Adolescents
14-19 years
I support teenagers to develop their own self awareness, regulate their emotions and learn to manage situations with adults and their peers.
Parental Support
I provide customised support for parents whose son/daughter is engaging in one-to-one therapy.
Supervision
Students
Pre-accredited
& accredited
Supervision is a vital area of support, learning and collaboration to allow for “Best Practice” to continue.
Client Issues
Anxiety
is a feeling of apprehension about the future. The more a person tries to makes sense of their future the more uncertain things become. This can cause fear to develop and a lack of control and a need to withdrawn due to feeling overwhelmed.
Depression
is known to affect people in different ways and shows itself when you are feeling sad, low, irritable, angry, low energy and loss of interest in things you would normally enjoy.
Workplace Stress
can be the result of conflict between colleagues and/or management. Feeling a lack of control of your job and being overwhelmed by tasks or requests being put on you.
Eating Disorders
involves relationships with food, eating, exercise, and body image. It is characterized by eating-related behaviours that impairs physical and mental health.
Self-Esteem
is based on our opinions and beliefs about ourselves, which can sometimes feel really difficult to change depending on how we value and perceive ourselves. Your self-esteem can affect whether you like who you are and be able to make decisions and assert yourself.
Relationships
is defined as being in the state of relating or interrelating with two or more people and considers how one talks to, behaves toward, and deals with each other.
Sexual Abuse
also referred to as sexual assault or sexual violence is any sexual activity that occurs without consent. It is not the survivor’s fault that they were assaulted. It includes unwanted sexual touching, rape, forced oral sex as well other sexual acts.
Suicide Ideation
(SI) often called suicidal thoughts or ideas are experienced by many people especially during times of stress or when they are facing mental or physical health challenges.
Treatment Approach
Attachment-based therapy is form of therapy that applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, which explains how the relationship a parent has with its child influences development.
Cognitive-behavioural therapy stresses the role of thinking in how we feel and what we do. It is based on the belief that thoughts, rather than people or events, cause our negative feelings. The therapist assists the client in identifying, testing the reality of, and correcting dysfunctional beliefs underlying his or her thinking. The therapist then helps the client modify those thoughts and the behaviours that flow from them. CBT is a structured collaboration between therapist and client and often calls for homework assignments. CBT has been clinically proven to help clients in a relatively short amount of time with a wide range of disorders, including depression and anxiety.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an approach to therapy that helps clients identify their emotions, learn to explore and experience them, to understand them and then to manage them. Emotionally Focused Therapy embraces the idea that emotions can be changed, first by arriving at or ‘living’ the maladaptive emotion (e.g. loss, fear or shame) in session, and then learning to transform it. Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples seeks to break the negative emotion cycles within relationships, emphasising the importance of the attachment bond between couples, and how nurturing of the attachment bonds and an empathetic understanding of each others emotions can break the cycles.
Existential psychotherapy is based on the philosophical belief that human beings are alone in the world, and that this aloneness can only be overcome by creating one’s own meaning, and exercising one’s freedom to choose. The existential therapist encourages clients to face life’s anxieties head on and to start making their own decisions. The therapist will emphasise that, along with having the freedom to carve out meaning, comes the need to take full responsibility for the consequences of one’s decisions. Therapy sessions focus on the client’s present and future rather than their past.
Gestalt therapy seeks to integrate the client’s behaviours, feelings, and thinking, so that their intentions and actions may be aligned for optimal mental health. The therapist will help the client become more self aware, to live more in the present, and to assume more responsibility for taking care of themself. Techniques of gestalt therapy include confrontation, dream analysis, and role playing.
The Gottman Theory For Making Relationships Work shows that to make a relationship last, couples must become better friends, learn to manage conflict, and create ways to support each other’s hopes for the future. Drs. John and Julie Gottman have shown how couples can accomplish this by paying attention to what they call the Sound Relationship House, or the seven components of healthy relationships.
The humanistic method takes a positive view of human nature and emphasises the uniqueness of the individual. Therapists in this tradition, who are interested in exploring the nature of creativity, love, and self-actualisation, help clients realise their potential through change and self-directed growth. Humanistic therapy is also an umbrella term for gestalt, client-centred therapy, and existential therapy.
