Psychotherapy is a confidential conversation which tries to help people gain a sense of what is troubling them, while at the same time facilitating an understanding of their troubles and distress. People seek therapy for all kinds of reasons. Perhaps there is suffering which has never been properly shared or acknowledged. There may be anxieties around relationships, overwhelming feelings or else a lack of feeling, loneliness, or just a sense of something missing.
Our present difficulties often have roots in the past. A lot of what can trouble us – depress us, keep us awake at night, get us into difficulties – does so because the conflicts which underlie our difficulties are not evident to us, and are hard to access. They can, nevertheless, generate thoughts and feelings over which we feel we have little control, and which can drive us to keep on repeating ways of thinking, behaving and relating which may be destructive in our own and others' lives.
Most of us come to therapy with a story, an account of ourselves shaped by our anxieties, traumas and disappointments, as well as our hopes. Psychotherapy allows us to express, and thus hear, our stories and to find ways of telling different stories about our lives, and hopefully finding different more creative ways of living our lives.
Practically speaking, through a therapeutic relationship, I help people recover from depression and anxiety, trauma and stress, relationship difficulties, and addictions. I do this by helping people build resilience, so that when they leave therapy, they can cope better with any further life crises they may encounter.
I work mainly with individuals in psychotherapy, and do a limited amount of couple counselling. If you are wanting psychotherapy for reasons of personal development I then work mainly from a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspective.
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