Specialist Areas
Couples Counselling
I have always loved working with couples to support them in finding more effective ways to communicate and develop deeper relationships. There are lots of reasons a couple may decide to have counselling. Often a crisis may prompt the decision to seek support. The basics of good relationships are goodwill towards, and respect of the other. I work with couples to look at the dynamics of the relationship and unpick the knots that cause tension and distance.
Clinical Supervision
It is requirement of trainee and qualified therapists to have clinical supervision. Working as we do on our own it is crucial to have the benefit of sharing our client work to recognise transference and blinds spots. I offer both individual and small group supervision to trainees and qualified therapists and counsellors.
Specific Issues:
For many years I have run workshops on various specialist areas. I am now working on a one-to-one basis with people wanting to look specifically at these issues:
Childless or Childfree?
Are you feeling ambivalent about having a child? Are you living with a choice that is not your own? Have you left it too late to have a child?
There often comes a time in our lives when we are faced with the decision about whether or not to have a child. For some women, this will be an easy decision. For others, it is much more conflicted - maybe complicated by factors such as age, health, or partnership status.
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating
We are familiar with anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating, but disordered eating patterns are very common. Sometimes we eat unhealthily as a way of ignoring our problems. Compulsive or binge eating may seem to help dampen down feelings we don't feel comfortable with. At first, this may seem to offer a solution to some of life's problems, but we can get stuck in this unhealthy cycle. Conttrolling our eating my become obsessive, and in some cases, life threatening. Eating alone or on social occasions, shopping when hyungry, leaving long gaps between meals, the smell of fresh cooking or the sight of treats like chocolates or biscuits, can often be the triggers for eating unhealthily. Often an eating disorder is a crisis of self-esteem where food becomes a metaphor - for attention or love or reward.
I encourage you to explore your relationship with food, how you might label it “good” or “bad”, and how emotions affect your eating patterns. We will look at eating disorder cycles and use creative exercises to challenge those cycles and find a balanced way out of them.