I am trained in several different types of counselling and psychotherapy including Narrative Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Mindfulness. I integrate these therapies to make sure they fit in with you, so you don’t have to fit in with them. 

Although the therapy modality can be important, my main aim is to support you to feel comfortable, respected, dignified, heard, and empowered. This is the basis of all good therapy. Some studies suggest that around 80% of positive outcomes in therapy are based on the therapeutic relationship alone. This strongly informs my work with people – that trauma-informed human connection comes before clinical approaches.

Another important aspect of my practice is that rather than seeing the person as the problem, I view the problem as the problem. So, instead of the person having ‘irrational thoughts’, I see symptoms and many problems as survival responses that are protective from specific threats/danger. The effect of this is two-fold. One, this changes our questions from ‘what’s wrong with you’ to ‘what happened to you’. Two, it sets up positioning clients as the expert for understanding problems they’re experiencing, and how problems are trying to undermine the their intentions. It is then the therapist’s role to skilfully ask meaningful questions to support the client to re/discover their own responses and solutions to problems, which is an opportunity for the client to ‘re-author’ their life.

One of our therapeutic aims is for clients to be able to ask these meaningful questions towards themselves, to re-author their life without the help of a therapist. It’s incredibly empowering to re/connect with previously unheard/unseen parts of ourselves, to develop agency from the problems that burden us, and feel inspired to grow from our own reflections and intentional actions.