PSYCHOTHERAPY AND COUNSELLING

Starting therapy can be a new and foreign prospect for most people, at first. It would be perfectly natural to feel a little nervous or unsure! After all it doesn't happen anywhere else in life to open up about one's own personal thoughts, feelings and experiences to someone one doesn't know so well.

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How psychotherapy works is by giving you a safe and reliable space to explore your current circumstances and what is holding you back from moving in a direction that is true to who you truly are. The idea is to provide a mindful and curious attitude to assist you in getting closer to the areas of pain in your history that may still have echos in the present.

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This is not to delve into the past or overwhelm you with unpleasant feelings but to befriend more and more of your experience and then learn new ways to cope with things and make yourself feel better. In my view, we all did a wonderful job at surviving and adapting to often difficult and less than ideal circumstances and had to find ingenious ways to cope with the cards that we had been dealt. Even problematic beliefs and behaviours or symptoms, in this light, could be viewed for their survival value, carrying the potential for new meaning and healing to take place. The process is collaborative and I hope it might assist you to identify what still works for you and what isn't serving you anymore. What you want to keep and what you are willing to let go of in order to have a full and fulfilling life, if this is not already the case.

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Since it takes time to trust, therapy works best if it takes place over a period of time that is long enough for us develop a good enough relationship and for you to have enough time to resolve past traumas and integrate the work we do together, depending on your particular situation. What this looks like in practice, is that therapy is often open-ended but with regular reviews and with the possibility to suggest ending when you feel ready or need to.

 

In order to best facilitate the development of a safe container for the work, it helps for both of us to commit to the process and not have too many interruptions. After all, it only works if both of us are there! In my experience knowing there is a reliable space every week helps you to get the most out of therapy so it works best when sessions are regular, once a week and on the same day and time.

 

It isn't a quick fix unfortunately, I wouldn't give advice or tell you what to do, but I would facilitate you developing more and more of your inner qualities and resources and finding a more long term solution to the stuff that keeps on happening and for which you are considering therapy at the moment.

 

If you would like to discuss more around starting psychotherapy or trauma therapy in London, send me an email or call to book an appointment.