How I work:
- I offer a safe and confidential space.
- I strive to be open to, and interested in feedback from my clients.
- I aim to be responsive, flexible and adaptive to feedback and look at what I can learn from it.
- I try to find out from clients what they want and need, rather than making assumptions about what might be best for them.
- I try to be clear with clients about what they want, and strive to articulate this in a negotiating, collaborative way.
- I value difference and diversity, and consequently have a commitment to social justice.
- I believe that there are no single, right answers to life's most fundamental questions, and hence I value alternative opinions and am keen to engage in dialogue
- I listen to what the client chooses to talk about, highlight what I notice, ask questions to clarify the meaning, help to connect with feelings and explore choices.
- If the client wishes we can go into childhood issues, and I will help the client to perceive how past experiences unconsciously shape patterns in past and present relationships.
- I can support clients in establishing and fostering the relationship between conscious and unconscious processes.
- I aim to tailor my approach according to the client's preferences; if I cannot offer the best way for the client—because it is either outside my competency or not suitable for online therapy—I will help to find a better resource for support.
My Approach to Therapy:
- If we are wounded emotionally we cannot heal just by challenging our irrational beliefs, because thinking has only limited access to the limbic system of the brain where emotional learnings are stored, and to the deep brain where core feelings originate.
- In therapy, we need to leave the sphere of cognition—the thinking parts of our brain—and enter the sphere of the inner felt sense and emotions, where we use attention to present moment experience in the body.
- The problem often is that we think we only have one 'I' and 'I' want to change something so 'I' should be able to do so. But fact is, we have multiple 'I's and every 'I' might want something different.
- When the whole system is affected by trauma, the different 'I's polarise and become more extreme, pulling in different directions. There is no point in beating some of them, challenging some of them, trying to get rid of some of them.
- We need to increase our capacity to rest in the tension of inner opposites and conflict, even when anxiety wants us to collapse into an interpretation. By giving attention to our inner conflicts and our suffering we can heal the wounded parts and harmonise our whole inner system.
- I learned this also through own experience.
If you would like to know more about emotional learning and the brain you may read this article.