Making Change
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. "
~ Barack Obama
Counselling and psychotherapy are about change and growth. While the work of Counsellors and Psychotherapists with clients may be of considerable depth, the focus of Counselling is more likely to be on specific problems and changes in behaviour to foster well being and is usually of a shorter duration. Psychotherapy is more concerned with helping people with psychological problems or recurrent patterns of behaviour that have built up over a long period of time and which keep you from feeling good about yourself and others. However, it is not unusual for psychotherapy to be incorporated into a counselling session and counselling to be an essential part of psychotherapy.
Choosing the Right Counsellor
Research shows the success of counselling and psychotherapy depends above all on the therapist's ability to form a 'therapeutic relationship' with you. Choosing the right counsellor (who feels right to you) is key. I offer you a safe space to breathe and to be yourself – space where there is room to explore your experiences, thoughts, and emotions - both positive and negative - without judgement: space to better understand who you are and who you would like to become. Building on your strengths, resources, values, and knowledge, I work with you to achieve positive change and personal growth.
I work from a variety of traditions including a blend of internal family systems therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, solution focused therapy and mindfulness mediation. My practice is trauma informed. Traumas both major and (relatively) minor are endemic to the human condition. To help clients understand, process, and recover from traumas, I use EMDR – eye movement desensitization and re-processing – and Internal Family Systems Therapy. EMDR helps clients tolerate intense emotions experienced in the mind and body when traumatic experiences are triggered or recalled. When the emotional charge associated with trauma memory is dampened (de-sensitized) , it allows clients to more fully remember and process traumatic experience in an adaptive manner. The goal is to let the past remain in the past, so that clients are no longer disturbed by traumatic memories and can be present to their current experience.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidenced based approach to psychotherapy. It is effective for anxiety, anger issues and early trauma. IFS identifies and addresses the multiple sub-personalities or families within each person’s mental system called ‘parts’. (For example, “A part of me feels anxious. A part of me trusts no one.”) These sub-personalities often consist of wounded parts and painful emotions such as anger and shame, and parts that try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded parts. A person also contains many positive parts (called Managers) that help us navigate daily life but sometimes work so hard (perfectionism) that they are no longer helpful. The sub-personalities are often in conflict with each other and with one’s core Self, a concept that describes the confident, compassionate, whole person that IFS believes is at the core of every individual. IFS focuses on healing the wounded parts (called exiles) and restoring mental balance and harmony between the parts and the core Self.
Forget Normal Focus on Health You are Not Alone and There is Help
One of the joys of being a counsellor/psychotherapist is letting people know that they are not “strange” or “weird” or the only ones who could possibly have this problem or think these thoughts. Often clients express a wish to be “normal”, believing that no one else could possibly feel this anxious, this afraid or panicked, this depressed, this angry, this guilty, this lonely, this grief stricken, this responsible for being bullied or assaulted, (you are not!), this unsure of a career or life direction, this confused about relationships, sexuality, and gender, or that no one could ever like me or love me. My first response is to welcome clients to the human race because these thoughts and feelings are all too common. My second response is a declaration to forget “normal” and focus on what is “healthy” for you. Mental health and well being are on a continuum from illness, helplessness and unhappiness to vitality, resilience, optimism, and self-fulfilment. Counselling and psychotherapy are designed to move clients along that continuum to improved health and life satisfaction. To foster that movement, throughout our sessions, I will be interested in the quality of sleep of your sleep, the presence or absence of exercise and good nutrition in your daily life and your participation in events and activities that you enjoy and those that foster positive social contact.
"The only normal people are the one’s you don’t know very well."
~ Alfred Adler