How I work
Initial contact
If you send an enquiry with a little information about what is troubling you and any questions you have to help you decide whether to book in for an assessment appointment, I will be more than happy to respond as best as I can and will aim to do so within 48 working hours (usually sooner). If helpful in your decision making, we can arrange a short 10-15 minute phone call to meet and see how it feels talking together.
Assessment
Our first one or two sessions would be an opportunity to start to gently explore what is troubling you, to develop a safe and trusting relationship, to develop a shared understanding of your current difficulties and to determine together the best way forward.
Therapy
From there we can go onto work together collaboratively to alleviate your distress and help you to find your way forward towards a valued and vital life, despite life’s challenges.
We would discuss what you felt you needed from the space to identify what truly matters to you and to empower you to move forward in ways that felt meaningful and authentic to you. You may be seeking a safe and containing space to talk through, reflect and process aspects of your life. Or you may want to have guidance on more action-oriented ways of working that would help with the problems you are experiencing.
The main therapy models that I draw on are Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT), Narrative therapy (NT) and Eye Movement Desensitation and Reprocessing (EMDR) which are summarised below, but I am also informed by Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), psychodynamic and somatically focused therapy models.
All of these therapies are compassionate, non-blaming and respectful but differ in how they conceptualise difficulties and how much structure they have and one model might suit your style or type of difficulties better than others. You may already know that one style or other may be a better fit for you, or may feel open to a more integrated approach, incorporating a considered and tailored blend of styles.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT is an action oriented and experiential therapy with the aim of enabling you to accept (make room rather than resign to), what is out of your personal control and commit to action that improves and enriches your life. You would be invited to develop psychological skills to help you more effectively deal with difficult thoughts and feelings to reduce their impact on you, and to develop a healthier, more supportive way of treating yourself in the face of the difficulties. We would work on exploring and clarifying your values – what truly matters to you rather than the ‘shoulds’ – to guide the actions you take to maximise your potential for a rich, full and meaningful life.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy views people as separate from their problems, which helps the client to see the problem as something they can look at and make changes to, rather than as an intrinsic part of who they are. It has a conversational style exploring the stories told by you and the people and culture around you that impact on your sense of who you are and what you are able to do. Through the conversations, we would work to help you to rewrite your preferred stories, enabling you to take a stronger position to those stories around you that don't fit, and to empower you to make positive changes.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. It does not require talking in detail about the distressing issue if this is difficult for you, and consists of a structured set of processes that I would use to guide you safely through images, emotions and body sensations associated with previous traumas enabling the distressing memories to lose their intensity (desensitise) and eliminating or significantly reducing the re-triggering of these trauma-associated responses.