Many people are confused between psychotherapy and counselling. I regard them as interchangeable although psychotherapy might refer to deeper, longer term exploration and counselling may be more about a specific issue.
People often come to therapy or counselling because they have specific concerns to explore or it may be a vague feeling of unease, of feeling stuck, or of anxiety, depression or other emotional, psychological or physical distress. Psychotherapy can help us to understand and to gain awareness of ourselves and why we behave in certain ways. We can become conscious of how we express and respond to different emotions, how we communicate, how we form and maintain relationships or how we manage conflict, and with the help of a therapist we can develop the capacity to change things for the better.
My Approach
I work as an Integrative Psychotherapist and this means that I draw on a number of different strands of psychotherapy but am most influenced by psychodynamic ways of understanding distress. This broadly means that I will explore with you how the past may be affecting you in the present, how early attachment might influence current relationships and the defences you may have developed to protect yourself. I will create a unique way of working depending upon your needs as the individual client, but always based upon building a deep and trusting collaborative relationship and using this as a supportive platform to explore concerns.
I believe the quality of the client-counsellor/therapist is the most important experience in therapy, indeed essential to a positive outcome. I hope to build a therapeutic relationship with you that is supportive, trusting, and genuine and which provides a caring, respectful, safe, secure and confidential place for you to talk openly with someone who is neutral and non-judgemental. My style is open, warm, approachable and supportive.
