What is psychotherapy?

I recently attended a networking event full of people from all different kinds of professions and a part of networking is telling people about what you do, and probably more importantly, how you do it.

Whenever I get asked what I do for a living, the answer, 'I'm a psychotherapist' elicits all kinds of responses. Some people get really interested and want to know how I work with other people’s pain and distress, and how those people get better.

In a nutshell, I support people to be more curious about themselves, their relationships and the world around them. Curiosity builds connection. To be more curious, you need capacity for it. If you are in deep distress, from grief or trauma, then curiosity will be difficult, if not impossible to have the capacity for.

I help foster your innate curiosity by working relationally with you - 'relationally' means that I use our therapeutic relationship as the bases for our work together. It's not just what you feel and think as you talk, but also what I feel and think as I listen - and I use this as key information to give insight into what may be happening at a deeper level. It's at this deeper level that we begin to make sense of your experiences so that they can be integrated into you. This is what creating capacity means. Because once experiences are integrated, you create more space.

Clearing up the tangled mess of past, present and future (especially in trauma) and deeply understanding what your loss means to you, creates space. This also has a lot to do with our neurobiology and how the nervous system responds to threat, which can be activated in grief (but not always). Sometimes, it just takes time with another grounded, attuned person to help your nervous system begin to regulate (this is another way we work relationally together). Much of anxiety and depression comes from a dysregulated state. Dysregulation isn't in itself, a 'bad' thing. We have evolved to have a nervous system that continuously regulates and dysregulates, it's only when we get stuck in dysregulation and then develop coping strategies that are harmful, that it can get bad for us.

In psychotherapy, I work with you to bring more regulation by learning ways to come back to the present moment, where you are safe. Over time, this gives you space to reflect and explore your experiences and make sense of them. From this place of safety, you are able to read the dysregulation as information to pay attention to, with curiosity and openness, rather than shutting down or slipping into old coping strategies. This is what growth and change looks like in psychotherapy with me.

It can take quite some time, and be very challenging, but the rewards are great. From a more curious and open position, I’ve seen clients really soften and relax into themselves. Their confidence in their abilities to meet difficulty and complexity in themselves and others, grows. They can begin to use their grounding techniques to help those around them when their nervous systems are in dysregulation – and this builds stronger, more connected relationships. This is how curiosity builds connection, with self, others and the world, and leads to a better sense of wellbeing, alignment and balance.