Individual Counselling & Psychotherapy

in Edinburgh

Below you will find a compilation of the most common questions I’ve been asked about regarding counselling. If you have questions please don't hesitate to contact me and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Typical questions are:

• It is possible to save a relationship that has been emotionally and sexually dead for years?

• It is possible for the love to come back?

• Is it possible to stop the rows and the power struggles?

• Is it possible to recover from an affair?

• Is it possible to communicate to your partner and be understood?

The answer to these questions is Yes, and it takes work and commitment​!​

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How Counselling or Psychotherapy may Help.

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1. Improved self-awareness, helping you to cope with everyday challenges.

2. Deeper understanding about the impact of the past and your previous relationships, helping you from feeling stuck.

3. Stronger and more meaningful relationships with other people, helping to build real intimacy, love and contentment.

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Psychotherapy is based on the idea that what causes people emotional and interpersonal difficulties are outside of their ability to know about them. This is why the advice of family and friends, self-help books and strategies, and willpower, while helpful at times, fail to provide the lasting relief from the issues that bedevil a person. Psychotherapy explores how these unconscious factors affect current relationships and patterns of thought, behaviour and emotions.

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For me psychotherapy has three aspects to it: 

Firstly, it is often a way experiencing ourselves in a different and deeper way. Psychotherapy offers a safe context within which to examine the complexity of our lives and the suffering we all experience as human beings. It is a way of listening to, witnessing and understanding a person or a group of people.

Secondly, psychotherapy is a body of knowledge and theory describing why humans do what they do. There are many different theories, old and new, in psychotherapy, but all have one tenet in common: experience with other people from the very beginnings of life, even in utero some believe, matter and shape who we become. Many divergent fields of science are providing proof of what the early founders of psychoanalysis theorised without the benefit of the amazing scientific technology we have today.

Thirdly, psychotherapy is a system of strategies and techniques used to help people overcome the difficulties in living. It assumes that each person's life history is unique, determined by environment and genetics. As a psychotherapist I strive to create a safe and protected environment for my clients to unravel the emotional and relational knots that keep them caught in difficulties. My ideas about the person's difficulties and my treatment strategies are co-created from the collaboration between the client and myself and are particular to that person at that time in their lives and the treatment.