Online Therapy Clinic — Clinical Reflections
By Ari Sotiriou | Online Therapy Clinic
Ari Sotiriou, UKCP-accredited psychotherapist, explores the experiences that bring people to therapy — relationships, attachment, loss, intimacy, self-esteem and the patterns that shape how we relate to ourselves and others.
Grounded in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic thinking, these short reflections are intended to make complex psychological ideas accessible in everyday language.
Visit Online Therapy Clinic for articles, reflections and information about online psychotherapy and couples th
The Night Watch: Why the Anxious Mind Won't Let Us Sleep
Why does the mind refuse to rest when the world has gone quiet?
At three in the morning, a familiar argument can begin. One part of us is frightened. Another tries to reason the fear away. Yet neither seems able to bring us back to sleep.
In The Night Watch, psychodynamic psychotherapist Ari Sotiriou explores anxiety and sleeplessness through the ideas of Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion.
Sleep, he suggests, is an act of trust. And sometimes what keeps us awake is not simply excessive thinking, but an emotional experience that has not yet found a place to be understood.
With two dramatised inner voices, this episode explores the movement from fear and reassurance towards a third position — one in which anxiety can be acknowledged without being fought.
Companion reading:
https://blog.online-therapy-clinic.com/the-night-watch-why-the-anxious-mind-wont-let-us-sleep/
The accompanying article also explains how to request the interactive worksheet, What Keeps Me Awake?
Online Therapy Clinic – Clinical Reflections
Presented by Ari Sotiriou, UKCP-accredited psychodynamic psychotherapist.
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
For persistent sleep difficulties, consult your GP. If you feel unsafe, seek immediate support from local emergency services or a crisis service.
This episode is intended for psychoeducation and personal reflection and is not a substitute for individual assessment or treatment.
A More Stable Sense of Yourself — Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence, Part 5 of 5
What would it mean for self-esteem to stop rising and falling with every success, criticism, rejection or mistake?
In the final episode of this series, Ari Sotiriou explores a more stable sense of self: one that can remain present across different emotional states, survive bad days without turning them into identity, and allow dependence on others without disappearing into their responses.
The episode brings the series together around a quieter question: not whether we can feel confident all the time, but whether we can remain in relationship with ourselves while we think about what has happened.
This is EP08 of the Online Therapy Clinic Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence series.
Online Therapy Clinic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychiatry and CBT online.
Follow the show for further clinical reflections on relationships, self-esteem, attachment and emotional life.
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
This podcast is for general information and reflection and is not a substitute for individual medical or psychological advice.
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
1. When Self-Esteem Stops Being a Score
2. Being the Same Person on a Bad Day
3. Depending Without Disappearing
4. A More Stable Sense of Yourself
Learning to Answer Back — Differently — Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence, Part 4 of 5
What happens after we begin to recognise the critical voice? The next step is not simply to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
In this episode, Ari Sotiriou introduces a more reflective internal position. The episode explores how to examine evidence without turning reflection into self-prosecution, how to let achievement register without making worth depend on performance, and how values can help guide decisions when approval is uncertain.
The aim is not to defeat the critic, but to create a larger internal conversation in which criticism can be heard without being given total authority.
This is EP07 of the Online Therapy Clinic Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence series.
Online Therapy Clinic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychiatry and CBT online.
Follow the show for further clinical reflections on relationships, self-esteem, attachment and emotional life.
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
This podcast is for general information and reflection and is not a substitute for individual medical or psychological advice.
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
1. Not Positive Thinking
2. What Is the Evidence?
3. Letting Achievement Register
4. What Matters to Me?
The Inner Critic — Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence, Part 3 of 5
The inner critic rarely introduces itself as cruel. More often, it sounds practical, responsible or protective: be more careful, work harder, do not get too comfortable.
In this episode, Ari Sotiriou explores why a harsh internal voice can feel necessary, how criticism becomes internalised, and why perfectionism can become a defence against exposure, failure or rejection.
Rather than treating the critic simply as an enemy, the episode asks what it may be trying to prevent — and what happens when self-protection itself becomes a source of suffering.
This is EP06 of the Online Therapy Clinic Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence series.
Online Therapy Clinic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychiatry and CBT online.
Follow the show for further clinical reflections on relationships, self-esteem, attachment and emotional life.
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
This podcast is for general information and reflection and is not a substitute for individual medical or psychological advice.
