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Short-Description

I am a qualified and experienced psychotherapist and counsellor and have been in practice for over 20 years. I offer therapy to suit your requirements. Deciding to have therapy is an important step towards finding a solution to psychological issues that you may have coped with alone for some time. You can be assured of confidentiality, competence and a non-judgemental approach. I aim to be inclusive and sensitive to the specific needs of people from all sections of the community. Whatever problem or “symptom” you find yourself struggling with, we will aim, through psychoanalytic approach, to work with it holistically and build a context for its understanding. This way we do justice to you as a unique person and thus provide us with root causes of your difficulties which encompass both your present situation and your personal history. This rational or intellectual understanding is important and even necessary but it only goes so far. If your desire is to go further, we will aim to move towards a deeper, emotional level to make longer lasting changes or perhaps reach an acceptance of certain aspects of yourself. From my experience of many years, exploring both our intellectual and emotional layers results in the overall lessening of our problems. Often enough, a successful therapy becomes exciting or rewarding for the client and the therapist as it holds a potential to be transformative – ultimately our goal is to help you lead a more fulfilling life and move beyond problem solutions. It is a shared experience amongst many contemporary psychoanalytic therapists that people seek our help when the gap between who the person is or seems to be and who they would want to be becomes too wide, too far apart, too painful. This gap may be felt with differing degrees – some clients start therapy overwhelmed by crashing hopelessness and depression that affects all aspects of one’s s life severely limiting the capacity to function. For others, it is possible to fulfil their daily tasks and find enjoyment in their work and in relating to others but seeming out of the blue they begin experiencing panic attacks they cannot understand, or have intrusive and unwanted thoughts or struggle with addictions and feels something within them is sabotaging their desired goals. Other clients are aware of the internal conflict, they feel guilty about their sexual behaviour, their core identity or they desire intimacy and successful relationships but seem to keep “ending up” with partners who cannot be relied upon. Finally, there are people who cannot make any sense of why they are seeking therapy: they are successful at work, have supportive partners and families, no financial burdens and yet they feel empty and dead inside and guilty on top of this as they should feel happy. How do we reconcile this gap between reality and desire? Each client finds his or her own answers in the confidential and non-judgemental therapeutic setting where I, as the therapist, will be attentive to the unconscious aspects of my client’s communication. If what I feedback to the client resonates, s/he too will be curios and attentive to the hidden aspects of themselves which often hold the key to personal growth and the unlocking felling stuck. To get to this point, we will need to collaborate, explore dreams and daydreams, remain silent when this is needed – this process cannot be forced and the pace will be set by the client and by the trust we build and develop. We will need to make space for the mundane as well as the profound, for fantasies however exorbitant or ordinary, for learning about what you as the client fear the most as well as about what bores you or leaves you indifferent. In the end, the gap should narrow – you should feel more enabled to follow your desires, be more forgiving of yourself and your “weaknesses”, more appreciative of your strengths and more able to discern what ambitions or goals are authentically yours and which are someone else’s, more “knowing of what to throw away and knowing what to keep”. Interest in Critical Theory and Modern European Philosophy, most notably the work of Derrida, Butler and Foucault and its impact and integration into therapy/analysis. Commitment to ant-racist practice.