Core Process Psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy that encompasses the capacity to work deeply with all aspects of our experience as human beings. This means heart and feelings as well as mind, our body which holds and expresses who we are, and our deeper soul and spiritual nature too. Core Process Psychotherapy works towards a greater integration of all of these aspects of ourselves, recognising that when they are not working harmoniously together, this can adversely affect our well-being.
Core Process Psychotherapy blends both Western therapeutic understandings and practices with the wisdom and compassion of Eastern practices and insights into the nature of human suffering. Essentially it works with the understanding that, underlying our individual struggles, issues and ways of being, we have an innate source of well-being which is aware, compassionate, creative and joyful. These natural qualities can become obscured, often through the ways we have had to adapt ourselves within our environment and relationships from an early age. But these qualities are always there and essentially the journey taken in psychotherapy is one of a deeper re-connection to them.
During the therapeutic process we focus on developing our natural capacity for Mindfulness. Through refining our ability to focus our attention more fully on our moment to moment experience, we can develop greater awareness and insight into our feelings, our life difficulties and struggles, our relationships, our patterns of behaviour and also how past experiences and relationships have shaped who we are today and so continue to affect the present.
Psychotherapy can be a rich, creative inner journey of self-discovery that can bring to light aspects of ourselves, like deeply held feelings, beliefs and ways of being that we are not always aware of, but which influence and affect us. Through attending compassionately to what we are with and what we discover, we have the potential to honour and process our feelings, release patterns of behaviour that no longer serve us, integrate aspects of ourselves that we were disconnected from and create the possibility of deep healing and transformation.
More about how I work
I see the role of the psychotherapist as one of a compassionate guide and support, to accompany people to be with what is difficult and painful, and to help them reconnect with their own wisdom and inner resources, rather than taking a position of the ‘expert’.
I encourage incorporating an awareness of the body into therapeutic work if it feels comfortable to do so. The body holds our feelings, experiences, memories and patterns and so including the body in therapeutic work – and this can mean just mindfully bringing attention to the body whilst reflecting on, and exploring an issue – can connect us to our true experience in a very direct way, potentially deepening our enquiry.
I also offer the possibility of using other creative forms within the therapeutic process, according to what is helpful for each individual. This includes exploring and deepening into experience as it expresses itself within dreams, imagery, the felt sense, and through engaging with artwork.