Do you chase unavailable romantic partners?
Find yourself putting them on a pedestal?
Do you pick arguments to push safe and available people away?
But you’re clueless about why you do this? Or how to change?
You’d like a healthy and supportive relationship and fear you will ‘miss the boat’ and grow old alone?
investment is £100 per 50-minute therapy session
I trained for 6 years in Gestalt therapy and this fundamentally informs my approach to therapy.
Gestalt theory posits that we have an innate drive for growth and integration and that as a therapist my job is to facilitate you to connect with this innate ability.
I do not ‘fix’ you or tell you what to do. To do so would be to disempower you and wouldn’t lead to sustainable change.
I support you to find your own new creative way of being in the world you create lasting positive changes that best suit you in your situation.
One way I support you to do this is by raising your awareness of unhelpful ways of thinking and doing. These were the best way to manage your childhood environment so they are not ‘wrong’.
For example, we might have learned to make ourselves small to keep out of the way of an erratic and violent parent. This kept us safe. However if we keep on making ourselves ‘small’ as adults we are not taken seriously and get taken advantage of.
Gestalt therapy helps us to gain awareness of behaviours and beliefs that we took on to survive that we now do automatically without thinking and don’t serve us.
Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological approach which means it places a lot of value on the present. I explore with you how your ‘issue’ is showing up in the present.
It is an existential therapy which means it emphasises the influence we have over our situation. We are able to change our response. In a session we might experiment with changing your response.
I might invite you to imagine your boss is in the room and you respond to them differently. This is not supposed to be a role play, just a way to try out a different way of showing up in the world.
Gestalt is holistic and takes into consideration the whole of your experience: body, mind and emotion. In a session I often ask what’s happening in your body as you say something or enquire what the movement might be that goes with a thought. Listening to all of you gives us more insights and understanding.
Gestalt is a relational therapy. We develop ways of being that currently don’t serve us as a result of relational trauma. . We can also heal in relationship.
I provide a safe space with containing boundaries where I intend to help you feel seen and heard. I may at times share my emotional or physical response to you if I think it will shed light on your process and what we are trying to shift.
I combine Gestalt therapy with attachment-informed EMDR and IFS parts work.
Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic approach created by Richard. C. Schwartz that works well with both EMDR and Gestalt Therapy. It explains that we all have different parts, for example a happy part, an anxious part, a sad part.
Jacob Moreno, the founder of psychodrama first refers to the ‘parts’ of us. Sometimes our parts are very polarised, destructive or unhelpful. This might be an eating disordered part, a depressed part or a panicky part, amongst others.
This is when intervening therapeutically can be effective. We do that by first getting to know the part. We find out how long it has been around, how it developed, and most importantly what it is doing for us.
However unhelpful a behaviour seems, all of our parts have a benevolent intention. They developed in childhood or adolescence as a creative adjustment to our life situation at the time.
We might have developed a controlling part to help us cope with overwhelming anxiety that our caretakers were not available to soothe. Perhaps we developed an angry part to protect ourselves by scaring an abusive parent.
We might have developed an anxious part to try to stay hyper-vigilant and stay. These parts want to help us but are stuck in the past. They think we are still the vulnerable child and teenager and are unaware that we are better able to support ourselves now.
They are called protector or manager parts Often they don’t want to give up their role as they are covering up even more painful parts which are called exiles. These may be feelings of deep grief, utter helplessness, or burning shame, amongst others. We don’t want to feel these painful feelings, who would after all? Through the IFS process we are able to process these underlying painful feeling states. By doing so, we also find that the unhelpful protective behaviours cease.
What can IFS be used for?
It can be used to work with any unhelpful behaviour like addiction, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, anger, OCD, amongst many others.
Case Study
This is an amalgamation of several client’s experiences. All identifying information has been changed. Tom, a father of two, came to see me as he was getting disproportionately angry with his partner when they didn’t ‘back him up’ on parenting decisions. He felt disrespected and as if he didn’t matter in these moments.
Using Gestalt Therapy we looked at ways that Tom could communicate the message in his anger in a calmer yet assertive way. We then dialogued with the angry part to see what it was trying to do for him. He imagined the angry part as a younger version of him with a red face, wearing rugby shorts and vest.
The angry part told us he’s been around since Tom was 14. He developed in order to stop other kids at school bullying him. He’d also developed to stop his father shouting and him and criticising him. It didn’t want to let go as he feared if not that Tom would feel powerless and vulnerable. It did eventually let us talk to the powerless and vulnerable part that was around 6 years old.
It described how difficult life was at the age when Tom’s parents were divorcing, and they didn’t have much time for him. The is part was scared and lonely. We helped this part to unburden by sharing its’ feelings.
We added some bilateral stimulation to this unburdening. By the end of the session Tom imagined that part in a safe place, it felt a lot lighter. When I asked him to consider the recent moment when he felt triggered by his partner, he felt less angry about it. As the weeks went on he developed more choice about how he reacted to the triggering situation and he was able to speak calmly with his partner to resolve it.
"When I came to see you I had been signed off work for 3 months with depression. I felt helpless to overcome my low mood and anxiety. With a combination of our sessions and medication I am now living a full life. I feel more in control in my Managing Director role and am finally free to enjoy family life too. I feel so much more present. Thank you!"
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Meet your Therapist, Alexandra
I’m Alexandra, an accredited Gestalt psychotherapist and EMDR practitioner working with individuals and groups. I trained for six years at the Gestalt Centre London and have done additional Attachment-Focussed EMDR Therapy training with leaders in the field, Mark Brayne in the UK and Laurell Parnell in the US. As well as a flourishing private practice I have worked for a private Harley St psychiatric clinic in London as well as Associate Tutor at the University of Surrey Counselling Psychology Doctorate programme. Due to my special interest in trauma I worked as a specialist complex trauma therapist at the world-renowned Khiron House residential trauma treatment facility. Most recently I have been the Year Tutor teaching on the Gestalt Therapy MA programme at the Gestalt Centre, London.
A highly experienced and skilled psychotherapist and coach I have undergone around 8 years of therapy training myself which is essential to really go deep with someone. As a therapist-coach I balance the patience, compassion and self-acceptance necessary for therapy to work with goals and structure.. I value authenticity: this shows up in how I express myself to you and how I try to ‘get’ the true you. I aim to accept your individuality in all its diversity. I excel at making things happen and gettng results and I delight in supporting you to realise the truest, happiest version of yourself.
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