Sometimes we need to find the way home to ourselves…

Sometimes we need help to come home to the felt sense of who we are in our bodies.  This is the  path to mental wellness. Body psychotherapy offers a body/mind approach for when you feel ‘talking isn’t doing any good’, or you feel it ‘won’t get to the bottom of your problem’.

Why come to Therapy?

It seems obvious how to answer this question: to feel better; to feel better about ourselves, less tormented, gain more clarity, be less exhausted by self-blame, have more energy, to feel less depressed, less anxious. All of the above.

And yet to make the journey into therapy, let alone through therapy, is quite something. To reach the point in your life, when you really don’t want to go on as you have been doing, is quite a point of transition, and nobody is sure whether it’s the right thing to do. It’s normal to feel uncertain and fearful about starting therapy.

It’s normal because you’re going to start something new. Hopefully you’re going to create something new inside yourself and while that might feel exciting, the letting go of familiar if not necessarily helpful ways of being yourself, can feel very unsettling.

I would recommend that you think small. Small steps, one foot in front of the other, without thinking too much about the bigger picture to begin with. Take it week by week. Rome definitely wasn’t built in a day and thinking just a few sessions will sort you out is probably unrealistic. But neither do you need to set enormous goals. If the therapy is working as it should, a sense of feeling seen and heard should emerge quite quickly. This in itself can feel quite transformational. Someone is actually interested in you! Someone is curious and committed enough to being alongside you as you try to work out why you’ve come. It’s good not to be alone.

The first few weeks can feel quite supportive. And then, perhaps what has been troubling you, what has been bubbling up inside which has been difficult to tolerate, starts to feel a little more present. Good therapy will catch those moments, contain them in the space, and perhaps start to sprinkle a bit of transformative goodness (like plant food!) into those vulnerable patches. To continue the garden image, it isn’t about toughly digging up the difficult-to-eradicate thorny parts of yourself, eliminating the bits you don’t want. It is more about creating space, perhaps reducing them in size and seeing what else can grow alongside which feels gentler, more powerful and connected in yourself.

Sometimes you might feel a little better, sometimes a lot better, and there are also times when therapy will bring up uncomfortable feelings and thoughts which are helpful to process the following week.

It is my intention to sit alongside you through, what is in essence a journey, cliched as that sounds. As a therapist, I’m not powerful enough to ‘change you’ or to have all the answers. This is your work but I do believe every single person who comes to my practice has the capacity and potential for profound emotional and spiritual change, if that is what they are looking for. I will hold the space for you, and together we can discover and accept what has always been there and what needs to grow, be tendered and flourish. Life is full of risk, therapy has some risks but if you’re that way inclined, I can’t think of a better way to find meaning and deep support for the person you truly want to be.