Psychotherapy

Honesty and trust are very important ingredients in a therapeutic relationship. Predominantly, therapy is based on a relationship between therapist and client: two fallible human beings in a room. It involves the active presence of both, as fully as possible, with mutual respect.

I work with young people and adults. One of the key things I try to demonstrate to my clients is their own ability to survive and feel empowered, by increasing awareness of their own resources and building on who they already are. I hope to facilitate a genuine engagement with my clients so that they may feel more able to accept the parts of themselves that they find unacceptable. I work both long and short term with clients, depending on what issues are presented, appropriate to work with and agreed on. I can incorporate various modalities and tools into the work, including CBT, mindfulness, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, creative/art approaches and the body-based work.

I am an integrative psychotherapist. My initial training was psychodynamic, and I therefore hold and use many of these theories to develop my thinking in clinical work. My subsequent integrative training introduced me to relational work and the importance of incorporating the consistent awareness of attachment and relating, within the therapy room. Over the last 8 years, I have specialised in assessing, diagnosing, and working with dissociative disorders, in particular Dissociative Identity Disorder. I also train other mental health professionals in working with this client group and clinically supervise this area of practice. This particular area of clinical expertise is carried out through my work with the Clinic for Dissociative Studies.