probably much earlier. Experiences I would've had of this, you know, sort of families immigrant backgrounds and this idea of place and how you see yourself in place and how you see others. In the place you are and how comfortable you are or how you might need to take on different adaptations in order to, to find that. So, you know, and this can always found very sound, very dramatic, but I think some of it happens on such a subtle and unconscious level. But it, it's, it was good groundwork. I think before I even knew what psychotherapy was, uh, I think there was already a sense of going, what am I, and what does this mean and what is this and what am I to it? And, and all of these really important relational questions that we ask ourselves in, in group or in one-to-one therapy.
Dr Peter Blundell:That's that's really interesting. So you told us a little bit about your career before being a therapist, but can you tell us a little bit about your career, kind of after you qualified or, or whilst you were training? Yeah,
Jeremy Sachs:of course. So group work was sort of my first love in, uh, psychotherapy and I still really value group work and, and I suppose I want to be, you know, it always gets called group therapy. I think if you were. Puritan, you would not call it group therapy. It's it, you know, I think my model is an integrative model that provides space for the sort of deep processing. That perhaps pure group psychotherapy would provide, but it also has psychoeducation. It also, uh, has, uh, psychosocial elements to it. So there's, there's quiche and tea and frisbee, you know, this sort of thing. Um, allow and play and all of these really important things. So that, that's always been my first love. And I for one-to-one therapy. I, I sort of see myself as a really, hopefully, and I increasingly at this minute, sort of shift towards this more and more relational, more and more person centered. It is nested firmly in psychodynamic understanding in theory, but all of that happens outside of the therapy room and, and in the therapy room. I think it is the relational reparative experience that I really think is important. And that can include thinking about transference, counter transference is so important to me. It's such a, a, a, a clue, you know, into, into what's happening. So a that's sort of the bedrock. I have additional training in narrative exposure therapy which is a. Short term therapeutic intervention for traumatic stress disorders. And, you know, it's, it's. It's a bit like EMDR. It's something that you can go and do quite divorced of anything. And I, I, I now don't use it as a, as a single course of therapy. I'll incorporate it into the relational therapy. I, I, so I think that's sort of the, the, hopefully gives you a sense of where I'm coming from.
Dr Peter Blundell:Yeah. No, it does. And so, where do you work then as a therapist? Are you in private practice or have you worked in other organizations?
Jeremy Sachs:Yeah, a minute. I'm in private practice, so I'm based in Glasgow. And I have a private practice both in person and online. Um. I've worked in charity sector and, uh, while training was at NHS uh, services for Morley and South London. But yeah, at the minute purely private practice, I. Took some time off. Well, not, I, I sort of went down to part-time private practice in order to write a book. See that very smooth transition to talk about that. And so, so yeah, every minute the time split between writing and, and. Yeah, private practice.
Dr Peter Blundell:That's brilliant. So, uh, my next question's obviously gonna be, can you tell us a little bit about the book?
