In therapy, you can feel heard and understood. You will find new awareness of yourself and how you relate to other people. This can help you to manage painful feelings, feel more confident in your abilities, be more compassionate towards yourself, feel move alive, more of the time.
What might we aim to do?
Of course, goals of therapy vary enormously between different people. But they might include:
- Managing stress and anxiety
- Quietening your internal self-critical voice
- Feeling a closer connection with people who are important to you
- Becoming more able to set boundaries in relationships or at work, reducing overwhelm
- Expressing your anger more constructively
- Making more sense of your past and present
- Making a decision
- Becoming clearer about your purposes in life
How does therapy work?
We all have habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that were what we needed in the past but are no longer working for us. Identifying and understanding what is behind these is the first step to changing them, if that is what you want.
We may find that underneath some of your feelings or thoughts lie others, which are less in awareness but also having a big influence on you. Uncovering these more submerged feelings can enable you to understand yourself better.
We all feel different at different times and also have conflicting thoughts and feelings at the same time. Exploring these conflicts can help you to get different parts of yourself working more in co-operation with each other.
All this can enable you to let go of ways of being, feeling and acting that no longer work for you, expanding the emotional range and the options available to you.
First sessions
I see therapy as a warm, welcoming place where you will be able to say whatever you want to, whether you are clear about it or not, in confidence and without judgement. Nothing that matters to you is too big or too small.
Early sessions give us a chance to meet and see how we feel together. I will be interested in learning about you – what has brought you to therapy, your hopes and anxieties about it, something of your family history and your current day-to-day life. Together we will try to put words to what is troubling you and where you would like to get to in therapy.
The process of therapy
We will meet every week at the same time. Each week we will talk about the areas of your experience that feel most important and emotionally resonant.
We will go at your pace – sometimes you might be bursting with thoughts and feelings you want to share, other times you might feel quieter and want to slow down.
Sometimes we might pause to focus on how we feel in the moment, or to think about something that feels unformed, or something that happened between the two of us which could be an echo of your other relationships.
And it’s not solely about your internal worlds and your important relationships. Wider society, our economic, social and environmental situation, and our identity (gender, sex, culture, heritage, race, body, disability, sexual orientation, age) also affects how we feel in day-to-day life. Another element of therapy can be to clarify feelings that relate to society and culture.
Much of the time, our sessions will feel like a conversation between us. Sometimes we might use photos, music or objects to help express something. We might think about dreams, or physical sensations. We might move around and see how the movements feel.
At times, we might weave in practical methods to help you manage your feelings, for example breathing techniques, mindfulness, bringing images to mind, or focussing on particular thoughts and stepping back from others.
Contact – anna@annathomastherapy.com