My approach to therapy integrates embodied, creative exploration with psychodynamic and relational work. This means that I work in a holistic way, inviting multiple layers of experience to inform us so that feelings can be accessed and shared in different ways. Grounded in a soulful perspective on suffering, I hold a space for disowned feelings and denigrated parts of the self to be experienced differently, and viewed as part of one’s survival story. The safely-held therapeutic relationship can foster the development of self-compassion towards aspects of experience that have felt ‘intolerable’, in turn bringing the potential for change and integration.

My training draws on elements of archetypal and developmental psychology, field theory, and psychodynamic understandings of the unconscious. The ‘integrative’ aspect of my approach describes a combination of traditional talking therapy with creative, relational and embodied approaches. The ‘transpersonal’ refers to what is beyond/greater-than the ‘personal’ or ‘individual’ experience, and therefore connects us to a wider whole. Dreams, stories, images, sensation and movement can become rich sources of exploration in this soulful terrain. By considering distress from an integrative-transpersonal perspective, we can view it through multiple interrelated lenses: personal, relational, sociocultural and soulful/transpersonal.

Often we can place a disproportionate value on thinking and cognitive methods of understanding. These are inarguably important skills, yet they can cause us to become stuck in a binary view of distress, as a problem to be solved or a ‘sickness to be cured’. A broader view would include the role the unconscious has played in bringing suffering to light, so that symptoms of distress are viewed not only as ‘pathologies’, but as valuable messengers communicating a deeper imbalance in need of attention.