Therapeutic Approach
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Therapy is a very personal experience and I focus on creating a warm, safe and supportive environment. Psychotherapy is often entered into after a difficulty has become impossible to manage on your own, or if you are going through a challenging time. At this point, you often feel overwhelmed and stuck. Therapy aims to alleviate this distress by working through the problem. This means that we will talk about what has brought you to therapy and explore internal conflicts, thinking and feeling patterns, and relationship dynamics. It will also be useful to examine if certain past experiences may be influencing the problem, and if so, to bring these into present awareness, analyse them, and develop fresh insights. This process will contribute to a greater sense of agency, achievement, and help you in becoming unstuck. Our work together aims to improve your ability to move in the world more seamlessly and effectively.
I primarily draw from psychodynamic theory. This theoretical framework understands the interaction of various conscious and unconscious mental and emotional processes to influence personality, behavior, and attitudes. In-depth talk therapy encourages you to speak freely about anything that comes to mind, including current issues, thoughts, feelings, fears, and dreams. Although working from a psychodynamic perspective, I do include other approaches if required. For example, OCD responds well to CBT with exposure and response prevention.
Some of the theoretical influences that have shaped my psychological approach include Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Harry Stack Sullivan, Donald Winnicott, John Bowlby, Wilfred Bion, Otto Kernberg, and Peter Fonagy.
The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.
Sigmund Freud
What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that every child in the first years of life goes through an immeasurable degree of suffering.
Melanie Klein
It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil.
Ronald Fairbairn
Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.
Harry Stack Sullivan
The precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face.
Donald Winnicott
We’re only as needy as our unmet needs.
John Bowlby
If a new result is to have any value, it must unite elements long since known, but till then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned.
Wilfred Bion
During the second half of the first year, regulation of arousal and emotion no longer depend simply on what the caregiver does, but on how the infant interprets the caregiver’s accessibility and behaviour.
Peter Fonagy