The core of the work is simply a conversation between us.

 

Together, we will aim to figure out your un-thought-about or automatic   ways of looking at the world and at yourself. We will do this by making connections between

 

•  the stories you tell of your life and your memories, dreams and daydreams.
• and how it feels to talk about these things to me and have me be with you when you say and think them.

 

How often will we meet?

 

I see people once or twice a week at a regular time.

 

How long are the sessions?

 

Each session lasts 50 minutes. 

 

What happens at the first meeting?

 

At the first meeting people usually start by saying what has brought them.

 

I will spend a little time clarifying my terms and agreeing with you a mutually convenient time.

 

I will talk to you about my practice of confidentiality.

 

At the end of the session we will review how it went. 

 

If you feel it has worked well, we will agree to meet again. 

 

If you feel that for any reason I am not the right therapist for you, I will try to refer you on to someone local who is likely to be more appropriate.  

 

 

How long will it take?

 

If you want a sounding board to help you make sense of your situation and make better choices in life, a few sessions can make a big difference.

 

If you want to look more deeply at how you come to be as you are and to change how you feel about yourself and the world, the work can take some months. 

 

My usual approach is to suggest, at the end of our second meeting, that you make a contract with yourself to come another four times.

 

By the end of these six sessions, you will have a good idea of what psychotherapy can do for you.  You may decide that you have done what you needed to do, we may agree to continue meeting for a fixed time or we may engage in an open-ended process.

 

 

What if it is difficult for me to come at a fixed time each week?

 

A regular rhythm is important to the work, and most people seem to be able to manage this. 

 

I am sympathetic to the problem of shift work. Providing we can find a way of aligning our schedules in a planned way over a reasonable period, I would not insist on meeting at the same time and on the same day every week.

 

I do not work in an ad hoc way.  

 

What kind of psychotherapy do you practice?

 

I am an "integrative" psychotherapist.  You can read more details about what this means and compare it to other forms of psychotherapy by looking at the links on my What are Psychotherapy and Counselling page.

 

For me, the "integrative" in integrative psychotherapy has three main meanings. 

 

The first two refer to its aims for the client:

• to integrate our emotional and thinking lives.  To enable us to live our lives fully through the synergy of thinking and feeling at the same time, rather than being overwhelmed by feeling or restricted by logical thinking.
  
• to integrate those parts of ourselves that at some point in our life we hid or abandoned in order to survive. So, for example, that the shy or introverted person can enjoy company without losing the restorative power of solitude or a gregarious or extroverted person can experience their own company as something other than loneliness.

 

Thirdly, for the practitioner, it means bringing together the many different ways of thinking about what it means to be and become a person and to always look for the appropriate way to think about a particular client at a particular time.