I specialise in working with adult clients (both individuals and couples/others) facing difficulties with mood and anxiety, trauma, losses, and the many other issues associated with attachment and life challenges. Philosophically I believe that emotional development, healing, and change are facilitated through relating and not just diagnosing and treating with formulaic approaches.
In my experience, which is supported by research, it is the quality of the therapist-patient relationship and the communication between us that matters most in the healing process and so I provide a warm and accepting environment so that communication between us can be understood, elaborated, and used for emotional development. I listen and promote exploration of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in our work together and to that work I bring integrity, curiosity, professional boundaries, flexibility, and humour to my practice.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a collaborative meaning-making endeavor that facilitates the exploration of our conflicts and difficulties and helps guide us to work through some of our inevitable unconscious roadblocks set up early in life.
Ideas that inform my work
My approach is an integrative framework that aligns with the developmental, psychodynamic, and relational/interpersonal theories and practices that I individualise in my clinical work to the specific needs of my clients.
Trained as a Transactional Analyst, I also value phenomenological and existential aspects of experience which means that I am interested in your way of seeing things and what they mean to you. I am mindful that many experiences impact our sense of self such as temperament, physical makeup or limitations, ethnicity, spirituality, gender, race, and class. The fields of neuroscience, especially in relation to the dynamic qualities of self-regulation and the domains of non-verbal and unconscious communication also inform my work.
Together we look at thoughts, feelings, behaviors, dreams, memories, and stories that come up for you during therapy sessions and in daily life. Over time, we explore the emergent patterns and beliefs, often unconscious, that may interfere with creativity, enjoyment, intimacy, learning, and life-enhancing choices.
Psychotherapy
I consider psychotherapy a collaborative, meaning-making endeavour that facilitates the exploration of our conflicts and difficulties and helps guide us to work through some of the unconscious roadblocks that often get set up early in life. Contemporary psychoanalytically orientated psychotherapy is interactive and engaging and considers our earliest relationships as building blocks for the experience of self and the world around us.
A process that is both interactive and engaging, analytic thinking involves theories of the mind that consider our earliest relationships as building blocks of our experience of self, and the work connects the immediacy of your emotional experience with deeply held perceptions of yourself, your relationships, and the world, opening up avenues to profound change and growth.
Depression and anxiety
Feelings of isolation, failure, and alienation
Imposter syndrome
Self esteem
Grief
Prolonged grief states
Creative identity issues
Professional identity issues
Personal identity issues
Professional identity issues
Loss of meaning, motivation, and drive
Beginning or ending relationships
Personal and romantic relationship concerns
Complex and painful family of origin difficulties
Grief, losses, and estrangements
Healing from sexual abuse and trauma
Healing from emotional or physical abuse
Body image difficulties
Life transitions
Stress management
Work and workplace issues
Anger & dissatisfaction
Unresolved emotional pain
Counselling
Counselling is a form of short-term talk therapy (6-12 sessions) focused on a specific issue that you are seeking to sort out, change or work through. The goal is often to unravel a problem and find new ways forward. The work is solution focused.
When a client comes for counselling they usually have a clear idea of the problem but need to develop skills, awareness, and strategies to deal with the problem. I counsel a range of clients experiencing workplace issues, grief, interpersonal difficulties and many more issues. When working with issues in counselling we are working with conscious mind and problem solving, boundary strengthening, and mindfulness skills are often utilised in the work.