Real Therapy - With Gijs

Myths and truths about institutional abuse When “Stress” Isn’t the Right Name A professional environment can look respectable and still dismantle someone from the inside. In this episode, I examine how institutional abuse often gets misread as stress or burnout. Not because the symptoms are wrong, but because the structure behind them is missed. We look at: – How harm can occur through procedures,...

Still functioning is not the same as Living your full life When someone tells me they’re still functioning, that does not reassure me very much. It tells me they are still moving. Still managing. Still sounding coherent enough that nobody gets worried. But functioning is not the same as health. In this episode, I look at the quieter form of depletion that often gets missed: When life is still runn...

“Do you do EMDR?” It’s one of the most common first questions in therapy. It makes sense. When you’re struggling, you want something that works. You want certainty. You want to reduce the risk of wasting time. But a method is a tool. And tools come after we understand what we’re dealing with. In this episode, I examine why starting with the method can quietly distract from structural assessment. O...

“Shouldn’t I be further along by now?” The stages of grief are one of the most widely repeated psychological models in modern culture. They promise order. They imply progression. They suggest that mourning follows a recognisable path. But structurally, grief is not linear. In this episode, I examine what happens when a descriptive model becomes a performance standard. When oscillation is mistaken...

People come to therapy wanting something gone. The anxiety. The anger. The numbness. The noise. As if it’s a bad tenant you can evict without touching the building. But most of the time, what they want removed is the very thing that’s been holding everything together from below. That’s why I sometimes think Real Therapy has more in common with The Phantom of the Opera than with self-help. The Phan...

The moments that matter most in therapy rarely look like progress. They feel like something old finally stopping.

Insight isn’t slow. Your nervous system is. And it doesn’t care about your calendar or your motivation. It's Jurassic Age old - and it will not budge just because you want it too....

You can still get things done. You hold a tight ship - too tight.. You’re organised, capable, reliable. Nothing has collapsed, so nothing gets named. This episode is about the phase before labels arrive. Before burnout, anxiety, depression, or anything else people reach for. The phase where you’re still functioning — and that’s exactly what hides the cost. I talk about compression becoming normal....

I’m a therapist and a long-term caregiver. In this episode I speak about what doesn’t show up as a crisis, but quietly reshapes daily life. About being “on” even when nothing is happening. About functioning without an off-switch. About how carrying becomes normal, and how competence can hide the cost. This isn’t a teaching episode. There’s no advice, no method, no solution. Just a lived reality th...

In this episode I talk about a phase that often goes unnoticed. Everything still works. You respond, decide, carry responsibility. From the outside, nothing looks off. What disappears isn’t competence or energy, but margin. Tolerance shrinks. Decisions are made to close pressure, not because they fit. Timing becomes something you manage instead of feel. This isn’t a crisis, yet. It isn’t burnout....

A Stallion runs away from the Chinese farmer. Everyone knows immediately what it means. Bad. The farmer answers with a question. What is good and what is bad? The next day the horse comes back. With more horses. Now it’s good. Obviously. What is good and what is bad? His son breaks his leg riding one of them. Bad again. What is good and what is bad? Then war breaks out. All the young men are taken...