Jeremy Sachs:Much? Thank you. It's almost like we had a discussion. Prompt me to do it. Yeah. So the, the book is, um, is, the title is an Intersectional Guide for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse and their Allies. And hopefully the, the title is, is. A, a good enough explanation to what it is. It is a book that examines the different challenges that male survivors of sexual abuse face, and it hopefully provides guidance for them as well as people who want to support them. So this could be psychotherapists, counselors, social workers, but it could also be loved ones, you know, family members, uh, husbands, wives who are supporting, the book. I hope, I mean, there's, there's not a lot of books on male survivors. There are good ones. There's, uh, victims No Longer, which is a Mike Lou book, but it's it that was written in the seventies. So I hope what this book brings, there's three different elements that I'm sort of need to practice talking about in order to sort of promote it, but I think it, it aims to look at, abuse experienced at different developmental stages. So childhood, adulthood, and adolescence. I think teenagers are often neglected in lots of you know, you e even in sort of physical health pediatrics goes from child to adult and we miss this really informative, essential developmental stage of adolescence and abuse in adolescence, particularly for boys. Is wildly confusing, disorientating and isolating. That's one of the elements. It talks about the, the intersectional element as well. There are very few books that examine what it is. The experience of sexual abuse for different types of men. And when I think about that, I think about men's lives before abuse, during abuse and after abuse. So what is it to grow up in poverty and then experience sexual abuse, and then after seek support for something that is stigmatizing and shaming. What is it? If you are a teenage boy, what is, what is the sense of ification? Particularly if you are a working class or black boy and experiencing sexually, you know, all of these different variables that impact your ability to either heal from sexual abuse or compounds trauma. Importantly, it's, it's not about saying there's a hierarchy of suffering. It's not one's worse. Another, it just says, Hey, look, different experiences, different identities will require. Different considerations when healing, and some people will struggle to find support more than others. And then the third aspect of it is a transformative justice approach which is an ideology which concerns itself around violence in society. So I often say for men, sexual abuse rarely happens in a vacuum. Transformative justice would say violence doesn't happen in a vacuum. So it concerns itself with, yes, sexual abuse, but also you know, climate justice, land ownership, domestic abuse, sex workers rights, minority, um, trauma, generational trauma, these kinds of things. Um, accountability is a big part of it, and it's rare that it, it's used in the context of men because of the patriarchy and where it sits. But actually what we, what we do know is that men who want to move on with their lives, may look to statutory services in order to help them. Now this can be the healthcare service or this can be the criminal justice system. And depending on your identity, you'll have a different relationship with these different statutory services. And actually even if you are, if you're a man who is not part of a minority, the way the criminal justice system. Mishandles evidence or stigmatizes what it is to be a man and a sexual abuse, you may not find what you need from these statutory services. So it offers transformative justice principles as a suggestion of how to heal and move on outside of systems that may. Neglect you or at worst, retraumatize you. So that, that's sort of the, the book in a, in a nutshell the subject matter is chosen by the men who I've worked with in, in groups. So each chapter reflects one of the key topics that, that male survivors are concerned with. And it's, it's, after working with hundreds of men, it's really amazing how, uh, the same topics. Come up, each group, say, okay, here we are again. This is a big topic. Set some relationships, shame, coping, strategies. Good. You know, these things come up again and again. So, i, hopefully that's concise
Dr Peter Blundell:ab Absolutely. It sounds a wonderful book. And it sounds like there's so much in there and I was wondering why you think, I possibly know what I think, but wondering why, why you think it's taken so long for kind of a book like this to kind of be, be published? It sounds like there is some good books out there, but there's not a lot.
Jeremy Sachs:Yeah. I mean, I think firstly. Women's experience of sexual violence is talked about a lot more because women face it a lot more women face a version of sexual violence on a daily basis, how impactful it is. That's, very an individualistic sort of question. But living in a patriarchal society, there's and so. A lot of the conversation and resources go towards that and rightly so. You know, I think there can be a really uncomfortable narrative of us versus them. And this doesn't get us anywhere. The reason why we are talking about men more these days is because of the work of feminist scholars and activists. You know, it's not in spite of, it's because of I think men. Have had to adapt to the patriarchy in ways in order to reduce how harmful the patriarchy is to men. And this is a systematic shutting down of emotions and feelings which is a pretty futile. Uh, I don't want to belittle it, but it's, if you push emotion down and emotion down here, it will come out somewhere else, but in order to, to fit into the patriarchy, I think men do shut down these kinds of things. I think systems of power, so religious organizations, schools, settings, where. Male survivors are disproportionately represented. They have incredible power still in this world. And all of this contributes to a, to a systemic silencing of men. You know, the, the group I used to run, the average time it took from male survivor to tell any anybody about abuse was 26 years. So 26 years before if, if telling somebody at all. Um, and then this, you know, the topic really unfolds because then there's different stigmas about abuse at different ages. If you're abused as an adult versus a child, if you're abused by a woman, what is it to be a trans man? Who's abused and had to transition, and where does the abuse sit with this and where does your gender sit with this? So, it it's ri it's a really rich tapestry of incredibly silencing and oppressive experiences. It's, that means we don't have as many resources for men.'cause it's harder, it's hard for men to talk about.
