Counselling Approach
As babies and children, in order to grow and survive it is vital we learn to adapt to our environment. Our survival depends on our attachment to our primary caregivers often at the expense of our authentic self. Journeying into adult hood we take these adaptations (coping strategies) with us, yet these adapted responses learnt as developing children, are not so relevant to our ‘grown up’ situation.
WHAT CAN I HELP WITH?
I work holistically. By noticing how your thinking habits, body sensations and feelings show up in the present, enables us to explore and heal the hidden drives and forces learnt from early relational dynamics and past trauma. By bringing into awareness the unconscious patterning learnt from the past, allows choice and the potential to live a life more aligned with your authentic self.
As neurologist Antonio Damasio puts it, “the mind is embodied, not just embrained”.
HOW DO I WORK?
I use a variety of techniques as no single approach is appropriate for everyone.
(For a more comprehensive explanation of each modality please see synopsis of approach
I have a Diploma in Humanistic Integrative counselling including:
Person Centered Therapy
Gestalt Therapy
and Transactional Analysis.
I have an additional three year training in Voice Dialogue, from the Blagden Insitute in Dorset. Most people recognise inner dialogues taking place within themselves. Quite often, these selves can cause inner tension, split feelings and doubt. Voice Dialogue is a powerful and non-judgmental method for guiding people towards a better understanding of their inner urges and motives.
TRAUMA
As a therapist, I am committed to learning the latest developments in healing trauma. Traditional psychotherapy works by exploring how the cognitive mind makes sense of the self in relation to the world. Because trauma is a survival response based in how our autonomic nervous system responds to threat, it is activated by the emotional brain (fight and flight) or the reptilian brain (freeze) depending on our capacity to manage the encountered threat. To work with traumatic stress, it is vital to understand the difference between top down (thinking mind) and bottom up (fight/flight/freeze) regulation.
ART THERAPY
I have a Person Centred Art Therapy Certificate and when appropriate use creative techniques, including art imaging and sand-tray in my counselling practice.
“Images, like dreams, tap into the world of spontaneous knowing, nothing to do with thoughts.”
Liesel Silverstone, Art Therapy The Person Centred Way (1993)
WHAT IS SAND-TRAY?
Using the Sand-tray, you can set up a world, by means of figures/objects and the arrangement of the sand, in the sandbox, that represents what is going on for you in both your outer and inner state. In this manner, through free, creative play, unconscious processes are made visible in a three-dimensional form.
