My approach is existential, a mindful and unpretentious talking therapy. It combines the constructive, forward looking approach of cognitive therapy, the respectful person centred tradition and the depth of psychodynamic psychotherapy.
The focus is on individual experience and understanding this within the context of the challenges and paradoxes of life and living.
Human beings are understood to be creatures of continual change and transformation with unique personal strengths and weaknesses, constantly seeking opportunities and yet frustrated by limitations in the physical, social, personal and spiritual dimensions of existence.
Meaning and value is explored with the aim of being true to oneself and living responsibly whilst at the same time understanding the consequences of our ideas and beliefs on our own and others lives.
Good therapy is by its nature challenging but also ultimately respectful of a person’s unique way of understanding and living their life. The goal of therapy is authentic living; that is, living deliberately rather than by default.
Background Existential psychotherapy and counselling has its roots in the work of RD Laing. As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, he was concerned that subjective experience had got lost in the grand theories of our modern age and more and more of our miseries were being dealt with by the medical profession in clinics.
He drew heavily on the work of European existential philosophers of the last few centuries who had written about the human condition. He also immersed himself in Eastern philosophy and practice.