Often, difficulties we are experiencing in the present, have their origins in our past.
We can find ourselves repeating patterns in our relationships and/or work life that are not helping us, or may be keeping us stuck. In my clinical work I utilise psychoanalytic theory to understand how early experiences are affecting you in the here and now.
I am particularly interested in modern psychoanalytic ways of thinking about our relationships that includes Attachment Theory.
By bringing into awareness patterns of relating you acquired through early experiences, psychotherapy can have a positive affect on your relationship with others, to your work and to yourself. Long-term psychotherapy can have a profound affect.
What happens in psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy can be helpful for the following difficulties:
- depression
- anxiety, stress
- loss, bereavement
- low self-esteem
- difficulties in making and sustaining satisfactory relationships
- issues around identity
- difficulties arising from emotional, physical or sexual abuse
- feeling stuck in a pattern.
Some people enter psychotherapy simply to learn more about themselves. Psychotherapy increases self-awareness and many people find therapy gives them increased confidence, improves their personal and professional relationships, increases their ability to manage stress and enables them to have a fuller and more satisfying emotional life.
Psychotherapy, through gaining a deeper self-awareness can:
- improve our capacity to relate to others and ourselves
- help us feel more at ease with and more accepting of who we are
- enable us to better tolerate our emotional world and the life’s ups and downs
- help us to become freer to make choices over our present and future
What happens in psychotherapy?
During psychotherapy we will explore all aspects of your life; past and current relationships, early experiences, thoughts, feelings, anxieties, memories, dreams and fantasies.
Sessions take place once a week and last 50 minutes. I also work with some people twice weekly.
The therapy takes place in a safe, confidential and supportive environment.
You can engage in psychotherapy for as long as may be useful; this can be months or several years, depending on your individual needs.
