About Me
I have a post-graduate diploma in Integrative Counselling and have sixteen years professional experience. I work chiefly with the person-centred approach, which supports the individual's own capacity for healing and change, and the psychodynamic approach, which explores underlying conflicts that can block that change. I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and adhere to their Code of Ethics and Good Practice. I have personal indemnity insurance and receive regular professional supervision.
My approach to counselling
Over my sixteen years of practice, I have had the privilege of working with many and very different people through important and transforming times of their lives. My integrative training was a combination of three traditions: the humanistic or person-centred, the psychodynamic, and psychosynthesis (an approach derived from Jungian understandings). My own approach draws on all three as seems appropriate.
The humanistic tradition is based on the recognition that all people have within themselves the capacity to grow and change. Rather than super-imposing some kind of prescription, the therapist works with this capacity in the client. We all have our share of the life force but some of it gets trapped or blocked as a sort of shield to cope with difficult circumstances. The counselling process gives the opportunity to understand how past experiences and present ones are linked, freeing up energy for the present.
Psychodynamic work has to do with conflicts within the psyche (which is something like the being of the whole person - thoughts, body, feelings, actions, illnesses - everything involved in how the life of the individual feels as it's getting lived). It helps us explore what is going on under the surface in our relationships with others and ourselves.
The spiritual dimension behind psychosynthesis can come into focus when dealing with the most challenging of life's experiences.
“Over my sixteen years of practice, I have had the privilege of working with many and very different people through important and transforming times of their lives.”