About Me

As a qualified and accreddited (MBACP) therapist you can expect me to:
– offer a safe, confidential place, where you can talk about yourself and your life, which may be painful or confusing and may make you feel uncomfortable, angry or unhappy
– offer an opportunity to think and talk about yourself and your concerns in a way that you often can’t do with family and friends
– offer a place and time which is just for you to talk about those things that bother you
– listen to the way you feel and how this affects you and others
– accept the way you are without judging you
– help you to make the changes you would like to happen
– work hard to create a good therapeutic relationship with you so that we can work well together
– understand that it is not always easy to talk about problems and to express your feelings
– work with you towards improving your well being

Some things I won’t do:
– offer to “cure” you
– judge you
– make decisions for you
– take advantage of you
– spend time talking about my problems inappropriately
– discuss what you and I talk about with other people

I describe my therapeutic style as humanistic, integrative, and relational. For most people that doesn’t mean very much, so this is what I mean.

Humanistic

This describes my basic beliefs about people:
– everyone has essential worth
– people are not good or bad – we all have the potential for both
– we all have the capacity to choose
– people are responsible for themselves
– people have the power to change and grow
– we exist in relationship with the world around us
– the truth about people is more than the sum of all the parts

Integrative

Humanistic therapies are all based on the beliefs above, and there are many theories and ways of understanding people that have stemmed from this. But there are also lots of other ways to approach this. I don’t stick rigidly to ‘a way to do therapy’ but incorporate aspects of many different theories including some of the ‘non-humanistic’ ones.
I do this because I believe that they are useful and helpful to the work of therapy. Just as no two people are ever the same, I don’t believe that any one sort of therapy can ever be adequate for everyone.

Relational

I place particular importance and value on the relationship that develops between myself and the client. I believe that we all exist in relationship with the world around us, and so when we are trying to make changes, or solve problems, or make sense of our experiences, we also do that in relationship.
Therapy is very different to most other relationships you may have – that’s part of it’s value, but it is still a relationship.