Welcome
exploring what it is to be human
I bring everything I have got to the work.
I want to help you to find out how to be more fully yourself and to be free.
I bring everything I have got to the work.
I want to help you to find out how to be more fully yourself and to be free.
All my clients tell me that I am remarkably different from other counselors or psychotherapists. I think this is because of the intensity of my engagement, my imagination, enthusiasm and knowledge and my expertise and experience working with dreams and the unconscious, which is rare to find, and that when blended with an understanding of attachment theory and complex trauma therapy, become extremely powerful tools for psychological healing and personal growth.
I use empathy and honesty to try my best to really understand who you are and what it feels like to be you. This forms a basis of trust and understanding which are the foundations of our work together.
Together we can explore your past and present, your family, childhood and relationships, your dreams and your unconscious to better understand patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving, how they fit together in yourself and in others, how this has affected your life and what you can do about it.
I work with the whole person, and I bring the whole of who I am to the work too. Working with me will never feel like a box ticking exercise.
Find out what a typical session is like.
Perhaps you're feeling unable to be yourself with others? Overwhelmed with emotions you don’t understand? Weighed down by past events? Locked into a cycle of toxic relationships? Unable to recover from an overwhelming loss? Struggling with patterns of feeling and behaviour related to childhood and family? Perhaps you are disabled, neurodivergent, on the autism spectrum or with ADHD, and have found yourself in a world that does not seem to have been made with you in mind? Or maybe you've achieved what you thought you were striving for in life - family, career, success - but you find yourself still searching for life's meaning and purpose.
My three main ways of working are Jungian Dream Work (Carl Jung, Marie Louise Von Franz), including active imagination, Attachment-Based Psychotherapy (Patricia Crittenden, Andrea Landini) and Complex Trauma Therapy (Christine A. Courtois, Julian D. Ford). I fuse these so that together we can find a multifaceted but coherent picture of what you are experiencing and why, and to help you to discover and draw on lost or forgotten strengths and resources hidden in your unconscious which clarify and address the very issues you are facing.
I also use techniques and perspectives from person-centred counselling (Carl Rogers), mentalization-informed therapy (Peter Fonegy, Anthony Bateman), mindfulness (Dogen Zenji), cognitive therapy (Aaran T. Beck, Socrates), existential therapy (Irvin Yalom), art and play based therapy including sand play (Dora M. Kalff), Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Ella Freeman Sharpe) and the Power Threat Meaning Framework (Clinical Division of the British Psychological Society).
When dream work is conducted skillfully it is powerful and effective for everyone who is able to let themselves play freely and imaginatively with metaphors and how they relate to life, like appreciating a poem. Carl Jung and Marie Louise Von Franz, in their concept of individuation, particularly addressed themselves to those in the second half of life, who have achieved what was expected of them, socially, family-wise and professionally, but nevertheless feel unfulfilled and lacking meaning or life purpose. Dreams, when skillfully interpreted in a collaborative effort between myself and you, can identify lost parts of the self that were put aside, perhaps in childhood, perhaps later, and can point the way to how these lost parts can be reclaimed. Integrating these lost parts of self is a process of discovery of deep personal meaning. By bringing these forgotten parts back from the unconscious into consciousness, you become more complete, more whole, more in control of yourself, more fulfilled and more in touch with your life's personal meaning and purpose.
I am also happy to work with themes of spirituality and mortality. Jungian dream work more than any other modality addresses these issues head on with a distinctly pluralistic, mystical and individualist flavour. It can offer insight both into personal and collective spiritual meanings and the relationships between them, these insights can lead to transformational experiences that change or enhance your view of yourself and of the world.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate." Carl Gustav Jung
"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." Sigmund Freud
I work with all kinds of adults at all stages of life, from young people just starting out on their journey to greater independence, to older people, nearer my own age, taking the time to heal old wounds, reclaim lost or forgotten parts of the self, release repressed energies, and find new vitality, meaning and purpose in life.
I work with individuals of all gender and sexuality.
I am especially happy to welcome neurodivergent people and people with physical difference and/or disability.
