Therapy

We are meaning-making beings and can all struggle with meaning and purpose at different points in life.   We all have a story based on our life experiences which contributes to how we make sense of the world and the significance we place on events and circumstances.  How we see ourselves, our identity, is an important aspect of this story.  

We often desire certainty and the life-story we tell ourselves is one way to achieve this to some extent.  This story can help us to build strong and lasting relationships and achieve our goals, but it can also be limiting, painful or self-destructive.  Therapy can facilitate a deeper understanding of the life-story and as such allow for important edits to be made. 

People often come to therapy desiring quick change and/or to be fixed.  While some relief or benefit can happen relatively quickly through therapy, deeper insight, more meaningful change and understanding of oneself can take time. 

I work with adult individuals and couples (monogamous and non-monogamous) as well as other relationships (siblings, friends, etc.), on both a short-term and long-term basis, in person or online.

A lot of the work of individual therapy is in exploring relationships, in all relevant domains; whether this be the relationship with oneself, with others, work, environment or spirituality.  The relationship between client and therapist is central to this exploration and is as important as technique and approach, i.e. what a therapist does and says, how they work.

My work with couples and other relationships is based on the ideas that a relationship is a dynamic between people and we all have patterns of relating to others. We start to form our expectations about relationships and what love is from our earliest experiences.  Although relationships often seem unequal or out of balance all parties contribute to whatever dynamic exists.  It is in understanding this dynamic and how each person contributes to it that change can occur.  

I believe there is space in therapy to both explore early experience to help understand and explain today’s reality as well as focusing on practical solutions to today’s problems.

Our first session will be a general exploration of the area or areas you might want to focus on, some discussion of the therapy process and an opportunity for us both to discuss whether therapy is right for you. We will also discuss some of the practicalities and next steps, should you wish to proceed.

I have experience working with a wide range of issues and problems and with people from many cultural backgrounds.  Please feel free to ask me more.