What is Psychotherapy?

The nitty gritty of how I work… if you’re up for it!

Somatic therapy

Therapy can often be known as the ‘talking cure’, but often there’s a lot more going on than just talking. Somatic therapies recognise that the body is intricately interwoven with the mind, and that working through the body is often a helpful approach. The body has a wisdom and a creativity that is often hard for our minds to grasp, but if we can learn to listen there is a lot to uncover and heal. Understanding how the nervous system incorporates experiences into our sense of ourselves, and working with the body to rewire patterns of movement, feeling and thought, can have profound effects on the way we interact with ourselves, others and the world.

Person-centred/humanistic therapy

As the name suggests, person-centred therapy places the person (aka, you) at the centre of the therapeutic exchange. You are the only expert of your life (even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes!) and the task of therapy is to work as a team to uncover the answers you both seek and hold.

Carl Rogers, the founder of this modality, believed wholeheartedly in the capacity of people to change and grow: he called this fundamental force our actualising tendency. He also believed that simply by encouraging the right conditions in the therapy space, a therapist could naturally expect to see therapeutic change emerge.

Person-centred therapy forms the basis of my practice. While I offer certain skills, tools, knowledge and experience, I don’t believe it is helpful for me to be seen as the ‘expert’, or any kind of authority. Ultimately, you are the authority of your life, and we are working together to enhance your capacity to access that authority.

You might notice the word ‘author’ within authority. We are working together to help you to be the author of your life.

Since I work integrativevly, there are many ways we can progress. Depending on your needs, I will use elements of some/all of the following modalities:

Narrative therapy

Narrative therapy is what’s known as a ‘constructivist therapy’. It posits that we construct our present realities based on the narratives we carry about our past. We become our stories, and often our current-day issues are perpetuated by retelling unhelpful (and often skewed) versions of our lives. Hence, narrative therapy focuses on deconstructing our old stories and constructing new, more empowering ones. With the use of narrative therapy, we can create new interpretations of who we are, who we have been, and who we can be.

Meaning reconstruction for grief and loss

Meaning reconstruction is a model developed to assist those suffering from protracted grief, who find it hard to locate meaning in the wake of a significant loss. Losses can be extremely traumatic, and can lead to feelings of loss of self, making forwards momentum in life seem impossible. This modality works to honour the lost person (or pet, role, life stage etc.) by experiencing their loss in a safe space, and working towards creating meaning and fulfilment in life.

Positive psychology

Positive psychology takes a strengths-based approach to therapy, focusing on amplifying the strengths and virtues that enable individuals to thrive. Sometimes, this approach can helpfully counteract experiences of over-focusing on suffering, negative views of self, or unnecessary diagnosis. While it is important to work through the ‘deep, dark stuff’, it is equally important to focus on locating meaning and creating forwards momentum from even the darkest of times and events. By widening our lens to include positive aspects of self and meaning, we can build resources and resilience that may dramatically enhance fulfillment in life.

Mentalising based treatment

Mentalising is the capacity to understand our (and others’) mental phenomena - thoughts, beliefs, emotions, knowledge, desires, and intentions – and link them to actions. It is a natural capacity that develops as we mature. When mentalising is functioning well, we tend to have flexible, creative relationships with ourselves and others, we are able to understand human behaviour, and we find meaning in our lives with ease. Sometimes, there are particular areas in our lives that we find difficult to mentalise – for example, some of us find it hard to comprehend anger, or sadness, and the emotions result in confusion or acting in unwanted ways. Or, we might find it hard to mentalise others’ behaviour and always seem to interpret it wrong.

Mentalising based treatment focuses on identifying mentalising breakdowns and working gently to increase clarity.  

Trauma-informed therapy

When trauma is present, there are important considerations in any space, and particularly a therapeutic space. Therapy that is trauma-informed generally works through a three-stage model.

1. Safety, stabilisation, resourcing

The first stage – and the most important – is safety. Without safety, it’s likely that any traumatic material that arises in the therapy space will be experienced as retraumatising. To build safety, we work on creating a trusting relationship. We also work on your own resources – internal ones like breath to help you regulate difficult feelings, and external ones like friends or hobbies where you can go to fill your cup.

2. Processing, remembering, and grieving

Only after cultivating safety and developing your resources do we begin the work of processing the trauma. Here, we work through memories which may be visual and/or felt in the body. This can be challenging, but we make sure to always return to your ‘Window of Tolerance’ through co-regulation, as well as practicing the skills of self-regulation that you will now be proficient in. This looks like putting words to the feelings, expressing emotion, making sound and movements to help release the trapped trauma from the nervous system. This is not linear work - it may feel like you’ve made some progress, and then things feel hard again. It’s normal to have to return to stage one at various points in this process. We will keep track of how safe and stable you feel, whether your life is being affected by the processing, and whether we need to slow down or pause to regain stability.

3. Integration and restoration

In stage three, we focus on integrating the changes that have occurred through processing your trauma. Trauma significantly impacts how we experience ourselves, shaping our identities. Integration means that you can restore previous hopes and dreams, embrace parts of yourself that might have felt lost or confused, and start to build an empowered, resilient new identity which incorporates the hurt parts WITHOUT being controlled by them. We could see this stage as a completion of Erik Erickson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development - a sense of autonomy, initiative, competence, identity and intimacy. The past will have much less of a hold on you, allowing you to be more fully in the present, and to see the horizon of possibilities in the future.