My practice tends to the wholeness of humans; the conscious and subconscious,
the somatic/bodily, emotional, relational, cognitive, behavioural, and transpersonal.
The approaches that I draw on will depend on what emerges during the process.
Each client is unique, so every process will be too.
SOMATIC & IMPLICIT
This approach helps foster self-regulation using mindfulness and ‘bottom-up’, body-based approaches, restoring nervous system resilience and flexibility, and processing implicit (subconscious) memory. I support you in exploring what is held in the body as a pathway to the subconscious, bringing compassionate awareness to the protective stories that may still feel alive within.
It’s very hard to think or will our way out of what is felt and believed on a bodily, cellular level. This is partly because this material is largely subconscious, outside of our immediate awareness, overlaying our present with echoes of the past. Also the more primal parts of our brain respond to threat and emotional activation faster and more automatically than our more recently evolved cognitive/thinking brain, and this 'newer' brain area becomes inhibited and rigid in response to activation and high stress. So there is often a combination of charged subconscious material colluding with our more primal survival-based instincts, and often this creates distortions, impulsive reactivity, and/or patterns of stuckness, shutdown and loss of hope etc.
Growing self-regulation capacity, and bringing awareness to what is held in our system in unprocessed, implicit form gives us the chance to understand what is going on outside our immediate awareness, and to integrate material from past experiences that we were not able to process at the time. This integration process empowers us by naming what is going on, reducing the charge held in the material, and increases our capacity to consciously choose value-aligned actions rather than be at the whim of our subconscious material and survival responses that can often keep us in unhelpful patterns.
RELATIONAL & EMOTIONAL ATTUNEMENT
This approach prioritises subjectivity, the unfolding of your inner world, and the experience of being met by the counsellor in an emotionally attuned way. This allows for your inner life and conscious awareness to ‘open up’, while the experience of emotional attunement helps the brain integrate charged material, and facilitates corrective experiences of emotional release, attunement, and compassionate accompaniment.
For those who grew up in authoritarian households, schools, religions etc. or are authority-averse, or come from backgrounds of abuse or neglect; who were not seen, heard or given space to explore and process your own thoughts, beliefs, or feelings – this approach can be particularly therapeutic. The counsellor takes on the role of empathic witness, rather than expert, authority, or goal-oriented coach, and follows the client’s lead allowing ample space for self-exploration. The focus is on your present experience and inner world rather than a specific goal or agenda.
COMPASSIONATE COGNITIVE-BEHAVIOUAL
When working on self-regulation on a nervous system level and processing implicit memory, our cognitions will often improve allowing our minds to be more ‘user friendly’. However, deeply wired-in cognitive patterns can be stubborn! Actively working on becoming more mindful of our thoughts and beliefs, and their relationship to our behaviours and the changes we may want to make is very beneficial too. When tending to the cognitive and behavioural aspects of your experience, I aim to support you in embodying your insights and understandings by taking values-aligned action and moving towards change, while cultivating a more self-compassionate and supportive inner voice to help you get there.
TRANSPERSONAL & ECOLOGICAL
The transpersonal refers to aspects of the human experience beyond the everyday personal stories, and places appropriate importance on our ecological relations to the natural world as a way fostering deeper wellbeing, connection, and belonging.
Our age-old, symbiotic relationship with nature, in which our species evolved, is a potent ally in our healing and wholeness.
A transpersonal approach also allows us to explore meaning in a symbolic way, using modes of understanding that speak to us on a level deeper than the analytical mind. For clients who would like to cultivate a deeper relationship to the soulful and symbolic level of experience, or would like a safe place to explore and integrate dreams, visionary or non-ordinary experiences, I welcome this into the therapeutic space.
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