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'Almost like a buzzing of energy - I could feel my blood moving, a warmth spreading through my torso. A feeling of being very deeply anchored in the moment. An intense moment of contact and relatedness.'
That moment where you look at one another with tears in your eyes. Where you feel you understand each other completely. You feel a bodily resonance, the aliveness of your blood, and there is a sense of expansion as you experience this moment of deep connection. What is happening in our minds and bodies during these moments of profound relatedness? How do we make sense of them - and what meaning do they hold for us?
This book explores these moments of profound contact between client and therapist: experiences that feel, in their intensity and intimacy, like moments of love. Drawing on decades of psychotherapy and counselling literature, Emma Swales examines how these experiences have been understood, named, and navigated across the helping professions.
Written for qualified and trainee counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors, and other helping professionals whose work draws on the therapeutic relationship, this book will help readers recognise, understand, and respond to these moments in an informed and ethical way - using them to offer genuinely healing experiences and deepen the bonds that make change possible.
A compelling exploration of a fundamentally human experience.
Foreword by Professor Andrew Reeves
Preface
Introduction
PART 1 - UNDERSTANDING LOVE IN THERAPY
1 Love in therapy - an overview
2 Understanding change in the therapeutic relationship
3 Moments of love in therapy
4 How our bodies relate to each other
5 Embodied attunement and neurological synchrony
PART 2 - ADVERSITY AND NEURODIVERGENCE
6 How trauma affects our ability to connect
7 Synchrony, asynchrony and neurodivergence
PART 3 - THE THERAPIST
8 Personal therapy for therapists
9 The embodied experience of the therapist
10 Embodiment and love in training and supervision
Conclusion
'Emma Swales' Moments of Love is an absolute gem of a book that offers a way to conceptualise and consider love within a therapeutic context. I love her comment that "one of the important things that happens in therapy is moments of love". It is a hopeful testimony to a very human and humane phenomenon, moments of love in the navigation of relational therapy. This should be essential reading for student practitioners, for those working in the therapy professions, for supervisors and for those training the next generation of practitioners. It's so important that our professions can fluently talk about moments of love. A brilliant book, buy it!'
Dr Lynne Gabriel OBE, Professor of Counselling & Mental Health, York St John University; President, British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy
'I sincerely hope this book will be required reading on all therapy training courses. Its subtitle is 'embodied attunement in the therapeutic relationship', but its scope is far wider and can apply to all our relationships. The author has navigated a tricky course – the word ‘love’ carries a lot of baggage – yet throughout her writing is well researched, cogent, compassionate and brave. I could quote lots from it but here is one sentence: "Love does not belong in the shadow side of therapy, it needs light and air: to be seen and understood from every angle, so we can use it as a resource to heal, rather than a shameful secret". Thank you, Emma, for an important contribution to the therapeutic literature.'
Robin Shohet, trainer and author of several books including In Love with Supervision
'Weaving together neuroscience, attachment theory, spirituality, perspectives from different psychotherapies, thoughts on the therapeutic relationship and, especially the embodied experience of the therapist, Emma Swales writes accessibly on a complex topic. We are taken with her on an exploratory journey as she navigates her themes. She gives us moments for pause and reflection with useful boxes with key points in each chapter. She sees love arising in moments of embodied, and synchronised, attunement in psychotherapy. For her, love is not eroticised and is safe; it is akin to agape, and the energy of the life force. These moments of love are fleeting, and yet they are the key ingredient in the therapeutic relationship and powerfully healing. Although she does not shy away from providing us with some methods to try out and gives case examples, love surpasses any technique or theory.'
Gill Westland, body psychotherapist, author of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication in Body Psychotherapy
'This is a feast of a book that brings together ideas from psychotherapy, neuroscience, philosophy, trauma studies, neurodivergence, child development, clinical work, and above all an exploration of what Emma Swales calls "moments of love" – those moments between client and therapist where a real authentic meeting of minds and hearts happens and there is nothing but that glorious moment of warm, mutual understanding and connection. Swales unpacks those moments and explores them in depth and yet with such a light touch she often made me smile.
For trainees, Moments of Love is a really useful theoretical and methodological support for their development and understanding of using themselves in the best way; for experienced therapists a treasure trove of ideas, viewpoints, nuggets of new theory and persuasive research, and for everyone above all a validation of what we know in our hearts.'
Professor Charlotte Sills, psychotherapist, coach and supervisor in independent practice and Hult Ashridge Education
'Love is a highly significant dimension of human experience, whose presence or absence shapes the lives of all of us. Moments of Love explores how love can occur in the context of the work of being a psychotherapist, and what it means for the process of therapy. This book offers a thoughtful, careful and well-informed reflection on the extensive literature on this phenomenon. It is essential reading for counsellors and psychotherapists at any stage in their professional journey and career.'
John McLeod, Emeritus Professor of Counselling, Abertay University
Dr Emma Swales is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and supervisor with over 25 years' experience of supporting people through trauma recovery. She worked in the domestic violence sector for many years, and later for a Leeds-based mental health charity before qualifying as a psychotherapist in 2011. Her speciality and research interests are the bodily held experience of attachment, relationship, and early developmental trauma, and how we can overcome difference, build connection and create protective relationships. She is based in rural North Yorkshire, where she loves to go for long walks with her big, beautiful, stroppy Lurcher, Mouse.
