What kind of therapist am I?

I've been thinking long and hard about what kind of therapist I am lately. I've been practicing as a counsellor in Wellingborough and online for nearly 5 years now and my approach has evolved and shifted so much since those first, tentative sessions. I sometimes wish I had one recorded so that I can go back, but I know all I would do is spot the missteps, the mistakes and the missed opportunities. To be fair I still do that when I think about my work today, although I'm much better at patting myself on the back for the things that go well, too. I wonder where those first clients are, if they're happy now, or at least able to manage their challenges slightly easier these days.

My core training is as a person-centred therapist. I love the theory: we all have a core sense of ourselves that is shaped and added to by our caregivers, teachers, family, friends, cultures and society. Those conditions tell us how we need to be to be loved and looked after. Sometimes those conditions help us grow in the direction of our full potential, and sometimes they hinder us. The therapy is working to find out what belongs to us and what has come from others. Some conditions we want to keep and some we want to discard. The founder, Carl Rogers, said 'The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change'. When we become aware of and accept the version of ourselves that exists now, we can shed off the layers of conditioning that are hindering us. The core sense (known as the organismic self) emerges and we learn more about our true identity. This makes us more sure of ourselves, more able to trust our thoughts, feelings and decisions. That authenticity and self-acceptance helps us to make more genuine and satisfying relationships with others as well as ourselves.

Working in a purely person-centred way is wonderful so in many ways. My job is to accept you exactly as you are, no matter what you bring, no matter how sad, ashamed, lonely or broken you feel. I'll give you unconditional positive regard - meaning that even when you show me the parts of yourself that you have hidden away, that you don't like or are ashamed of, that I'll value and prize you just the same. In practice, you'll hear me reflect back your words, check my understanding, be curious enough to dig deeper with you, at your own pace. I'm not a blank state therapist. My face tells too many stories for that! The relationship we create IS the therapy, so I'll always be genuine in my responses, so that you can trust that I'm giving you my authentic self. In response, I hope you will slowly unfold and become authentic with me, learning that you are valuable and worthwhile in that authenticity.

This will always be at the core of what I do, I believe in it passionately. However, I also have a deep interest in the human body, the nervous system and trauma. I wanted to understand how the body respond to stress and trauma, whether it's chronic or acute. A few years ago I developed a chronic illness in response to a mix of viral illnesses and chronic stress. I became fascinated by how my nervous system and immunity had been impacted by me constantly pushing myself to the limit. I also recognised that I needed to find a way to reconnect to my body in a gentler, kinder way - a way that honoured my pain and fatigue and made it possible to live a fulfilling life without putting more stress on my system. I learnt about movement, breathing techniques, mindfulness, tuning into my pain to be able to accurately assess what I needed instead of numbing myself to it.

I started to learn about somatic therapy and how it can really help people who have experienced trauma. So often, clients could tell me exactly what had happened, almost as if it was a script. They'd talked it through a thousand times but still didn't feel better. Or, it was so distressing that they couldn't talk about what had happened to them, but desperately wanted to stop feeling so anxious, stressed or afraid. Either way, the answer seemed to me to be to reconnect body and mind. To teach people how to safely access the physical sensations that matched the feelings they described, whether they had numbed themselves to them or were feeling them in an overwhelmingly constant way. Working with the body, we can access feelings that have been squashed and denied, or have become chronic and distressing, and learn how to feel them safely, without becoming overwhelmed. In my experience, it has been powerful and transformative for so many people where talking and being heard just isn't quite enough. Common narratives that work with somatic therapy are 'I'm strong, I can cope, I've been through shit and survived, I can't trust anyone else to fix it but me and I'm great at fixing everyone else's problems, so why do I feel so bad?' and 'I can't cope, everything makes me worried and anxious and I don't trust myself at all to be able to manage this'. Somatic therapy takes these narratives and teaches: 'My body's job is to keep me safe. It will find ways to tell me if something is wrong (or right - but that's another blog) and keep telling me until I listen and process. I can trust it to give me messages to help me to understand myself and my needs, and always bring me back to safety, no matter how vulnerable I feel'.

These are the ways that I work, but that doesn't say much about me. I'm kind, compassionate, thoughtful and insightful. I value honesty, justice and equality. I'm a card carrying member of 'the tofu eating wokerati'. I love being in green spaces, near water, with my dog.

My Dog Barkley

I'm also sweary, messy, imperfect and figuring it all out as I go along. Sometimes I'll look at you and not know the right thing to say, or the right question to ask. Sometimes I'll blurt something out before I've thought about it (usually about your ex being a *Insert swearword here*). Sometimes I have to hold back my own tears because I feel your pain along with you. Some days I ask a question and let you go off on a tangent before you ask 'what was the question again?' and I can't answer because I've heard you say something important so I've forgotten. Some days, my chronic illness is in the room and I have to apologise for yawning (it's never you). Other days I pick up on a pattern that helps you put several puzzle pieces into place and we have a magic moment where it all makes sense. I will always validate your feelings, but sometimes I will challenge a narrative that is protecting you from really getting to the root of things, is protecting you from having to feel those feelings, or helping you to avoid accountability for patterns of behaviour that have been contributing to your distress. That can be hard.

Our work together is collaborative - imperfect human to imperfect human, learning about you together. I'm no expert, just curious enough to want to really dig in with you. So if you're open to change, ready to confront some difficult feelings, don't mind the odd 'F' word (feel free to join - definitely no judgement here) and want someone completely on your side, even when that means being challenged, then I might be the therapist for you.

Sam xx