"‘You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.’ (Rumi)

About you

Approaching counselling can be exciting and empowering, but it can also be scary and nerve-wracking. I’ve been there myself and I remember all too well how it felt like a risk to dare to reach out to a stranger and be vulnerable and hope to be met by someone who is understanding, solid and friendly.

I know it can also be hard to trust someone you don’t know with your most vulnerable experiences and feelings, and even harder to believe that it may help to do so. It can feel like a betrayal of our family or friends. Clients sometimes feel it is indulgent and that their problems don’t warrant this kind of time, money or attention. It can feel shameful to admit you’re not coping.

Many of us grow up believing that we need to just get on with our lives, that everyone has difficulties and we shouldn’t make a fuss. These can be some of the biggest hurdles to get over to feel like it’s ok to ask for help. But as the horse says in Charlie Mackesy’s book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse: ‘ Asking for help isn’t giving up. It’s refusing to give up.’

Therapy can also feel costly and time consuming. I know it isn’t an easy commitment to make but it is one that I think most people find worthwhile once they take the leap because mental wellbeing is just as important as physical wellbeing, if we can even separate the two, and, as with all health concerns, the earlier we seek support the more likely we will be able to move towards healing and leading fuller lives; the more likely we are to be able to engage in our lives more wholeheartedly, to reconnect again with hope, humour and passion. 

I bear all of these concerns in mind when meeting new clients, which is why I like to ensure we have plenty of opportunities to test the waters and get a sense of each other before we commit to working together. After all, for the therapy to have the best chance of being fruitful, we need to start out feeling comfortable enough together.

What troubles you?

Our problems don’t usually fit into neat boxes and there is often a lot of cross-over. Diagnoses can be helpful, but they can also be limiting. I prefer to think of people more holistically, and work with the person rather than with a label. But as a rough guide here is a list of the areas I work with most. If you are not sure whether your issue would be something we could work on together you can contact me and we can discuss it. If I don’t feel like I would be the best therapist for you, I will say and I would do my best to recommend a suitable colleague instead:

  • Anxiety and Panic

  • Belonging and Identity

  • Bereavement and Grief

  • Climate change anxiety

  • Depression

  • Family issues

  • Health anxiety

  • Living and working abroad

  • Loneliness

  • Family members with long-term health issues

  • Friendship issues

  • Managing transitions in work/life

  • Relationship issues, affairs and betrayals

  • Self-harm

  • Self-esteem

  • Sexual, physical, verbal or emotional abuse

  • Sexuality

  • Sibling relationships

  • Social anxiety

  • Stress

  • Feeling stuck

  • Suicidal thoughts

  • Trauma and Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

How can therapy help?

As human beings we are pack animals, social creatures, which means we need each other to survive and to make sense of ourselves. Many people will receive a good enough balance of love, support, challenge and space to be themselves, to learn how to hold themselves in the world and generally manage the bumps and knocks that come along the way. These people may only feel a need to come to therapy if difficult or traumatic events occur in their lives that they cannot process any other way. However close our relationships, we can’t always talk freely and frankly with our friends and family members and therapy can provide a safe space to make sense of what’s happened and work out how to find your feet again.

Meanwhile, for a whole variety of reasons, many people don’t receive a good enough balance of love, support, challenge and space to be themselves. These people will often have developed coping mechanisms that work for a time but which can be hard to adapt for changing circumstances. For these people I believe psychotherapy provides a healing relationship. “We are born and formed in relationship with each other, with ourselves, and with the environment and culture, and we seek to make and retain relationships and attachment at all costs. We are wounded in relationships and will most likely be healed in relationship.” (SHADBOLT, C. (2012) The Place of Failure and Rupture in Psychotherapy. Transactional Analysis Journal. 42 (1). p.5-16.)

Therapy is often described as a ‘talking cure’ and sharing thoughts and experiences is a big part of it, but it is not just about talking. As humans, we use talking as a means to connect, but when we talk we are also communicating with our bodies and our feelings. We use expressions and body language, as well as words. We may cry, we may laugh, we may grit our teeth, we may thump our fists, we may sit still and in silence. It is all a form of the communication that can be part of a therapy session.

Engaging in psychotherapy is about learning what it is to feel really heard, seen and understood over time, and learning to trust in this different experience of yourself with someone who relates to you with empathy, honesty and authenticity. It’s also about being gently challenged on some of your stuck patterns, the ways we’ve learned to view things and respond to others, so we can update our old coping mechanisms and learn to live more flexibly. We live in a web of relationships with other people, and with our environment, moulded by our experiences. We want to be our own selves, and we want to feel connected. I believe therapy can help us to learn how to better find this balance in our lives.