How we work

Sometimes you may not know quite what the issue is but life just does not feel quite right. Or perhaps a life event has made things difficult for you. Together we can explore your thoughts and feelings to help you make meaningful connections and provide clarity for how you want life to be. Therapy can facilitate a healing process that enables real and lasting change to occur.

Benefits may include enhanced physical and mental well-being, improvements to your quality of life, overall well-being and satisfaction with life. The process can be challenging, but letting go of the status quo can provide the opportunity for something different and ultimately more fulfilling to happen.

We treat each client as a unique human being with their own individual way of living life. We see a good therapeutic relationship as paramount to the process of potential change, so really emphasise the importance of finding the right therapist for you.
Each  of our therapists draws on a range of therapies to inform how they work and to define their own unique style of therapy.

• Humanistic Therapy
• Person Centred Therapy
• Gestalt Therapy
• Relational Transactional Analysis
• Experiential-Focusing Oriented Therapy
• Cognitive Behavioural Approaches
• Psychodynamic Therapy
• Systemic Therapy
• EMDR
• Integrative Psychotherapy

(Please scroll down for a brief summary on each.)

Humanistic therapy

Humanistic therapy focusses on the recognition of your own creative  capabilities in  personal growth and choice.  The main aim is to offer a ‘real’ relationship that provides a non-judgemental and understanding experience. This relational approach provides a platform for you to explore perceptions of yourself in the ‘here and now’, assisting you to recognise your own strengths, weaknesses and personal processes. Click here for more information

Person-Centred Therapy

Person-Centred Therapy sees human beings as having an innate tendency to develop towards their full potential, given the right relational conditions.  Our therapists provide an environment in which you will not feel in any way feel judged, thereby enabling you to experience and accept more of who you are as a person, thus reconnecting with your own values and sense of self-worth.   Significantly we work to understand your experiences from your own point of view, from an open and genuine standpoint, positively valuing you as a person in all aspects of your own humanity.  The nature of the therapeutic relationship (drop down relational approach) is crucial for the success and effectiveness of the therapy. Click here for more information.

Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt Therapy has a strong focus on the ‘here and now’ concentrating on an enhanced self awareness of your ‘whole’ experience of life including thoughts, feelings and actions.  We will concentrate on experiences in the present, to remove obstacles and blocks created by past experiences. Click here for more information

Relational Transactional Analysis

TA is a theory that is related to communication and child development, explaining connections to the past and how these influence the subsequent decisions that people make.  Three ‘ego’ states are used to describe how we respond to others in all our communications; Parent, Adult and Child.  TA seeks to identify what goes wrong in communication and provide opportunities to change repetitive patterns that may limit potential.  A relational TA approach looks at how these repetitive patterns may be played out in the relationship between client and therapist. Click here For more information

Experiential-Focusing Oriented therapy

Focusing oriented therapists create an environment that allows and supports the experiential, in such a way as to further your direct, bodily experience in the moment. Therapists will create an environment to where you are able to directly sense issues as they are experienced in the moment. You will be encouraged to check that the words and suggestions given by the therapist match with your own feelings and what rings true for you. Click here for more information.

Existential Therapy

The Existential approach focuses on exploring the meanings behind issues through an emphasis on a philosophical perspective rather than a technique-based approach.  It can be effective if you wish to increase self-awareness and broaden your views of the world and your place in it. An existential approach will generally more emphasis on the choices made in the present and future than the past. For more information click here. 

Cognitive Behavioural Approaches

Cognitive behavioral approaches are based on a combination of basic behavioral and cognitive principles, focusing on how we attend, interpret, reason reflect and make sense of internal and external events. The theory acknowledges that some of our behaviors cannot be controlled through rational thought.

Common features of CBT procedures are the focus on the ‘here and now’, a more directive therapist role, and a more structured approach to sessions.

