🧠 What Is Formulation? - with Clinical Psychologist Dr Rebekah Tennyson
This video explores the difference between a diagnosis and a psychological formulation. While a diagnosis offers a label based on specific criteria, a formulation goes further — it seeks to understand your distress within the context of your life, history and identity. It is the story of you, viewed through psychological frameworks, rather than a judgement about what is “wrong”. A formulation helps answer the question many people carry: Why do I feel like this? It avoids pathologising and instead recognises distress as a human response to life’s challenges. Importantly, formulation is collaborative: you are the expert on your lived experience, and together with your therapist, you build a shared understanding that guides the next steps in therapy.
Dr Rebekah Tennyson is a HCPC-registered Clinical Psychologist working with children, young people and families within the NHS alongside her private practice. She holds a first-class degree from the University of Cambridge (2010) and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Oxford (2017). Her integrative “Pick’N’Mix” approach draws on Internal Family Systems, Emotion Focused Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, CBT, ACT/DNA-V, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents and Narrative Exposure Therapy. Passionate about helping people see and accept all parts of themselves, Dr Tennyson creates a warm, collaborative space where every part of you is welcome.
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