I will greet you with an open, respectful and gentle attitude.

As an Existential therapist I help clients to understand themselves and their worlds better through an exploration of what things mean to them, what is important to them, and their emotional reactions to their experiences and to the people in their lives.

I will challenge your assumptions and any contradictions in what you say. I will encourage you to view your life from different perspectives, come to terms with uncertainties and to be open to new possibilities and choices.

Existential therapy draws on philosophy and psychology. Central to it is the fact that all of us experience a level of anxiety about life and its uncertainties. We cannot control every aspect of life and sometimes it throws very difficult things at us which can upend our existence. Learning to accept uncertainty and anxiety helps us to a positive future, embracing life with all its ups and downs.

Existential therapy is client-led and empowering. It focuses on the present, although previous life-experiences are considered too, as they can provide insight into our current choices and ways of viewing the world. It does not diagnose or pathologize but rather views each person as an individual with their own struggle.

Existential thought considers important aspects of our lives such as our ability to create who we are and to recognize that we are not fixed, though we might believe we are. It encourages us to embrace our freedom within certain limits to take hold our lives and how we live them, to recognise how being with others influences us, and to tune in to our emotions.

A greater understanding of our reactivity helps to bring greater clarity on how we have been living and how we might want to live in the future. It can also help us understand others better.

I will encourage you to describe how you are feeling, how experiences and relationships impact you, how you think, how you anticipate new encounters will unfold.

Sometimes we can be so stuck, so ‘sedimented’ in our views. We can believe there is no way out, things will always be a certain way, and that we do not have the power to change things. Feeling like this can lead us to frustration, low mood and even quite dark and desperate thoughts. Yet there are other ways.

We have choice over how we perceive ourselves, our world, our prospects.

Therapy with me will help you to shed light on your ways of thinking and being.