WHY THERAPY?
Clients seek counselling & psychotherapy for a variety of reasons. It is often because of the difficulties and challenges in daily lives that sometimes become overwhelming and may impact upon relationships, work, and personal and professional judgements. It is sometimes beyond the control of the individual to address those issues without professional help.
The overall aim of therapy is to provide you with an opportunity to work through difficulties in a safe and confidential environment without feeling judged. Such issues may involve areas of your life which you feel troubled by, either in your personal life or at work. Issues brought to therapy may involve self esteem and confidence, relationship problems, anxiety, depression, work related stress, bereavement, loss, abuse, rape, identity.
WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT FROM COUNSELLING/PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH ME?
I describe myself as an Integrative Psychotherapist by this I mean that I work with people to enable them to experience life in the fullest way that is available to them.
There are a number of ways of helping individuals depending upon the issues they bring. The outcome of any type of therapy is dependent on a variety of dynamics - the effectiveness of the therapist, the limitations of the approach, the commitment and effort from the client, the complexity of the issues brought into therapy. Counselling/psychotherapy does not offer a magic wand and entering into therapy requires serious consideration. An initial consultation with your therapist gives you the opportunity to agree whether this is the suitable way forward for you.
The uniqueness of a therapeutic relationship is the availability of a another human being who has no preconception of you and no personal agenda other than to be in relationship with you and be helpful in guiding you in your right direction.
I have particular interests in working with childhood issues and trauma.
I am a qualified E.M.D.R. Practitioner and also offer Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
WHAT IS INTEGRATIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY?
A developmental-relational approach that uses a synthesis of Humanistic Psychology, Object Relations Theory and Psychoanalytic Self-Psychology.
The result is a unique integration of approaches designed to help with working through childhood issues in order to be fully available for the richness of current relationships.
WHAT IS CBT (COGNITIVE BEHAVOURAL THERAPY)?
It is a way of talking about:
How you think about yourself, the world and other people
How what you do affects your thoughts and feelings.
CBT can help you to change how you think ("Cognitive") and what you do ("Behaviour)". These changes can help you to feel better. It focuses on the "here and now" problems and difficulties. Instead of focussing on the causes of your distress or symptoms in the past, it looks for ways to improve your state of mind now.
WHAT IS EMDR?
EMDR is an acronym for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, an innovative clinical treatment originated and developed by Dr Francine Shapiro in 1987. EMDR is effective in treating individuals who have experienced psychological difficulties arising from traumatic experiences, such as assault, road traffic accidents, war trauma, torture, natural or man-made disasters, sexual abuse and childhood neglect. EMDR is also increasingly used to treat complaints which are not necessarily trauma-related, such as panic disorder, phobias, performance anxiety, self-esteem issues and other anxiety-related disorders.
EMDR is a complex method of psychotherapy which integrates many of the successful elements of a range of therapeutic approaches in combination with eye movements or other forms of alternative dual attention stimulation, such as alternative hand-tapping or alternative audio tones, which appear to stimulate the brain's information processing system.
During EMDR treatment the client attends to emotionally disturbing material in brief sequential doses while simultaneously focusing on an external stimulus. EMDR appears to facilitate the accessing of the traumatic memory network and the information is adaptively processed with new associations being made between the disturbing memory and more adaptive memories or information, leading to more complete information processing, alleviation of emotional and physiological distress and development of cognitive insights.
EMDR is a three-pronged approach involving processing of:
• past events that have laid the groundwork for dysfunction
• present circumstances that illicit distress
• future templates dealing with potentially distressing situations in a more adaptive manner.
EMDR is the treatment of choice for psychological trauma according to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). These guidelines are followed by the NHS.
