Get The Most Out Of Life
How Can Counselling Help Me?
Effective therapy is a partnership; this is your journey and you have the personal attributes to get to where you want to be. My role as a therapist it is to help you to navigate the path, goals, and destinations of your choosing; wherever you are currently at on your journey I will meet you. I role is not to give advice but to enable you to effectively self-govern with the benefit of a greater and more accurate understanding of yourself. You have the inner resources and wisdom to reach your goals and full potential, it’s my job to help you access them, trust in them and use them successfully.
Your Space
I know that starting the process of attending therapy can feel daunting, risky even, which is why I strive to create an environment where you are fully supported, accepted and free to express a full range of feelings where you can feel truly heard. Sometimes, it can be hard to find somewhere we can genuinely reveal our innermost feelings and find and be ourselves; we will build a relationship where you can do just that. Our counselling relationship will be a professional relationship, which means that I pay attention and respect to our boundaries at all times. It is not my role to offer advice, 'fix you' or be a friend, but to assist you in locating and connecting with your own tools and inner resources to get you where you want to be.
Therapy Approach
I use a broad scope of skills, approaches and evidenced based practices to meet the unique needs of each client. My core training was in psychodynamic psychotherapy, incorporating Object Relations therapy. My learning in these fields continues as I find these approaches highly effective in addressing the underlying causes of pain and frustration in life.
Psychodynamic therapy takes a developmental approach to understanding thoughts, feelings and behaviours. How have we arrived at our own individual world view? Is it a true reflection of who we are? How could our conditioned responses be preventing us from finding meaning and fulfillment in our lives? Psychodynamic therapy reveals the hidden mental processes that steer us and determine how we operate in the world and brings fresh perspective to the nature of their influence on our life.
Object Relations is a well established branch of psychoanalytic theory which recognises that social connections are fundamental to human survival. The quality of our relationships has a direct impact on our sense of well-being and our ability to thrive. When this is compromised in some way, feelings such as depression and anxiety can be catalysts for helping us discover healthier, more beneficial relationships with those around us. Object relations therapy seeks to explore and understand our style of relating in more depth. Its purpose is to arrive at a clearer and more realistic sense of self, to address distortions that we have developed in response to significant others and to develop insight so that new choices and possibilities can be embraced with trust and confidence.
Self Psychology is concerned with understanding how our self-concept has developed, how our environment and relationships have impacted our sense of who we are positively and where it has presented challenges for us. Our relationship to ourselves is the most fundamental relationship we have, since it is the starting point for all other relationships and underlies our experiences as we move through life.
Polyvagal Theory seeks to understand how our autonomic nervous system impacts our lived experiences for better or for worse. It has core themes concerning safety and how the mind and body organises itself in the face of threat. Using a polyvagal informed approach can be very useful in understanding how chronic stress damages us but importantly how we can manage our own stress response and build resilience in the face of life's challenges. The adaptations that all human beings make to resolve threat can now be understood in a different, more empowering light; if we can actively choose between surviving and thriving, we are in a good place.
Specialist Areas of Interest, Experience and Expertise
In addition to the issues mentioned on my home page I have a specialist interest and expertise in the following areas:
- Anxiety If anxiety is inhibiting your enjoyment of life, I offer a variety of different approaches that we will work through together to help you regain the quality of life that you want.
- Relationships Difficulties If dissatisfaction and frustration are recurring themes in your relationships, or you are a 'people pleaser' or maybe lack assertiveness, there will be underlying reasons why. Psychotherapy can help you to understand the origin of patterns of relating, bring them into your range of awareness and give you new choices in how you interact in relationships.
- Complex Trauma Attachment/early years bonding trauma can manifest in many different ways, for example, addictions, depression, destructive behaviours and personality disorders frequently have their roots in early relational challenges. The quality of your inter-personal relationships and life experiences can be greatly improved by healing complex trauma.
- Stress can have hugely detrimental affects on our mental and physical well-being and I have a particular interest and passion in helping people develop awareness of their own autonomic states and how to effectively manage them to reduce the negative impact that stress has on nearly every aspect of life.
- Autoimmune Diseases If you would like to develop greater awareness and more effective management of your autoimmune disease, I am very experienced in working with people who want to reclaim a better quality of life.
- Narcissism. Narcissists and those who come into contact with them often experience particularly destructive and damaging emotional experiences that are complex in their cause and resolution. There can be far reaching and long lasting consequences of contact with narcissists especially where a power imbalance is present, such as parent/child, employee/manager.
- Bullying. The long-term and sustained impact of bullying on self-esteem whether this be within our own family, at shcool or at work, should never be underestimated. The experience can negatively impact our self-worth and sense of identity. Psychotherapy can help you to make sense of how you have incorporated this negative conditioning and how you can begin to address it and regain a true sense of your unique worth and capabilities.
- Character traits and behaviours that hold us back from reaching our potential. Sometimes it is easy to think that particular character traits are a part of our personal make-up where in fact they are responses to certain prior life experiences. Issues like self-sabotage, jealousy, passivity and anger are symptoms of underlying issues that can be explored and worked through.
- Life transitions. We will all face many major transitions as we progress through life and some of these challenges can prove demanding to cope with and to discuss honestly with those we are closest to. It is never to late to seek support for whatever may be troubling us.