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MY APPROACH
I am committed to what Johnella Bird (2003) has described as the 'development of processes where discovery is privileged' over and above a strict adherence to the 'structural boundaries produced by models'. I have evolved an approach that draws on ideas and practices that support this process and especially from narrative, psychodramatic and attachment-based therapies. My approach is best described as phenomenological and dialogical, meaning that I stay as close as possible to what is happening for the person who is trying to make sense of their experience and give regard to the dialogue emerging within that person's struggle and between us in our conversations.
The other critical aspect of my way of being as a therapist is in giving space to knowing and naming how the use of power in a person's life has created or contributed to their happiness, situation or suffering. For me, a great deal of a person's suffering, my own included, is entirely understandable where power has been used to marginalize a person and 'other' them. Issues around social justice are therefore central to my understanding of the ongoing process in becoming a person and a therapist.
I set out below something about the processes I use that keep evolving. This will hopefully give you more of a sense of what it might be like to be accompanied by me in working together.​
COLLABORATION
The people I have accompanied in our work together often talk of being lost, waylaid, at a dead end, disoriented or swept off their path, and not knowing how to retrace their steps or find another way, another path to go onward. I cannot know how a person will find their way as each person lives in a unique situation and only they can know where they have come from and where they need and want to go from here. Nor do I want to impose a pre-determined map or 'apply' a model, interpretation or diagnosis.
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What I bring is a knowledge and skills of navigating often difficult and complex landscapes in accompanying many different people on their journeys. In this way I trust in the person I am travelling with to discover how to find their way.
COMPASSION
Compassion is a process of witnessing and giving regard to the unspoken experiences in life. Places in a person that have been minimized, crushed, judged or punished. A person might speak of how they must be 'the problem', that they are 'self-sabotaging' or 'abandoning themselves', 'in denial' or just wrong. This is not to say that a person may not be struggling with these thoughts in genuinely trying to take responsibility or be accountable in new ways for their choices. In my experience, it is more often the case that the person is taking on too much responsibility from a deep place of feeling that they are somehow broken or innately 'messed up' and not belonging in some way.
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​Through creating a compassionate space it is possible to make sense of how the use of power has impacted a person's life, whether that is within the family, at work or in a systemic way in society.
CREATIVITY
We are born with an innate capacity to explore and discover newness and grow in response to others in our lifeworld. Given the conditions of safety, love and encouragement we flourish through play and creativity as children. At the heart of this process is the capacity to be spontaneous and discover a sense of what is possible and who we are becoming. When things become too difficult in life as a child or as an adult through loss, trauma or a change in the conditions of life, this capacity for spontaneity can become greatly diminished and it is then more difficult to adapt and create solutions to problems.
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Part of my approach as a therapist is to co-create the conditions that will support the person to increase their capacity for spontaneity and creating ways to make the changes they want in their life.