Psychotherapy

If you have never had psychotherapy, or if you have had previous poor experiences that have left you believing that psychotherapy does not work for you, or if you cannot afford therapy, then please read on…  If you don’t like the word therapy – forget it’s called this! My take is that what’s usually needed is somebody to connect with us in a human way that includes our pain and suffering.

The premise I work from is that all human behaviour, however screwed up we might feel ourselves to be, exists because it has proven to be the best answer to challenges we have faced in the past… i.e. I believe in our fundamental ‘rightness’. Mostly we end up in places that do not feel right or good because at some point in our lives we have had to resolve impossible conflicts without there being enough love and support. 

You can think of the therapist as providing some of the relational support that was previously lacking. Gestalt therapy is highly relational, meaning that I will respond to you as a real human being… I am not here to analyse you. I believe that we gain greater possibilities for our actions by daring to step a little outside of our comfort zones. As we dare to step outside, we access more energy and aliveness… this is supported by the person of the therapist, and over time we learn to support more possibility and range within us.

I know it can be scary to contemplate placing your trust in a process and in a person that at the outset are unknowns. Allowing that something different is possible means really facing up to the pain of what wasn’t there in the past. This takes bravery. The parts of us that seem to resist change are often the parts we most need to listen to, because these encode information about our past hurts.

Selecting which therapist to work with is about deciding whom you would like as part of your developing support system. I am inviting you to be a part of my community - you would be allowing me to be a part of yours. Occasionally I facilitate workshops, and groups aimed at bringing people with a diversity of experience together. These are offered as an adjunct and complement to individual therapy.

What I have come to understand about myself is that my own journey enables me to connect with people who have experienced traumatic loss, separation or abuse in infancy or later. 

I tend to be more flexible with appointment times, venue, frequency of sessions, and session length, than are some therapists. Deepening conversations can be had in a park, a cafe, over the phone, or take place in your home. I believe in removing some of the stuffiness and barriers that make therapy inaccessible. Good therapy is a human to human conversation.

If any of this resonates I can offer you a trial session (payable at a rate we agree to work to). You can email me on gillie2k@gmail.com. Or call me on 07791 282 812. Thank you.

If you would like to read more about my approach to psychotherapy that aligns personal development with collective effort to tackle systemic inequalities, please visit the Something Different Therapy Community.

I have put together an introduction to gestalt therapy for new clients that can be downloaded here (My Brief Introduction to Gestalt Therapy).