Understand | Heal | Grow
I hope to offer you an opportunity to explore your concerns in an atmosphere of trust and support with a caring professional with the right training and experience to hold space for you and facilitate you in exploring and resolving your struggles, find your own answers and a positive way forward.
Together, as you get things off your chest (sometimes for the first time!) and take stock of your experiences and how you feel, we can begin to support you to understand, heal and grow…
– to understand is to bring an open, kind curiosity to what is going on for you, within you and the struggles you are facing so that you can come to better understand yourself, your patterns and the reasons you feel and act the way that you do. Together, we can learn from your experiences and gain deeper insight, giving you the choice and power to make the changes you want to whilst accepting that which lies outside of your control.
– to heal is to work together to bring compassion, empathy and acceptance to the “unfaced and unfelt” parts of ourselves that lie beneath our struggles the parts of ourselves we reject and lie in our shadow… the psychological wounds or scars that we all pick up as part of being human. Part of the healing process is building a healthier relationship with yourself, your feelings and experiences, re-connecting with your inherent wholeness, worth and value.
– Healing, for me, also includes including and honouring a person’s difficulties and so-called ‘negative feelings’, bringing a kind curiosity to them and seeking to learn from them rather than treating them like symptoms, attempting to remove them or to necessarily ‘get rid of’ them as some other approaches might, but exploring the wisdom and intelligence that lies beneath our sadness, our anxiety, our anger ….
…What might be regarded as “symptoms” of our suffering might be pointing toward something within ourselves that perhaps we have forgotten or abandoned, some need we are denying, some way in which we are not living authentically. This offers the possibility to become more consciously aware of what is calling for our attention and to integrate parts of ourselves that perhaps were needed to be ‘put away’ in order to survive or feel loved and accepted at an earlier stage of life (or simply living in a society that isn’t conducive to our wellbeing) and is now yearning for release and expression. Often a feeling that we are not living or being the way we truly want to be in the world can arise as various “symptoms” such as depression and anxiety.
– to grow is to make empowering, positive, life-changing and authentic choices that move you in the direction of your goals and the life you wish to create for yourself, moving from a place of stuckness, confusion and inner conflict to a place of clarity, authenticity and wholeness. Working together to remove the obstacles to growth, we can help you to re-connect with your core values, let go of old habits (and addictions) that may no longer serve you and become the truest version of yourself, living the life you wish to live – a life that is connected, meaningful, fulfilling and authentic.
“The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free” (Rollo May)
In short, working together, we can discover who you are, how you fit in the world and how you want to spend your precious time on this earth.