Counselling & Psychotherapy
I work in a very collaborative and transparent way, weaving several different approaches seamlessly onto a person-centred framework in which you, the client, are always treated with great respect and humility. There is no need to know anything about counselling theory to benefit from counselling. However, if you would like more insight into my particular approach, please read on.
On this page:
Experiential Person-Centred Therapy
Working with the Mind-Brain-Body
Making the Best of Our Authentic Selves
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Person-Centred Therapy
'Person-centred therapy' is a form of talk therapy developed by Carl Rogers in the mid 20th century. Like most psychotherapists of his time, he had been trying to use Freudian approaches that assumed the therapist had all the answers if only the 'patient' would listen. He turned therapy on its head and learned to really listen to his 'clients'.
"We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know."
With colleagues, Rogers analysed thousands of hours of therapy sessions to come to the conclusion that what works best is a therapeutic relationship in which the counsellor offers empathy and unconditional positive regard from a place of genuineness. The latest neuroscience research confirms the power of relational attunement in healing. We are born into relationship, we grow through relationship. We can be easily harmed by relationship, but also healed by it.
A true person-centred therapist really respects the unique experience and potential of their client.
"It is the client who knows what hurts, what directions to go, what problems are crucial, what experiences have been deeply buried."
"As no one else can know how we perceive, we are the best experts on ourselves."
The person-centred tradition has developed in many directions since Rogers, but always remains deeply respectful to the client and their personal wishes.
I use the ethos of the person-centred approach as the foundation for my whole 'way of being' as a counsellor. Classical person-centred therapy is completely non-directive and some clients want a bit more direction than that or don't yet feel that they have all the answers within. Perhaps they really do, but life is busy and therapy is expensive ... fortunately there are many ways that can make counselling a lot more efficient and probably more effective too, so please read on!
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Experiential Person-Centred Therapy
One of Rogers' colleagues, Eugene Gendlin, wanted to know why some clients seemed to make faster progress in person-centred therapy than others. He discovered that these superstar clients more naturally tuned into what he called the 'felt sense'. Importantly, he found that he could teach clients how to do this, and he called this technique 'Focusing'. Accessing the felt sense allows one to tap into the whole meaning of a situation and find the answers within. This came to be known as the 'experiential' branch of person-centred therapy. Much more recent understandings from neuroscience confirm that the felt sense or 'interoception' is a very important factor in wellbeing and that problems with interoception are linked to many diagnosable mental health disorders. Everyone can access the felt sense, but some people need some extra help to make this second nature.
There is an honesty to the felt sense: It connects us to who we really are - beneath all the defences we have built up through life - and this authentic self is always beautiful. Feeling the felt sense is a moving experience, and I ease clients into meeting it with compassionate curiosity. Connecting to our authentic self allows us to live more purposefully and invites joy into our life.
Deliberately working with the felt sense helps us get past that 'stuck' feeling that many of us experience in life and that can block progress in talk therapy. The felt sense is a foundational tool of modern trauma-informed practices such as Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems Therapy. I was thrilled to discover another approach that works very powerfully with the felt sense and integrates it with all my favourite themes. This technique is called Brainspotting – more on this below.
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Working with the Mind-Brain-Body
​ ​In 'The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, mind and body in the transformation of trauma', Bessel van der Kolk brilliantly explains how traumatic experiences leave an imprint on all parts of our being. Furthermore, all aspects of our sense of self, relationship to others and engagement in the world are inherently mind-brain-body experiences. Think of some of the expressions we use every day: cold feet, gut feeling, skin crawling, shock to the system, heartfelt connection, warm hearted etc.
The Experiential branch of Person-Centred Therapy began to link the mind to internal bodily sensations via the ‘felt sense’. Polyvagal Theory has given us many more body-based psychotherapy tools within a useful theoretical framework. I use this to help clients befriend, map, navigate and shape their nervous system, that may have become trapped in fight, flight, freeze or other states.
My interest in the mind-brain-body connection led me to train in two powerful additional tools: Brainspotting and NeurOptimal Neurofeedback.
Working with our 'parts'
Many schools of psychotherapy going right back to Freud acknowledge that we are made up of different 'parts'. One reason talk therapies sometimes get stuck is that different parts of us may want different things. This is completely normal, but sometimes it can be very frustrating! Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) has developed this idea beautifully and I always hold it in mind when working with clients. A very important point from IFS is that there are no bad parts: they are all trying their best for the whole 'system' - that's you! By listening to all of the parts with curiosity and compassion, we can help them to all get along better. Often parts are stuck in roles they developed in childhood, or in relation to traumatic events. I can help your parts to feel safe and heard again, and help you to do the same. The parts can then transform back into their less extreme versions. For example, the anxious part transforms back into the watcher part. The people pleaser becomes the helpful part. We might also think about how our parts interact with those of people around us ... it's a fascinating way to re-examine difficult relationships. Parts are often felt in different areas of the body, and once again this provides an opportunity to integrate mind, brain and body.
