You

Thinking about therapy can bring up many questions. I've answered some of them here. If you have any others, please ask.

*N.B. If you are an organisation looking for performance coaching or wellbeing & therapy sessions for your team, please contact me directly.

Ask A Question
  • What is therapy?
  • How can therapy help me?
  • Do you have experience working with my situation?
  • What will happen?
  • Will it be worth it?
  • How long will it take & how much will it cost?
  • Will I feel embarrassed?

What is therapy?

Therapy is a process, using evidence-based methods to support the change you want to make. This can include addressing thoughts, feelings, and actions, as well as your relationship with your self, others, and your life. 

Therapy provides space, structure, and safety. It is non-judgmental, challenging, and supportive. And you might find it more enjoyable than you expect.

You can find out more details about the therapeutic methods I use in The work section, here.

How can therapy help me?

There many reasons people use therapy. For example,

  • to move out of a deficit
  • to explore
  • to move from good to great
  • to create rest, peace, and ease

Most often, we will experience a mix of these during and after the work

Move Out Of A Deficit

There’s something that’s not OK. And you’ve decided it’s not OK for you that it remains that way. It may be something acute that’s happened suddenly, like a loss of job, or relationship, or health. It may be something chronic that’s been difficult for a long time and you know that now it has to be addressed, like habits that impact your health, or anxiety leading to avoidance, meaning you’re not progressing at work or connecting with friends or partners in meaningful ways.

Therapy can help get you out of the deficit – and, once out, something else becomes very important too. Let’s use an analogy: you’re going about your life as normal and suddenly you sprain your ankle. You go to a physio, get it checked & taped up for stability, told to rest, and to do the rehab exercises until you’re in less pain.

Many people will comply, joylessly, until they’re about 70% back to where they were. And as they adjust to their new normal, bored of the rehab, they just make do with having a slight limp, near constant pain, and a less functional ‘normal’.

This can be devastating for quality of life. And for me, it’s heartbreaking, because doesn’t have to end like this.

To extend the metaphor to a far better result: we would want to look at why your environment had trip hazards and what we could do to remove them; what are the conditions that resulted in you not having been able to build your strength and capabilities for resilience to such challenges; what your beliefs and expectations are that mean you accept a lower quality of life than is readily available to you; whether there are limiting factors in your values, in how you see yourself, and your life progressing.

In short, now that you can metaphorically walk again, what would you love to do now? Surfing? Skiing? Parkour?? What are your mental, emotional, relational equivalents? As Mary Oliver wrote: what will you do “with your one wild and precious life?”

So we’ll be looking for exciting, enlivening, and compelling reasons for change. If you want it to be, the new normal may well be better than your previous one.

Explore

There may be past events, current situations, future goals you want to explore. Maybe it is the reasons for your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Maybe it’s their possibilities that have you curious. Humans are great storytellers, and the meanings we make of our lives matter. Those meanings we create affect our identities, values, relationships, in sum the qualities of our lives. By creating better understandings of our past, present and future we get to create for ourselves richer, deeper, brighter lives.

Move From Good To Great

How can I get better at this? How can I enjoy that even more?

You may be an athlete looking to take your performance to the next level by developing routes into optimal states, pre, during, and post practice and events.

You may be a manager aspiring to further leadership roles and need to improve your public speaking. You may already be practicing, may already have developed a degree of proficiency and credibility, but you’re still not yet able to really capitalise on your strengths. You may have thoughts along the lines of “if only my mind would stop worrying so much about what other people think… and how much my hands are sweating and my voice is shaking… then I’d be able to focus, find my thoughts, and do justice to myself and my team.”

If you’re looking to improve performance, sports psychology has a lot to offer for mental, emotional, and physical progression.

Create Rest, Peace, and Ease

Not all goals are about self-improvement, -development, and -betterment. And change isn’t just about striving and struggling to move away from pain, towards pleasure, or for improved performance.

Wellbeing is about being well, not just doing well.

Sometimes what we need is the space, structure, and trust, to be seen, to be heard, and to have our truth acknowledged. This in itself can be hugely freeing.

Do you have experience working with my situation?

Probably.

