What is Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a modern treatment for complex conditions that afflict our capacity to live a full and meaningful life. Its main focus is on the debilitating condition that trauma can have on our life. When we talk about trauma it is not just the one off traumatic events, we refer to developmental trauma, the trauma we suffer through our early years with our main care givers. This trauma creates a lot on going suffering as adults and can be experienced as the complex emotional responses we have in relationships and with mental health problems. It maybe experienced as dissociation, numbness, destructive or repetitive behaviours, suicidal feelings and thoughts, negative voices in our head, relationship difficulties, addictions, anxiety, aggression problems, depression and many of the other complex and difficult experiences.

Developmental trauma is insidious in that it becomes normalised in our everyday lived experience setting us up to accept being abused or treated badly as often our fault or responsability. Your capacity to even recognise that you have being traumatised and how this re-traumatisation leads to emotional and psychological suffering is important insight in the healing process.

 The important link between physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health are all connected to together in a holistic approach to wholeness and healing. We strive to uncover the unconscious wounds together and help parts of self that are in conflict to find integration and healing in the most deep parts of our selves. The most important part is about the journey together towards self discovery and transformation, away from a wounded self to a powerful self that can find deeper meaning and connection in an often fragmented world.

Treatment is not just for those of us who suffer from the debilitating affects of mental illness or severe trauma, in fact learning more deeply about ourselves should be an important part of our self learning and growth. It helps us to access our own spiritual connection and to find our path in relationships, career and how we want to live our lives.

The Somatic in Psychotherapy focuses on our relationship with our body, to develop trust and learn how to listen to and feel our own rich inner wisdom. This enables us to learn how to form a meaningful narrative around our lived experience and to develop a rich inner world that we can share powerfully with others. The aim is to move towards what I call an aware embodiment where we are able to inhabit all parts of ourselves.