Dr Peter Blundell:And just in, in those discussion points, I just think the complexity of all of that. Mm-hmm. It sounds like, um, this book really tries to kind of get into the nuance of, of that and trying to understand how that might be experienced differently by different men.
Jeremy Sachs:Absolutely. I really hope so. I really hope so. It, it really strives to I, I say in the introduction, you know, one of the things that I think. The psychological industries perhaps have misunderstood, is that psychotherapy is framed as a return to safety. So we experience mental distress. We go to therapy, we find ways of understanding it, and we can return to a place of relative safety for so many people. They had they were born into danger, they were born into, e either relational, familial danger, systemic danger, you know, for some people will have never known safety. Before the experience of sexual abuse. So actually when we are thinking about how to work with this experience, understanding that often yes, there is the traumatic experience of sexual abuse and whether that happens as a one-time thing or systematically across a period in a man's life. And often for men, it happens multiple times with multiple perpetrators in multiple developmental stages. But even before that. Something might have happened that we see presenting in our patients or clients that you go, huh? What is this? Uh, I sort of, I don't love diagnostic language, but what is this sort of disorder that, that, maybe led to you being vulnerable for people to say, oh, I can, I can prey on this child, or, or this teenager, or this adult. Is vulnerable in some way. So yeah, hopefully it sort of opens up that conversation to go, you know, uh, uh, the circumstances before, during, after the identity of somebody. These things really matter when we think about how to work with male survivors.
Dr Peter Blundell:And, um, what's coming up for me, I was thinking about people's experience before the abuse, the experience of the abuse and also not all psychotherapy is safe. Actually, and so there's potentially retraumatization, but also other harmful experience that is happening in therapy on top of all of that potentially.
Jeremy Sachs:Oh, I completely agree. I, you know, and it, it's, it's complicated'cause nobody says I'm a bad therapist. No one puts their hands up to say that. And I've heard countless stories from men who will say, my last therapist. It can be from really harmful, made me disclose something. I wasn't ready. They said to, to heal. I need to tell my trauma to, to right the way to, to, to people shrugging off going, well my therapist didn't really believe in bisexuality. So you know, this kind of thing. And I want to say and I think it's, this is perhaps the gray area in what you are getting at. I have been the wrong therapist for some people. Some people have, will have walked away from therapy with me. Not a lot. Like I, you know, one or two examples I can think of who will absolutely have gone, gosh, that was a, that was a negative experience, um, and I can be as holding and as empathetic and as safe as I can possibly be. And that still be too much. There'd be something in the transference. Or I can, I can make a mistake or I can, that has taken. So, you know, there's a sort of a narcissistic or borderline wound that I, as a human being, has rocked so much that they would walk away and go, okay, that was, that did not do me any good. So, I, I, you know, I think there's, we need humility when talking about it and also understanding that, traditionally the psychological industries have done harm. To, particularly to minoritized people, but, for sexual abuse, absolutely.
Dr Peter Blundell:I think one of the difficulties that we have as a profession, I think, is that, uh, many people are reluctant to talk about those times when they've made a mistake. Or, um, a client may have had a harmful experience, uh, but are actually, we're not willing to admit that, or we're not willing to acknowledge it on some level, uh, because we're, feeling defensive and, and yeah, not wanting to admit our errors and our mistakes.
Jeremy Sachs:Yeah, absolutely. And I get it. I really, I really do. I think we, maybe we'll get onto this in a bit, but I think particularly in psychotherapy and counseling, we in the uk, certainly it is a strange and difficult industry to navigate the way it is viewed by other. Healthcare systems, the way we view ourselves, the way we view our, sort of our cousins and siblings and different psychological services. I really understand why people are defensive. I really get it. I really get it. Yeah.
Dr Peter Blundell:Yeah. So this, well, this might link into this next question then which I'll, I'll move on to just to skip a question and come back, uh, because I think it might interlink to this. So, what do you think is the biggest challenge the counseling and psychotherapy professionals face?
