My Approach
Gestalt therapy underpins my approach, so I help you to grow awareness of all aspects of yourself and how they relate so that you have a wider range of responses available for you to choose from, you don't just have to react according to old patterns. I help you to understand how those old patterns have shaped your life space so that you can make alterations carefully to your life as you integrate new learning about yourself.
I also help you to re-author your life so that your story makes sense to you and you are able to feel compassion towards the ways you have bent yourself to fit into a system, whether that is a family, a team or wider society. In terms of models this utilises Compassion Focussed Therapy but also, because our minds stretch beyond our biology, into our relationships and our context, this utilises group analytic ideas as well. Perhaps you are doing therapy for several people...
Whether you love to write or begrudge even making a shopping list I can help you to use writing to help you find the words to translate your pain - or your joy - into communication. Sometimes a metaphor can say something true about ourselves that normal language cannot reach. Sometimes a poem can make a connection that had alluded us for decades. As Emily Dickinson said, 'write the truth - but write it slant'. It's emotional truth we are looking for, not perfect form.
And staying with the power of the imagination, some of the most profound therapeutic work I have been a part of has involved imagery re-scripting. This seemingly simple technique uses what MRI machines have shown about how the brain works, that it responds in the same way to data it perceives and data it imagines, to provide corrective emotional experiences to painful life events.