HOW DOES SITTING AND TALKING ABOUT THINGS HELP?
Recent brains scans done before and after psychotherapy show that the brain plastically reorganizes itself in treatment. We all have reaction patterns that hide painful ideas, feelings and memories from conscious awareness. By working through these patterns we turn implicit memories (the ghosts that can haunt us) into declarative memories that have a clear context. (See Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself, Penguin Books, Chapter 9)
Since psychotherapy involves the exploration and processing of uncomfortable aspects of life, you may at times experience difficult feelings like sadness, guilt, anger and frustration along with insight and release. It is this working through that allows long term change to take place. Psychotherapy commonly leads to improved relationships, healthy solutions to specific problems and significant increases in mental clarity and emotional balance. Psychotherapy is a place to talk openly, let the emotions out, frame your experience and find yourself again. It is a space to heal. WHY DOES THE PAST MATTER NOW?
Certain events in childhood, and even the more recent past, send out a ripple effect that still works upon us now. Especially if that event was traumatic. The earliest of experiences have the added complications of often being preverbal – and thus harder to articulate. They show up as more of a felt sense. Without words to translate them into our conscious mind we just feel a lurking presence and what may seem like a senseless foreboding.
We cannot go back, but we can change the force and the impact of the ripple. HOW DOES WORKING WITH DREAMS AND ACTIVE IMAGINATION HELP MY 'REAL LIFE' ISSUES?
It is almost impossible to change using only the conscious logical mind. Behavior, repeating patterns in your external life, relationship issues and even disruptions in our health often have their roots and sustaining energy in our unconscious world.
Why do we keep repeating the same mistakes? Where is the pattern in your life coming from, and is it working? What is our pattern of reaction when we’re frightened, when we feel vulnerable? Do those reactions work with our hopes for the future or against them? Are you undermining you own efforts to move forward? How do we mend a broken heart? Can we ever feel worthy? Or forget devastating and traumatic events that happened in our childhood? Learning to work with the unconscious, shadowy parts of our psyche is like discovering another language. The subconscious speaks in images. We connect by interacting through active imagination and working with the images that come through dreams. We can become the images, converse with them. Draw from their strength, see things from this larger or opposed perspective. It's one of the fastest and strongest ways to break out of the ruts our brain has fallen into and expand to new levels of insight and understanding. Slip out of the false narratives that hold us back. Unpick what is going on in our personal relationships. Sustainable change beyond our work together. Using dreamwork, creative imagination, watching our lives from a curious perspective. We can write into it, draw, paint, dream into it. And transform. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE COACHING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY?
Both release blocks and open the world.
Psychotherapy is about dismantling and healing. It is the still focus on what’s holding you back, creating anxiety, frustration and repeating patterns. It’s being honest about the pain you are holding. About finding the light inside fear. Psychotherapy gives a safe space to speak about and lay boundaries around a traumatizing event, circumstance, fear or tendency. Therapy finds echoes of the past and adaptations which no longer work and we call them out as echoes – NOT reality. We find how the difficulties are signposts in your larger life’s story. What is this situation evolving and cultivating within you? Coaching is about inspired action. Coaching is momentum. You’re moving on and finding the life you were born to live. Dreaming, clarifying intentions and dissolving challenges (mental and circumstantial) between you and your right life. Developing life skills, techniques and awareness you can use for the rest of your life. We get to the thoughts behind the blocks. We locate the goals, and more importantly, the big megawatt why behind the goals which will fuel you onwards. There will be juicy, soul-inspiring homework between sessions. That said, as both of these approaches inform all work that I do, you will have the benefit of both regardless of which approach you feel most drawn to. I’m on the proactive side of therapist and as a coach I go a bit deeper and am more of a motivator than drill sergeant. Many clients combine therapy and coaching – and we switch gears depending on the presenting issue. WILL YOU BE ABLE TO TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO DO?
No – but I’ll be able to help you find the answer within yourself. You know what to do already. The answer is just hiding beneath loads of defunct stories that you’re carrying around.
My main job is to ask really good questions. We will find the patterns which are leaching away your energy and redirect that energy to areas you would like to expand. We will look at your life from both the strategic eagle-eye view and the practical mouse-eye view. You do all the deciding. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?
This depends on how big the change you want to make is and how open you are to change. Most change happens little by little, and then all at once.
I recommend an absolute minimum of four sessions to really sink our teeth into an issue. I’m very flexible on how sessions are spaced out. Some clients find coming every week most beneficial, while others prefer bi-weekly. Coaching clients often find that once we’ve established a game plan, a twice monthly appointment gives them time to put their action steps into play while keeping them accountable and on track. If the focus is on psychotherapy I strongly recommend we have at least four sessions on a weekly basis before then spacing them out if that is what you would like to do. On average it takes six weeks to break an old habit and six weeks to embed a new one. New neural pathways are being formed. Immediate changes don’t always last. We need time to work out kinks. Time to welcome the hiccups as we go along so we can devise sustainable solutions. Let me say that again: SUSTAINABLE. We’re designing touchstones, habits and new patterns to sustain you for the rest of your life. All techniques, information, healthy habits, untangling of inner horrors and defunct stories, coping strategies and motivating forces which we will weave into your life are designed to transform the areas you’re most concerned with – forever. You’re re-authoring your life. This is seriously fun and meaningful. We want to go in deep and work from the inside out. Your new life will be taking root and growing to bear fruit. SHADOW SELF - WHAT IS THIS?
