How I Work

My work begins with what is happening here and now.

In a session, I attend to what you are experiencing in the moment — what you are feeling, sensing and thinking, and to how you are shaping and holding yourself through your body. We may slow things down and become curious about breath, posture, movement, tension, energy, or whatever else is asking for attention.

I also attend to what is happening between us. Rather than psychotherapy being something I do to you, the relationship itself becomes part of our inquiry. What happens between us can offer a living glimpse of how you meet another person, how you protect yourself, how you reach towards or withdraw from contact, and what new possibilities of relationship might emerge.

Body, psyche and awareness

The body is an important part of how I work. I may invite you to notice sensation, breath, movement or stillness, and to become curious about how your body responds as we speak. This can help us notice ways of protecting, containing or regulating yourself that words alone may not reveal.

We can also attend to how regulation happens between us. At times simply being with another person — slowing down, noticing, staying with something together — allows an experience to be met differently.

Dreams are welcome in the work. Rather than looking for a single interpretation, we can stay curious about their images, feelings and associations, and about what they may be bringing into awareness.

Images, metaphors and other movements of the imagination can sometimes offer ways of knowing that are not available through explanation alone.

We may encounter different parts or voices within you: the part that protects, the part that drives, the part that withdraws, the vulnerable part, or the familiar shoulds, oughts, always and nevers that organise experience. The intention is not to get rid of these parts, but to know them more fully and discover what becomes possible when they are brought into relationship.

My work is trauma-informed. I pay attention to pacing, consent and what feels possible in the moment. Mindfulness and awareness practices, indoors or outdoors, may also become part of our work when they are useful.
At times I may invite you to take something from our work into the place where you are — perhaps through a walk, sitting with a tree, being beside water, noticing the weather, or spending time with a particular place or other living being. What happens there can then become part of what we explore together.

Beyond the separate self

I don't understand our difficulties as belonging only to an isolated individual. We are shaped through relationship — with other people, families and communities, but also by culture, place, history and the wider living world of which we are part.

For some people, this means bringing their relationship with land, place and the living world into the therapeutic process. We might notice the changing seasons, the weather, the ground beneath us, the elements, or your relationship with particular places and other forms of life. Ecotherapy, for me, is not simply about taking therapy outdoors. It is about remembering that our lives are entangled with a world that is more than human.

There can also be room for experiences that don't fit easily within conventional psychological language — questions of meaning and soul, spiritual experience, mystery, and the transpersonal. I don't ask you to adopt a particular belief system, and we can remain curious about experiences without needing to explain them away or decide exactly what they mean.

Sexuality and the erotic dimensions of being human can also enter our work. I understand the erotic broadly: not only as sexuality, but as part of our capacity for desire, intimacy, creativity, connection and aliveness. Where these aspects of experience are important to you, they are welcome in the therapy.

And we do not leave the wider world at the door. Ecological breakdown, climate change, social and cultural upheaval, injustice and uncertainty can profoundly affect how it feels to be alive now. For people engaged in conservation, activism, community or other forms of response to these times, therapy can offer somewhere to bring what that asks of you — without treating your concern for the world as something from which you need to recover.

Working alongside

Psychotherapy involves an inevitable difference of role and with that comes questions of power. I try not to take the position of being the expert on your life. I want us to be able to notice and speak about what happens between us, including moments when power, difference, misunderstanding or uncertainty enter the relationship.

I bring my experience, training, attention and presence; you bring a knowledge of your own life that I cannot have. The work grows through what we discover together.

I don't know in advance where our work will lead, nor do I see therapy as a journey towards becoming a finished version of yourself. I hope instead that we can meet what emerges with curiosity, honesty, humility and, when it comes, humour — allowing greater connection, movement and possibility to develop over time.