Working with Trauma
In working with trauma, I have been particularly influenced by contemporary American trauma practitioners such as Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Deb Dana and Janina Fisher, and, here in the UK, by Carolyn Spring, an inspiring trainer who has lived experience of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
Trauma can be defined as anything that overwhelms our capacity to cope in the moment. This overwhelm sets off a series of defensive measures, sometimes called emergency stress responses. They are natural adaptations designed to keep us safe at that point in time. To 'fight or flight', various workers in the trauma field have added a growing list of adaptive responses including freeze, collapse, fawn, submit, cry for help etc.
These adaptations, so necessary at the time, nevertheless leave imprints on our mind, brain and body. This is what we mean when we say trauma is ‘stuck’ in us. Our system becomes highly sensitized such that reminders of the original events ('triggers') can set off powerful reactions, that send these stress responses into overdrive, out of proportion to the current situation. This can make us feel like we are re-living the trauma (e.g. a 'flashback') and are out of control. Our behaviours may surprise and disappoint us, but they make sense when seen through this trauma lens. Dissociation is a common outcome that can confuse everyone involved and derail all sorts of good intentions. The trauma held in the body can even be responsible for many of the ‘medically unexplained’ physical symptoms which are so common these days.
Trauma speaks a different language - the language of the body and the non-verbal parts of the brain. As such it requires a particularly gentle and informed approach. We now know that talk therapies that ask clients to re-visit any aspect of the trauma can feed into this dysregulated system and reinforce rather than heal the difficulties.
From the start, I help you to identify, understand and normalise trauma symptoms, because knowledge is power. This feeds into a key early goal of trauma therapy which is the creation of actual safety AND a felt sense of safety. Trauma therapy unfolds in a very bespoke way, but I model connection, compassion and non-judgemental curiosity at every stage. Healing from trauma goes along with an internalisation of this attitude. It also involves 'integration' between all the parts of ourselves: mind, brain and body, to pull us away from 'dissociation'. There are ways of talking through this process and ways of experiencing through it. Brainspotting is a particularly powerful experiential tool for healing trauma.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting makes use of the observation that where we look connects to how we feel. Tracking eye positions helps us to get into the deep brain-body system where trauma, pain, dissociation and other symptoms are ‘stuck’ and are marked out by particular felt senses. Safe places in the body can also be identified in this way and used as a secure base from which to expand the sense of safety. It is a highly relationally attuned experience in which I ‘hold space’ for you while you visit this deep internal place and process your feelings in your own unique way that follows the brain-body's intuitive wisdom. It's much more about feeling than speaking: some people find they Brainspot in silence, while others talk out the experience. Brainspotting can be a relatively fast and direct way of processing trauma. It fits well within the above approaches and can also be experienced separately.
"Where we look affects how we feel"
NeurOptimal® Neurofeedback
NeurOptimal® is a cutting edge neurofeedback device that uses the latest understanding of the brain and body as a self-organising dynamical system. By effectively 'holding up a mirror' to the brain, it gives the brain the information it needs to optimise its function. It does this by listening to the electrical activity of your brain and mirroring back the information via music that you listen to through headphones. When it hears something that is out of line with a reference range, it creates tiny interrupts in the music. This invites your brain to notice what it just did. It is then up to your brain what it does with this information. NeurOptimal® is marketed as a wellness tool rather than a medical device. Rather like the purest forms of person-centred therapy, the device is non-directive and trusts the client's inner wisdom to find their own unique path. My role as a NeurOptimal® trainer is mainly to help you to notice shifts in your symptoms, which we take careful note of at the start. Like with any non-directive therapy, we do not know exactly where the therapy will lead, but we trust the process. We do know that NeurOptimal® improves the flexibility and resilience of your brain and central nervous system, and that this nudges your system towards healing and growth.
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NeurOptimal® can be used as a standalone tool, or in conjunction with talk therapy. The USP for some clients is that you don't have to talk at all during the procedure, which takes care of itself while you can relax, read or use a screen.
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See the product website for more on what NeurOptimal can achieve: NeurOptimal® Neurofeedback & Brain Training Systems for Personal & Professional Use​​​
Making the best of our authentic selves
Have you ever felt like you are a square peg in a round hole? Or experienced the joy of feeling completely understood and accepted for who you are? Does your day-to-day leave you feeling energised or depleted in a way that seems out of proportion to what it is? Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are well known for developing theories of how we 'actualize the self', i.e. become the best versions of ourselves. 'Best' in this context is about best fit or authenticity, not winning a competition! Talking therapies are an excellent way of exploring what makes us tick and pointing us in the right direction for getting the best out of life. I am always looking for shortcuts to make the process more efficient for my clients. I find it especially helpful to examine our intrinsic personality and values. Personality theories, based originally on Carl Jung's work, and subsequently developed by mother and daughter team, Katherine Myers and Isobel Briggs and others offer amazing insights and 'aha!' moments. It's a strengths-based approach that my clients find very affirming and empowering. We feel more confident and motivated to make changes to our lives when we understand why they feel right. Sometimes it is a collection of very small changes that can make all the difference to our day to day experience.
I offer this as part of counselling or can offer a standalone package if this area particularly interests you - please see the separate page on this.
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