Welcome
Research shows that the most important aspect of therapy is the working alliance between client and therapist, and my approach is informed by this. I believe that the most crucial thing I can provide is an honest, human-to-human connection; and before anything else this requires trust. I strive to be warm, present and above all human for my clients.
I hold an honours degree from the highly regarded Counselling & Psychotherapy course at CIT. My approach is humanistic and integrative, which is to say my primary focus is the person and relationship in the therapy room, and that I work using varied frameworks rather than a single school. I make use of Transactional Analysis, Johnson’s theories of personality, Gestalt, IFS, Somatic Experiencing, Jungian-inspired mythic storytelling, and others.
My Philosophy & Approach
There are as many reasons to come to therapy as there are people. Just as you would expect a doctor or personal trainer to tailor their services to your own personal needs, so therapy should adapt itself to what you are hoping to get out of it, and which approaches for achieving that goal will best suit you and your circumstances.
Having said that, there are a couple of factors that are often present when we are considering therapy.
Firstly, it is likely that we are concerned in some way with change. Perhaps we want something in our lives to be different. We find ourselves unhappy or unsatisfied with our lives as they are now. Alternatively, there may be changes in our lives already that we are struggling with. Something that was once tolerable has become intolerable, something that was once good is no longer so. We may not even be sure what is wrong or what we are seeking, only that something is “off” and that we want that something to change. Sometimes even understanding what it is that we are seeking can be the first task of therapy.
Secondly, we have reached the limits of our current resources. It is rare for someone to seek therapy without having first tried whatever approaches and strategies they already have available to resolve their situation. We are social creatures, and one of our core survival strategies is to look for other humans when we are faced with something that we don’t think we can handle alone. Seeking support is a quintessentially human activity, and represents a strength in us, not a weakness.
Taking these two together, we can form an idea of what therapy “should” be. Firstly, it should stand in service of either achieving, or supporting us with change. Therapy that changes nothing in our lives is not effective therapy. Secondly, in order to do that it must provide us with something both supportive and new. If we have been unable to meet a challenge with what we already have available, we must almost by definition need some new element in order to find a way forward with our issue.
We live in an explicitly “rational”, information dense society. It tends to be that our skills around analysis and problem solving are well developed, as much of our education and work life revolve around focusing on and building those skills. We have access to almost overwhelming amounts of information, knowledge, and advice. And when dealing with external challenges, these resources prove eminently effective. We build skyscrapers, cure diseases, feed billions. But when we meet internal challenges, we sometimes need something “more”.
As humans, we are rational, thinking beings, and our modern society puts a particularly strong emphasis on those aspects of us. But there are other parts of us too. We have an internal experience. We love, we make music, we dance. If you are asked what it feels like to love, or why a particular piece of music moves you, or what the experience is of sitting by an open fireplace, you may provide an answer that is accurate, scholarly, and comprehensive, without truly touching the experience of those things.
Having the knowledge we need is only part of what is needed for change. We all know that we should eat healthily, exercise regularly, stay off our phones, and sleep well. How many of us achieve all of those things consistently? Knowledge provides the external direction, the framework for change. But in order to actually perform (or tolerate) change, something more is needed. Something internal, something experienced.
My approach then, is to assist you in uncovering what this internal factor is for you. While I am experienced in change, and have knowledge of psychological and psychotherapeutic theory, you are the expert on yourself. I work with the understanding that the answers and strengths that are required for change to occur already exist within you, even if you are not yet aware of them. I make use of various psycho-educational, creative, and felt-sense techniques to help you find the answers and strengths that will make what is currently impossible or unbearable, possible or bearable.