Jeremy Sachs:It's such an interesting question. I'm going to also refuse the premise'cause I, I am, you need someone smarter than me to say the biggest challenge. I think one that I, I think about a lot. I'll just, this is just a occurs to me an awful lot. I think psychotherapy is changing so quickly. And it's a response to the world around us, right? We, we shut the door, on our therapy room, and it's, it's harder and harder these days to, to stop the outside world coming in to our client work. And some of this, I, I sort of, I want to celebrate, you know, I, I'm glad gone are the days where we are expected to be a blank slate. I think I do, I mean, I say that I do think there's a place for sort of, uh, analysts and, and this, I think this is such a fascinating field. I'm glad I don't have to do it. You know, I think it's very difficult to be a blank slate. I think it's very difficult to be anti-oppressive and be a blank slate. I think it's very difficult to have a relational style of person-centered therapy and be this blank slate. And I also think. There is a climate at the minute, whether there's a richness of misinformation about what psychotherapy is. That really I think alarms me, and I'll try and be very concise'cause I know I can talk about this endlessly, but I think it, it sort of splits into that, I think social media. I remember when training the question was about what clients could or couldn't find out about you, that, that, that question feels so obsolete because I think you know, social media has become so much more than that. I see therapists volunteering information on social media, and some of this is great discourse, really interesting, really great. And some of it I think, is deeply problematic. I think I see tiktoks, my, so I have a TikTok account. It is purely for cute cats, raccoons, getting up to mischief and dancing, you know, but I'll have psychotherapists come across and that it'll be five signs your childhood trauma is affecting your relationships or how to tell when you're dating a narcissist. And, and, and, you know, I find this problematic in so many ways, almost beyond whether they're. That information is correct or not? I think there's something about the expectations we're setting for the general public and what psychotherapy is. I think it sets us up as being the exceptional, you know, that we're, we're somehow sort of these, these exceptional people who are there to treat the affect. You know, we're here for symptom reduction. And actually that, that's not what psychotherapy is. I think we if we set ourselves up as, as sort of these people who can talk on social media and have our YouTube channels and our tiktoks, I think it really diminishes what therapy is. It says that we're the primary in the process rather than the process is the primary function. And we're there as a relational curious guide. And, you know, not, I don't want to shit on people who sort of have social media. These are individuals. There's a systematic issue. There's the apps that treat therapists like dating apps. I won't name them, but you know, they promise to provide help in a better way. And it's sort of like, you know, swipe left if you don't want that therapist swipe well, what does that do to rupture? How do we heal? Absolutely. You have the right to change your therapist, but how do we sit with rupture in the room? And, you know, if you download an app and it's, free to use until you're paying a therapist, if it's free to use, you are the product, you know, the, the shareholders and. Silicon Valley, they, they don't care about your mental health. They care about your data and this sort of thing. And, and you know, they say have 24 hour access to your therapist. Have a phone call, have it, and this, this isn't psychotherapy. And even so a guilty pleasure Married at first sight is a, is you know, and they have a panel of experts. One of them is A-B-A-C-P member, and they'll be saying, you are this attachment style. This is a classic definition. And one, I dunno how anybody says that to anybody, to the example I'm thinking of. They were wrong. That's not what this attachment is. So I, I, I, I just think there's so much misinformation and I think it is a problem because we are in, or we can be really in a sort of unhealthy com competitiveness because us as an industry is sort of, perhaps diluted by the way. Healthcare is viewed in the uk. Mental health is viewed in the uk. You look at, you look for jobs for therapists, and it's counseling psychologists, it's clinical psychologists, and it's CBT therapists, and these are the NHS jobs. So suddenly we're all really struggling to go, oh no, you know, I know what I'm talking about. Look at this, and you, and I dunno where I, I dunno how to solve this because actually I think. There is use in this, there is use in the work you do through social media and connection, and I think people have the right to gain information and psychoeducation and but I, I do despair sometimes. I hope that makes sense.
Dr Peter Blundell:It that really, it really does make sense. And I, I, a lot of that resonates with me and I was thinking about, as a person centered therapist, I'm trying constantly not to be the expert in the relationship with the with the client. And I was thinking a lot of what you were talking about there is people trying to be experts and kind of look like they know what they're talking about and not always drawing on Yeah. Information that is accurate or relevant or they're not experts in that particular field or area.