My experience includes working with

  • feeling anxious
  • feeling depressed
  • procrastination
  • fear of doing something
  • issues with food and body
  • changing habits
  • improving performance in sports, in sales, in speaking
  • trauma
  • grief and loss
  • loneliness
  • developing confidence
  • calming overthinking
  • improving communication, team, and relationship skills
  • building self-esteem
  • clarifying goals, values, and purpose
  • finding meaning beyond yourself
  • dealing with burnout
  • improving well-being

If your situation is not included here, feel free to get in touch so we can talk about it. If we’re not a good fit, I may be able to refer you to a specific colleague.

What will happen?

When you contact me, we’ll arrange a good time for a 15 minute phone call. This will help us decide if we want to work together. If we do then I’ll send you some information for you to read and respond to before our first session.

The session can be in person at my practice in London, or online.

The purpose of the first session is to map where you currently are, what you want to change, and what you’d love the outcome to be. We will then be able to arrange our schedule of sessions accordingly.

After the first session, sometimes single ad hoc sessions will be appropriate.

More often, a set of 3 to 6 subsequent sessions is more effective. We know that sometimes when we get to a difficult point in a process we can think about stopping, not yet realising that we’re at a key learning point that can be the difference that makes the difference to our lives if only we had a way of seeing it through. So, our success is significantly improved by a secure structure of planned and progressive sessions over time. This means we’re more likely to reach a celebration point you can be truly proud of.

In some cases, we can also consider a more immersive approach and include intensive work for a half day, after our initial session.

 

We will tailor our approach to your needs.

Will it be worth it?

That’s a judgment only you can make, and only once you’ve done the work.

 

A useful question to consider is: what will happen if you don’t find out? There’s a reason you’re thinking about therapy. Most likely there is something you want. If you don’t get that thing, what will your life be like? What will become impossible or unavailable to you? Will that be OK for you?

 

Insight can happen quickly, which is wonderful. Then, making permanent positive change requires practice – sometimes gentle, sometimes determined. The results you experience will depend upon the energy, focus, and consistency you have available.

Rest assured that no effort is wasted. And no one can know what will grow from the seeds planted. But we do know that if we don’t plant the seeds then no, they won’t grow.

 

A useful analogy is that of two boats setting out to sea. There is a difference of only one degree in their trajectory. At first there seems to be no difference in their directions, yet over time they end up in very different locations. We can use this power of marginal gains to our advantage, and we can track and celebrate each step of your achievements along the way.

 

I myself have worked through issues with PTSD, anxiety, and grief, and used therapeutic tools to enhance athletic, creative, professional, and personal aspects of my life. The people I’ve worked with have overcome hundreds of other challenges. The methods themselves have changed the lives of thousands. And for me, these practices made possible qualities of aliveness, performance, connection – and enjoyment (who knew!) – that would otherwise have been impossible. What I’ve learnt by doing continues to be transformational – and that’s what makes it worth it.

How long will it take & how much will it cost?

Each standard session lasts 75 minutes.

Immersive half day sessions of course are longer. And depending on your needs we may consider other formats.

Because the format of the work is adaptable to your specific situation, the cost varies accordingly, so we’ll work out what’s right for you when we speak.

 

The number of sessions will vary, depending on the time you have available, the number of things you want to look at, and whether you’re looking for an intense period of work or a longer term development.

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I do pro bono work, however these times are currently taken with no further availability. If you would like to be kept informed of changes, please feel free to sign up to my newsletter here

Will I feel embarrassed?

Maybe, and that’s OK. There are things we don’t usually talk about, so it can feel odd at first, but most people find it becomes much easier much faster than they’d imagined.

 

It is your choice what to say and what not to say. You never need to share anything you don’t want to. We go at your pace, to the depth and detail of your choice.

 

Sometimes we just need someone to hear us say what’s true for us, in a safe and non-judgmental space. Sometimes we need detailed interventions. And sometimes we just want structures to work within, without sharing the content of our lives. Any combination of these is fine.

 

I understand the worry, I’ve been there myself. Having now done this work for many years, I can assure you here as a therapist once assured me: it’ll be OK, we can do hard things, and you might find it’s easier than you expect.

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