Psychotherapy & Counselling
Counselling and psychotherapy can help treat challenges and symptoms relating to your mental health and emotions. Also known as talk therapy, these approaches aim to help you understand your thoughts and feelings and equip you to face new challenges, both in the present and the future. Counselling and psychotherapy are similar and the two can overlap.
In both approaches, it is beneficial to understand the need for change and be willing to engage in a collaborative process. You also need to work with a suitable therapist whom you can trust.
Counselling
Counselling
Counselling will usually focus on a specific, current problem that you are conscious of, and tends to be short term.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy goes deeper, exploring what is often unconscious – thoughts, feelings, patterns, conditioning – and bringing it to light, thus addressing the underlying causes of your unease as well as how to resolve them. Psychotherapy can help when depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, addictive behaviours, bereavement or other factors leave you feeling overwhelmed. Sometimes we don’t seem to be suffering any particular problem, but feel increasingly agitated by a sense of dissatisfaction, emptiness, feeling stuck, being misunderstood, or a gnawing lack of meaning and purpose.
My Approach
I work in the context of Psychosynthesis, an approach to psychology developed by the Italian psychiatrist, Dr Roberto Assagioli, who was a student of Freud and Bleuler, and a colleague of Jung.
In developing Psychosynthesis, Assagioli agreed with Freud that healing childhood trauma and developing a healthy ego were necessary aims of psychotherapy, but held that human growth could not be limited to this alone. A student of philosophical and spiritual traditions of both East and West, he sought to address human growth as it proceeded beyond the norm of the well-functioning ego, aiming to support the blossoming of human potential and further still, to open the door onto the spiritual or transpersonal dimensions of human experience.
Accordingly, I hold that just as childhood is affecting our present living, so too is our vast human potential for healing and change. Indeed, repression of this higher potential can lead to psychological disturbances every bit as debilitating as repression of childhood trauma.
I provide a confidential, nourishing space where you can be seen and heard. We can gently explore your feelings and fears and what may be holding you back, as well as your hopes and aspirations for the future. Where appropriate, I draw on techniques such as guided meditation and visualisations, inner-child journeying, basic somatic experiencing and the exploration of your symbolic imagination and dream life.
You have control over how we work together, but whatever you choose to share with me can become fertile ground for self-knowledge, creativity and rejuvenation. Essentially, our therapy space is a collaborative, co-creational process in which I commit to supporting you in a deeper and more meaningful connection to your potential, helping you make more authentic choices around the life you want to lead.