Jeremy Sachs:I think you're absolutely right. I think whenever I, I'm reaching for psychoeducation, something's going wrong in the relationship. Somebody's making me feel like I need to prove myself. It, it's some sort of, you know, it could be, uh, sort of, again, it's some sort of narcissistic habitation and I'm going, gosh, I'm not good at, I better say this thing. And also. W what we're not are these clinical psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, which is w which I think is wonderfully freeing. I don't need to worry. I, in my supervision and in my private time when I'm reflecting on my clinical work, sure I will use different models to understand individuals. But how freeing is it to sit in a room and go. You are in pain and I really want to understand that and maybe we can find some patterns that might make sense of something. But actually my primary goal here is for you to feel really heard and I will, I will draw my experience and my expertise and all of this clinical knowledge to go what is going to be the best for you in an authentic way.'cause what'll work for you might not work for others. But you know, to, to be unshackled from, from a clinical model and yet draw on it because those clinical models are data-driven. We have research into them. We know we can fall back on it. But the freedom to go actually, sure. This is, uh, a DSM definition of trauma, but fuck that. What does this mean to you? Lovely, lovely.
Dr Peter Blundell:I love that. And if that, if that is what psychotherapy is about, then when, when you see those people on TV shows making diagnoses or mm-hmm. Or even commenting on other people's mental health or ways of being as a therapist, I suppose that's something that really grates on me as well in terms of, because if that's not necessarily what we're doing in the therapy room, why all of a sudden is it then okay to kind be going, doing that? Else?
Jeremy Sachs:Well, it's because there's this third person in the room, and if the third person is either the audience, the producers, the investors, there's this third person that's going, okay this sort of specter of person. Of course, we, we work with third people in the room all the time. They're the abusive fathers for the difficult relationships for the, you know, they're the people that. Inform us in good and bad ways, and what we get to do is name it and you know, sort of conceptualize them. But these therapists who are on these TV shows saying that there's a real dishonesty to it, there's a real doubt. I'm going to say this thing to you and it's for your own good, but there's this specter person going, actually here's, here's an alternative motive.'cause we want views or you are gonna go onto TikTok and say, I'm gonna provide you with psychoeducation because I want to help. But what's the shadow side of that? What, you know, what, what do you need? What's the third drive in the room?
Dr Peter Blundell:And I think what we don't, what we kind of suspect, but maybe what we don't fully know is how all of that is now gonna impact on all these different therapeutic relationships out there. Because things have shifted so much now that. Even before, and you were saying psychotherapy, I was thinking actually we could debate as to what that actually is.'cause are everybody, is everybody doing the same thing actually, or actually people doing very different things?
Jeremy Sachs:Absolutely. And the, the real, you know, while we're all sort of scratching our chins about this, there are people out there trying to make, trying to make sense of it. Of clients and patients going well, but you do that and you do that and this is DBT, but that sounds like CBT. But you have a video that says that, and and they're coming to us with all of those, and that will manifest in lots of different ways. And I think it really, uh, you know, I, I think it ties us in knots and I think that it is deeply detrimental to people who. Looking for support.
Dr Peter Blundell:This question, maybe you kind of maybe answered this question'cause what we've been talking about, suppose social media, therapy community. So I wondered how do you see the wider therapy community? So that might be the social media community, but elsewhere as well, and then how connected you feel with those other therapists.
Jeremy Sachs:Yeah, so I mean, it would be no surprise after ranting about social media, but actually I don't find it very connective for me. And I, I used to try, you know, I used to sort of see. How effective it was for other people in really finding their people. And it's, it's sort of, you know, that marketing 1 0 1 social media has to be social and what I very recently discovered is I don't find it it doesn't give me the nutrition that, that. Connection does, and I think it does for other people. And that's fine. And, and you know, what I needed to do was unhook from seeing people who could really find their, their, their people with it and go, do, you know, okay. That's,'cause I put stuff out and be like, nobody likes it. You know, it's, it's seductive. And I, I just, I don't, if I can't receive satisfaction from it I'm certainly not gonna be able to give that satisfaction. And so, it leaves me, uh, at best a bit, a bit sort of me, and then at, at worse, when I am feeling a bit like, oh God, I can really do with a win. It's pretty punishing. So I, you know, how do I find connection? I mean, we all work in silos, particularly in private practice. I have a peer supervisor who is, uh, you know, I think. Has been a lovely sort of recent development who is a, a therapist who is a very different type of therapist to me, and I really value the differences that we bring. Um, so we meet monthly. I'm lucky that in my personal life actually, I, I know therapists and they are different. Types of therapists. So I, I sort of grew up with an old friend we used to hang around, sort of, the same places in South London, and she became a therapist a few years before me. And so, you know, so there's little dots of, of connections in my personal life. But other than that, I, I, I do find it difficult. I do because I think. If you work in one area, so men and sexual abuse, you get therapists contacting you, going, I'd like to talk through a case and I really value that. I get a lot from that, but it's very sporadic. So I think it can be lonely, it can be quite disconnected which I do, I do sort of miss the, the, uh, nutrition that you get from. From connectivity.
Dr Peter Blundell:I, I think that's interesting to hear that. And I think a lot of the people we had on the podcast are in private practice have also felt that. But I was also interested in your perspective in terms of social media possibly making you feel disconnected rather than, rather than connected. And I I was thinking. Been involved with Therapist Connect and seeing how it, how it's evolved and actually sometimes it might appear that there's lots of connection going on, but actually maybe people aren't necessarily feeling that, you know?
Jeremy Sachs:Well, I mean, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my, uh, and we don't have to go into this too much, but my disposition or my, my internal script is to feel othered very easily. Not unique to me at all. But I will, I will view all of it through that lens first before I have to go, hold on. What's, what's really happening here? So it's there's a real reflex for me, certainly to go. Well, I don. I can't do this. I don't, I don't feel connected. Yeah. And I, you know, I think therapists we're, we're all, or not all of us, maybe I shouldn't speak so universally, but we all, a lot of us carry some sort of relational wound that will either make us want to really pull, close or feel completely isolated from, you know, there's, there's sort of. We vibrate certain frequencies. So, yeah, I think, I think it is really interesting the, the appearance of connectivity and how we go. I can feel in the middle of this, or I can feel in the fringe, or I can feel pushed out. It's, it's super interesting when we apply this relational language to something ethereal like therapist connect, right? You can, you could look up that hashtag and go look at this hub of creativity and I didn't, and have your own sort of relational response to it, which is, we weren't talking about this 120 years ago when Freud was.
Dr Peter Blundell:Absolutely. And then the, the impact of that on each of us will obviously be very, very different. And then the unpacking of that as well, in terms of how we make sense of it and, and understand it. I think, yeah, I think that's really difficult. So we are, we are just coming to the end now, but just like my final question is what are your future plans like coming up? Obviously you've got the book.
Jeremy Sachs:Okay. So future plans. I'm, I'm developing a four session training CBT on working with male survivors. At the minute there's a sort of psychosocial context session. There is, uh, the impact of sexual abuse on different developmental stages through the lens of the sexual self and shame. Then there is one on narcissistic adaptations and working. With that. And then there's a fourth one. I haven't quite decided what that's going to be. I think maybe something around, uh, systemic personal interpersonal betrayal and what that means. But, but that's coming up in the next few months. Which, I'll be putting out that on social media. Um, and then the book launches. There's a London. Which is the 23rd of August, which is a Saturday at the Freud Museum. And then there's an online book launch, which is hosted by, um. The therapy and Social change network on the 19th of September. There'll be hopefully some Scottish launches too, but that's all up in the air so that, that, that's the immediate future.
Dr Peter Blundell:I think that's fair. I think that's enough to be going on with, isn't it? There's quite, there's quite a lot to pack in over the next few months. Yes. That is fantastic, Jeremy. It's been absolutely wonderful chatting to you. And best of luck with the book. Um, I'll be buying a copy and we'll make sure that we can put all the links in the show notes and everything so people can be directed to your training and to the book. And yeah, hopefully we can connect again and have another conversation sometime.
Jeremy Sachs:I really like that. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure. I was, um, I was nervous if I'm honest.
Dr Peter Blundell:Thank you so much. Alright, take care.
