Reeva Steenkamp texts to Oscar Pistorius teach us about emotional abuse




This is very important.


This is intimidation and is one of the main aspects of an emotionally violent relationship. 




Here’s another text from Reeva to Oscar…



This is not a healthy relationship. 





Many abusers publicly humiliate their partners, it’s a way of reducing their partners self esteem by making them feel small and humiliated. This is verbal abuse and you do not have to put up with it. This is an early red flag if you are dating an abuser. They might be charming most of the time until the mask slips down for a moment and they put you down in front of friends of family. Pay attention to this! This is the beginning of a slippery slope! If they publicly humiliate you this will not get better over time!


Sure, self improvement is important in a healthy  relationship of flexible give and take with a partner who is your EQUAL but trying to “fix” your supposedly terribly flawed self for the never ending lofty expectations of an abuser is a unbalanced game you can never win.






I want to include examples now of how an abuser uses jealousy, possessiveness and isolation in an abusive relationship from the standard counselling text books to illustrate my point.


Using jealousy to justify actions, using jealousy as a sign of love instead of insecurity. Unfounded accusations of cheating, unfaithfulness, infidelity.


them, discouraging her from being close with anyone else.





Recently, I read these texts to a client who recognised the words as if they were her own.


If you are in a situation where someone is making you feel small, controlled, worthless and like you can’t do anything right and they critisize you for small, petty things like how you dress, housework, how you talk, how loud you laugh or you feel trapped, afraid and powerless then please get in touch.

There is a way out.




New Year Sex and Relationship Resolutions





Prioritise sex and make time for it.







Resolve to “fight fair” for 2015.






Broaden your definition of sex for 2015.





Here’s to a lush and pleasure ­filled 2015!

Catherine O Dowd

Using poetry and writing in therapy



Unfolded Out Of The Folds

always to come unfolded;
superbest man of the earth;
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman, is to come the friendliest
of perfect body;
appear the strong and arrogant man I love;
thence come the brawny embraces of the man;
the man’s brain, duly obedient;
Walt Whitman

Having the courage to keep your heart open

We are powerful beyond measure, and so deeply vulnerable at the same time. This may seem like a dichotomy, but it isn’t. We have misunderstood real power. It has been something assertive, non-surrendering, pushing on through. This is not real power. This is simply willfulness. Real power is something else- receptivity, openness, the courage to keep your heart open on the darkest of days, the strength to feel it all even when the odds are stacked against you. Real power is showing up with your heart on your sleeve and absolutely refusing to waste one moment of your life hidden behind edginess and armor. -Jeff Brown

This quote really spoke to me because I speak to so many people who are jaded and bitter about love. I see so much heartbreak and a “closing in” of emotions. I see people going through the motions with sex and dating, or even pulling back and not dating anyone, because they don’t want to feel and they don’t want to hurt.  I’ve experienced this in my own life, so I can truly understand. I can understand the pain of heartbreak and not wanting to open yourself up to someone like that again, just to feel the pain of disappointment or betrayal again, but we can’t stay in this stagnant No Mans Land forever. We have to move forward and embrace growth and change.

A lot of us have very strong defenses up to keep this pain away. We can be too busy all the time, as a way of making sure someone can’t sneak through the cracks of our emotional fort. We can have “fuck buddies” and move on as soon as emotions start getting involved, we can serial date, or have serial relationships or we can close down emotionally. We can have sexual relations with others but be so closed down that our emotions are turned off and we don’t experience sex and intimacy to its fullest potential.

Get in touch today if you would like to break down those walls, open your heart, own your own power and experience love and intimacy without the armour and walls.  Let’s embrace our power and our vulnerability.

Sacred Sex… Reaching new heights..

I just wanted to share this quote with you all. It really turns the idea upside down that sex is shameful, naughty or sinful. How can you change your view of sex and your body?

“Candles, music, flowers and wine – these we all know are the stuff of romance, of sex and of love. But candles, flowers, music and wine are also the stuff of religious ritual, of our most sacred rites.
Why is there this striking, though seldom noted, commonality?

Is it just accidental that passion is the word we use for both sexual and mystical experiences? Or is there here some long-forgotten but still powerful connection? Could it be that the yearning of so many women and men for sex as something beautiful and magical is our long-repressed impulse toward a more spiritual, and at the same time more intensely passionate, way of expressing sex and love?

Because we have been taught to think of sex as sinful, dirty, titillating or prurient, the possibility that sex could be spiritual, much less sacred, may seem shocking. Even stranger in a world where female genitals are sometimes described as “cunts” (one of the most obscene swear words in the English language), is the idea that women’s bodies and particularly women’s vaginas could be sacred.

Yet the evidence is compelling that for many thousands of years much longer than the thirty to fifty centuries we call recorded history this was the case. In traditions that go back to the dawn of civilization, the female vulva was revered as the magical portal of life, possessed of the power of both physical regeneration and spiritual illumination and transformation.

Far from being seen as a “dirty cunt,” woman’s pubic triangle was the sacred manifestation of creative sexual power. And far from being of a lower, base or carnal order, it was a primary symbol of the powerful figure known in later Western history as the Great Goddess: the divine source of life, pleasure, and love. ”

~ Riane Eisler, “Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body”