Traditional CBT is “problem focused” and “action oriented”addressing emotions, behaviors and cognitive processes via systematic, goal-oriented procedures. Contemporary or third wave CBT is now very diverse and incorporates a range of approaches including Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), Schema focused CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

CBT approaches can be effective for a variety of conditions, including mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse and psychotic disorders.

A cognitive behavioural approach (CBA) can also be integrated into the work of therapists from other modalities for more click here.

Psychodynamic therapy

This approach stresses the importance of the unconscious and past experience in shaping current behaviours. Clients will be encouraged to talk about childhood relationships with parents and other significant people. Psychodynamic therapy aims to help you become aware of and to experience vulnerable feelings which may been pushed out of conscious awareness. The psychodynamic approach takes the view that everyone has an unconscious, which holds painful and vulnerable feelings that are too difficult to be consciously aware of. In order to keep painful feelings, memories, and experiences in the unconscious, people develop defense mechanisms, which according to psychodynamic theory, can cause more harm than good and it is once the vulnerable or painful feelings are processed that these defense mechanisms reduce or resolve. There is an assumption of unhelpful behaviour having been constructed and formed at a very early stage of life which then goes on to cause distress in the experiences encountered on a daily basis. For more information click here.

Systemic Theory

Traditional psychological therapies tend to work with distress in individualistic terms. A ‘Systemic’ therapeutic approach focuses on exploring client(s) contextual worlds, through the detailed examination of current familial relationships and patterns. Systemic Therapeutic Approaches thus locate current difficulties being experienced by clients in relation to family patterns and processes, rather than seeing them as a “product of the individual”. Systemic therapeutic approaches recognise that the individual is part of a wider complex interactional ‘system’ and therefore seek to offer clients opportunities to find new and more expansive ways of relating, within their existing family relationships. Consequently clients may at times experience Systemic interventions as more ‘directive’. Whilst trained ‘Family Therapists’ often work with couples or whole families, individual therapists may also integrate systemic thinking into their practice with individual clients. For a general description of Systemic therapy, contact the Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice at www.aft.org.uk

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an interesting and complex 8 phase approach to psychotherapy which incorporates much of the wisdom of other therapies.  It is used within a comprehensive treatment plan to promote healing and recovery from difficulties you may be experiencing in your present day life.  When something traumatic happens to you your mind appears to hold onto it in a way that can be triggered on a daily basis by many different things or people that you encounter and it is these old experiences that can still be causing a great deal of the discomfort.  EMDR can assist people with many types of emotional problems from those rooted in early childhood psychological problems/trauma or later adult single adverse life events. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, right/left eye movement, or tactile stimulation (tapping), to activate both sides of the brain, releasing emotional experiences that are “trapped” in the nervous system. This assists the neurophysiological system, the basis of the mind/body connection, to free itself of blockages and reconnect itself.  As troubling images and feelings are processed by the brain resolution of the issues and a more peaceful state can be achieved.  The therapist works with you, guiding you to revisit the traumatic incident. When the memory is brought to mind, the feelings are re-experienced in a new way. EMDR makes it possible to gain the self-knowledge and perspective that can enable you to choose actions, rather than continue to feel powerless over your re-actions. EMDR sessions will continue until the traumatic memories and emotions are relieved which can be a simple process in some cases or more complex in others, everyone is unique.

Integrative Psychotherapy

Integrative Psychotherapy takes into account many views of human functioning. The psychodynamic, client-centered, behaviorist, cognitive, family therapy, Gestalt therapy, body-psychotherapies, object relations theories, psychoanalytic self psychology, and transactional analysis approaches are all considered within a dynamic systems perspective. Each provides a partial explanation of behaviour and each is enhanced when selectively integrated with other aspects of the therapist’s approach. The psychotherapy interventions used in Integrative Psychotherapy are based on developmental research and theories describing the self-protective (and initially helpful) behaviours that people adopt and develop when they are faced with very early childhood problems and dilemmas as a way to survive. The aim of an integrative psychotherapy is to facilitate wholeness such that the quality of the person’s being and functioning is optimised with regard and respect for each individual’s own personal limits and external constraints.