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||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Philippa Perry MAHPP UKCP
Psychotherapist
and Counsellor ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Wilmington Square, London, WC1 020 7713 0030 or email (when e-mailing please put "therapy" in the subject line). I work with individual adults, couples and groups. I work with people who want to sort out a particular problem, work through difficult feelings as well as with people who are interested in personal and professional development and/or wish to develop more personal awareness. The initial session will not be charged for if either of us decide not to take it any further. The normal charge for a session is £40.00. My Experience In 1986 I trained and volunteered for the Samaritans. Here I learnt about the power of talking and being listened to and understood and how that could save lives and improve lives. I was so struck by this that I trained as a counsellor. Then undertook further training to graduate as a psychotherapist. I have worked as a volunteer at the Drug and Alcohol Foundation in Westminster, London running groups for people who had a substance mis-use problem and a mental health diagnosis (Dual-Diagnosis). I worked at Women and Health, as a counsellor and psychotherapist and have served as a member of the Women and Health Management Committee. Since 1999, I've had a private practice at Wilmington Square, London WC1X 0EG. I work with individuals and couples and groups. How I work I believe many people come to therapy because self-protective strategies have become, or can also be, self-destructive strategies. Whilst I think it is important to challenge self-destructive strategy/behaviour I believe it is important to aim to understand the feelings that lie beneath it by inquiring, imagining and checking out assumptions (mine and the client’s). If I understand the feeling behind a behaviour and can emphasise with it, I can hopefully help to raise awareness of the behaviour or strategy in a way less likely to shame the client. I believe that empathy creates the best context for growth. I
believe that change occurs when one becomes what one is, not when one
tries to become what one is not. Before
people come to therapy many people have tried to change and have not
succeeded or have only partially succeeded which is why they have sought
help. What I am always
looking for is how a client talks to themselves, how they organise
themselves somatically, how they are feeling, what they feel their needs
to be, their belief systems and their cultural context.
I am also interested in how it feels for me to be in relationship
with them. I believe our
relationships contribute to how we form ourselves by the attunement we
have received or have not received from our parents, carers and peers
and I believe that a profound new relational experience can be the cause
of change as the experience of the relationship demonstrates what is
possible in relationship. What
I find particularly rewarding about the work is how the client gets more
insight into who they are and how they are in the world and begins to
find more of their own inner wisdom. What they've known all along finds
more of a voice and they can begin to hear it more clearly. When people
start doing psychotherapy relevant memories come to the surface and
dreams can provide more information than they may have realised they had
access to. The experience has led me to believe that we have an inner
drive to fulfil potential, to become fully more of who we are, and we
can learn to tap into this drive to our, and to the world's, advantage.
In
my practice I aim to facilitate what I see as this self actualisation
drive in my clients and to facilitate their taking charge of their own
lives. The
way I do this may differ from client to client.
I believe that the most important aspect of my humanistic
practice is the relationship I have with each client.
I believe it is important to give clients the experience of a
relationship that is for their sake (unlike a social relationship which
is more mutually based) where I attempt to attune to their needs and
work to understand how they feel and experience themselves and how they
experience themselves in relationship.
Like Yalom I believe that people are usually in psychotherapy
because of some interruption to contact that people experience in
relationships with others. I
draw on a variety of techniques such as drawing a client’s attention
to their process as well as attending to the content of what they bring.
To do this I use models from family therapy, transactional
analysis, psychosynthesis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, gestalt and
others, as well as my own experience and observation.
However I believe no technique would work unless there is a
working alliance between the client and the therapist.
How I organise myself in the relationship will vary from client
to client. For example a
client neglected by a distracted depressed parent may respond better
with a therapist with a spontaneous, interested, talkative way of being.
On the other hand, a client with intrusive, demanding parents and
older siblings might find a quieter, non-intrusive presence to be just
what she needs. I respect the individuality of the client and aim to
attune to it whilst staying centred in myself .
I aim to be in control of my own boundaries in a session balanced
with taking my lead from the needs of the client.
Here are some frequently asked questions and expressed doubts about starting therapy. For other therapists in other areas please go to www.ahpp.org The UK Association for Humanistic Psychology Practitioners.
THEORY LINKS An example of the work of Allan Schore, psychotherapist and neuroscientist Gestalt Therapy, An Introduction, Gary Yontef http://www.behavior.net/gestalt.html A Gestalt Therapy Approach to Shame and Self-Righteousness: Richard G. Erskine, British Gestalt Journal, 1995,Vol. 4, No2 p. 108-117 www.integrativetherapy.com/article-shame.html IWhat Is Self Psychology? By Paul H. Ornstein, MD http://www.selfpsychology.org/whatis/paulornstein.htm For advice about training please go to www.metanoia.ac.uk or www.psychotherapy.org.uk or www.bacp.co.uk
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