I am a Gestalt Therapist based in Bristol city centre close to Bristol Beacon and Park Street. I hold the Masters in Gestalt Psychotherapy from Birmingham University, having trained at the Sherwood Institute, and have trained in Somatic Trauma Therapy with Babette Rothschild. I am a fully Registered UKCP psychotherapist.
I decided to train as a psychotherapist because I want to make a positive difference in the world. Psychotherapy has always struck me as being fundamentally about freedom; both freedom from suffering, and freedom to live truly.
These freedoms are gained by undertaking a journey of self exploration, discovery, and transformation. Psychotherapy is a journey of empowerment, during which each traveller gradually realises the extent to which it is in their power to choose suffering or being.
My specific clinical interests at this time are depression; trauma; and existential crisis. These are all experiences that involve a fundamental rupture between the individual, and a sense of satisfaction with life or belonging in the world. This rupture brings with it great suffering.
It is the depth of this suffering that makes the transformative journey of psychotherapy more feasible. This is because our need to transform is usually less powerful than our need to stay the same. When our dissatisfaction with the life we are living grows strong, or when our sense of belonging in the world is ruptured, our need for transformation outweighs our need to stay the same.
At the very least, psychotherapy is a way of healing the human spirit. At its most advanced, psychotherapy is a way of using suffering as a path that leads to a new way of being. Both of these possibilities excite me as ways of making a positive difference in the world.
