My ways of working
I am interested in understanding in a deep sense the relationship dynamics that underpin your present-day experiences.
Psychodynamic therapy is based on the idea that many of our emotional difficulties stem from patterns developed in our early years, existing in our adult lives as echoes.
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 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 very similar to psychoanalytic work and can involve working with dreams, creative imagery and associations to develop insight and understand the meaning of things.
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 reparative relationship between us in which you are free to explore some of your relational difficulties with me and that this relationship itself, not just your insights, is an important part of the therapeutic process.
Jungian
Born from the same roots to 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 symbology and incorporating Eastern philosophies in understanding the self and the life-giving 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, 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, so if my clients are interested in this then I encourage them to make use of any creative method that resonates with them.
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.