Therapy for self-understanding, authenticity and personal growth.
What Makes it Happen
The Philosophy
Understanding before intervention. Curiosity before certainty.
The person before the explanation
I think people make sense.
Not always neatly, and not always for reasons we can fully understand. But when we want to make sense of a feeling, a behaviour or a familiar way of relating to others, it helps to understand the person and circumstances around it.
We are more than the difficulties that bring us to therapy.
I'm interested in what has shaped our experiences, the meanings we've given them, the ways we've learned to protect ourselves and what might now be understood differently.
Theories are maps. They are not the person.
My approach is integrative, informed particularly by psychodynamic, developmental and relational psychotherapy.
These perspectives help me consider how earlier experiences, relationships and unconscious patterns may influence our present lives.
Humanistic and person-centred thinking informs my respect for the individual's experience and autonomy. Existential and phenomenological perspectives speak to my interest in authenticity, meaning, uncertainty and how we experience being ourselves. I also draw upon practical approaches, including CBT-informed methods, when they are useful.
But psychological theories are ways of approaching an understanding, not definitive explanations of a person.
If an interpretation doesn't fit someone's experience, I think that's a reason to become more curious, not more certain.
And not every difficulty has its origins in the past. Our bodies, circumstances, relationships and the realities of everyday life matter too.
Understanding and change
We can understand why we behave in a particular way and still find ourselves doing it.
Sometimes a response we would like to change continues to offer a familiar sense of protection, even when it also restricts us.
I don't believe this always calls for greater effort or another technique. Sometimes there is more to understand, acknowledge or experience.
At other times, change requires us to practise something different, make a difficult decision or take responsibility for how we respond.
Both forms of change interest me. What matters is whether understanding begins to make a meaningful difference to how we experience and live our lives.
There is something fundamental to my approach that I want to make clear.
I do not know who your authentic self is.
I can bring psychological knowledge, experience, curiosity and interpretations to our conversations. But I cannot determine who you ought to become.
I think of it more as an increasing freedom to experience ourselves as we are.
To recognise our feelings without automatically judging them. To acknowledge our limitations without experiencing them as inadequacies. To accept that we do not know everything, nor do we need to.
There is a particular freedom in being able to say “I don't know” without feeling inferior, or “I need help” without feeling diminished.
And sometimes in recognising something uncomfortable or contradictory about ourselves without immediately needing to defend against it.
For me, authenticity involves greater honesty with ourselves, alongside the freedom and responsibility to decide how we respond to what we discover.
What that looks and feels like will be different for everyone.
And it isn't for me to decide.
Authenticity belongs to you
The relationship matters
I believe the therapeutic relationship can become a place where familiar expectations and ways of relating are recognised and explored.
You can question my understanding, disagree with an interpretation or tell me when something doesn't feel right.
I may sometimes challenge an established belief or invite you to consider something uncomfortable. But I also have a responsibility to remain open to being mistaken.
Compassion and honesty both belong in this work.
Finding your own way
Ultimately, I don't believe the purpose of therapy is to become endlessly occupied with understanding ourselves.
Life is something to be lived.
My hope is that psychotherapy helps you develop a greater capacity to recognise your own experience, respond to life more freely and decide what matters to you.
Not because you have finally worked everything out.
But because you no longer need to.