About Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a talking therapy. It tends to be longer term and explores the whole person, whereas counselling tends to be shorter term, more goal oriented and may focus on a particular issue that is arising. Rather than forcing change of behaviour or thoughts (that may be short-lived and feel like a chore to remember), psychotherapy works at depth. Through a commitment and curiosity to exploring yourself, change follows, slowly but surely. Awareness and understanding are part of the work, but for therapy to have an impact, we need to experience our emotions deeply and connect these to our thoughts and understanding of ourselves. Making sense of things and gaining insight is part of the work; we also need to really experience what it is like to be who we are, to have been through what we have, to weave these together with our story.

Within therapy, we explore your past, your present life and what you hope for in the future. It can be valuable to explore the people, environment and events you grew up with and the influences they had upon you, to understand the context surrounding the development of your personality, beliefs and behaviours. This helps us to understand your patterns now. We will pay attention to what helps you now and what no longer serves you, how people or events impact you and how you go about coping with what comes your way. We will work out what enables you to feel stable, engaged, well and what gets in the way of this. You may find that you develop a gentle concern and care for yourself, a patience with your anger or shame or distress and better ways to take care of yourself in these states. You may discover a new connection to your feelings and impulses, to your physical body and begin to feel more alive and present in your life.

My role is to guide and facilitate your self-exploration. At times you may need to simply be heard, to tell your story and to see how this is taken in and understood by another person. I may ask you questions to take you deeper into your experience of yourself. I may suggest hypotheses about your experience and the impact it’s had on you. I may link together things we have learned about you or I may spot patterns in your feelings, thoughts or reactions to things.  I may bring in different theories or ideas to help you reflect, to organise your thoughts or ideas about yourself. We may try different ways to develop your ability to listen inwards – noticing your bodily sensations, your thoughts, exploring your emotions and how you react and respond to yourself when these arise. We will get to know your internal, emotional landscape so it becomes more familiar, easier to talk about and easier to live with. We will work on defining what it is you want or need and figure out what might be getting in the way. We will keep noticing where we are going, what’s working for you and what you find helpful.

Awareness is key. Awareness is what grows first – once we get to a state where we can truly observe ourselves, we are well on our way. Once we have awareness and curiosity we can explore the depths of our experience safely and begin to find inner resources and wisdom.

People come to psychotherapy for many reasons. Some people experience feelings or states that are difficult to bear. Some people come because they feel stuck or lost, finding themselves in the same situations or relationships over and over. Many issues or situations respond well to psychotherapy, some of them are:

• Abuse (emotional, physical and sexual)
• Addictions
• Anger
• Adjusting to new life events or change, new diagnoses
• Anxiety, feelings of panic
• Bereavement, loss, grief
• Bullying
• Depression, low mood
• Eating disorders
• Low confidence, self-esteem
• Post-natal depression
• PTSD / CPTSD
• Neurodiversity (and the impact of being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world)
• Relationship difficulties
• Sexuality
• Shame
• Stress
• Trauma