Kirstan Puttick Lloyd Psychologist

Kirstan Puttick Lloyd Psychologist Clinical Psychologist offering therapy & assessments for adults, teens & children. Based in Cheshire, UK.

Special interest in trauma, neurodivergence, relationship dynamics & emotional wellbeing.

When I sat down to write a blog about attachment theory I tried something I had not done before. I posed myself the ques...
16/05/2026

When I sat down to write a blog about attachment theory I tried something I had not done before. I posed myself the questions an exam might ask: What is an attachment style, exactly?

And then I paused with it for longer than felt comfortable. I am a registered psychologist, trained in developmental psychology. I have read the foundational literature and sat real-life exams. And yet, when I tried to pin the term down, it scattered.

That experience of being stopped by a familiar word is itself the clinical phenomenon I wanted to write about. It is what happens, in a session, when a patient is gently asked to slow down a label they have been using as a declarative statement rather than as an opening.

What I realised, by trying to define attachment for myself, is that pop psychology attachment language can be overly simplistic. The categories are not necessarily wrong. Instead, they are partial. For me, how we relate to others is nuanced and dynamic. And it cannot be captured neatly by four labels simple labels.

I often wonder how useful reassurance and encouragement are.But maybe that is the wrong lens. Perhaps it is more useful ...
16/05/2026

I often wonder how useful reassurance and encouragement are.

But maybe that is the wrong lens. Perhaps it is more useful to think about what allows someone to metabolise supportive reframing in the first place.

“Fake it till you make it” works fine if underneath the faking you have a feeling that you are competent and capable.

But for many people who hold high expectations of themselves, with little tolerance for not-knowing or the naturally haphazard path of learning, this kind of advice can feel empty at best. At worst, it reinforces feelings of personal failure.

They can recite the mantras framed as antidotes, naming the evidence that challenges their cognitive distortions: I am capable. I am smart. I have real talent. And still, to no avail.

By inviting curiosity, and a desire to understand more deeply, we can gently challenge these beliefs at a structural level. The aim is not to outthink our overthinking. It is to restructure the internal world, so that we can feel connected to ourselves as both capable and imperfect. A version of ourselves that can weather criticism, and steadily work towards meaningful goals with a sense of purpose.

If reassurance has fallen flat for you, what’s helped instead?

“Imposter syndrome”, as a label, is a crude container for something altogether more nuanced and complex.I feel we reach ...
09/05/2026

“Imposter syndrome”, as a label, is a crude container for something altogether more nuanced and complex.

I feel we reach for labels to make life easier. They cluster symptoms together and offer a simplified description of what are often complex lived experiences.

But if I conflate experiences and assume what a patient means when they say “I have imposter syndrome”, I will miss the mark.

Some adults walk into therapy with a sense of a gap between their skill set and what is expected of them. They can tolerate the not-knowing and even enjoy the learning curve. “Fake it till you make it” resonates. They have a feeling that they are good-enough, and the confidence they will develop the skills they need. These are clients who benefit from the sensibility CBT offers us.

For other clients, this misses the mark entirely.

Despite the degrees, the experience, and the hard work, they carry an anxiety that they are not good enough. An internal, often shame-based, experience of being deficient. This is often accompanied by a harsh inner critic, relentless and merciless, more punitive than most people in the world around them. They expect others will echo this critic, which causes enormous anxiety.

A glib “fake it till you make it” won’t shift this. Indeed, it can reinforce the anxiety.

I’ve written about some of the faces “imposter syndrome” can take in the new blog post (link in bio).

If you’ve felt this from the inside, what did or didn’t help?

When a high-achieving adult arrives saying they are burnt out, I am usually not the first psychologist they have seen.Th...
05/05/2026

When a high-achieving adult arrives saying they are burnt out, I am usually not the first psychologist they have seen.

The WHO defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. In essence, a mismatch between the workplace and the person. For many, this is accurate, and the standard interventions help.

For others, what presents as burnout is something else. An internal mismatch, between who someone hoped to be and where they find themselves. A self organised around exceptionality, meeting a world that doesn’t always confirm it.

This can develop when real talent was locally over-praised. The playing field evens out in adulthood and the calibration breaks.

In other cases, the specialness was compensatory, built on the absence of warmth, or on the bind of having to be great for a parent who needed greatness.

Either way, the adult arrives with a self organised around being exceptional, and an inner knowing of not being quite that good.

When that gap becomes impossible to ignore, something gives way. The cultural language calls it burnout. Clinically, it is something else, and the work that addresses it is also something else.

