How I work

 ‘Your mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe. When you push off with your foot, a thousand new roads become clear.’

Rumi

Some therapeutic approaches such as psychodynamic counselling are really useful to help you to gain awareness and understanding of past experiences and patterns of relating and behaving. Working in this way offers you an opportunity to develop your awareness of the habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions that can lead to unsatisfying relationships. The compassionate presence of another person can allow you to notice the patterns of thoughts and feelings you experience during a session and to fully experience yourself in relationship with yourself and with others. This can help you to bring into conscious awareness conditioned reactions that have become established based on what has been learnt in the past.  

Other approaches may provide you with practical tools to help you to change unhelpful behaviours and begin to make positive changes in your life right now. These might include solutions focussed, CBT or mindfulness strategies. Sometimes it can be too difficult to find the words to describe how you are feeling. The use of the arts can add another dimension to therapy. Using art or natural materials in sessions can feel reparative, creative and empowering. 

Bringing awareness to your body and the felt sense can help you to overcome symptoms that you may experience as physical sensations such as fear or anxiety. This can offer you ways to ground yourself and to find both a sense of calm and new awareness of your physical patterns of response to stress. I have found that nature connection work can be a particularly good way of working with symptoms that are felt in the body.