Guide
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It can be difficult to know what approach is best when starting to consider therapy. There are hundreds of approaches to helping, and even more practitioner styles, attitudes, theoretical positions, experience levels, and personalities. This brief guide may help you clarify some of what is available in this practice, and provides an overview of the process of having a first meeting, assessing your needs, and starting and ending therapy.
Read the information on the Home page first.
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Various modalities and levels of support and challenge are available in this practice. And you can change these at any time throughout your therapy. Counselling is the least challenging; symptom-management is focussed on containing and channelling your experiences; and various analytic levels of psychotherapy help you gain insight and understanding into your way of being.
Depth Psychotherapy - Existential Analysis - can help you bring your mind and body into harmony, reducing the internal struggles you have with yourself and others. It can help you heal your nervous system and strengthen your ability to manage and centre your life around self-care, meaning and purpose.
Patients who benefit from depth psychotherapy the most are those who place greater value on long-term truth than on short-term comfort, and who prefer more interaction and open collaboration with their psychotherapist than is commonly offered by conventional approaches. Patients who are open to having their lifestyles, beliefs, habits, assumptions and self-defeating behaviours explored, and challenged when appropriate, will readily make gains in therapy. Those who remain defensive and resistant to change and challenge to their comfort zone will not benefit from any form of psychotherapy, in my experience. New skills and awarenesses can then be formed for greater authenticity, self-reliance, self-respect, better self-care, self-confidence and clarity of purpose in life.
🕊️ It is important to emphasise that trust and honesty are essential for depth psychotherapy to be effective. This allows you to co-create a therapeutic relationship that is safe, respectful, and straight-talking. Without deepening trust and honesty, healing and resolution of struggles held in the body and nervous system are, in my experience, usually limited. Depth psychotherapy is therefore not suitable for individuals who are unwilling to develop their inner life by being fully open, transparent or honest in the therapeutic relationship. Simpler approaches focussing on talking, symptom management and making changes to thinking habits, and that don’t rely so much on relationship integrity should be sought instead. CBT is a good example of a much less challenging, technique-based approach.
Depth psychotherapy can be as challenging and supportive as you request it to be. Most people like the idea of authenticity, but few are able to rise to the challenge of being more authentic because it is scary and difficult to do so in a society that is inauthentic by default. Working on your personal authenticity can include electing to address and resolve your ‘shadow’, or the less appealing aspects of your personality and habits that most individuals make great efforts to conceal or deny in themselves. Whilst very challenging, some of the many benefits of this deeper work include greater inner peace and feelings of wholeness, greater personal integrity, enduring security and a surer sense of identity, genuine confidence founded on truth rather than pretending, greater humility, clarity of one’s true values and purpose, a deeper and more courageous trust in your own personal wisdom and intuition. Greater authenticity also gives us the opportunity to drop the false social masks that we are socially conditioned to wear, often in defeat of ourselves and our deeper nature.
Is depth psychotherapy for you? If you want challenge, depth and resolution of the root causes of your life problems and are willing to do the work, then yes. If you prefer much less effort and challenge, then opting for counselling, symptom-management, and staying on a a safer level in your sessions might be best for you. You can do any of these approaches within this practice as support and challenge levels are chosen by you.
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The first meeting can be booked as a 30 minute online video call if you just want a quick impression of the psychotherapist’s way of working. Or you can book a 50 minute session, attending in-person or online, which gives more time to explore your needs and to ask any questions about assessment and the psychotherapy offered by this practice.
Introductory sessions are booked via the Appointments page and are a no obligation way for you to discuss what you are looking for, and allows you to ask any questions, talk about your concerns or aims, and to get the gist of what might be involved in any work you might want to do.
If another service or approach may be more appropriate to what your needs appear to be, then this can sometimes be a place where you might identify that (if not, then Assessment may do so). You can stop at this stage and are under no obligation to return.
NOTE: attending an Introductory Meeting does not guarantee you an assessment or psychotherapy space. But you may be able to join the waiting list if the service is suitable for addressing your needs.
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If we agree at the Introductory Meeting that assessment of your needs is appropriate, then you would look for a suitable space advertised on the Appointments page if one isn’t immediately available. Once you book the assessment appointment, I will send you the pre-assessment login password so that you can fill out and return my online Assessment Form and read and sign my Agreement before you attend your first assessment appointment.