Parts of us we don't identify with. Appalling to our social selves.
As we grew up we were taught both explicitly (parents: 'you must eat your vegetables and kiss your aunt Mavis hello') and implicitly (schoolmates excluding you after you make an embarrassing gaffe) what is acceptable in social situations and what you are expected to hide. This is different in different cultures, countries and families. What was acceptable and what was not. Our own internal voice/compass often grows so quiet as to become imperceptible. We expressly reject within ourselves the sub personalities we don't want others to see within us. Ironically, trying to entirely disown an aspect of ourselves often makes it all the more obvious to others. We go blind to the parts of us we wish not to acknowledge. Learn to recognize our own danger areas, swamps and black holes. Recognize the lies we tell ourselves and believe. The reasons why it's so delicious and deliriously drug-like to believe these particular lies. Life is inherently messy with no guarantees. It promises to hold surprise reversals, tragedies, opportunities, loss, windfalls, crippling setbacks and grace. If we do not live life in knowledge that we are on a hero's journey - a unique hero's journey built to hone our own skills, understanding and meaning - then we are mown down by life, constantly wondering what we did to attract our challenges rather than rising to meet them and grow to the stature we were meant to have. We have a whole pantheon of emotions to guide and inform us. To release and emotions we must allow it to fully incorporate, learn its lessons and then let it go to make room for the next. WHY NOT JUST CONFIDE IN A FRIEND?
Friends are fantastic. Hopefully your friends have your best interests at heart. They are invested in you. You share a past and similar experience. They’re right in there with you.
As your therapist and coach, I also have your best interests at heart. However, I’m outside your life looking in from a different perspective. From here it’s easier to see the big picture. I’m not immersed in years of assumptions based on your past. I’m not invested in your story. Through years of experience I’ve cultivated very open ears and mind. Through years of training I’ve curated a broad collection of transformative tools and techniques for working through all manner of situations. Mind-openers and exercises to help see you through end-of-rope times, confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, life changes, illness. I’ve met the ugliest of experiences and stories and helped find the light within them. I’ll call you out on things and keep you accountable if that’s what will change a slippery situation. I hold steady if what you need is a mooring point to deal with an emotional hurricane that’s stripped you of your own calm centre. You can safely and confidentially be honest in your sessions, without fear of damaging a relationship. You can express views that may be confrontational. This is a safe space to play with new ways of being. Start down new paths without alarming people invested in who you always have been. CBT, DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY, MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING... WHAT IS BEST?
We use several techniques to sidestep the thinking rational mind and understand what your soul is searching for - that place where we feel at home, fulfilled, meaningful.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) - working with thoughts from a logically mapped out perspective. Depth Psychotherapy - non-linear process that is not limited to solving problems, but more towards integration and wholeness Internal Family Systems (IFS) Transpersonal Psychotherapy The ability to go between cognitive approaches that speak to our intellectual mind and depth approaches that engage our unconscious works best. The combination balances and nourishes the social self as well as the soul. Using dreamwork, creative imagination, watching our lives from a curious perspective. Process of reflection, translation and moving forward down a different path. Decision by decision. Step by step. do you take insurance?
As I am credentialed as a psychotherapist in the UK, yet am currently living in the United States, I am unable to accept insurance. Beneficially, working outside the framework of insurance schemes allows for more freedom in approaches and loosens the need to diagnose so more emphasis can be spent on strengthening. Furthermore, self-pay offers a higher level of confidentiality both personally and systemically.
WHO GENERALLY COMES TO YOU AND WHY?
Most people start work with me from a place where they simply cannot carry on using the same thought processes and beliefs that have gotten them this far. Their outside life has broken in some way. Or the outside looks fine, but the inside feels like it's a dead forest or swamp. Something is not working. Feeling depressed, unceasingly angry, frustrated, de-powered.
If you get the internal headspace right - then the outside world will synch. Things move. Use thinking mind as the servant and not the master. We use several techniques to sidestep the thinking rational mind and understand what your soul is searching for - that place where we feel at home, fulfilled, meaningful. Process of reflection, translation and moving forward down a different path. Decision by decision. Step by step. HOW DO WE MEET? I'M IN A DIFFERENT STATE/TIME ZONE/COUNTRY THAN YOU?
As someone who has lived and worked on three different continents myself, I get the time difference conundrum. We can find a time that works.
I see clients by Zoom, FaceTime, and phone - and also have an Ithaca, NY consulting room to host those in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. When in UK, I use rooms in the Little Venice area of London (between Paddington Station and Warwick Avenue Station). HOW WILL I KNOW IF THIS IS FOR ME?
Authentic
Willing to open your mind and heart to new perspectives Willing to take responsibility for where you are and where you’re going Honest with yourself and others Comfortable with both play and stillness – or yearning to be so Ready to make changes, not justifications Excited to try out new approaches between sessions Someone who prefers laughter to harsh criticism |