I am experienced in working with children, adolescents and adults. My early career was with teens as a youth worker near Boston in the USA. My roles in Aotearoa have been more focussed on children, parents and adults, at times including grandparents. However my training and history collectively allows me to modify my counselling and therapy to suit the person, irrespective of age.
Feel free to contact me to discuss the needs of different ages and stages.
See more in: Attune to Teenagers
In IFS we can work in a way that you can still do therapy and create change and healing without you telling me everything that happened to you. You can tell me what feels comfortable for you and we will work at your pace.
IFS is an evidence based psychotherapy based on the idea that the human mind is naturally multiple; we are all made up of a system of parts who have different roles, like in a family or an eco-system.
In everyone’s internal system there are protective parts, vulnerable parts and parts that are resources for us. Parts might show up as beliefs, emotions, behaviours and automatic reactions.
At our core we are led by Self. Self is in everyone, it can not be damaged and it knows how to heal.
In IFS we work to respect and understand parts, the relationships between them and to become more Self-led.
We are born with parts and all parts are valuable and skilled. However, throughout our lives as we have negative experiences burdens are created and our parts shift into extreme roles that can present as damaging, difficult and negative but served a function at the time of trauma or attachment injury. These parts are stuck in that time and carry that burden; they continue to do their ‘job’ to try and help us. IFS therapy is designed to heal via the process of connecting more with Self as well as by releasing the burden and the part can return to it’s natural or desired state.
In IFS we do not view clients as having a disease or deficit but believe that everyone possesses all the strengths and resources they need. By working to heal parts we release the constraints on our strengths and resources so we can access them to improve how we feel and function internally but also how we relate to those around us.
Schwartz, R.C. & Sweezy, M. (2021). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). New York NY: Guilford Press.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNA5qTTxFFA
“Attunement is a two-part process: It involves both being fully aware of another person’s sensations, needs, or feelings and communicating that awareness to the other… [It] is a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of the other—knowing the other’s experience by metaphorically being in his or her skin. Effective attunement also requires that the therapist simultaneously remain aware of the boundary between client and therapist.”
- Erskine, Richard G. Inquiry, Attunement, and Involvement in the Psychotherapy of Dissociation . Transactional Analysis Journal, Volume 23, Number 4, October 1993, pp. 184-190.
https://www.integrativetherapy.com/en/articles.php?id=28
“Empathy and attunement underpins therapy. When we empathically attune to another we gently tune into, sense, and resonate with their experience. The process is similar to the way an attuned parent, noticing a child’s distress, will take steps to offer comfort. It’s about giving appropriate responses, not just crying because the client is crying…Effective therapy depends on attunement, with empathy as the foundation. To empathically attune at a deep (perhaps embodied) level, we are called on to let ourselves go into the process; to release our own Being in order to Be-with in the moment… It’s about letting embodied feelings, thoughts, impressions and intuitions appear – letting go of knowing certainty to see what emerges.”
- Finlay, L. (2016). Relational Integrative Psychotherapy: Processes and Theory in Practice, Chichester, E.Sussex: Wiley (Chapter 4)
http://relational-integrative-psychotherapy.uk/chapters/empathising-and-attuning/
I am informed by and use tools from a range of models, theories and perspectives, including but not limited to:-