I have worked with many first and second-generation British people whose experience spans different cultural norms.
I bring everything I have got to the work. My aim is to empower you to find your unique path in life, to find your meaning and your purpose, to be more fully who you are, and to be free.
I am a Level 7 psychotherapist and a registered member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists.
My supervisor’s supervisor once said “it’s always in the childhood”. In my experience she was right. Even when it does not seem like that at first. The subtlety of what it is to be a child, and to learn how to feel okay in an imperfect family and an imperfect world can lead to difficulty in relationships or in how you feel about yourself as an adult. Childhood adversity can be anything from poverty, war, illness, serious illness or death of a parent or sibling to over-strict or over-critical parenting to deceitful, dangerous, abusive or neglectful parents.
Adversity in childhood, even subtle and unintentional adversity, can lead to a wide range of ways of feeling, thinking and behaving that worked to cope with and survive that adversity but which when brought into present circumstance in adult life no longer works. This can lead to a breakdown or distortion in the relationship we have with ourselves and with others in ways which may be experienced as:
Something has hurt you. You went through intense mental pain when there was no one to comfort you. You are still reeling from what happened. Don’t wait. Too many wait too long. Value yourself and get help.
You have experienced a loss from which you seem unable to recover. You may have overwhelming and/or confusing emotions that seem unbearable and incompatible. Loss, anger, guilt, love. Even though it may seem impossible, there is a way to move forward.
Whether as a child or an adult, sexual abuse or any manipulation into sexual activity by a person with more power than you can impact our self-esteem, our trust in ourselves and others and our ability to build successful intimate relationships. Many people who have been abused, especially as children, feel complicit in their abuse. Therapy is an opportunity to share these experiences and find out what they mean to you and how to live with what has happened to you.
I don't seem to have the capacity to feel embarrassed about these things, they are too important in the lives of the people affected by them for me to take such a point of view. My aim is to disarm misplaced shame with acceptance, empathy and honesty. Here, in therapy you may find that you can speak about things that you have never said out loud before. It takes time, it does not need to be rushed.
Fear is a basic and automatic response to immediate threat. Anxiety is a more complex and enduring experience that may include intense worry, disturbing thoughts and unpleasant bodily feelings. At its most extreme anxiety can become a full blown panic attack. When anxiety is based on unconsciously exaggerated beliefs or on fears of the anxiety itself (being anxious about anxiety) and when it gets in the way of your everyday life then it’s time to do something about it.
Low mood and depression can include feelings of loss, self-criticism and hopelessness about the world and the future. You may find that you have lost interest in the things that you used to care about and that you find it difficult to enjoy the things that you used to enjoy. Depression and chronic low mood can be severely debilitating and may seem to take most or all of the pleasure out of life. Both person-centred therapy and CBT have been shown to be effective for depression and persistent low mood. Why wait?
Perhaps what you are experiencing is just too confusing to put a name to. Call me, let’s talk about it. If it’s outside my area of expertise I’ll see if I know someone I trust who I can refer you to.
Jungian Dream and Inner Parts Work: Helping you to use your dreams and imagination to find your interior symbolic landscape, understand it's inhabitants, and connect to your unconscious. Find new resources, meaning and motivation in your life.
Attachment-Based Psychotherapy: Understanding how childhood experiences affect biases in how we use our personality and how we balance thinking, feeling and allocating responsibility when we feel threatened or upset (e.g. excessive self-blaming) especially in close relationships.
Working with relationship based trauma that may have developed over many years, usually in childhood. Neglect, abuse, bullying, criticism. Many people prefer to underestimate their childhood suffering, but that suffering was real.
Person-Centred Counselling: Being heard, with empathy, honesty and respect. Finding enough psychological safety to explore difficult experiences and feelings.
The Power, Threat, Meaning Framework: This is a new, non-diagnostic approach to mental distress, developed within the clinical division of the British Psychological Society. If you have faced the misuse of power, discrimination, institutional abuse, exclusion, being silenced or having your point of view distorted and used against you, then it's time for recovery, and maybe justice too.
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Rick Kaye BSc., PgDip., MBACP