About Psychotherapy and Counselling
I offer Counselling and Psychotherapy for the following problems
Self-esteem, confidence and assertiveness issues, depression, confusion, feeling stuck/inertia, addictions (alcohol, drugs, food, sex, work, gambling etc..), anxiety, stress, panic attacks, OCD, grief, identity, self-development, unresolved problems that torment, separation, loss, divorce, abortion, miscarriage, redundancy, decision making, family issues, relationship issues, unhelpful patterns of behaviour, physical and sexual abuse , trauma, life-style changes etc...
This is not an exhaustive list of client's presenting issues, but is intended to give a flavour of some of the reasons why people seek professional help.
It is equally possible to feel a generalised sense of discontent, or to be unclear about why life is not living up to your expectations. It may be that you have some doubts about something in your life, or an idea that you are nurturing and would like to air your thoughts and feelings with somebody that is not going to have an immediate preference or encourage you to go in a particular way, as can often be the case with friends and family.
Short-term solution-focused work is very useful and effective when working with something that stands out against the background of everything else that makes up your life that gives definition to the issue and provides us with a focus. It might be a known problem, or a desired outcome that can energise the motivation to understand and remove blocks to achieving the goal.
Talking to somebody who is both on your side but also willing to make observations, to challenge and direct thinking and behaviour, and who can help to bring insight into what is maintaining the problem and to support the necessary movement that would bring resolution, is the key to a good outcome.
The techniques that facilitate that outcome can include cognitive behavioural work, but sometimes we discover that the information that we need to progress might be less known, and come from imagery, intuitions, from dreams, or from a constellation. This is known as Systemic Work, see below.
Depth Work
Depth work or open-ended psychotherapy is about supporting more fundamental change, and attends to your overall functioning. It looks at how your personality operates, the areas where you get stuck, the beliefs and value systems that are your guiding principles, how you identify yourself and who you potentially could be if liberated from certain constraints.
My core training in psychotherapy is called 'psychosynthesis'. It is a humanistic transpersonal approach, broadly speaking it takes a dual perspective.
On the one hand attention is given to the personal realm of the personality and the difficulties that are manifesting within oneself and/or in relationships as a result of things being out of balance, lacking integration, or having adapted to your earliest environment in ways that are no longer useful or relevant. (Symptomatically this can show up as many things such as anxiety, depression, addictions, destructive patterns of behaviour, low self-esteem, lack of assertion, problems with authority, inability to control anger or other feelings, and so on.
On the other hand there is the belief that there is another realm that has a powerful influence over us, called the Transpersonal. This encompasses our soul, the qualities that are attempting to emerge in our lives, our innate drive towards healing, the belief that we all have the potential to connect to powerful resources within us providing us with wisdom and direction, and that sometimes the issues at the level of the personality are key, even gateways to allowing more connection to this realm.
Bringing ourselves into alignment with these energetic forces will support us in our movement towards fulfilling our potential.
In practice this is done by bringing awareness to all aspects of yourself in life, gaining insight into some of the adjustments to the environment that were part of the early formation of your personality, understanding why that happened as a necessary means of survival, and supporting the necessary steps to change.
This can only be achieved in an environment that is as respectful and non-judgmental as is humanely possible.
The awareness that is so central to the change process is harnessed and directed through talking about, observation, noticing the living.
Systemic Work
This is a solution-focused healing approach that throws the perspective wide open, seeing the individual or even the couple as a part of a larger set of systems - the family, both past and present, community, culture and ethnic group and so on. So instead of the rather limited or incomplete picture of the situation from the perspective of one person, we look at how the whole system is mapped, who belongs to it, the significant events that have shaped it, and the affect of all of this on its members.
For instance we know, as systemic therapists, that things like traumatic events in a family can have a powerful influence across several generations, casting a shadow over the present day in ways that are difficult to fathom for everyone.
One of the guiding principles of systems theory is that everyone in the system is connected, and that change in one causes an inevitable change in everybody else. It also means that even though one person might be the focus in terms of symptoms, the so-called one who needs help, the others in the system will be playing their part.
The method that is used to see what is really going on is called a constellation. A constellation is a 'living map' of the issue, and supported by knowledge and understanding of the organising forces that influence a system, we can focus on the moment that would allow the whole system to relax and to regain its vitality.
Contact me in confidence on Telephone: 07702 415241 or email:
