What does therapy offer?

Therapy offers a confidential, professional service which is private and safe. We work collaboratively together, with respect and openness.

We all at certain times in our life need help with problems and difficulties that arise. For example, if your washing machine broke down, you would call in a repair expert, that's no different to going to a psychotherapist/counsellor for help with psychological problems.

Therapy can offer an opportunity for reflection, gaining awareness and exploration to assist in our personal growth and development. In changing the way we think, we can change the way we feel, which can then change our behaviour, focusing on better ways to deal with enables us to generate and reach different goals.

Couples therapy can be for a crisis moment, general help, communication issues, or for any disruption within the couple to help you back to harmony. We can also use couples therapy to enhance our relationship, moving on after retirement, or major life changes, when the children leave home and much more. We can work at seeing from other perspectives, making changes, meeting each others needs, seeing how we trigger our partner and understanding how we may sabotage or use maladaptive patterns. We can also understand our attachment patterns, languages of love, different communication styles and how we can derail ourselves in arguments. I follow the Gottman Method for Couples Therapy as it has the benefit of three decades of research and practice in clinical settings. I also use David Schnarch`s methods, being very clear with the interactions and how we entangle ourselves in the relating game, including where this comes from and how to break free. He has many useful books to aid the process. More recently I am integrating the work of Terry Real, relational life therapy and his most recent book US.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a psychological approach based on scientific principles and research suggests that it can be effective for a wide range of problems. The counsellor and client work together to identify and understand the problems, in order to work through difficulties, to understand the link between thoughts, feelings and behaviour. During times of distress, we can judge situations and difficulties in a different way than when things are ok.

When we are growing up, we learn about ourselves, the world, and others around us by our experiences that happen to us. From these experiences we develop core beliefs, rules, a life story, identity, and personality traits. These beliefs and rules can sometimes cause us problems as adults, which we are not so conscious of, and we can be triggered in certain situations/circumstances in different ways. Therapy can help us to see and understand our beliefs, rules, past story, and personality traits to help us understand about our problems, the meanings we give them and how to manage them better. When we see more of what was unconscious to us, we have more choice of how to respond in the moment. We try to understand the interpretations that we make also, the assumptions and filtering so that we can see the bigger picture and decide how best to handle things. We can also reframe our beliefs and thoughts and develop more realistic, more helpful and real for the now (rather than carry them from the past) for the life we have now.

Differentiation focuses on helping you to tolerate anxiety while facing issues head on, all the while improving your ability to self soothe while you hear and say difficult things. It also involves improving your ability to hold onto your sense of self while maintaining the relationship. This also requires you to be able to balance your needs and self-identity with that of your partner – and vice versa.

Some of the main concepts and terms created by Dr. David Schnarch identified in Crucible focused therapy include:

• Emotional gridlock – which occurs when you cannot agree to disagree and feel that you can no longer compromise.

• Normal marital sadism – which are the typical mean, sarcastic and spiteful things that couples tend to say and do to each other – both sexually and non-sexually.

• Self and Other validated intimacy – self validated intimacy is about sharing your thoughts and feelings to your partner and other validated intimacy is when your partner accepts those thoughts and feelings.

• Collaborative alliance – you, your partner, and the therapist have the same goals.

• Other concepts for you and your partner learn about and explore!

By using these concepts in couples and in individual work, the therapist will ultimately push you and your partner outside of your comfort zone and develop new comfort zones by becoming more emotionally able to respond in the now and continue to have a good attachment, even when triggered. This helps us keep our autonomy and relationship with others in balance - staying authentic.

Longer term therapy:

Longer term therapy is less directed and allows more time on memories, the past, working with the shadow side and unconscious material. It`s said that the force of the unconscious can become destructive, or self-sabotaging if it remains unconscious. Sometimes it is difficult to recognise because it is unconscious and can bring with it a charge of emotion, which we find difficult to pass through, without reacting to. The shadow side (unconscious) can take a lot of our energy. When we work through this and make the unconscious conscious, we then have many more choices, much more awareness and we are not caught out. It can be that your shadow side brings you into therapy, because you keep sabotaging yourself and yet don`t want to for an example.

Often therapy provides relief by helping us to understand our own part in suffering, changes patterns of behaviours and to develop new strategies. We often meet with resistance when doing the deeper work, however together we find our way through and heal the fragmented parts of the self. We then find freedom, liberation, and clarity aiding us to become the best versions of ourselves. With connection to ourselves and understanding why we get stuck, we are able to change and free ourselves from the old patterns and sabotage. Also tying up lose ends from the past and integrating the fragmented parts of ourselves allows us to move on and live more fully in the present moment - that`s where we find contentment and inner fulfilment.

Mind & Body together:

Incorporating mind and body work together for our awareness and healing. This helps us to become more aware of how our thoughts and the meaning we give them show up in the body and then our behaviour. This inside out work also helps us to see how our past experiences are sometime still having an effect on us too. Learning to dialogue with your body is a great source of information and when we see this, we can work with at transforming it. Interoception is “the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a moment-by-moment mapping of the body’s internal landscape across conscious and unconscious levels” (Khalsa et al., 2018). This feedback loop of incoming and outgoing information between the brain and body has also been called our “sixth sense.” The brain’s ability to register, interpret, and integrate bodily signals is undoubtedly consequential for our well-being, self-regulation, mental health and social connection.

Combining therapy and mindfulness sessions: Would you like to wake up your senses, connect and create a sense of harmony with life. Using our 5 senses helps us to wake up, connect and listen to the messages inside more, even just standing outside for a moment: listening, looking, smelling, touching (and tasting). The therapeutic work and relationship stays the same, so even if we take our session outside in nature for a walk and talk session, or just stand outside we remain very focused. It can also help the constant chatter in our heads to quieten, allowing us to see more clearly what`s important. Using movement and the nature can help us to reconnect - this can help the therapeutic process, as become more in a flow and dialogue with ourselves more deeply.

Awakening to Reality:

The cherry blossom tree has to shed it`s flowers & old leaves to be able to grow new ones next year.

Our internal landscape can dictate our behaviour, often without us consciously realising it. So when we learn to wake up, we learn what really serves us well - practice what nourishes you, rather than what depletes you. Choose which path you wish to be on = success or failure path.

Our thoughts can hold us victim to our past experiences & then we can stuck in them.

The conditioned mind: We perceive the world through our lens, through our experiences our brains developed - we have the option to awaken from our minds past construction. What was learnt, can be unlearnt and we can relearn new. As the saying goes - what fires, wires, meaning what you are thinking creates your pathways. When you change habits, your brain rewires. So we can learn to be selective, because the mind wants to go back to what is familiar, which isn`t always what we want going forwards.

Become your own master to yourself - acting with loving kindness and generosity to ones own needs, can help us to make better choices.