Speakeasy Counselling Therapy Styles

 As part of my desire to satisfy the needs of people who are located in different locations or who have difficulty physically or emotionally traveling, I primarily offer sessions using a face-to-face video conferencing platform called JANE that allows you to have confidential counselling from the privacy of your home.

Some of you have become disillusioned and disheartened. You have effectively given up, losing awareness of your options and possibilities. For many, therapy is the first time they have been truly listened to without judgement or pressure. We work in the first session together to determine what the crisis is and form an agreement around what a successful outcome would look like over time. 

I do not offer a singular approach to healing because your needs are not that easily defined. So, I use a multi-formatted evidence-based approach blending Gestalt, Somatic Experiencing therapy, AEDP & expressive arts.  

COMMON ISSUES ADDRESSED IN INDIVIDUAL THERAPY INCLUDE:

relationship difficulties, identity, anxiety/depression, unresolved childhood issues, boundary-setting, perfectionism, self-esteem, life balance, trauma, and communication.

What happens in a somatic experiencing session?

Somatic psychotherapy sessions are typically focused on achieving awareness and release of the physical aspects associated with past trauma. The therapist helps you to track and explore your bodily experience and sensations as they arise throughout the session.

What is titration in somatic experiencing?

Titration means that we slow things down. Because trauma is “too much, too fast, too soon,” we want to counter this in trauma renegotiation. Slowing down looks like working with only small bits of difficult experiences at a time

The Somatic Experiencing® method is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application.

The SE™ approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma.

Using body awareness techniques I will help you regulate your nervous system from experiences of trauma that have affected your sense of vitality and power in the world. I will start by gently expanding your emotional ability to feel sensations coming from traumatic experiences such as accidents, attachment trauma, sexual assault etc. Building the ability to move our way through the immobility response by allowing the sensations one bit at a time to work our way out of the fear responses that got stuck in our bodies. Building a sense of safety and a capacity to deal with and feel scary sensations over time.  

Gestalt & AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) are a form of humanistic/existential therapy that believes that people are born with the resources and ability to be in rewarding contact with other human beings and lead satisfying creative lives. However, often during childhood and sometimes, later on, something interrupts this process and you become stuck in fixed patterns and beliefs about yourself and the world.

My therapy aims to investigate and uncover how these patterns are still active and affecting your present life. I hope to support you to find new and more creative ways to resolve the problem or crisis you are facing and to heal any trauma that is unresolved.

What are the different types of portrayals?

• Interpersonal
•  Anger/rage portrayal towards imagined others
• Repairing/reparative portrayals with imagined others: i. a longed-for experience, e.g., an apology ii. saying good-bye iii. something that hasn’t been said or done
• Intrapsychic; Reunion with usually young/child parts of the self
• Rescue portrayals
• Internal attachment

Why do a portrayal?

What are our goals?  Through the experience to uncover and rework the dynamic that created the inhibition or prohibition against the feeling

• to experience affect, process it to completion, and release adaptive action tendency

• to build and expand emotional, relational, and expressive capacities and repertoire

Your relationship with your partner is one of the most complex connections in your life. When something goes wrong you feel it, but you may not be able to express what the problem is exactly. To keep trying the same thing over and over but end up in the same place with the same conflict is a common problem. I am there to uncover the communication struggles that are blocking you from vulnerability and from connecting with your partner at the level you so desire. Through relationship counselling I will teach you techniques that will help you settle conflicts, improve your intimacy, rebuild trust, and define your relationship goals.