About Therapy

I am an integrative counsellor registered with the BACP. I believe that people are made up of physical, mental, emotional, relational and spiritual dimensions, and at times any or all of these may need to be addressed. Counselling is a relational process, and at the heart of the work is building a relationship in which problems can be shared and you can have the opportunity to find your own solutions. It is a journey, and we can explore together what your path looks like, hence the pictures of paths at the top of this page.

Being integrative means I draw on more than one theory to work with your areas of needs and expectations. Please see below for the different theories I use, and hover your mouse above each one for more information:

Humanistic Approach

While others types of therapy fall under a general umbrella of Humanistic therapy, more widely this means that I see you as the expert on your own life and holding the responsibility for your thoughts and actions. My role is to walk alongside you but not to tell you what to do. While you might come wanting answers, in gentle questioning I guide you to where you hold the answers yourself.

Person-centred

As part of the humanistic approach, this places you at the centre and is based on the belief that given the correct conditions, everyone has the capacity for personal growth and change. By offering empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence, you can be helped to come to terms with negative feelings and find your own ways to make changes in your life.

Psychodynamic Approach

The psychodynamic approach looks at the past its impact on your life today. You may have a traumatic past, or wish to explore aspects of your childhood or earlier life, in order to help you understand ways you are feeling and behaving now. By understanding this, you can determine what might no longer be needed. It can enable you to speak about events you haven’t had the opportunity to speak about before, with the time and space allowing you to bring new understandings and perspectives on them.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)

At times, the way you are thinking about a situation can alter how you are feeling and how you behave. If a change is made to the way that you think, changes to the feelings and behaviour can follow. This is what Cognitive Behaviour Therapy looks to do.

Behaviour Therapy

Behaviour therapy looks to see how behaviours you exhibit can be learnt responses from the past. Once these have been identified, you can explore different ways of behaving which are more appropriate to present day situations.

Creative therapy

Sometimes words are not enough or are not easy to use, then you can investigate other ways of communication, such as writing, drawing or using images. This is not Art Therapy, but is using creative tools to help you express yourself when words cannot be found.

Existential therapy

Existential therapy stems from the believe that life has no given meaning, and that we therefore have to make our own sense of the world. You may be asking about life’s big questions regarding freedom, death and choice, the anxieties this may bring, and a search for how you can construct meaning. By constructing meaning, it can help you to make decisions about how you want to live your life.

Phenomenological therapy

You may wish to talk about things happening in the present. Phenomenological therapy is a way of doing this in which you will be invited to explore events, without judgement and without assigning meaning to them and equalising them with other experiences. Part of looking at this may be to look at how you have perceived an event, which might be different to explaining the event itself.

Gestalt therapy

The word Gestalt is from a German word for whole or pattern. This not only takes you as a whole, but also places you within your surroundings. It looks at how you relate to others and manage situations by looking at your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. It often includes acting out scenarios and imagining what you might say to someone if they were in the room with you.

Brief therapy

This is what is says on the tin! You might have a limited number of sessions due to time constraints or financial reasons. In brief therapy, you will focus on positive change and specific goals, and how you can achieve them. The focus is on looking forward rather than problems of the past.

Transactional analysis

Transactional Analysis says you have three states/roles – Adult, Parent and Child, which you will use when you are interacting with different people. Ways you behave may come to light, where you might act in a different role to what is needed, for example, relating to someone in a child role, rather than acting as an adult. You can then explore ways in which you can change the role you are behaving from.