Core Process Psychotherapy
Core Process psychotherapy integrates the wisdom of Buddhist philosophy and mindfulness, with western psychotherapeutic practice and body awareness.
What Happens in a Therapy Session
Awareness is the key to change and healing. We bring awareness to the present moment, slowing down enough to help you deepen your awareness of your body, feelings and states of mind. We work at your pace, exploring how it is to be you.
Core Process psychotherapy integrates the wisdom of Buddhist philosophy and mindfulness, with western psychotherapeutic practice and body awareness.
What Happens in a Therapy Session
Awareness is the key to change and healing. We bring awareness to the present moment, slowing down enough to help you deepen your awareness of your body, feelings and states of mind. We work at your pace, exploring how it is to be you.
We all find ways to distract and numb ourselves, for the purpose of blocking out painful feelings, feelings of aliveness, and our innate capacity to give and receive love. The defences which may have kept us safe as children, may now be keeping us stuck in repetitive and self-destructive thinking and behavior.
In therapy, we explore the underlying beliefs, judgements and defences which shape how you experience yourself and your relationships. This can help you gain insight in to how the past continues to influence you now.
Psychotherapy can be long or short term. An on-going weekly commitment offers you an opportunity to be heard, witnessed and deeply supported, as you learn to tolerate feelings and experiences, that have seemed unfamiliar or unbearable. As the therapeutic process unfolds, we also focus on what is thriving. This may be your capacity to be kind and patient with yourself. It may be your capacity to safely express strong feelings and assert appropriate boundaries, or your growing sense of resilience, joy, openness and groundedness. Together, we find out how you can experience and accept more of who you really are, and support the development of new and fulfilling ways of living and expressing yourself.
Therapy is not a quick fix. We may engage with it at different stages in our lives, when particular issues are calling for our attention, or we may need support to deepen self-awareness, and our capacity to relate to ourselves and others in an authentic and intimate way, which is a life long journey.
Trauma Therapy - Somatic Experiencing
Trauma Therapy is a safe and effective approach to dealing with the effects of trauma. Trauma is a big word that many people cannot relate to, but in trauma therapy, it becomes clear that many of the symptoms we live with, such as anxiety, physical symptoms, low self-esteem, depression, emptiness etc, are often the affects of experiences in our lives that were traumatic.
There are degrees of trauma that range from sexual abuse, childhood neglect, life threatening attacks or accidents, domestic violence or sudden loss and bereavement, to the experience of extreme loneliness in childhood, or the pervasive sense of not being seen, supported or valued.
In trauma therapy, we pay attention to subtle sensations in the body, in order to discharge the high activation in the nervous system. The approach helps us access the kindness and patience needed, to allow feelings we fear will be overwhelming. Through re-connecting to body sensations and feelings, we learn to gently turn towards what we have been avoiding, thereby releasing the energy that is bound up in unresolved trauma.
If appropriate, I use EMI (Eye Movement Integration) for PTSD and more complex and unresolved trauma.