Experience, Experiment, Discover, Deepen

Whatever is going on for us that prompts us to seek professional help, I believe therapy is, at heart, about establishing and developing a more secure, loving home within ourselves. I am interested in your relationship with yourself, what I consider to be our primary relationship in life, regardless of our relationship status.

To do this, as a key part of our work, we consider your experience in real time – in the here and now – along with looking at your patterns: how you are with yourself, how you talk to yourself, and how you function day-to-day. We explore this alongside how you relate to others, including how you manage your boundaries with yourself and with others. I view your history as the context for who and how you are now, looking with you at the ways in which you have formed yourself over time, in response to what you’ve experienced. I keep in my awareness the broader perspective of your current situation, your stage of life, what you want for yourself in the future, and your attitudes.

I approach both life and this work with curiosity, wonder and compassion. For me, therapy is a process of attention, experimentation, learning, empowerment and maturing, through an ongoing cycle of contact, engagement and reflection. It’s an opportunity to recognise and develop existing and new inner and outer resources we need to live a satisfying, meaningful life, whatever our age.

Our bodies, minds and emotional experience are beautifully, inextricably connected. While talking is obviously important in therapy, it can sometimes take us away from the immediate experience of being present in our bodies, the ground of our being. To balance that, I work somatically (with the body), taking into consideration your physical structure and behaviour, including your muscular patterns, to help you recognise the impact you have on yourself, especially emotionally. This does not usually involve touch and is with the aim of helping you directly experience and influence your embodied patterns, attitudes and identities in the present. In the process, you can make the connections between these and your emotional experience, your mental state, and your relationships with the wider world.

Joining the dots in this way can help you see the bigger picture of how you function and, in the process, develop greater agency and responsibility (response-ability) – the ability to respond to yourself, people close to you and those you encounter along the way, and the world around you. We live in a world which increasingly champions individualism: I reject that – we are relational beings and we need to find ways of living together, of expressing ourselves, including our emotional experience, and our wants and needs, while taking into account the impact we have on the other, whether our fellow humans or the more-than-human.

Through doing this work, you can gain new perspectives on yourself. You can recognise and end old patterns, attitudes and identities that no longer serve you, and establish new ones that do – ones that are right for you now. In the process you can become more self-referenced, deepening your experience, leading to greater satisfaction and increased hope, as you mature and evolve towards fulfilling your potential, and taking your place in the wider world.