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INDIVIDUAL SOUL-BASED PSYCHOTHERAPY
As I have already stressed, while much traditional psychotherapy
sees the fixing of personalities as an end in itself, I recognise
that many people need healing at a deeper level and that this cannot
occur unless we learn to grow closer to our soul life and begin to
tap into our capacity for feeling awe and inspiration, beauty, depth
and meaning. From this place, many problems may begin clearing up
on their own and it becomes much easier to work with our dark side
and confront our emotional difficulties and negative beliefs. So
while I work with all the issues that ordinarily beset any client
who comes into psychotherapy - that is, with anxiety, depression,
stress, trauma, abuse, Narcissistic and Borderline issues, with
people fearing life and death and having difficulty with
relationships, etc - I tend to do so always out of a place of heart
and soul.
In a word, I see the importance, as I said earlier, of clients
opening their hearts and coming to recognise themselves as a soul. A
soul with a material body; a soul with a personality. Yes, we all
have our neurotic problems and disorders of one form or another, but
it is not who we are and I refuse ever to put a person into a box
solely marked by their symptoms. The core of each of us, I believe,
is blessed. And clients appreciate being seen in this way. They find
it gives them space to view their own wounds from a more
enlightened perspective, not so much as an enemy but more as a
friend. Indeed, many clients grow to regard their problems as
being very catalytic in helping them come closer to their own
authenticity.
I work with people from different ethnic groups, classes and
religions, some of whom are young adults just setting out on the
adventure of life and who need plenty of mentoring and coaching. I
also work with people who are more deeply disturbed. I also
specialize in seeing people who are consciously on a spiritual path
and who may require spiritual guidance as well as psychotherapy.
With some people, I may do deep regression work which may at times
lead them beyond their personal 'biographical reality' and into
human collective memories. There are times when very profound
healings can occur if some ancient pre-this-life traumatic memory
is accessed, re-experienced and its contents gradually integrated.
Because, for some clients, spiritual approaches such as meditation,
prayer and general awareness training, serve to enhance their
recovery and speed up their capacity to work through their
psychological issues, many clients attend my workshops, seminars and
retreats where such processes are explored. While my core
psychological training has been in Psychosynthesis, a
transpersonally-oriented psychotherapy, I have also been influenced
by other psychological and spiritual approaches, both Eastern and
Western. These include Carl Jung, the Gurdjieff work, the teachings
work of A.H. Almaas; Buddhism, Shamanism and Creation Spirituality.
COUPLES
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Couples work, to be effective, needs to be very subtle, for extremely
deep and painful wounds can often become activated by the onset of
intimacy. Many of us are secretly afraid of giving or receiving love.
Also, it is easy for certain couples to become stuck in negative
patterns and not know how to move on. So there may be occasions where I
may need to work at depth with one or both partners as well as seeing
them as a couple. Also, given that we are living at a time where many
of our old ways of ‘doing’ relationships no longer work, couples often
come for me for assistance in how they might ‘do’ their relationships in
a new way! Such people may simply need relationship coaching.
Many relationships fail because people hold naïve expectations about
them or feel they should be easy and that one shouldn’t need to
‘work’ at them. I do my best to remind people that these notions
are myths and so try and help them work at their relationships
together. My long, three-hour CD on ‘Bringing Soul into
Relationships’ (which is all about what makes relationships work and
what makes them fail ), is recommended to many of the couples I work
with.
CONSULTING
WITH ORGANISATIONS
Here, my concerns are not so much with the ‘business objectives’ of
organisations, but rather with their human face and the many
different kinds of challenges posed by people working together and
which, if unresolved, may block or distort those objectives. Among
the many inter-personal difficulties that I am called to look at,
include those resulting from people:
- having
insufficient awareness of the effect they have on others( e.g.,
someone not knowing they are 'dumping' or being bullying).
- being bad
communicators
- having
difficulties working together with others as a team
- living too
much in their heads and not enough in their heart. (Hence
relationship with others may be cold and decisions overly narrow
and devoid of sufficient intuition)
- being
stressed because work brings up deep-rooted childhood fears
- being
stressed as a result of imbalanced lifestyles.(e.g., bad diet,
no exercise, excess alcohol)
- projecting
their shadow (e.g. critical parent)onto their employees
Here, my work consists of meeting with the team as a whole, asking
them to fill in a questionnaire, meeting with each individual (once,
or a few times as the case may be), and then designing a weekend or
two-weekend seminar for everyone, based on the nature of the
organisation’s overall challenges, and designed specifically to
bring greater harmony and resolution into the group. |
