FAQs

Yes, yes to friends and family – if you have them – but they can also be distracted by their own problems and not trained to respond to painful feelings. Most of all, friends and family can have a personal investment in the outcome, whereas ultimately a therapist does not.

Although the two are used interchangeably now more, counselling can be shorter than psychotherapy and focussed on helping address specific present-day problems or challenges. Therapy is often longer-term (the training is usually longer, too) and delves more deeply into underlying issues and patterns. As an integrative counsellor and therapist, I believe in addressing the past, present and the future.

Ha. I think it’s a useful tool for therapeutic questions you may wish to ask it, rather like all the self-help books in the world condensed. And sometimes we may just want clarity. We can read a hundred brilliant self-help books and not change however, because as humans we and our problems are more complex – for example, rationally, I know I need to lose weight, so I don’t have a heart attack, so why am I stuffing cake? 

AI is also different to being with another human being. Counselling, like all relationships, is a process between two people. It’s not about the right response but about feeling your impact on another person. And bots bypass the unconscious projection of emotional needs that therapists are trained to notice and contain. With AI, there’s no one to witness the projection or work through it. To me, it’s perhaps receiving exactly what you ask for, without confronting what you actually need.

Some people need a few sessions and others longer term. After an initial meeting, if you want to continue, I usually suggest six sessions. After this, we can review how the work is going.

Rather than comparing the size of your struggles with others, it may be more useful to ask different questions; to think about the impact your problems are having on you and how negative this is, or to become interested in why you are comparing yourself to others: is this familiar to you or something you do often? Would you like to do things differently or want things to change? If so, therapy could be right for you.

Perhaps you find silences challenging for a reason and it would be helpful to explore this. If you come to any session and don’t know what to say, I will check what’s happening for you, whereupon something invariably emerges.

Psychotherapy is my livelihood but that doesn’t mean that the therapeutic relationship between us is not real or a real relationship. I see it as a real, caring relationship with parameters.

I see it as an important part of my job to inspire trust and confidence in you and in the relationship between us, so that you feel able to share things that feel difficult, when you are ready: I respect your pace. I also say that to survive pain or loss for example, you will need to revisit it at some point. Some people get more anxious initially, or depressed, but this will pass.

Often when we begin therapy, we are looking for a toolkit: techniques and strategies. We want to ask questions and get answers -- please help me manage my emotions or get rid of them. There is no right way to do life, however. I am an integrative therapist and I will help with everyday strategies and tools. I also believe therapy is about something deeper; for example, tolerating something that was once felt to be unbearable. It gives you time to think, investigate, and pause, rather than react to life or triggers. This isn’t something you can read up on, it comes with a sustained therapeutic relationship which addresses the issues underneath; depressions, anxieties and unconscious dynamics that can steal our peace and rob our life of joy.