Approach

What to expect

I work in an open and honest way, which means we regularly review your experience of therapy throughout our time working together. This often includes an anticipated number of sessions where appropriate and suited to your needs and situation, the cost of your therapy and the times you can attend. This enables you to get the most out your sessions.

Sessions last 50 minutes, usually once a week, at a regular time.

I encourage an initial 15 minute consultation via zoom. This enables us to look at what brings you to therapy in some detail and get a sense of whether we are a good fit to work together at this time. There is a small amount of paperwork that we complete together, before thinking about a way forward for you.

Therapy on your terms, for your duration.

Let’s face it. Be honest. No-one wants to be in therapy longer than they need to. Modern life is frantic, and more overwhelming than ever, and offers us great joys. Unavoidably, therefore, we also encounter great sorrows. We are faced with three options in the face of these difficulties - to endure, to sit with, or to move on. There’s no one size fits all approach. There’s no right or wrong way to feel. Sometimes it’s a combination of all three, sometimes just one. That’s ok. I see good quality therapy as a means to potentially embrace all three, in a way that honours where you are, and where you want to be.

I use solution focused therapy as a tool to identify what the problem is, and incorporate other models of working to establish what might be helpful, based on what works for you.

My approach to working with you is based upon a broad, unique and comprehensive double training - in both counselling and mental health social work, and I have worked for the NHS in community mental health for some years.

Therapy explained for the jargon-phobic.

Stereotypes exist for a reason, folks. Freud loved a couch and favoured long term regular psychoanalysis. Longer term therapy has its place, and be effective for many people, and I continue to work with people in both the longer and shorter term, as required. That said, I tend to find more and more people desire a shorter term therapy for various reason’s, and we can talk about this in more depth and what this means to you, early on.

There are dozen’s of models, theories and approaches that inform good quality, contemporary therapy. In essence what we’re seeking to do is work together for a period of time, to enable you to move forward and overcome what ails you. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. I provide the space and the conditions for you to create the change you desire, and we navigate this, together. I place heavy emphasis on the together part for good reason - poor emotional health is a lonely and bewildering place to find yourself. We enter into therapy equally, seeking the same outcome and walk the route together.

Models, theories, approaches?
Fine, but which do you use?

I bring several perspectives to my work with you - those informed by therapeutic theory, and another informed by social theory. This means I view the difficulties that prompt people to come to therapy through a lens that captures a lot of information, based on your various experiences through life, both positive and negative, and how this impacts you within your relationships, family and community. This can help us see how and why these experiences sometimes generate problems as well as opportunities, and how we can approach these problems in a way that enables you to move forward.

The underpinning principles of person-centred practice remain central to all the work we complete together. This is the understanding that YOU remain central to the process, and that I set the conditions of a good working relationship that enables you to do the work, in a safe and supportive way.

I incorporate aspects of Gestalt (how and why we see ourselves the way we do, and what happens when this is very different to how others see us), psychoanalytic (the belief that difficulties encountered in adulthood can sometimes have roots in childhood experience), Transactional-Analysis (the way we communicate with others and what happens when this goes awry, focusing on how we communicate and which parts of the ego inform this), and a relational approach, based on what happens when your needs don’t get met and the impact this can have during therapy.

I have a particular interest in mindfulness, which is growing exponentially in popularity as a means of exploring and accepting how we are in the here and now. I favour breathwork techniques as a useful addition to psychological work due to the potential benefits of working with the breath to assist and deepen the process, and find this to be a powerful addition to my practice. I regularly use DBT skills (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) for specific issues for the simple reason that it is a tried and tested approach, which appears to work, and have been in formal training to use this model for the last two years. I have also recently added EMDR to my practice which is proving to be a useful model for working with various difficulties.

Lastly, I hate jargon. At a guess I expect you probably do too. For this reason we’ll work in a clear, comprehensive, relatable and informed way.