What I work with and how I work with it

I work with clients on various problems.

My therapeutic approach is extremely versatile and is used to address everything from challenges in relationships to existential questions.

A lot of my work involves helping clients with their sense of self, sense of direction in life, self doubt, motivation and emotional regulation.

I am trained in a psychodynamic, relational approach to experiential psychotherapy. I know; that’s a mouthful!

In essence it means that my therapy guides you in exploring and becoming more familiar with your emotions and thought processes.

It helps you understand how they contribute to your everyday functioning and well being.

The therapy is supportive, not directive, and values an egalitarian relationship between therapist and client where mutual respect is key.

The therapeutic approach in more detail

  • Most psychology is based on the idea that we, as human beings, function on a mixture of conscious and unconscious processes. Psychodynamic therapy deals with both types of processes and focuses on the dynamic between them. It aims to help the client understand their unconscious processes and how they affect their conscious thoughts and action.

    I find it helpful not to think of the unconscious as something threatening and potentially overpowering. But instead to conceptualize it as that which is not accessable to us in a given moment. In this sense, we can think of therapy as an exercise in accessing the unconscious.

  • The view is that our relationships (including the life long relationship we have with ourselves) constitute our emotional life and that you can’t work on one without the other.

    We are formed through our past and present relationships. As children we internalize the social world around us. And it is this internalization that characterizes how we interact with others. Through accessing and understanding those internalized and often unconscious patterns (the psychodynamic approach), therapy can help us foster and develop healthy and well functioning relationship and thereby help us create a more meaningful life.

  • To conduct an experiential therapy means to work with the experiences that manifest themselves in the therapy session. It means to focus on the here and now and ground the client in the emotions they experience as they experience them.

    With roots in humanistic approaches to therapy, experiential psychotherapy places an emphasis on the relationship between the client and therapist and sees this relationship as a tool with which to explore the clients reactions, thoughts and emotions in the therapy session.

  • The focus on the relationship between client and therapist builds on the humanistic stance in psychotherapy. It developed around the middle of the 20th century as a response to the more impersonal psychoanalysis of the likes of Freud.

    The humanistic stance sees the therapist’s authenticity and empathy as crucial ingredients in therapy and a safe and respectful relationship between client and therapist as the main therapeutic tool.

What to expect from the first sessions

The introductory phase in therapy is very individual; for some people it’s 10 minutes and for others it can be months. There is no right or wrong here.

The pace of the therapy is different from client to client. Some have a need to dive straight into the deep end and others need time to slowly approach things.

In the first few sessions with a new therapist, a lot of the work is actually about establishing the working relationship. The quality of this relationship, between the client and the their therapist, is key to the impact of therapy. So, finding exactly the right therapist for you is hugely important.

That is why I offer all new clients a free 30 min start-up session which they can use to form first impressions and evaluate whether they want to continue.

I expect you to continue therapy only if you are motivated, at least a little bit curious and if you believe that our work together can benefit you.

What you can expect from me is my dedication, my support and my utmost respect for people who seek help and are ready to work on themselves.

A therapy session is an hour dedicated to you and your experiences. I guide you in exploring what topics might make sense for us to work on but you have the ultimate say on what we use your sessions on.