MY APPROACH TO PSYCHOTHERAPY

Professional qualifications and work experience give the psychotherapist theoretical knowledge and technical skills. Personal psychotherapy and professional supervision enable the psychotherapist to understand his/her own life experiences and inner processes. Understanding his/her own assumptions, inner processes and values enables the therapist to use them, where appropriate, to assist the client’s desired changes and to keep them separate, where necessary, from the client’s experiences. This gives an added dimension and a depth to the psychotherapy or counselling.

Out of this melting pot of the personal and the professional comes a unique way of working with the client to help him or her resolve problems and gain a more satisfying way of life.




The account of the dream in particular tells me that everyone runs his/her own Life race, and that there are as many running paths as there are people, and as many ways of running. Some of those ways of running the race may be similar to my own, others distinctly different. As a therapist it is important to acknowledge each client’s individuality and diversity and to fit the . It is important to acknowledge the creativity and courage required of each person to run his/her race and that each person must choose the pace and the way of running. In each client’s race, the psychotherapist is one of the “helpers”, one of those who support, encourage, offer insights and strategies when required, one who values each race as an individual creative effort, but never runs the race for the client.

My own experience has taught me to value commitment, courage, acceptance of life’s ups and downs, perseverance, and to accept that we do not automatically have these. They are ideals to strive for.

I have learnt that living this life is our task, however harsh and painful it may be. We make of this life, and ourselves, the best race and the best person, we can.

There help available when the going is hard. It is there, though sometimes hard to recognize or accept. The help comes sometimes from outside, sometimes also from within ourselves

I have learnt that Life will test us to the limit. Terror, pain, exhaustion, loss, loneliness, frustration, despair, confusion are as much part of Life as joy, companionship, courage, content, hope, clarity and a sense of direction.

The dream tells me that Life changes and that the good bits will alternate with the painful bits and that to avoid the pain is to opt out of Life. But it also tells me that we do sometimes need to pause, to recoup and to reconsider. To blunder on blindly without considering what we do, where we are going and to what purpose we run as we do, is to run unconsciously and miss the lessons we can learn from our race.

These experiences teach me that this is a long term process, a life long process, and that each person will run Life’s race at a pace he/she can manage. Some will go at it hard and long, not stopping; others take the race in short bursts, or slowly and cautiously. Each person’s mode of travel is unique and good psychotherapy respects this, encourages where it can and respects the need to draw breath. The client determines the pace and mode of the race.

From the story of the poet’s eye I have learnt that nothing and nobody is what they seem and that within the roughest and most broken exterior there is something more, something greater, striving to become.

I have learnt so much in my meetings with clients. They have moved and inspired me with the sheer raw courage they have shown. They have shaken me out of complacency and forced me to consider them, their issues and myself, in a new and creative way – repeatedly. To all of them my heartfelt thanks.