Can Psychotherapy Help You?

Therapy For Anxiety, Depression, Grief And Loss

Hello

“Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is.”

Marilynne Robinson

Therapy can offer a unique space to think about what is going on for you. Life experiences, recent or past can cause emotional distress. Through my training, experience, and exploration of my own complexities I will try to help you find a way through your difficulties, taking a compassionate but also objective position. The therapeutic relationship is the way we create this possibility together. I will listen carefully and thoughtfully, finding ways to respond to your predicament. Various symptoms may be troubling you. Behind these may be experiences of being unseen, unheard, mistreated, or misunderstood blocking further growth and development. I will aim to find the right mixture of challenge and support for you.

I have experience of working with, trauma, anxiety, depression, loss, relationship issues, addiction problems and personality disorders. I tend to work open ended but can also offer short-term focused work on a specific issue. My training is psychodynamic which means I explore what may be going on both consciously and unconsciously, with the aim of bringing awareness to the obstacles causing painful, sometimes repeating, experiences.

Areas I Can Help With

Anxiety

Anxiety is often caused by both external and internal difficulties, a challenging life situation, feelings of loss, abandonment, rejection and being misunderstood. These can create painful internal turmoil, worry and intense physical symptoms. The provision of another calm and containing mind can help to bring back a sense of balance.

Depression

Depression is often made up of feelings, of sadness, despair, hopelessness and worry. These can cause irritability and instability. A safe confidential space where these feelings can be both experienced and understood, rather than fought against is key to finding a way through and out of this common but painful and sometimes debilitation condition.

Destructive behaviour

Sometimes we can find ourselves repeating self-destructive behaviours that are getting in the way of living well. This can be a painful experience and is often defended against, as it can be felt as a terrible blow to our self-esteem and the idea of who we think we are. Therapy can be a safe place to investigate these.

Relationship and attachment issues

A key feature of our shared humanity is the desire to relate. Loneliness, sexual desire, and the need to feel accepted and wanted drive our want to be in intimate relationships. Indeed, relationships can be deeply satisfying if to some extent, complex. Through our experiences we can seek intimacy whilst also defending against it or finding ourselves repeating destructive patterns of relating. Through the therapeutic relationship we can safely explore these patterns, bringing them to awareness and finding ways to let go of the pain behind them. In addition, the therapeutic relationship can be a safe place in which to explore and integrate new, more helpful and satisfying ways of relating.

Addictions

We numb ourselves for all sorts of reasons, but this brings only temporary relief. Often, we attach to something that, although harmful, is at least reliable and effective. Therapy for addictions can be complex as it can get in the way of insight and progress. However, if there is a real willingness to go beyond the numbing behaviour, it can really help to understand what the nature of the pain is that is being numbed. Other treatments may need to be considered alongside therapy if the addiction is severe.

Crisis

This can be brought about by unexpected changes and challenges. Burn-out, heartbreak, retirement, abuse, loss and identity crisis. These require a thoughtful non-judgmental space where these unexpected challenges to our sense of self can be processed and new ways of being created.

Trauma

Experiences of trauma, abuse, and/or neglect can be overwhelming and damaging. These experiences have been ‘too much’ to process and instead have been boxed away. At the time this may of been absolutely necessary for psychic survival, but can create problems down the line. The mutual creation of a safe therapeutic can create a space where these experiences be thought about, and processed slowly ‘unboxing’, these painful sometimes unconsciously stored experiences. Trauma can be big T trauma, where there have been significant events tor experiences that have been disturbing and overwhelming or little T trauma, where cumulative experiences of neglect or unavailability have built up and had a profound effect.

Change

Often we know we need to make changes but remain stuck in old patterns. These old ways need to be understood, as well as the imagining and implementation of new ways and paths forward.

Support

Sometimes we just need the supportive space of an hour a week to unburden ourselves to meet the challenges of our lives. Work, relationships, friendships, parenting, and family dilemmas can all be helped by the calm thinking space of therapy, enabling us to bear the burden of our own responsibilities.

Identity

Finding out who we are, our true voice when we are often crowded out by so many competing ideas or influences can be essential in living a life of authenticity.

Therapists in training

Therapists are required to have their own therapy to experience being a patient. This inevitably illuminates the therapist’s own complexes in this difficult work. As is often stated, we can only take out patients/clients as far as we have gone ourselves

Supervision

I am a qualified Supervisor qualifying through The Society of Analytic Psychology, which is a Jungian orientated training institute. This has informed my Psychodynamic thinking and my main approach to Supervision is to explore the experience of both therapist and patient as they create the treatment together.

Adolescents 16-25

I have been evolving my work as a Psychotherapist with Adolescents for some time now. I started working with adolescents as a youth worker over 30 years ago and have continued in my Psychotherapy career, through working with Students at Sussex University, setting up a rites of passage mentoring service in Brighton;- abandofbrothers.org, completing a secondment with the Family Therapy Service at the Youth Offending Service and for the last ten plus years have been providing open ended psychotherapy to young people in crisis for Brighton Council. I have completed some of the Society of Analytic Psychologies excellent course on working with Adolescents as a transition and a pathway to adulthood.

Adolescence has always been a difficult time, with the often-precocious rush to an imagined adult identity. Today adolescence can be an almost permanent state of being, with confusion around responsibility and vagueness about the transition to adulthood. Adolescent states of mind and behaviours can continue well into adulthood.

In my work with the Family Offending service, I encountered up close how even with the most supportive family environment, adolescence can throw up huge and sometime quite dangerous challenges. The needs of the parental family and the needs of the adolescence can often be in sharp conflict. My work with this group has developed as a stage-based model. Building an initial working relationship is key and presents different challenges to the adult population who come with a greater sense of their own needs. Then there is an agreed focus of the work and the exploration of the adolescent’s identity, dependency conflicts and challenges, providing a neutral space where these can be thought about in some depth. Finally, I aim to support in developing a path through and out of adolescence towards adulthood.

Initial meeting

Initially we may speak on the phone and then if agreed have an initial consultation to discuss your issues in more depth and for you to have a chance to meet me and experience how I work and ask any questions. There is no obligation to continue beyond this, but we may also agree to start therapy together. Therapy takes place between once and three times a week.

GET IN TOUCH

About Me

I am a psychodynamic psychotherapist working in private practice in Brighton and Hove. I have been working full time as a psychotherapist for over ten years now. I am registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, the UKCP. I abide by their code of ethics and operate a non-discriminatory practice. All enquiries made about therapy via this site are confidential.

My Qualifications

Supervision Qualification. Society of Analytic Psychology. 2023.
Functional Family Therapy – Youth Offending Service – 2016.
MSc in Psychotherapy. University Of Brighton 2014.
Post Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling. University Of Brighton 2012.
Integrative Counselling with a Mindfulness based approach through The Centre for Mindfulness Based Education. 2009.

I regularly attend Continuing Professional development events and course.