Perhaps with the ‘trembling lower lip’ of Blair, or the wearing-one’s-heart-on-one’s-sleeve of Diana, which have combined to create a new model of how to deal with emotions and has  spawned a host of daytime talk shows filled with the emotional incontinence of sad, attention-seeking individuals. The Oprahfication of UK society continues apace: ‘How do you feel about that?’ has become the clichéd question of  a multitude of professionals – from TV interviewers to doctors to teachers and journalists.

So on the one hand there seems to be a new openness to human emotions, their depth and omnipresence, a new willingness to engage with each other as, first and foremost, feeling human beings. And yet there is also a disparagement of emotional life that accompanies this supposed sea-change in attitudes. How often do you hear talk of ‘psychobabble’ as a  put-down of someone’s attempt to put into words perhaps deep and complex and confused emotions? The word comes from the US, so perhaps there is also a wish to distance ourselves from the superficial ‘feel-good’ pieties of our American cousins. But such dismissiveness is also a typical British philistine reaction to the hard graft of developing emotional literacy, the finding of a real language for the intricacies of our emotional life.

Psychotherapy can help someone find their own language. Importantly though, it helps link feeling with  thinking,  for often (and for complex reasons) these have become disconnected inside us. The thoughts in our head are not always integrated with the emotions in our hearts: guilt, insecurity, depression, relationship failures, loss of meaning in life, over-dependence on food, sex, alcohol, drugs – these are real issues that need a patient attention to the ways in which inside us feelings have not been listened to, or have been intruded upon, or dismissed or denigrated. We can easily become strangers to our real selves.

Psychotherapy and counselling resources are readily available, but finding someone to talk to can still be a daunting business. A personal recommendation helps, but often it is hard to know who to ask even to find a good therapist. Do you want to see a man or a woman? Do you want your therapist to be Jewish or not? These are also issues to consider. There are 2 main reputable organisations that one can consult (http://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/; and http://www.bacp.co.uk/) which give lists of registered practitioners. Or, if you would prefer a more personalised service (and you live in London), there is a new service with which I am involved which offers an initial conversation and then an appropriate referral (http://www.fpcp.co.uk/). Popularized psychological jargon may be all around us – but it is no substitute for finding your own words for the things that matter most.