The practicals
I’m available Weekdays (except Fridays) including some evenings. My fee is £65 for an hour session. I also have limited reduced fee places for £35 (please contact me for more details).
Whether you feel stuck, unhappy, anxious or distressed, a few sessions could be all you need to clarify what’s going on and identify a way forward. Longer term therapy helps you identify patterns in thinking and behaving you want to discard, and practice better alternatives. We will review our progress and plan together.
My approach is influenced by the following themes…see if they interest you.
Shaping yourself to fit…
As human beings we adapt to the environments we must ‘be in’ (social, physical, economic, historical). We learn to shape ourselves to fit – particularly if we’re the least powerful in the group (like a child in the family) – and that shape then becomes ‘me’ and any distress we feel becomes ‘what needs fixing’.
The therapeutic process uncovers that shape, identifying the environment it fits and giving voice to the distress it causes. With that knowledge comes choice and the discovery of a more authentic ‘me’.
Being in the ‘here and now’…
“The past and the future are dangerous countries; I had been living in no man’s land, between their borders, for the last seven years. Now I felt myself moving again, and I was afraid.”
Damon Galgut “The Good Doctor”
Ruminating on the past or imagining the future (hopefully or despairingly) can feel safer than being in the ‘here and now’ – no man’s land – which may feel threatening, uncertain, empty.
In no-man’s land we feel vulnerable. But it’s also where we feel most alive. It’s where we find our vitality and where growth is possible. My role is to help you venture in.
Reclaiming your whole self…
“Don’t think of yourself as being up here (the head) and that you have a body, but BE a body – when you ARE a body you are SOMEbody. When you’re just in your head you are NObody”
Laura Perls “Living at the Boundary”
Our brain is not just the organ in our heads, but our entire nervous system extending to every part of our body.
We often see ‘I’ – that conscious self that lives behind our eyes – as the one who’s in charge. But our sensing, pulsating, organising body has will and knowledge of its own. It protects us – holding memories, creating limits, storing stress – and enables us to experience the joy of being alive.
By learning how to inhabit our bodies we can fully inhabit our brains.
Listening to your body…
Consider a cut on your skin…”the body has been designed to renew itself with continuous self-correction. These same principles also apply to the healing of psyche, spirit, and soul”
Peter Levine “Waking the Tiger”
Our cognitive brains are experts at meaning making and tell us endless stories to explain what’s going on, and what we should do about it. Such stories can be comforting. They help us feel in control. But they often tell us little that is new or real.
If instead, we listen to our bodies, we discover what’s new, real, and useful to our healing. Our work will help you learn how to listen.
Learning to love and be loved…
“the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return”
Song ‘Nature Boy’ by Ede Ahbez
If you’re lucky then you learn this from your parental role models and then pass it on to your own children without ever knowing how rare a gift it is.
But for many of us, what we inherit from our parents – and then unwittingly pass on to our own children – is how to protect ourselves from an emotional pain or sense of ‘badness’ that we don’t understand.
As adults, it isn’t feelings that cause us problems but what we’ve learnt to do to stop ourselves from feeling – dissociating, numbing, fantasizing, hardening, over-eating, under-eating….
Our armoured selves make loving/being loved more complicated….our work will help you find your armour so you can remove it when you choose.
Lively Body Mind 