Counselling and Integrative Relational Psychotherapy

TA (Transactional Analysis) may help you understand how we are all made up of different ‘parts’ (with younger, ‘child’ ‘parental’ ‘adult’ themes).  Understanding your script, seeing how these ‘parts’ operate both inside and ‘outside’ in your life, in your relationships, can be liberating, helping you work positively with stuck patterns. 

Although I am not a CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) therapist, I may also draw upon its ideas, clarifying how different ‘parts’ can get caught up in dysfunctional beliefs, feelings or behaviours.  Having a sense of how they might be contributing to difficult, painful relationships or situations may give you the power to change.      

Sometimes, IFS, (Internal Family Systems), may be even more helpful in understanding how trauma has affected your personality, relationships and addictive behaviours.   Knowing about your ‘exiles’ (vulnerable parts) ‘managers’ and ‘firefighters’ (ways you manage these) creates awareness, hope and capacity for change.   

No matter which ‘parts’ model we use, the awareness you gain creates ‘compassion,’ kindness, peace.   In TA terms this is about a ‘re-parenting’ of your ‘child’ by strengthening your internal ‘nurturing parent’ or ‘adult’ (your inner wisdom).  However, as a ‘top-down’ cognitive-based way of working, ‘parts work’ is not an answer for everything; it does not fully address trauma.   For more information about this do scroll down. 

A posh word for this is ‘Relational Psychoanalysis.’  The 20^th century American Schools who developed these practices, believed that a client’s personality and deepest needs, ( or their ‘parts’) showed up most clearly in their relationship with their therapist.  (This is largely true for the therapist also, and an important part of my training is about making sure this does not get in the way of what you need). This gives this ‘relational’ approach potency, shining a light upon what is most important and perhaps what you most need from our work together.  This may well be about feeling seen, heard, or having something acknowledged or validated in ways you have never experienced before.  Sometimes however, it may mean working through difficulties or challenges - something which is possible in an empathic, compassionate space.  Staying with uncomfortable stuff can feel worth it, if we can eventually ‘mine the gold.’ 

If it seems that this will help, I teach a bit about how our minds, bodies, brains and nervous systems work.   If you have experienced trauma in life, it can be incredibly reassuring to learn that your 'symptoms' what's happening in your mind and body, are normal - your nervous system's way of protecting you.   One thing I talk about a lot is the 'Window of Tolerance.'  An idea from Daniel Siegel, an American psychologist, it describes what happens in our minds, brains and bodies under the influence of extreme stress.  As we all feel stress at times, and many of us have experienced the 'small-T' traumas (minor, repetitive wounding in childhood) knowing about this can be helpful, building awareness and a new capacity.   This may lay the ground for us to talk about things you can do to help yourself  - new wellbeing practices which might strengthen your nervous system and help you to feel calmer and more grounded in life.     

Do look at my other pages to find out more.   In a nutshell, EMDR (Eye-movement and Desensitisation and Re-processing) is a highly respected, scientifically validated, holistic, structured psychotherapy, designed to address the roots of trauma.  I offer this as a stand-alone psychotherapy or integrated into a broader piece of work.  

Porges (Polyvagal Theory) and Van der Kolk (among many other scientists) have shown that trauma always leaves its imprint in the body.  While compassionate insight from CBT or ‘parts work’ is immensely helpful, science tells us is that what really addresses the impact of trauma is attention to the body - a ‘bottom-up’ approach.  

Thus, in addition to EMDR, I also offer a range of subtle, but transformative therapies:  ‘Focussing’ (Gendlin), ‘Somatic Psychotherapy’ (Ogden), ‘Mindfulness Practices,’ (Kabat-Zinn), ‘Emotional Freedom Technique’, EFT (Craig) are different ways to help you to connect more compassionately and deeply with your body’s unique emotional language, creating a deeper, calmer, more grounded sense of yourself.   These are just a few ways to ‘widen your Window of Tolerance,’ – ways to soothe the effects of trauma.  

Depending upon what you bring, you may find that looking more deeply into yourself brings up painful issues – the various losses which many of us experience as we go through life.   I feel that when working deeply with people, it is important to hold the space for such ‘big questions’ – what it means to love and lose, have limitations, frailties, or disappointments, all the stuff of human experience interwoven with its joys and pleasures.  Many thinkers have written about these issues.   I have an interest in the great visionary Carl Jung, who wrote compellingly about the challenges of mid-life informed by the wisdom of the unconscious.   My role however is to respect your path here, whatever that may be.   

This brings me to a treasured way of working with clients.   If you would like to understand more about 'Music Imagery Psychotherapy' and how it works, please do visit my other page which sets this out in detail.  Like many art forms, I believe that music provides a superhighway into our feelings and stores of a deeper wisdom.    As you will read on other pages, I offer 'Music Imagery Psychotherapy' as a standalone therapy.   It also integrates beautifully into the early stages or EMDR and of course within Relational Integrative Psychotherapy, providing for both safe accessible ways to ‘widen your window of tolerance.’  No musical ability is required to benefit from these practices.   The music is played via spotify, and mark-making using pastels deepens your experience in simple, natural ways upon the page.