Where we get stuck
Relationships are the lifeblood of our human experience. From birth, our health and happiness depend on the love and support we receive from our parents, our families and the other people in our world.
When we are hurt or neglected by other people, it leaves a legacy of destruction. The earlier this hurt happens, the more deeply we are marked by it. We get stuck at all the places where we counted on love, but were harmed or ignored instead.
As children, dependent on others, being harmed makes us feel that we are somehow unlovable — that the harm is our fault. We become disheartened. Our tender heart either goes into sad exile, or hardens to protect itself. Trauma — the harm, and the lack of care we received — becomes an inner blueprint for what we can expect of the world. Later, we may find ourselves in familiar-feeling relationships that mirror that lack of care.
An uncaring outer landscape gives birth to an inner landscape of suffering. Our thoughts are confused. Our feelings are painful. Our bodies echo with distress. Our actions mystify us. We feel out of control and alone. Something feels very wrong, and we don’t have the language to express it. We might feel overwhelmingly anxious, or fall into despair. We might try to numb the pain, then get caught in harmful habits and cycles of addiction. We might withdraw, or lash out. We become strangers to ourselves and to the people around us.
Therapy is a relationship too
Therapy provides a safe-feeling space to explore our inner and outer worlds with a trustworthy person who cares about us and what we experience.
We can rest in the generosity of our therapist’s complete attention. We can pinpoint exactly where we’re getting stuck, and grieve together about the things and people that hurt us. Trauma happens between people, and so it’s natural that repairing trauma also emerges from within a relationship. The relationship we develop with each other is the soil from which new life grows.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
When we feel safe in this relationship, we can find a way through together and create new experiences for ourselves. We can entertain fresh ideas and understandings, and listen together to what your body is saying. We can fan the flame of new life that is waiting to warm and inspire us. Lovingly and patiently, we can conspire together about what it would mean to live the life you want to live, instead of a life you want to escape from.
How I work
I bring a gentle curiosity to our work together, feeling for the pulse of your living, breathing concerns.
Together, we open up space to explore what you are experiencing as we talk through the treasures and traumas of what has happened to us in our life, where we might have gotten stuck, and our hopes for the future. What happens between us — how we experience each other, what moves us, the ideas that come to us when we are together — is all part of the work.
I’ll encourage us to slow down and bring gentle attention to the feelings, bodily sensations and thoughts that present themselves for healing acknowledgement. As we relax into joy and pain together, we co-create a fresh opportunity to invite renewal and vitality.
“My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.”
In this work, I am particularly influenced by Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Somatic and Person-Centred approaches, whose foundation is compassion, collaboration, real time awareness, and trust in human resilience.