What is Therapy

How does therapy actually work?

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy works with the mind, specifically the unconscious mind, a force that is outside our awareness. You may find yourself compulsively repeating cycles that consciously you may not want to. Psychotherapy takes a closer look at the more distinct aspects of life that may go unnoticed. It also works with deep-seated patterns, and deeper relational models, which you perhaps notice but struggle to understand.

By providing a safe place to talk and think with a psychotherapist, you can understand why you feel and behave in the way that you do. Additionally, it can help you face challenging thoughts, feelings and experiences that you may have been trying to escape.

Psychoanalytical psychotherapy is a collaborative process; it isn’t the psychotherapist telling you what to do, but the psychotherapist and you working together towards a shared goal. Often the objectives can change, and once what you came in for initially is resolved; you may see the ongoing benefit of staying in long term psychotherapy.

On the surface, psychotherapy appears to be simply a conversation between two people. At a deeper level, a relationship is being built and it is here that you will able to experience:

  • your ways of ‘being’ with another person
  • how you experience and relate to others, yourself and your emotions
  • how you avoid certain thoughts, emotions and realities
  • the impact of all of the above on your thinking and feeling
  • your unconscious beliefs, fears and ideas on which the above are based

By noticing and ‘working through’ the patterns which are unhelpful, lasting change is possible. The therapeutic relationship therefore becomes the vehicle for change, and the stronger the relationship the greater the opportunity for transformation. The relationship is also a place where new ways of relating, feeling and thinking can be experienced, emotional and traumatic wounds healed, limiting beliefs left behind and a stronger more creative sense of self built up.

What happens in
therapy sessions?

I provide a safe, confidential, reflective space which is dedicated to you. It is a place where you can explore yourself, your thoughts, your needs, your relationships and your emotions. There is no fixed way of working and you may start by simply talking about what is troubling you. Gradually we will begin to find patterns in the ways that you relate to others, yourself and your emotions and it is in these patterns that most of our problems can be located and worked with. A good therapeutic relationship creates a supportive environment in which difficulties, emotions and patterns of behaviour can be not only talked about but also in some unique way experienced together.

I provide a safe, confidential,
reflective space which is
dedicated to you. It is a
place where you can
explore yourself.

Therapy takes perseverance,
strength of mind and an investment of time

How long will
therapy take?

In a world of ‘quick fix’, speed and instant change it has to be accepted that therapy is something which takes time. Unhealthy patterns of thinking, relating and behaving which have been used for years to protect us from painful truths and emotional pain need to be gradually uprooted. Time is also needed to bed in new, healthier patterns, to develop a better and deeper emotional balance and to heal from the sometimes painful work of therapy.

Book a consultation

If you wish to take the next step, please feel free to contact me.