Longer term Psychotherapy
For most adults and often when working with young people, it is important to understand our past to know how it is impacting our present and how we can then change our future.
Understanding is not the same as re-experiencing. Instead it means looking back at your life with an open and compassionate attitude and then applying what you learn to the areas you want to improve in the here and now. This link between our past and present is a guide for much of the work that happens in therapy. To read more about this type of work, look to Sue Gerhardt, Why Love Matters?
“Therapy is a chance to grow up again”
“Our early experiences form our characteristic ways of relating to other people and coping with the ebb and flow of emotions…They are the bones of emotional life, hidden and outside awareness-the invisible history of each individual. These patterns orient our lives in a particular direction and this direction can be changed through therapy”
“Therapy offers a different kind of cure. Through establishing a personal relationship for the only purpose of therapy, the individual can explore the way he or she is in relation to other people and can attempt to modify old emotional habits and introduce new ones. But emotional habits take time to form and time to change. Together with the therapist, new emotional networks can be developed”
Short-term therapy
For those wanting more short term support with specific goals in mind, we can work together using a time-limited and goal focused approach.
Sometimes, it is not just the extent of difficulty we have experienced that determines how we deal with life, but the way we contextualise and understand the things that have happened to us that. This is the part that can change through therapy and can help you live life differently. You may only have a limited amount of time or your issue is more clearly identifiable. You might come to therapy with specific goals you wish to achieve. In this case a more focussed approach can help you re-structure the thoughts and emotions holding you back.
This more structured approach is based on the idea that:
“It is not the situation which determines how we feel but the meaning we attach to the situation”
Once we adopt this view of our experiences, it brings a freedom and belief that anything can change.
Specific Therapies offered
Integrative Psychotherapy (Using a combination of exploration of your past and current situation with an emphasis on future change)
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Compassion Focused Therapy
Narrative Exposure Therapy
EMDR for PTSD and Complex PTSD
Existential Psychotherapy
Children's Therapy (A creative approach including imagination building, drawing, arts and crafts, story telling)