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I have extensive experience as a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist in private practice and the NHS. I can accompany you through the sometimes confusing and difficult journey of self discovery, offering compassion and open-mindedness, understanding and expertise, honesty without judgement, reliability and trustworthiness.
Choosing to enter into therapy is a positive, healthy step.
Knowing that things are wrong or unhappy or out of control – yet being unable to change – is a confusing, troubling state of affairs, which it is difficult, but possible, to challenge.
Sometimes we need the help of a professional person who can stand alongside us and help us think through what is happening to us and how to change things. To make sense of the nonsense.This is where I come in. It is my job to sit with people and listen – to listen carefully in a way that others rarely do. To listen not just to the words, but also to the ‘music’ behind them. To listen to how you live in the word now, with all the joys and frustrations and confusions – but also to pay attention to your past – to how you have become who you are. And I also reflect on how you and I, sitting together, get on with each other – because in that encounter, there is much to learn – though it is important to stress that this is about you, not me!
It is my practice to meet once or twice with people contemplating therapy, to see if I have the right tools to help you and for you to ensure that it ‘feels right’. It is important that you feel safe, held, accepted and not judged – that you can trust both me and the process – especially when it gets tough. Sometimes this means that I/you/we decide I am not the right person – and that’s fine. I cannot stress enough that it is important to feel comfortable with the therapist before you start on this work. In fact, it is good to meet more than one therapist before choosing.
Having agreed to work together, a common-sense question is, how long? That’s difficult to say. Sometimes people come to address a specific problem – and perhaps three months is enough. Others might benefit from or opt for a longer process. Usually, I contract for a minimum of three months – with a review at that point. For those who come for longer therapies, we review the contract every six months.
We meet usually weekly for sessions of 50 minutes duration. Sometimes people opt for meeting twice or more per week – occasionally less often than weekly. To that time, you bring whatever is uppermost in your mind – current difficulties, memories or painful experiences, dreams, powerful or disturbing emotions. What I bring is my understanding of conscious and unconscious human processes, my professional expertise – and years of experience of sitting with what is unbearable, of listening to what cannot be said and making sense of what seems nonsense.
My role is to help your story unfold, to make it possible for the unspeakable to be spoken, to discern the patterns and themes below the surface and make them known.
Through the listening comes understanding; and understanding makes it possible for you to change.
We didn’t come into the world understanding what it is all about. From our earliest days, we struggled to make sense of the confusion in
which we found ourselves. Although our understanding grows and changes, many of the things we learned from the early times, continue to
shape and affect who we are as adults.
Sometimes, we contribute to the difficulty by the sort of person we are – our character, our
nature, our attitudes, our beliefs. We can have a vague feeling that something is wrong, that it shouldn’t be this way – but not know exactly what is wrong or how to deal with it.
But even in the best of circumstances, our developing understanding is partial, is skewed or just plain wrong.
And for many, early life is anything but ideal. Many have experienced a childhood, which was insecure, or loveless, or cruel – or where there was abuse (physical, emotional, sexual) or abandonment (by death or separation). Any child would struggle to make sense of those things – and often make wrong assumptions – such as believing it is our fault or that we are inherently bad or wrong.
And because we live ‘inside’ our own lives, we often cannot see how our beliefs and attitudes are skewed, unhelpful or damaging; indeed, we usually believe that ‘this is the way life really is’. We live ‘in the moment’, rarely reflecting on who we are, how we have become like this –
knowing that something is wrong but not knowing what or how it can be changed. And it is so easy to believe that it is we who are wrong.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy believes that many of the themes which drive us are out of sight to us – and largely hidden from others.
Nevertheless, this ‘unconscious’ material is always trying to make itself known, in all sorts of strange ways. Often, it drives who we
are in the world, so that we think and act in ways that are unhelpful or confusing to others – and sometimes to ourselves! And until
we can listen to it and know something about it, we can never truly understand ourselves and the things that shape and drive us.
My way of working is often called ‘exploratory’ or ‘depth’ psychotherapy. It takes time, space, careful attention – and often courage. Certainly, it is not – should not be – an easy option. My role is to share this exploration with you, to offer my expert understanding and my experience, to make it possible for the unknown to become known, the unspeakable to be spoken – in a way that is safe, if not entirely uncomfortable.
You are unique, with your own individual framework of understanding. This is an intensely personal journey; it is yours – unlike any other.
As I have sometimes put it, it is a journey into an unknown land; you may have only glimpsed parts of it. I have never been there – but I am an expert in the art of exploration and will accompany you on that journey.
Adults.
Relationship problems
Loss and bereavement
Troubled history
Anxiety
Depression
Standard rate is £75.00 per 50 minute session.
For those willing to commit to 5 sessions in advance, the rate is £65 per session.
I do offer a number of places at a concessionary fee, but these are limited.
English