What will happen during counselling?

When you come into my comfortable counselling room, we will be in a confidential space where I will encourage you to talk freely about whatever comes to mind. This is known as free association. You can talk openly, honestly and without being judged.

Sometimes I will be more directive, but it is important that you feel things are emerging at your pace, so that as we work we can bring to consciousness thought patterns and feelings that may have been up to now hidden, even from you. We can then explore what that means together.

A key concept in the psychodynamic approach is transference. This is where again unconsciously, you may repeat feelings and reactions that you have experienced in previous significant relationships, or during childhood. This will help us to truly understand their impact on you now, and how they may be keeping you stuck emotionally.

What happened in our early years and those developmental relationships can be a blueprint for the rest of our lives, creating a dynamic that we tend to take into other relationships in adulthood.

Transference can help us both learn more about your feelings, behaviors and actions, and then resolve the feelings that originate from these relationships. It can help you understand why you expect to be treated in a certain way and how that impacts on your current relationships.

What psychodynamic therapy can help with

Psychodynamic therapy can help with many different problems, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and addictions, or when you feel things are not quite right - not happy, unfulfilled or feeling isolated. I can help you try to find meaning and understanding, to make sense of things.

“It can be a slow process and the development is often subtle. But when that change happens, clients often find that everything in their life improves - relationships & friendships become more fulfilling to them.

Working lives can improve, as people tend to become more productive, creative and better able to think once the emotional knots are worked out, enabling them to work to their full potential.

But it’s really important that you find a therapist you feel comfortable with and who has the right personality for you. Often our first session will just be about getting a sense of whether the relationship will work. If you don’t think things are working, it might not be the method of therapy, but that I am just not right for you, and that's ok.

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