Asking for help is never easy, but sometimes it can feel terrifying. You may be feeling very vulnerable or very exposed. And maybe you are not sure if counselling is the right way forward?
This is an opportunity to talk to someone in confidence about any worries, fears, regrets or pains you are experiencing now.
I am here to listen to you and help you understand some of the conflicting emotions you may be feeling. I do not know any of your friends or family and I will never judge you for being angry or upset. Together, we can explore the source of your dificulties and find solutions that work for you.

Psychotherapy is a very personal experience and is different for everyone. We go at your own pace and according to your needs to allow the process to develop. We can talk about any subject you wish and I am here to listen to your unique perspective and never make assumptions on your behalf or your situation.
Counselling and psychotherapy is about having the courage to make changes in your life so that you no longer find yourself repeating bad experiences or destructive behaviour.
Talking through your problems with a therapist will give you a special insight into the aspects of your life that until now, have remained hidden. You can then go on to take control and make better choices.

I am an Integrative psychotherapist, which means I consider the person as a whole. This includes the mind and the body, lifestyle and history. Integrative psychotherapy is about using the many different tools of therapy theory in the way that most benefits the client.
You are a unique person and your history tells a story about you and how you have learnt to live in this world. At different times you may have felt or reacted to situations in a way you still do not not fully understand? In our work together we will consider the particular patterns in your life, the things that make you happy and the things that have brought you pain. Psychotherapy is not about avoiding the pain but about understanding why something feels so painful. With this understanding we can face our wounds from the past and finally learn to heal. With this healing, you are likely to spend a lot less time and energy trying to avoid situations and people, and finally start spending it in ways that actually benefit you.

This website is designed with the intention to help people who are seeking psychotherapy, whether for personal reasons or as a career choice, to find some answers to their questions. Psychotherapy is a big subject that can sometimes seem vast and complex and abstract in many ways. However, it might help to have a read through this page.

The word "Psychotherapy" essentially means the applied art of helping someone to 'heal' their 'thoughts'. This idea suggests a number of things;
1 - that our mere thoughts have the potential to be toxic and may require some degree of 'healing'.
2 - that the way we think about things has a very strong influence on the way we experience life everyday and that by changing the way we think can change the way we feel.

However, psychotherapy is not about mind control. Quite the reverse, my understanding of psychotherapy is that it is in exploring our true thouhts that we come to a greater understanding of who we really are. There is no absolute 'right' way of thinking. But sometimes our thoughts can be cluttered with ideas that we have adopted from others in an attempt to make sense of a complex and often hostile world. Unfortunately, these ideas do not often really fit with who we are deep down and it is this descrepency which can bring about a long-term sense of alienantion in some people. Making them feel there must be something fundamentally 'wrong' with them. And yet sometimes we are not even fully aware of our own thoughts, this is what is called the unconscious.

Without this deeper understanding of who we are, at first glance, the solutions to our problems may seem obvious, and yet when we try to implement these solutions, we do not necessarily get the results we expected. This might be because we have learnt only to look at ourselves, our lives and other people from a single perspective. Our ideas of morality can be very fixed and thus, other people's behaviour can seem very strange and even hurtful. Sometimes the same thing applies to us. Others may not be able to understand our own behaviours as it does not comply with their own perspectives. This is because we all experience things in a way that is unique to us, and our histories have had a huge influence on the way we think and feel. As the therapy work together progresses, we will find that a variety of different issues arise, and with these, unnexpected feelings will surface. At the beggining you may feel unsure of what to talk about and even how to talk about it. In this situation it would be important to take it slow enough for your confidence in me to grow and for the most pressing issues to arise naturally. But after a while, you may notice that some subjects are more difficult to broach than others or that you feel you want to talk about something but find you purposefully avoid it when you have the opportunity. These are signs that the therapy has reached a new level and it might mean that the work we do together becomes more challenging.

You could be angry but feel ashamed to show those feelings because you believe that 'anger' is wrong? Or perhaps you feel frustrated with me, but do not want to say anything because you feel it would hurt me and that I would not want to see you anymore?
These are often feelings which relate to experiences we had when were much younger and we depended on our carers for survival. Some behaviours may not have been permitted such as fighting or disobediance and there may have been good reasons for this. But the result is that the feelings associated with those behaviours can feel shameful or make us very sad in a way that stops us from expressing aspects of ourselves we think are essentially bad. It is very common for people to believe that if they really were a 'good' person they would never think or feel these 'bad' things. This is a black and white way of thinking and leaves no room for the whole spectrum of feelings that are essential to feeling whole and integrated. Anger is a feeling and is not a bad thing in itself. Sometimes the expression of anger, however, can feel very frightening. Both for the person expressing it and for the person on the receiving end. This can lead to believing that it is the feeling that is bad. However, if we are alowed to explore these feelings we can begin to understand them and learn that they are telling us something very important. when we are able to accept our true feelings, rather than only the ones we think are 'good', then we can begin to heal.

The following is an example of how this can played out.
A particular client may see himself as a rather intellectual person, and prefers to approch all aspects of life with a certain distance. This person might prefer a philisophical theory such as psychoanalysis to begin with. Working in this way will allow this client to express himself in ways he feels most comfortable and would give me insight into the way he consciously understands his experiences. With this approach the therapeutic relationship has time to develop in a way that builds confidence. However, as the work progresses it will become more important to start considering some of these issues with a different approach. This is the idea of integration; the more limited we are in our views and perspectives, the more limited our experience of life becomes. Always approaching problems with an itellectual distance for example, may suggest that this client fears his real feelings. He may even be very unaware that he has any feelings at all. This is called a defence mechanism. This client may have been taught in his early life that feelings are dangerous because they bring a sense of vulnerability. So he learnt to distance himself from his feelings. This would have been a very useful thing to do at the time because his vulnerability may have felt umbereable if he was not given the right support to integrate it while he was young. Rather he may have been made to feel 'weak' or 'ashamed'. Or maybe he was told "Boys don't cry" when he was upset that his parents had to go out? As a result he became determined not to disapoint his parents and suppressed his 'weak' feelings so he could be a boy they could be proud of?
Rediscovering these memories are likely to make this particular client feel lots of conflicting things. All of which are likely to feel very uncomfortable. He may resist talking about these things and dismiss them as "things from the past". Integrative psychotherapy is about exploring all these issues and not avoiding them because they feel uncomfortable. At this point a more humanistic theory such as Gestalt could be a very effective way of exploring these issues for this client, using excercises to experience these hidden feelings. All at the pace that the client agrees to.
Psychotherapy and counselling is a continuous experience and evolves as the work progresses. Every person is unique and experiences therapy in their own way. With a strong working alliance we will find creative ways to work according to your needs and personality.

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