TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE
My experience of working in this field is diverse. I currently see clients in private practice. I used to see patients on behalf of the NHS and the voluntary sector where I worked with people presenting with a complex history of trauma who hold very dis-empowering beliefs about life and themselves. I also see people who experience less disabling forms of mental distress and yet might be going through a breakdown of some kind; people who find themselves stuck, lost meaning in their life, struggle with relationships, misplaced a sense of who they are. Despite the fact that we still categorize people as being mentally and emotionally well or not well, mental health is a continuum between states of wellness and illness. We all move back and forth along that continuum.
I work with trauma
I am referring to One Off traumatic event some of us can suffer in life as well as what is called Developmental Trauma. The latter refers to the responses we developed to the environments of our childhood. The situations we faced growing up generated a set of behaviors, usually defensive behaviors, to protect us from re-experiencing the emotional pain we once felt. More often than not we are not aware of that pain and the correlated ways of being we take for granted that often get us in trouble or have us stuck.
I work with anger
Working with one's anger can be a trans-formative experience. I have extensively worked with anger to find ways for people to understand what their anger is trying to communicate to them. As well as working with anger in the consulting room, I have collaborated to create a Pack of Cards which can help people start their own journey to discover what their anger is trying to articulate. Find a link to the Anger Pack In the Projects section of the website.
I work with parents.
I invite parents to look into the intense emotions brought about interactions with their children. Some of those emotions were known but become more intense, others weren't even known before becoming a parents. Parenthood rocks the boat of our emotional life, the balance we thought we had found shows cracks and if we are willing to look, we discover what an unexpected learning experience parenthood can be. I facilitate an open inquiry into less known aspects of self, responses and behaviors which can come to the surface once people become parents and the guilt and shame they often harbor.
I work with couples.
Intimate relationships can push to the limit our personal emotional defenses . Relationships with our partners can bring to the surface raw emotions which we manage to deflect or tolerate in other types of relationships. Intimate relationships offer the unique opportunity to work out how we can be so close yet remain separate human beings?
I facilitate the exploration of the push and pull boundaries within couples, the ways in which our personal defenses can hijack our ability to listen to and see our partners, how we get stuck in habitual and negative patterns of communication -or lack of it.
I facilitate the exploration of Desire and Wanting. We will be looking at what it is that underlies Conflict and Anger.
We will look at the role of Assumptions and Expectations.
What are Trust and Betrayal about? Who is betraying whom?
What is commitment?
I work with people.
I facilitate a process for people to discover choice. Underneath the noise of the mind, the conditioning of our earlier and current social and cultural environment and the reality of the circumstances of our life, there is the possibility to tune in to something deeper within ourselves and find that we can actually choose.
I work with Imagination