I am interested in deeply understanding you and your internal and relationship dynamics that underpin your present-day experiences and ways of relating.
Psychodynamic therapy is based on the idea that many of our current emotional difficulties come from patterns developed in our early years, existing in our adult lives unconsciously as echoes and in our attachment styles. Even if we’ve had therapy before, sometimes things just keep coming back and often it is because we haven’t quite worked through these echoes yet.
By bringing these unconscious influences into awareness and working with these echoes we can start to recognise and question unhelpful patterns, helping you gain a deeper understanding and insight into yourself. This insight, combined with our trusting and healing therapeutic relationship, can then provide you the opportunity to move forwards with a greater self-knowledge, assertiveness, resilience, and self-compassion, which can help you free yourself from being stuck.
It is similar to psychoanalytic and attachment-based work and can involve working with dreams, creative imagery and associations to develop insight and understand the meaning of things.
My ways of working
Naturally, given the depth of this type of work, the therapy usually benefits from being open-ended or longer than some other types like CBT, but I have also worked within NHS settings and understand that sometimes for practical reasons the work needs to be shorter-term and if needed I am able to accommodate this.
Other influences
Although my work and training are primarily psychodynamic, I take inspiration and learn from many other traditions that enrich my therapeutic understanding. Primarily, these influences include attitudes which are:
Relational
Like in other relationships, much of the change that happens in therapy comes from building an authentic and honest relationship between us in which you are free to explore some of your relational difficulties with me. The relationship we form in the therapy is itself a vital part of the therapeutic process, not just your insight.
Jungian
Born from the same roots as psychodynamic work, Jungian therapy looks at the underlying unconscious dynamics that play out in our lives and can involve dream and creative work, but with an even heavier focus on symbolism and incorporating Eastern philosophies in understanding the self and positive aspects of the unconscious.
Creative
Often it can be difficult to put words around things which are, by their very nature, not verbal. Using creative methods (art, writing, dance, music, play, etc.) can be a helpful tool to engage with these things and can help facilitate changing them into something that can be thought about together.
Existential
This kind of therapy aims to help you make sense of your place in the world. At its core is the idea that we all have the capabilities and personal responsibility for making decisions and harnessing our creative potential, as well as finding our own sense of meaning.