Instilling hope in my clients
Aim of my therapy is to instill hope in my clients, as ‘experts’ on themselves and their relationships by helping them develop self-awareness and focusing on self care .
How I Work with You
I see clients on a weekly basis for in-person or online therapy, and tailor my work with each couple or individual based on what they need. Clients often come for counselling at a crisis point, seeking help in a very distressed state.
My focus then is to develop a good working relationship with my clients, so that they are able to talk about things that might be too difficult to say to anyone else. Being seen and heard by a therapist can make clients feel validated.
Change often takes time and patience and is not a painless process. However, I have witnessed many clients transform their relationship to themselves and their partners by taking the risk to enter therapy and sticking with it. My work often helps clients re-write their old narratives about themselves from a kinder perspective. A better and kinder relationship with ones’ self is required to build a better relationship with others.
A lot of my work is therefore about forgiveness and acceptance of who a person is and once clients learn to really love themselves they are then able to have more room in themselves to love and accept others. People can sometimes choose a partner based on the idea of either saving or helping them or being helped or saved by them.
Through my work on self love, clients begin to build a healthy relationship with themselves allowing them to develop healthier kinder relationships.
Over the last 13 years I have tried, through counselling and therapy, to help my clients become a better more authentic version of themselves while accepting responsibility for what they may be putting in to the basket.
My counselling practice
I am a highly experienced individual, couple and psychosexual therapist with 13 years of experience working with my clients. Whether you are looking for help with improving your relationship in general or struggling with anxiety, depression or an eating disorder, weekly sessions can help you in understanding yourself (and your partner) better and provide you with a safe, non-judgmental space where you will feel seen and heard.
In couple relationships, often people with anxious/insecure style of attachment end up choosing partners who may have anxious/avoidant style of attachment. When couples are able to take these ideas onboard, they are better able to identify separation anxiety and or avoidant behaviours in themselves and their partners. This can help clients develop empathy for their partner, one of the foundation stones for any ‘good enough’ relationship.
The individual clients I see come to me with various issues ranging from anxiety, depression, PTSD, eating disorders or are generally in need of help in framing their problems. Sometimes, anxiety or depression are the symptoms of something else they are experiencing in their relationships and environment. I help them discover the meaning behind certain problematic behaviours or dynamics affecting their lives.
Sex is one of the toughest subjects to talk about for most people. We are surrounded by images in the media of people with unnaturally perfect bodies having copious amounts of fantastical sex. I employ sensate focus, a series of touching exercises designed to deepen intimacy between partners and to help reboot and improve their sexual relationship . Clients learn about how sex in real life works and feel more confident in themselves. For unless we find a vocabulary to talk about sex we really can’t get anywhere close to resolving sexual problems.
In my practice, psychodynamic work is integrated with behavioural work like mindfulness techniques to help my clients’ ability to stay in the moment, as well as for clients in my psychosexual practice, Sensate Focus a series of pre-agreed, gradual gentle touching exercises.
Our First Session & Next Steps
After having a brief chat over the phone, an initial face to face or online session takes place lasting 50 minutes. This initial session is an assessment session, with detailed family and relationship history, allowing you to talk about the problems and for me to think about how I may help you.
At the end of this I provide a formulation and agree a treatment plan in collaboration with client/s. Unless the nature of the work is psychosexual in which case up to three assessment sessions might be required.