Types of Therapy

Existential Analysis as I have formulated and practiced it for over twenty-four years isn’t a fixed system or set of techniques repeated from an instruction manual, designed to help you fit into mainstream ‘normality’. The world already has plenty of approaches that treat people like broken objects to be fixed then adjusted back into our dysfunctional society, without another therapy adding to the problem.. Existential Analysis helps you re-value who you are in and of yourself. It is an individual way of helping you come home to yourself by re-learning what it is to trust your own truth, your intuition, your values, and to have the courage to turn your fears and insecurities into confident Authenticity and life purpose. Often, for example, our suffering and self-doubts get in the way of becoming who we are. We hold our suffering not only in our minds, our illusions and delusions about ourselves, but in our bodies, emotional memories and awareness habits.  Finding ways to release emotions held in the body, as tensions, impulses, urges and old needs for example, is a crucial part of recovery for many people, and for clearing away the obstacles to living with. a greater awareness of freedom and self-directed security. Existential concern is our genuine interest in living a more Authentic life. And the existential approach can help us cut through the falseness, pretentiousness, social and political games, and other false ways peddled by our society as ‘normal’. For the honest, sensitive person, we realise that our ways of getting by in this world are not necessarily the same as living a full, sane, moral or humane life.

Integrative Psychotherapy is the name given to work that uses many different therapeutic ideas and methods that are compatible with viewing the whole person as a multi-dimensional Being: emotional, cognitive, spiritual, relational. We all exist within a family, workplace, spiritual, social, political and economic context that necessarily influences each of us.  All of these contexts can be explored in therapy. Each person is a free, autonomous agent capable of creating new paths and directions in his or her life in a world full of internal and external challenges and obstacles, some of which can be overcome and others only lived with as limitations to our freedom.  Change happens by doing things differently, not just by talking, changing thoughts or gaining insight.  When our actions, values, beliefs, emotions and words are in harmony then we act more authentically with less inner and outer conflict.  Changing our thoughts alone often changes very little.