Dr. Libby Nugent: Clinical Psychologist

08/03/2026

06/03/2026

In mythology, tears are often supposed to have a redeeming and healing effect. If you have ever dealt with people who have become petritied by suttering, you know how redeeming it is if they can cry. Once a person reaches a certain climax of suffering, very often he or she cannot cry or break down anymore. They simply harden in horror. And then there is danger ahead.

Marie-Louise Von Franz

06/03/2026

https://www.youtube.com/live/Za8s21enW5A?si=70Bl66z3wP1Bm24X

Watch this subscriber exclusive event in full at https://www.unherd.com/liveWhat are ‘ancient technologies’ and could they save the West from its identity cr...

05/03/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1BxdJYJ4ux/?mibextid=wwXIfr

In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott reflects on her parents with a mixture of candour and gratitude. By her own account, they were volatile, opinionated, and at times emotionally inconsistent. Yet she draws from that experience a conclusion that isn’t bitter. She says she learnt that you can survive being loved imperfectly.

That claim goes against a powerful cultural story. We’re encouraged to believe that flawed love damages us beyond repair. Therapy language, sometimes helpfully and sometimes not, can make it seem as though any parental failing leaves a permanent wound. Lamott doesn’t dismiss harm. She has written elsewhere about addiction, shame and the long shadow of childhood. But here she’s making a quieter point. Imperfect love isn’t the same as the absence of love.

Most parents are difficult in some way. They bring their fears, their limitations and their unresolved anger into the home. Similarly, they can misjudge, overreact and withdraw. If love had to be pure to count, very few of us would have received it.

But to say you can survive being loved imperfectly is to recognise resilience. Children don’t need flawless devotion. They need enough steadiness, enough care, enough moments of being seen. The psychoanalyst D W Winnicott wrote about the “good enough” mother, arguing that healthy development depends on reliability that is sufficient more than perfection. That idea was radical in its time and still feels relieving now. It acknowledges that frustration and disappointment are part of growing up.

Lamott’s passage also carries an admission in that she suggests that at some point she felt the strain of her parents’ shortcomings. To describe them as very difficult is clearly not neutral. There’s history in that phrase and yet she resists the temptation to cast herself solely as injured. She claims endurance which moves the story from damage to survival.

Many adults spend years untangling what they received at home. Some discover deep harm but others find something more mixed: affection intertwined with unpredictability, encouragement alongside criticism. The emotional state that follows is often ambivalence. You love them and resent them, you defend them and yet are tired of defending them. That complexity can feel disloyal to admit.

Lamott describes it without drama. Her tone implies that imperfect love is the rule, not the exception. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect growth from those who care for children. It just means we stop measuring our past against an impossible standard.

There’s also humility in her observation. If we survived being loved imperfectly, it follows that we will love imperfectly too. That recognition can soften the harshness with which we judge ourselves. bell hooks wrote that love is an action and a practice. Practices are learned slowly and enacted by flawed people. We get things wrong but try again.

The fear many of us carry is that imperfection equals failure. Lamott’s phrasing refuses that fear. Survival here doesn’t sound triumphant. It sounds ordinary. You grow up, carry scars and some strengths. You learn what you want to repeat and what you don’t.

There’s relief in admitting that love doesn’t have to be immaculate to matter. It can be awkward, inconsistent, shaped by personality and circumstance. It can irritate as well as comfort. And still, it can sustain you.

To survive imperfect love is to accept that human beings rarely give one another exactly what is needed at every moment. They give what they can.

© Echoes of Women - Fiona.F, 2026. All rights reserved

Image: Zboralski

28/02/2026

24/02/2026

Leadership often asks us to speak with steadiness, even when our thinking is still in motion. This reflection explores what happens when the language we use to stabilise a room begins to harden around us, preserving us in ways that look like legitimacy but feel like suspension. It’s about the inner figures who notice contradiction, the cost of fluency that outruns thought, and the slow work of waking up again.

You only took a small bite.You did not mean to fall asleep.The apple was not obviously poisoned. It was polished. Persuasive. Glossed with the language everyone else seemed to be using. Half red: urgency, justice, belonging. Half green: freshness, safety, growth. It did not feel like deceit. It felt...

23/02/2026

The Death Mother and the Singing Bone: A Day of Reflective Group Practice
Tuesday 19 May 2026 | 10:00–15:30 BST
Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham

This day is designed for group analysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, trainees, and reflective practitioners working in or alongside pressured mental health systems who want protected space to think together about neglect, trust, and imaginative repair. The day is story‑led and grounded in group analytic practice, using fairy tale and group process to explore how despair is metabolised, how vitality returns, and how teams can reanimate what has been neglected.

There are three story‑based sessions across the day: The Death Mother, The Singing Bone, and The Skeleton Woman. Each opening a different window onto organisational life, ethical presence, and the slow work of repair. The structure includes spacious group dialogue, reflective teaching, and time for rest and integration.

A trainee / early‑career / subsidised ticket option is available, and all are welcome.

You can view full details and register here:

A reflective training day exploring trust, neglect, and imaginative repair in mental health services through story and group analysis.

19/02/2026

19/02/2026

My latest piece, Dressing the Atmosphere: On Fabric, Fear, and the Freedom to Speak, explores how groups tighten under fear, how legitimacy becomes fragile, what allows fabric to breathe, and why the ability to say 'I do not see what you see' may be the real test of belonging.

You can read a summary here or find the full post on my substack:

On Fabric, Fear, and the Freedom to Speak

16/02/2026

16/02/2026