Attachment-Based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Supervision in Walthamstow
Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Welcome to my website. Life can be tough sometimes. We may have feelings we struggle to cope with or understand or we might have a decision or life change we struggle to navigate. In any instance therapy and counselling might be helpful. There may be a specific situation, relationship dynamic or feeling past or present you wish to explore or make sense of, particularly if this is creating unease or struggle in your life right now.
Attachment-Based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
I am a UKCP-registered attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist, counsellor, supervisor and teacher. I have twenty years experience working with adults in individual one-to-one therapy both in person and online and supervising and teaching prospective future clinicians in training. Here are some of the ways I can help you:
Open ended Psychotherapy and Counselling
Open ended therapy offers an opportunity for you to build a therapeutic alliance and explore your struggles in as little or as long a time as you wish. This can be a very enriching and fulfilling experience and may involve focussing on a particular issue in your life or exploring more general themes that are bothering you. People come to therapy for many reasons and you can find out more about this in the 'About Psychotherapy' page on this website. Do also read on and see 'Wisdom from the Consulting Room' below for guidance on what to think about when seeking a suitable therapist.
Focussed Brief Psychotherapy
This offers you the opportunity to focus on a particular issue or problem and tackle this in a limited number of sessions, usually between 6 and 10 sessions. It will be more direct and will require more work in between sessions to think about and tackle the issue in your own time.
Supervision
I also offer one-to-one supervision for those psychotherapists and counsellors interested in an attachment-based framework and clinicans-in-training. If you are a psychotherapist, counsellor or trainee and are interested in an attachment framework please do not hesitate to drop me a line.
The Initial Consultation
Depending on my availability, the next step is for us to talk on the phone when we will discuss your needs, expectations and interests from therapy or supervision in more detail. The purpose of this brief meeting is to see how you feel being in the room with me and ask any questions that may have about the way I work. Then we just take it one step at a time and see how we go with the issues you wish to explore or make sense of.
If you are interested in any of these approaches and wish to find out more, you can visit the 'About Psychotherapy', 'About Nicky' and 'What to Expect' pages or drop me an email.
Wisdom from the Consulting Room.
Making Guesses
Sometimes I meet people who worry an awful lot about what people think of them, turning over in their heads what they might have said to their colleague on that night out or imagining why the person they know and like has walked past them in the street and not acknowledged them. ‘What did I say to offend them? What might I have done to make them think and feel badly of me?’. We are hard-wired to stay attached to others for our own survival, initially our primary caregivers and then later relationships outside our family of origin therefore if we are anxious in our attachments we might put a lot of time and energy into being good or acceptable to other people and therefore work very hard to figure out what they need and want from us. We in turn, in our anxiety, can make very definite ‘certain’ guesses about what someone is thinking and feeling. What I often say in situations like these is that we can only ever make guesses about what people are thinking and feeling as we cannot read their mind or know for a fact what they are feeling until they tell us. What I suggest in this instance is to ask ‘What other guesses might you make? You might be absolutely right about your friend ignoring you but on the other hand there might be other possibilities about what is going on’. This is not to minimise or undermine someone’s assessment of a situation but to encourage a loosening up and flexibility in our thinking about what someone might think and feel just enough to release the anxiety and help us think more clearly about what we are going to do next. Could the friend who walked in the street be having a bad day or have just received some bad news?’ ‘Or could they be preoccupied with all the things they have to do that day?’ ‘Or if they are genuinely upset with you, why might that be and what can you do about it?’ ‘Or is this a pattern in them to ignore people unexpectedly?’
So the next time you find yourself anxious about what someone is thinking about you and convinced you have done something bad or wrong, ask yourself what other guesses you could make, what other possibilities could exist. Can this then alleviate the anxiety enough to help you think more flexibly about what you next steps will be and what help you might need in doing so, whether this is speaking to the friend directly or making an appropriate adjustment in the friendship? Or doing nothing and see if it happens again. I hope you found this helpful and if you are struggling with anxious feelings about what others think of you then do not hesitate to reach out to a trusted professional.
If you are interested in counselling and psychotherapy contact me on 0208 509 2849.