Integrative therapy refers to therapy in which elements from different types of therapy may be used. Therapists ‘integrate’ two or more therapeutic styles (e.g. Cognitive and Family Systems) to bring about a personalised and practical approach to healing.
Integrative therapy (with a small ‘i’) may also refer to the process of ‘integrating’ the personality by taking disowned or unresolved aspects of the self and making them part of a cohesive personality whole. It reduces the use of defense mechanisms that inhibit spontaneity and allows flexibility in solving emotional problems.
IPT is a short-term psychotherapy in which therapist and client identify the issues and problems of interpersonal relationships. They also explore the client’s life history to help recognise problem areas and then work toward ways to rectify them.
There are specific Interpersonal therapies, such as Imago therapy, which focus on intimate relationships.
Interpersonal therapy is not to be confused with transpersonal psychology, which is the study of states in which people experience a deeper sense of who they are, or a sense of greater connectedness with others, nature or spirituality.
For clients with chronic pain, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and other health issues such as anxiety and depression, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT, is a two-part therapy that aims to reduce stress, manage pain, and embrace the freedom to respond to situations by choice. MCBT blends two disciplines–cognitive therapy and mindfulness. Mindfulness helps by reflecting on moments and thoughts without passing judgment. MBCT clients pay close attention to their feelings to reach an objective mindset, thus viewing and combating life’s unpleasant occurrences.
Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a method of therapy that works to engage the motivation of clients to change their behaviour. Clients are encouraged to explore and confront their ambivalence. Therapists attempt to influence their clients to consider making changes, rather than non-directively explore themselves. Motivational Interviewing is frequently used in cases of problem drinking or mild addictions.
Person-centred therapy uses a non-authoritative approach that allows clients to take more of a lead in discussions so that, in the process, they will discover their own solutions. The therapist acts as a compassionate facilitator, listening without judgment and acknowledging the client’s experience without moving the conversation in another direction. The therapist is there to encourage and support the client and to guide the therapeutic process without interrupting or interfering with the client’s process of self-discovery.
Unlike traditional psychology that focuses more on the causes and symptoms of mental illnesses and emotional disturbances, positive psychology emphasizes traits, thinking patterns, behaviours, and experiences that are forward-thinking and can help improve the quality of a person’s day-to-day life. These may include optimism, spirituality, hopefulness, happiness, creativity, perseverance, justice, and the practice of free will. It is an exploration of one’s strengths, rather than one’s weaknesses. The goal of positive psychology is not to replace those traditional forms of therapy that centre on negative experiences, but instead to expand and give more balance to the therapeutic process.
Psychodynamic therapy, also known as insight-oriented therapy, evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis. Like adherents of psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapists believe that bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness promotes insight and resolves conflict. But psychodynamic therapy is briefer and less intensive than psychoanalysis and also focuses on the relationship between the therapist and the client, as a way to learn about how the client relates to everyone in their life.
Relational life therapy offers strategies to combat marital dysfunction and restore harmony in relationships. Couples–those recovering from affairs, traumatic events, or a lull in passion–can find RLT helpful. To repair discord, the therapist identifies the main conflict upsetting the couples’ emotional intimacy. Once the partners see how they both contribute to the problem, the therapist teaches them skills to improve the ways they relate to each other. Couples may see a change in their relationship within three to six months.
Solution-focused therapy, sometimes called “brief therapy,” focuses on what clients would like to achieve through therapy rather than on their troubles or mental health issues. The therapist will help the client envision a desirable future, and then map out the small and large changes necessary for the client to undergo to realise their vision. The therapist will seize on any successes the client experiences, to encourage them to build on their strengths rather than dwell on their problems or limitations.
Strength-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counselling that focuses more on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, and less on weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. This focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on you best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience and change worldview to one that is more positive. A positive attitude, in turn, can help your expectations of yourself and others become more reasonable.
Trauma focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT) helps people who may be experiencing post-traumatic stress after a traumatic event to return to a healthy state.
