Having counselling or psychotherapy gives you a space in which you can reflect on your life and any difficulties you are experiencing. As a therapist, my aim is to support you to recognise how you are feeling and gain some understanding of what you need. Sometimes there are changes you need to make in your life, and I can help you work out your next steps. At other times there is nothing to be done and it is more important to explore ways of making peace with your current circumstances or events from the past. This is well expressed in the Serenity Prayer:
“… grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr
In counselling, I listen with openness and curiosity, genuinely interested in how life is for you. By listening well, reflecting back what I hear and offering new perspectives, I aim to help you know and understand yourself better. In this way you will find it easier to make choices that bring more ease and happiness.
In psychotherapy, we may explore activities that draw more directly on the unconscious. This may include bringing awareness to body sensations, using art materials, listening to dreams or experimenting with “two-chair work” (in which we give voice to two aspects of the personality, or practise saying what we would like to say to someone from our outer life). In this way we connect with the deeper, wiser self within, beyond the conditioning and adaptations we have all made in order to survive in this world.
“The doors to the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door. If you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life. That is a door.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes