Personal Counselling:
firstly, we’ll have you tell your story. This can bring immediate symptom-relief just from sharing. We’ll take a deeper look at understanding your problems, their (and your) history & how the issues effect your current life. We’ll work through problems to discover new understanding that can help you put away conflicts leaving you feeling released (more).
Couples Counselling:
firstly, we’ll help you both tell your stories to me and to each other. Sharing points of view can bring rapid symptom-relief. We’ll take a deeper look at the relationship’s ‘system’ & be curious about how it creates conflict. We’ll help you talk with each other, relinquishing some of the emotion that impedes understanding. We’ll tackle problems with creativity, discovering newer approaches that disables arguments. If it becomes your choice, we can also work towards a separation. Our work can leave your relationship released & you both empowered (more).
Read about Dean Richardson – Portsmouth Counsellor.
Individual Personal Counselling.
Firstly, my initial & immediate concern with you is to hear your story; I am someone you can talk to.
By telling your story to someone who is primarily interested in you, we can take advantage of an immediate relief in you symptoms brought on by the sharing of your troubles. The work does not end there, though, it begins there!
Together we’ll piece together a deeper understanding of your troubles; where are they rooted, how did they begin, what do they effect in your current life. Our aim together is not just to bring you temporary relief, but also to work through ingrained problems so that you can feel released from their effects upon you.
Defences are behaviours, feelings and emotions that once were intended to help you (intended by your psyche, at least). In the present day, defences that once were there for your protection, but are now acting automatically may bring you suffering. We can work to understand and accept your feelings (we cannot control what we feel – neuroscience demonstrates this) so that they do not rule your life, but can be helpfully integrated into your life as your ally.
You do not have to be at the mercy of your feelings. We cannot stop your feelings, but we can understand them and bring you choices about what you do when your feelings want to take over.
Reoccurring problems – my clients want to understand themselves and make changes, not just to their superficial behaviour, but also at a deeper level which my psychodynamic counsellor offers.
Unlike some stereotypical psychotherapeutic therapists, I do not simply sit in silence muttering the occasional “hmm”. I’m also not waiting to turn the conversation over to myself, so my focus is on your story and what’s happening or you.
Contact me…Couples Relationship Counselling.
My focus will be on your relationship (not two individuals coming to me with problems with each other). By focussing on your relationship, how it behaves, what happens to both of you during the relationship’s “system”, will help me (initially) and you (very soon after!) learn what is happening … and once we have knowledge of what is happening we can work to change things.
Think of couple relationship therapy like a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces fallen onto the floor … and non of us have the front of the box. So, together, we must piece together the jigsaw, helping each other determine what each piece is and where it goes. We build up the picture of your relationship and as we do so we learn how the relationship is going wrong.
Part of a systemic therapist’s role is to perturb how the relationship is (not) working … the relationship “system”. Part of the couple’s responsibility will be to learn new things about their relationship (which can be done in session with the counsellor, and through homework done at home). With curiosity comes new knowledge … with knew knowledge comes difference … and difference is a relationship (or change in a relationship).
Couples can be in distress because they feel they have exhausted all possibilities to resolve their relationship problems. Because the therapist is not “within” the relationship system, the therapist can work with the couple about being curious about matters of which may have had a blind-eye turned.
All of this happens over a number of sessions with sensitivity and an unhurried attitude.
Contact me…
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