My Approach
I truly believe that there is no one approach that is best. Drawing on various psychological schools of thought, I adopt an integrative approach tailored to individual needs. I work by the following principles.
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Person-centered is at the core of how I deliver therapy. It is crucial for me to unpick and understand the source of your distress. The combination of my expertise using psychological tools and assessments, with your lived experience of the difficulty, often help paint a clearer and the whole picture.
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Acceptance of the situation at hand is crucial in order to offer an accepting and non-judgemental safe space for individuals to share their narratives. By accepting the situation, we are not agreeing to what had happened, but instead are acknowledging it. By doing so, it creates a safe space to foster growth and movement forward.
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Being heard. With any conversation, both sides often have a competing agenda. We are so focused on our purpose that we may forget to listen, especially active listening. When we fall into this trap, the listener may not understand the situation fully, and the speaker may feel neglected, unheard, and not acknowledged. We will work towards keeping a safe space for active listening.
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Common Therapy Approaches
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Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a common talking therapy to help individuals with a range of presentations, including trauma, stress, anxiety, low mood and self-esteem. It focuses on understanding our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It also identifies unhelpful thinking patterns and an alternative way of thinking.
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Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is another talking therapy, adapted from CBT. It focuses on unpicking both sides of the narrative. ‘Dialectical’ means trying to understand how two things that seem opposite can both be true.
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Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is an integrative talking therapy that helps individuals with difficulties stemming from shame and self-criticism. It looks to enable individuals to be kinder to themselves. The model adopts tools from various therapies.
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Narrative Therapy is another type of psychotherapy. This approach looks into separating the individual from their problems, whilst encouraging individuals to draw on existing skills to minimise the difficulty in their life. A sub-component is narrative exposure therapy (NET), often used for trauma.
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Eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing is a psychotherapy approach designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. There is growing evidence that it can be used for mood conditions and other mental health difficulties.
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Mentalisation-based Therapy (MBT)
MBT is a long term psychotherapy approach that aims to increase an individual's capacity to mentalise. Mentalising is a normal human process where we think about what we are thinking. It helps us make links about our internal processes and others and understand how we can alleviate problematic situations and behaviours.