Link in bio.

Perhaps the more interesting clinical question about RSD is not whether it is a diagnosis.It is what happens when a labe...
27/04/2026

Perhaps the more interesting clinical question about RSD is not whether it is a diagnosis.

It is what happens when a label becomes an identity before it has ever been examined.

I believe this forecloses something. Not just in treatment, but in the person’s relationship with their own interior life.

Link in bio.

RSD is not a diagnosis per se. For me, it is a description that got mistaken for an explanation.Coined by a psychiatrist...
25/04/2026

RSD is not a diagnosis per se. For me, it is a description that got mistaken for an explanation.

Coined by a psychiatrist in the 1990s, the term has spread through online communities. This seems to have preceded the research, and there is no formal status in any recognised diagnostic system.

Labels not only shape how people understand themselves and relate to others, but also shape treatment expectations and modality. While the suffering and pain are real, an explanation based in immutable neurobiology can foreclose understanding and meaningful change.

Which raises the question: what are we actually treating when we treat RSD? And what does depth psychology offer that a checklist cannot?

Link in bio.

Relocation is sometimes an individual experience. But it is just as often a family one, whether a family moves together,...
16/04/2026

Relocation is sometimes an individual experience. But it is just as often a family one, whether a family moves together, or builds a life with loved ones away from their home country.

Most people who relocate expect to miss home. What they don’t expect is to look in the mirror and not quite recognise the person looking back. Or to realise, somewhere along the way, that the grief they are carrying was not entirely theirs to begin with.

In this blog I explore what can get transmitted across generations without a single word being spoken after relocation:

— Why displacement does not end with the generation that moved
— How unprocessed parental grief is transmitted to children without words
— What Winnicott, Kohut, Fraiberg and Freud offer us in understanding inherited loss
— Why growing up between two cultural worlds creates a particular kind of rootlessness
— What genuine psychological integration requires, and why symptom management falls short
— Why the internal experience of belonging cannot be obtained by passing a citizenship test



Link in bio

The hardest part of leaving isn’t the leaving.
11/04/2026

The hardest part of leaving isn’t the leaving.

Too often, mental health assessments are reduced to a checklist exercise—quick screenings, surface-level diagnoses, and ...
17/07/2025

Too often, mental health assessments are reduced to a checklist exercise—quick screenings, surface-level diagnoses, and generic treatment recommendations. While this may be enough for straightforward presentations, I believe we have a professional responsibility to do better for clients whose experiences are complex.

When we accept superficial assessments, we risk reinforcing misdiagnosis, ineffective treatment cycles, and system-driven burnout. Clients deserve more than labels—they deserve to understand themselves in a way that informs meaningful, tailored care.

This is why I advocate for specialist psychological assessments that are depth-oriented, collaborative, and formulation-led. It’s about recognising the interplay of neurodivergence, trauma, personality structure, and life context—not just symptom management.

At the heart of it, thorough assessment isn’t a luxury—it’s a fairness issue. Accurate understanding should be the starting point of any therapeutic journey, especially when people are already navigating fragmented healthcare pathways.

For those of us working in mental health, offering depth-informed assessments is not just good clinical practice—it’s a commitment to equity, dignity, and better outcomes.

Let’s stop doing more of the same and start offering more of what actually makes a difference.

What if neurodivergent burnout isn’t a reflection of individual fragility — but a warning about the world we’ve built?Wo...
10/07/2025

What if neurodivergent burnout isn’t a reflection of individual fragility — but a warning about the world we’ve built?

Workplace accommodations are so often framed as concessions. As if rest, clarity, autonomy, or sensory safety are indulgences — reserved for those who can’t keep up. But that framing rests on a dangerous assumption: that the default environment is reasonable to begin with.

What if it isn’t?

What if modern work was never truly designed for anyone — let alone those with sensory sensitivities, cognitive differences, or a limited tolerance for performance and pretence?

When neurodivergent people burn out, it may not be because they are weak — but because they are unwilling or unable to sustain what others silently endure. Like the canary in the coal mine, their collapse may signal not personal failure, but environmental toxicity.

We pathologise their distress instead of asking what it reveals.

And yet, the very things we call accommodations — structure, rest, flexibility, transparency — may not be special allowances at all. They may simply be the conditions required for sustainable human functioning.

So perhaps the question is not: “What do neurodivergent people need that others don’t?”

But rather: “What if their needs reveal what all of us need — and what too few of us receive?”

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Wilmslow

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