My approa
ch… safe, curious, knowledgeable, experienced, invested
As a Clinical Soul Centred Psychotherapist, with over 17 years of experience, I create a safe and sacred counselling space in which to engage with people in a way that can form a deep and genuine therapeutic relationship.
This relationship is essential to the process of journeying with clients in a soulful way. It provides a sense of safety, trust, and containment within which the individual can have the freedom to explore and bring into being whatever naturally comes.
As part of this relationship, I listen to a person’s story, both with a trained ear and a curious, compassionate heart. Sometimes it can be great relief to have someone genuinely ‘hear’. I will ask questions such as “how was that for you?”, “what does this mean to you?”, “if this were to happen in your life, what might that give you a sense of?” and “what do you notice as you tell me this?”. With this kind of attention, the meaning and embodied experience of a client’s story can become more available to them.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your Life and you will call it Fate.”
Carl G. Jung
An important aspect of engaging with the psyche in a Soul Centred way is the development of mindfulness or a “witness” capacity. I practice this in the hearing of a client’s story and, where appropriate within the counselling environment, teach this capacity to individuals.
Mindfulness can cultivate a people’s relationship with their own lived experience and Self overall. Our modern Western society tends to value “thinking” above all else. However, as a Soul Centred Psychotherapist, I believe that it is crucial to also be mindful of other aspects of being human, such as feeling, sensing, imagining, and noticing our own relationship with the world and ourselves.
When the overwhelming feeling, which often accompanies trauma or pain, interferes with the ability to have a full experience of being human, I use a range of psychotherapeutic techniques in a client centred way to help and support people, both in and out of therapy sessions.
Want to go deeper?….. In addition to the hearing, engaging, and resourcing techniques, which are essentially invaluable counselling skills, my work has a particular emphasis which allows me to engage with each individual in a deeper, more soulful way. In this way, a journey can be undertaken where the meaning, beliefs and personal mythologies which underlie everyday experience can be made more conscious and available to the person. In this context, the therapeutic relationship makes me a curious and knowledgeable companion as people dive deeply into the story available to them.
I feel deep respect and care for the uniqueness of each client as their experience unfolds with its own individual sense of timing and meaning. Throughout this process, I hold to the Soul Centred understanding that there is no right or wrong way for this journey to occur … no objective length of time the process ‘should’ take … and no one you ‘should’ be.
Influences
In addition to meeting my annual Professional Development requirements, I am informed and continually inspired by the thinking of people such as Carl Jung, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Gabor Mate, Thomas Moore, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Marie Louise von Franz, James Hillman, Robert Johnson, Sylvan Tomkins, Milton Erikson, Harville Hendricks, Babette Rothschild and untold others.
My work is enriched by the mythologies of ancient civilizations, fables and faerytales from around the world, and the insights of the long tradition of alchemy.