Humanist Psychotherapy
You might be disenchanted with materialism. Or perhaps you might find that the mainstream therapy approaches overly focus on thoughts and leave little room for life-changing, hard-to-capture moments, such as religious experiences. Humanistic psychotherapy is where your concerns can find a home.
How I use it to help
Humanistic psychotherapy derives from humanism, which explores the human condition and the meaning we derive from it. Humanistic psychotherapy honours and promotes reconciliation with the aesthetic, the spiritual, and the so-called ‘imperfect’ sides of our natures. I work with three types, which I outline below.
Person-centred Therapy
Person-centred Theory (PCT) assumes that each person knows intuitively how to grow, but that values or assumptions borrowed from, or imposed by, others prevent natural growth. When the client experiences support and understanding from the counsellor in a safe therapeutic environment, their intuition can start to flourish, improving the client's confidence and a sense of control.
Existential Therapy
Existential Therapy is built on four primary themes, each of which guides therapeutic discussions: death, anxiety, meaning, and freedom.
I employ techniques such as Socratic Questioning (“going down the rabbit hole”), normalization (as seen in grief), and supporting the client’s agency to uncover explore how each theme applies to the client's life.
Gestalt Therapy
Have you ever replayed something in your mind and let go when the right idea just clicked into place? Gestalt Therapy holds that feelings can get stuck and endlessly replay in our minds, and that clients can resolve them with the right concept (called “a Gestalt”). Using this model, I sometimes bring awareness to physical reactions, often related to stuck feelings, or ask the client to speak aloud a dialogue they’re having internally, until the proper Gestalt surfaces.