Therapeutic Modalities

Person-Centred Therapy ultimately sees humankind as having an innate tendency to grow towards our full potential. However, this ability can become blocked or distorted by certain life experiences, particularly those that affect our sense of value.  Therapists work to understand your experience from your perspective by allowing you to reconnect with your inner values & sense of self-worth, thus enabling you to find your own way to move forward & progress.

Psychodynamic Therapy works with unconscious processes & takes the approach that our past impacts our present & may determine how we react in certain situations & relationships. It's particularly helpful for those who feel their difficulties have affected them over a long period of time & are noticing repeated patterns of unhelpful behaviour & ways of relating. The impressions significant others make on us in our developmental years play a major role in how we relate to ourselves, others & the world,  so, in my work, we often start there.

CBT works with conscious processes & focuses on thoughts & behaviours in the here & now. When you feel anxious, you may often have accompanying negative thoughts which, over time, may develop into quite fixed 'faulty thinking styles' or 'thinking errors'. CBT is the most researched & widely used clinical approach for a variety of mental health problems. I tend to incorporate aspects of CBT alongside psychodynamic interventions where relevant. 

Existential Therapy places emphasis on the human condition as a whole & is interested in how we live & make sense of our lives given the limitations of what it is to be human. Emotional & psychological difficulties are viewed as inner conflict caused by an individual's confrontation with the givens of existence. One of the principal existential questions & one which is addressed in therapy is "How can I understand & make something meaningful of my life, knowing that ultimately I cannot control the world around me, & in the awareness that time is always ticking away?"

Fundamentally, Creative Counselling combines core talking therapy approaches such as CBT & Person-Centred with creative interventions. For example, working with symbols, drawing, clay, sand trays, therapy cards & more to give expression, movement, a voice, a shape, a symbol, a metaphor & colour to a client's experience - bringing it to life in a way that often words alone can't do. 

The Rewind Technique offers a way of permanently stopping the involuntary recall of a traumatic event by filing the memory so it becomes under your control. While no therapy guarantees success, Rewind Therapy boasts a healthy 8/10 success rate. Unlike other exposure therapies that treat trauma, you only provide minimal detail about the event & we work together to help you to detach from it prior to the intervention - hense; closure without exposure. And, it only takes 2-3 sessions (more for multiple traumas). As part of my commitment to the International Association for Rewind Trauma Therapy (IARTT), the therapy is free of charge to Veterans.