I have 27 years experience in assessing patient needs and I undertake a comprehensive psychosocial assessment prior to any Psychotherapy or Personal Development work. My assessment forms help us gather information that will highlight your needs, lifestyle, habits, existing support, history, self-view, and general circumstances.
Full assessment for psychotherapy usually takes between 2 and 4 sessions to complete, depending upon the volume of information and discussion involved. You can book these sessions weekly when spaces are available, or according to advertised spaces on the Appointments page.
If you only need counselling then the assessment only involves submission of the assessment form, and does not require attendance for assessment discussion.
When we do a full assessment for psychotherapy, in the last assessment meeting I share my summary analysis with you by discussion (not in writing), which will help you understand the root causes of your problems, any potential obstacles I see to you achieving your aims for therapy, and some of the therapeutic tasks my practice can offer you to help you achieve your aims.
If my practice is not appropriate for your needs or presentation, I can usually recommend alternative types of help that may be more appropriate for you if depth psychotherapy is not suitable, for example.
After assessment, if there isn’t a suitable weekly space available for you to start psychotherapy, you may be offered the option of joining my waiting list. If you are unable or unwilling to wait then seeking the help of another service may allow you to get started sooner.
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Regular weekly sessions of 50 minutes duration are standard practice, and help you concentrate on your goals at a steady pace, maintain momentum, develop new habits, and apply what you gain from each session during the week.
30 minute sessions are only available for online work via video call due to the impracticalities of short, in-person attendance. They are generally more appropriate for Introductory Meetings, extra sessions when you need a bit more input in addition to your weekly session, or follow-up sessions for patients who have finished met their main needs for psychotherapy.
However, depending upon your problems and needs identified at assessment, 30 minute weekly sessions may be appropriate for less complex needs, subject to assessment, and for meditation and yoga tuition. Short sessions are generally not advised where you have more serious or enduring needs that require more session time and in-depth understanding.
50 minute sessions can be attended either in-person or online. Full sessions are necessary for serious psychotherapy work, and your specific needs can be discussed during an Introductory Meting or your assessment sessions.
If you are on a budget and thinking that fortnightly sessions would be more affordable, I generally advise against this due to the fact that it is very difficult to maintain therapeutic momentum with less than weekly attendance. Similarly, trying to address complex matters in a few sessions is a false economy, and won’t tend to work. Fortnightly sessions, in my experience, extend therapy proportionally much longer than weekly attendance to achieve the same results. And trying to squeeze your needs into only a few sessions will only create stress and result in little, if any, real change.
My advice to patients where funding is a concern is therefore to spend time saving so that they can comfortably afford weekly attendance for the duration required to properly address their needs, which in my experience tends to be much more productive and better value for money in the long run.
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You can attend sessions in-person if you live locally, or online if you live elsewhere in the world. Appointments are booked the same way via the Appointments page.
I work online with patients from all over the world* including all parts of the UK, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and other places where English-speaking patients reside or travel. Wherever you live in the world and however you are travelling you can receive effective help and professional support at home or on the move: all you need is a laptop or smartphone.
*Exceptions detailed on the appointments page
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Once the assessment is complete, each psychotherapy, counselling or personal development session usually takes place at the same time and on the same day each week*, in-person or via video call if you prefer.
Optimal conditions for successful psychotherapy include a strong alliance between patient and therapist, with good motivation for change and growth, with maximum honesty and openness as the foundation of any healthy relationship.
*Fortnightly and sporadic attendance are much less effective and not currently offered by this practice due to demands on the service.
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Review sessions can be requested at any time throughout our work and allow for a formal or informal reflection on motivation, commitment and progress, re-establishing aims and focus.
Reviewing our work together and looking at gains and saying our goodbyes is also a healthy, constructive way to bring the relationship to an end when you are ready.
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How we choose to end our relationships often reveals more about who we are than any other aspect of the relationship itself. Ending psychotherapy well is a good way of securing in your mind and body the good work you did during therapy.
Patients can stop therapy at any time. Giving a minimum of 7 days notice to finish weekly therapy is helpful in allowing us to round off the work amicably, and cover any remaining points, clear up any misunderstandings, or unanswered questions. And offers a chance to review your progress and achievements.
Giving notice also allows us to discuss options like follow-up sessions, maintenance tasks to keep you going, or tapering attendance off before discharge.