How I work

I adapt my therapeutic approach to meet the need of the person or couple coming. I have a deep respect for the creative adjustments people make to cope with life and their inherent health for change when conditions are optimal. I invite people to explore what is happening now that is causing him/ her distress, with the past only relevant if it impacts the present.

For example, people can have a deep mistrust of others based on past experience. This protects them from disappointment but also from intimacy and belonging, On meeting someone new, instead of being open to what is there, they tend to focus instead on what might be untrustworthy and exaggerate this. They go about their lives feeling isolated and wondering why. In the therapeutic relationship they can start to become aware of how they are constructing reality, then with support and over time begin to open to experiencing something new. This can then be taken beyond the therapeutic realm into other relationships in their lives.

I have a particular interest in working from a relational perspective as many people have been wounded in relationship, so it is often in a receptive and trusting relationship that healing becomes possible. Advances have been made in the understanding of relational neurobiology by experts such as Dan Siegel, Stephen Porges and Bonnie Badenoch, who explain the science behind how interpersonal relationships affect brain development.

Within each onw of us there is a part that pushes to grow beyond restriction and so we find ourselves returning to the same places again and again seeking change until there is enough support for change to happen.

I attend supervision on a regular basis as required by IAHIP for accreditation of its psychotherapists.