What is psychotherapy and how could it help me?
People seek out a therapist for many reasons, for some it’s to ease the burden of anxiety, depression and symptoms of trauma, or to come to terms with a big life transition, diagnosis or illness. Sometimes people find the initial reason for seeking therapy is a catalyst for work on life more broadly. Some people a drawn to therapy in order to understand themselves better and to increase the quality of their relationships, personal agency freedom.
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Psychotherapy is a way to look in detail at how you think and feel in relation to the world. This is done in the form of a dialogue, sometimes with words, sometimes without, each input building on the last to create a picture of how you move through life. With a greater understanding of yourself comes choices; shall I keep this way of doing things or change it?
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Gestalt and How I work
Psychotherapy has several 'modalities', each with their own slightly different styles and underpinning theories. Within each modality, each individual therapist will do things slightly differently, so it's important to choose a therapist with a flavour that suits you.
My work is underpinned by the 'Gestalt' modality.Gestalt is a relational therapy, which means I bring myself into our dialogue and I might occasionally share what I am thinking and how I'm feeling, and how that might interact with your processes. I work with the assumption that your situation is unique, and the constellation of factors in your world are all of potential significance, and what is happening here-and-now, in this session is the best place to start.
Most of all I don't judge, I meet you exactly where you are, with the feelings you're feeling right now. I may make some brief notes at the end of a session, I don't follow a 'script'; as our dialogue unfolds the themes that need to be looked at will emerge when you're ready and feel safe enough to look at them. Sometimes words are not sufficient to explore an issue fully, so I might suggest we try something and see how it feels. If it works for you, we can find alternative ways to express yourself such as metaphor, movement or pictures.