Psychotherapy for Adults
I help individuals to understand themselves, including their symptoms and suffering, and to find out how to lead a more authentic and fulfilling life. Therapy is like having someone in your corner who helps you face your troubles and opens up new perspectives. Changes emerge from our work together are based on your wishes and needs.
I offer a confidential and secure professional relationship in which difficult experiences and emotions can be approached, faced, managed and further explored. The relationship develops in regular, reliable and private meetings so that emotions and feelings, thoughts, memories, dreams can come into awareness and thought about. My approach fosters self-awareness, self-discovery and understanding which encourages personal growth.
Brief psychodynamic therapy is focused on a specific emotional problem, conflict or symptom, how to manage it and make some sense of it. Some relief from what is immediately troubling can happen quite quickly. Yet lasting solutions to many problems and lasting change are harder to come by. They are always personal and require care, patient attention and a more sustained delving into the complexity of who you are and what has shaped you.
In open-ended therapy we work together on understanding long-standing patterns of your life and your way of experiencing. We focus especially on what is out of awareness, what is known somehow but hard to grasp, yet part of what is going on for you. Over time you begin to make new experiences and deep seated change develops.
Specific problems and issues I can help with: depression, anxiety, grief and unresolved losses, difficulty adjusting to significant or abrupt life changes, immigration and exile, early emotional trauma and neglect, difficulty forming satisfactory relationships, psychosomatic symptoms and persistent pain, loss of meaning in life, work place issues.
Supervision
I offer individual supervision for people in the professional services, education and health, and to other psychotherapists. Anyone whose work centrally involves contact with clients, patients, customers or students benefits from supervision. It provides a space to reflect on yourself in relation to the organisation and environment that frame your work. It strengthens you as a practitioner, and enhances the safety and professionalism of the work you do. My background is in tertiary education, professional research and I also welcome academics and scientists for supportive supervision.
Balint Group Work
I am a practitioner of the Balint Group method of case work, developed for GPs, psychotherapists and other health practitioners. The Balint Group offers a non-judgmental and creative way of reflecting on challenging or difficult work. Please contact me for further details. See also the Balint Society website: www.balintaustralianewzealand.org.
Couple Counselling
In couple counselling I provide a safe space in which each partner is able to talk about what can’t be expressed in the relationship. It’s a space to listen to and hear one another, to gain more understanding of what is going on between you. The focus is on enhancing communication, especially of emotions, and on understanding the effects of patterns of behaviour that lead to negative or destructive feelings. I communicate clearly and honestly what I notice, think and feel as we work together on finding solutions. It is a collaborative endeavour. Both partners need to commit to be open and receptive with each other and to work on the relationship.