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
1. The Voice That Says It Is Helping
2. When Criticism Becomes Internal
3. Perfectionism and the Fear of Exposure
4. What the Critic Is Trying to Prevent
When a Thought Feels Like a Fact — Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence, Part 2 of 5
A message goes unanswered. A colleague looks distracted. A partner becomes quiet. Before we have much information, the mind may already have produced a conclusion about what is happening — and what it means about us.
In this episode, Ari Sotiriou explores how interpretations can arrive with the force of facts. The discussion looks at the speed of automatic conclusions, the way feelings can become evidence, and how older expectations can shape the stories we tell ourselves in the present.
The episode introduces a more reflective way of noticing a thought without automatically treating it as a verdict.
This is EP05 of the Online Therapy Clinic Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence series.
Online Therapy Clinic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychiatry and CBT online.
Follow the show for further clinical reflections on relationships, self-esteem, attachment and emotional life.
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
This podcast is for general information and reflection and is not a substitute for individual medical or psychological advice.
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
1. The Speed of a Conclusion
2. When Feelings Become Evidence
3. The Story Behind the Thought
4. A Thought Is Not a Verdict
The Voice You Live With — Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence, Part 1 of 5
There is a conversation you may have been having with yourself for most of your life. It appears after a mistake, a rejection, an unanswered message, a comparison with somebody else, or a moment when you feel you have disappointed someone.
In this episode, psychodynamic psychotherapist Ari Sotiriou explores the relationship between self-esteem, confidence and the inner critical voice. The episode asks where self-critical ways of thinking come from, why they can feel so convincing, and how early relationships may become part of the way we speak to ourselves.
It also considers why someone can appear highly confident and capable while carrying a much more fragile sense of personal worth underneath, and introduces a distinction between what happened, what we felt, and what we immediately decided the experience meant about us.
This is EP04 of the Online Therapy Clinic Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence series.
Online Therapy Clinic
Psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychiatry and CBT online.
Follow the show for further clinical reflections on relationships, self-esteem, attachment and emotional life.
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
This podcast is for general information and reflection and is not a substitute for individual medical or psychological advice.
CHAPTER STRUCTURE
1. The Conversation No One Else Hears
2. Confidence Is Not the Same as Self-Esteem
3. How Other People Become Part of the Way We See Ourselves
4. Whose Voice Is It?
The Loneliness of Being Together | When Connection Goes Quiet
What happens when a relationship still exists, but emotional connection has quietly begun to disappear?
In this episode of Clinical Reflections, Ari Sotiriou explores the loneliness that can develop inside a relationship when one partner reaches for reassurance and the other begins to withdraw.
Set against the backdrop of a chalet in Zermatt, this three-voice reflection follows a couple who have travelled somewhere beautiful in the hope of reconnecting, only to discover that emotional distance has travelled with them.
The episode explores the pursuit–withdrawal pattern, the different ways partners protect themselves, why closeness can begin to feel risky, and how curiosity and recognition can sometimes reopen contact.
Presented by Ari Sotiriou, Psychodynamic Psychotherapist.
Online Therapy Clinic
https://online-therapy-clinic.com
When Two Partners Come to Therapy for Different Reasons
Two people can come to couples therapy wanting very different things. One partner may hope to repair the relationship, while the other may be uncertain whether they want to remain in it at all.
In this clinical reflection, I explore what happens when partners arrive with different hopes, fears and expectations, and how therapy can create enough space for both positions to be understood without forcing the couple towards a predetermined outcome.
The episode considers ambivalence, emotional withdrawal, attachment, conflict and the importance of allowing each partner’s experience to emerge in its own right.
Ari Sotiriou
UKCP-accredited psychotherapist
Online Therapy Clinic
When Betrayal Changes the Past
An affair can disturb much more than trust. For the person who has been betrayed, it can change the meaning of the relationship that came before it — memories may suddenly feel uncertain, and experiences that once seemed secure can be re-examined in a very different light.
In this clinical reflection, I explore why betrayal can feel as though it changes the past as well as the present, and how therapy can help make sense of the emotional aftermath without rushing towards either reconciliation or separation.
This reflection develops themes from my article, “How an affair can affect trust, identity and relationships,” published by Counselling Directory.
Ari Sotiriou
UKCP-accredited psychotherapist
Online Therapy Clinic
Read the article: Counselling Directory article