How can I help?
My experience
I work together with people, to find the best way they can resolve current difficulties, and to help them move forward in their lives.
If you are experiencing any of the situations below, you should find counselling and psychotherapy helpful.
Stress and burnout
Anxiety and depression
Relationships, especially couples
Rebuilding life after sexual abuse and addictions
Coping with physical illness, chronic pain and fatigue
Interest in personal development
Supervision for therapists
I work with people of any age from late teens onwards.
Approaches
I have explored far and wide within the counselling and psychotherapy field, and been most drawn to the more modern approaches which I find warm, friendly, open and affirming.
They focus upon working with people’s strengths, and finding the therapy that best suits the individual. We work together to create the best conditions for transformation to occur.
Added to this, the rapidly growing field of brain science is providing understandings which can guide us towards what is most likely to be effective.
Most of my training and experience has been in three main models of therapy:
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
This approach offers a helpful, non-pathologising and empowering understanding of our inner world and how to work with it, in a way that can be powerfully healing and transforming.
This approach has become enormously popular since being included in Bessel van der Kolk’s bestselling book: The Body Keeps the Score.
In 2011-12 I flew to the USA to train in IFS. In more recent times I have been Certified as an IFS Therapist and have been invited to be a programme assistant on IFS trainings based in Melbourne.
See:
Hakomi Mindfulness-Centred Somatic Psychotherapy
My original training starting in 1993 was in Hakomi Mindfulness-Centred Somatic Psychotherapy and this continues to underlie my approach to working with people.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT)
Relationships are an important part of our lives and I have been fortunate to attend training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy – EFT which is an effective, brief approach for helping couples rebuild their relationship and become close again.
See www.nzceft.org and www.iceeft.com