Psychotherapy
What is psychotherapy?
There are many forms of psychotherapy and counselling, but at heart, they are all simply ways of understanding what we want from our lives and improving how we go about achieving those goals.
Why do problems arise?
As we grow up we learn very quickly “how the world works” and how it affects us. Unfortunately, we do not always come to the most helpful conclusions and we do not always notice when things change. Strategies for circumstances in our lives may become embedded, even though the circumstances may have changed. Without really noticing, we can find ourselves running behaviours that no longer reflect our circumstances no longer provide for our actual needs, in ways that can be at best limiting and at worst harmful to us.
We might make generalisations about our lives based on our experiences that do not always hold true. We may ignore experiences and avoid information that we may not understand, that may make us uncomfortable, or that we simply do not want to know.
Sometimes, we may even reinterpret our experiences to support our current, less-than-helpful view of our lives.
What issues can Psychotherapy help to resolve?
Topics that commonly arise are:
Relationships
Stress and Anxiety
Grief and Bereavement
Assertiveness
Anger
How can Martin help?
During his more than twenty-five years working as a therapist in both the statutory and voluntary sectors, Martin has developed a wide range of skills and techniques that he employs with clients. In doing so, working closely with you as a client, Martin will help you to ensure that the issues and concerns that you want to deal with are explored in a manner that secures the changes that you want to achieve, as quickly as you want them.
What happens in a psychotherapy session?
During each session, Martin may ask you some questions relating to the issues you are facing, and how yo’d like to change. He then works with you to identify new strategies and patterns of beliefs that offer new, better ways of managing these issues; methods tailored to your current needs, that better achieve your desired goals, By taking a “positive” approach throughout therapy, concerned less with what you don’t want and more on what you do want, so the outcomes are tightly focused and successfully achieved far faster and far more elegantly than might otherwise be possible.
In the first session, Martin works with you to design a programme of action. In a short series of normally one-hour sessions, you and Martin then work jointly to help you to implement that plan in everyday life.
How will I know I’m making progress?
Achievements are reviewed at a frequency agreed with Martin. At each review point, you can then decide if you want to carry on, to examine other outstanding concerns or you may decide to break to consolidate your changes, perhaps continuing further work a future date.
Next Steps
You may want to have a chat with Martin before committing to becoming a client. That’s ideal; it will give you any opportunity, free of charge, to discuss your concern ,and to get a sense of whether or not you will be comfortable working with Martin before the need to make any deeper commitment.
Before doing so, it’s often useful to focus on what you’d like to achieve, using a simple exercise. Take a piece of paper and write at the top "What I want.." Then fill the paper with the things that you want to achieve in your life. It’s very common to find yourself with a list of things that you would rather not. For each “not have”, think about adding on "therefore I want" after it, so completing the phrase with something that is positive and which moves you towards your goal.
Having done so, just drop Martin an email or call him to discuss how he might work with you to start making your life more of what you do want, and less of what you don’t want.
All it costs is a chat, and it may be the start of turning your life around.