How I work
I offer a space to explore your inner world without judgement, so different aspects of your experience can begin to come into view. You might find yourself becoming more aware of thoughts, feelings, or patterns that felt difficult to make sense of, or that seem to work against you.
I am trained in Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, an approach born out of the Object Relations tradition in psychoanalysis. This approach understands our sense of self to be shaped through our formative relationships, and recognises that these patterns continue to shape our inner worlds and external relationships into adulthood.
It assumes that our early experiences continue to reverberate in our internal world, shaping how we understand ourselves and our relationships as adults. It is also attentive to the fact that both therapist and client contribute to the dynamics that emerge in the room, and that these experiences, when lived through and thought about together, can be an important part of the work.
Similarly, I understand therapy to be a developmental process. While psychodynamic work can help clarify destructive patterns in the short term, lasting change is more likely to emerge through the repeated experience of coming to sessions over time, as well as through what emerges between sessions and during breaks.
While based on a rich theoretical tradition, the way I work is rarely about applying theory to your situation. We begin with whatever you bring, and there is no fixed map for what will unfold.
Some of the ideas that inform my work as a therapist include:
Working with uncertainty
Rather than moving quickly towards explanation, this work involves staying with what is not yet known or fully understood. This can be challenging, but it is often within this space that new meanings and possibilities begin to emerge.
Beyond thinking
Although therapy is centred on talking, this doesn’t mean it’s limited to cognitive processes. I aim to attend to emotional and embodied experiences, which can indicate areas of "stuckness" that articulation may help to resolve. I also aim to hold space for times when words do not feel like enough.
We are formed through relationship
The environment in which we first found ourselves shapes the foundation of our psychology. These early experiences continue to reverberate in our internal world, shaping how we understand ourselves and our relationships as adults.
Limits and trauma
While part of the work may involve coming into contact with intense or uncomfortable feelings, this should be within a range that can be borne. If experiences such as flashbacks or extreme dissociation arise in session, I am trained to offer grounding and regulation strategies.
Who is psychodynamic therapy for?
Psychodynamic therapy can be helpful for anyone who is interested in understanding themselves more deeply. You might be feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or alone in your experience, or have a sense that something is wrong, even if it’s difficult to put into words.
This way of working can be especially useful if you find that familiar patterns keep repeating, or if previous approaches have helped in some ways but haven’t quite reached what feels more underlying or difficult to access.
Rather than focusing solely on symptom relief or working toward a specific goal, psychodynamic therapy aims to understand the person as a whole, including the less conscious aspects of experience that can shape how we feel and relate to others.
People come to this kind of therapy for many different reasons. You might recognise yourself in some of the experiences below:
Persistent anxiety or depression
Exploring the deeper, often less visible roots of low mood or a pervasive sense of unease.Relational patterns
Recurring difficulties in how you relate to others, or a sense of being stuck in familiar but unhelpful dynamics.Loss of meaning or identity
Periods of transition, or a general sense of emptiness or lack of direction.Complex grief
Losses that feel difficult to move through or process, perhaps because of the relationship to a person, a group or way of living.Early-life and attachment trauma
Formative experiences of neglect, abuse or rupture.Somatic or embodied distress
Where emotional pain is experienced physically, or as a sense of disconnection from the body.