What to expect from therapy with me
Seeking support for our mental health is not a practice confined to realms of the ill and the disordered. I don’t believe that it is abnormal to experience difficult emotions and thoughts, to feel overwhelmed, anxious and down. Psychological distress affects many of us at some point, and we can can alleviate this suffering with the right guidance and treatment.
My practice integrates Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Schema Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). These may be meaningless acronyms to you, or perhaps you are already aware of the kind of therapy you’re interested in. Regardless, I believe that these frameworks can help in providing us with an in-depth understanding of how particular psychological difficulties take shape in our lives and what keeps us stuck. These evidence-based therapeutic frameworks are grounded clinical psychological research and neuroscience. More importantly, I can readily apply them to my own experiences and believe that they produce practical, real-world changes.
The first step is to get to know you, your history, and your emotions. We will develop a shared understanding of the patterns and themes at the core of your difficulties and find the language that helps you describe your unique experiences. This initial assessment helps us to understand your story, identify your goals, and direct our focus. The next step is meaningful change - increasing awareness of unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and developing practical strategies to better know what you’re experiencing and how you would like to act goes a long way to helping. Meaningful change takes practice; relating to our emotions, sensations, and describing our internal world, challenging uncomfortable behaviours, or going deeper with experiential therapies such as EMDR and Schema Therapy.
Whatever the process, therapy is a supportive space to explore these difficult topics and reconnect to what is most important.
