What is a Typical Session Like?

Our first meetings often gives you the chance to share the thoughts, feelings, and experiences you haven’t been able to express elsewhere - without fear of judgment or consequence. I’ll do my utmost to see and hear you fully, beginning to understand what has happened to you and how it feels (and has felt) to be you. We may explore dreams early in the work if they seem useful, but dream work is never essential and therapy can proceed perfectly well without it, It's also when we begin to consider what techniques and modalities interest you and fit with what you've experienced in your past and what you're experiencing right now.

• Your Pace, Your Space
  Some clients dive right in; others need more time and caution. Both are absolutely fine. There’s no pressure to discuss details you’re not ready for. If certain topics feel off-limits, we can keep them on the periphery until (and if) you decide otherwise.
• Person-Centred Focus
  In these early stages, sessions are strongly led by you. Over time, I’ll become more active bringing in my expertise and guiding you toward pathways of healing uniquely tailored to your life story.
• Early Dreams
  Jung and other early practitioners of depth psychology (the study of the unconscious and the deeper layers of the psyche) noticed that dreams occurring early in psychotherapy can sometimes be especially revealing. It can seem as though the unconscious quickly recognises what is beginning to unfold in the therapeutic work and produces dreams that offer a kind of map of the person’s inner psychological landscape. These early dreams may highlight important conflicts, recurring patterns, emotional themes, relationships, fears, needs or aspects of the self that have not yet been fully recognised consciously. In this way, they can sometimes give an early indication of what the person is bringing into therapy and of the psychological material that may become important as the work develops.

My practice is integrative and ever-evolving, shaped by ongoing learning and by the unique needs each client brings. Although every session is different, they tend to bring together five main elements:

1. Your Present
   What’s happening for you right now. The events, thoughts, emotions and changes that have preoccupied you since the last time we spoke.
2. Your Past
   How childhood and family dynamics shaped who you are today, and how these patterns continue to play out in adult life.
3. Your Inner World
   We’ll explore this through Jungian dream analysis and active imagination, if you’re open to it, and/or through deep, shared exploration of your feelings. 
4. How you Experience Yourself and Others
   This is where we might also incorporate mentalization-based techniques, helping you reflect on your own mind and the minds of others as well psychoanalytical concepts of personality organisation and transference.
5. How Thinking and Feeling Contributes to Patterns of Anxiety
   How habits of thinking, feeling and preferences in language use contribute to negative self-image and anxiety. Here we use contemporary psychoanalytical theories and cognitive behavioral models to understand and free you from ingrained self-destructive patterns.