“The ability to bring calm to, reflect on, and take control of our lives, starts with our minds”
Human beings are complex, only by exploring one’s foundations and experiences can we understand how we function in times of change and development, and under stress.
Therapy is a professional holding space to explore and manage emotional and psychological difficulties. It is a place which seeks to analyse one’s internal and external experiences alongside cognitive, psychological and environmental influences, to understand our thinking, behaviours, and emotions.
AREAS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING
- Developmental Psychology
- Emotional Development (moods, regulation, management, expression)
- Cognitive Development (mental processing: attention, memory, flexible thinking)
- Social Development (relationship forming and sustainability, communication, peer relationships, group affiliations)
- Relational
- Attachment (parent-child bond, trust, security)
- Psychodynamic
- Internal Environment (internal representations of external objects, subjective experiences, perception, interpretation, expectation)
- External Environment (family, family history, upbringing, relationships)
- Psychoanalytic
- Unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, memories, and behaviours.
Elements of Therapy
Counselling
Counselling fosters a congruent, accepting, and empathetic environment, where one feels safe and able to share and process life experiences.
Counselling helps the individual manage their emotions, finding healthy coping mechanisms to build confidence and resilience.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy
Psychodynamic psychotherapy focuses on underlying causes of emotional dysfunction and distress. This type of therapy works with the subjective experiences of one’s internal world. Through the therapeutic relationship, unconscious thoughts, understandings, and emotional and behavioural patterns, are explored to bring about fundamental change through self-evaluation.
Present Focus therapy (CBT)
Present Focus therapy (CBT) works to change negative thought patterns and behaviours by reframing the way one thinks consciously about issues and events. It involves challenging one’s current understandings to encourage self-awareness and produce a more balanced perceptive.
Benefits of Therapy
Structure
A holding space which offers a sense of security in the routine and consistency of sessions. Therapy provides stability in offering a consistent time every week, a time dedicated to you alone to be held and understood.
Communication
Practising how to express and communicate one’s thought and feelings. The benefits of expressing and communicating one’s thoughts and feelings in therapy transcends to one’s relationships. Talking openly and without judgement allows for the exploration of one’s feelings and life experiences not shared with family and friends.
Focus
Targeted exploration and insight into life’s experiences and one’s responses to those experiences. Evaluation of specific experiences creates focus and with that clarity in decision making and future direction.
Processing
Processing past and present events, experiences and understandings. An internal sense of equilibrium is a natural consequence of addressing, talking through, and breaking down problems.
Emotional Regulation
Learning how to manage overwhelming emotions. Understanding triggers and utilising healthy coping mechanisms. Regulating overused and disruptive emotions. Finding and practising ways to express and communicate emotions safely and productively.
Professional Support
A safe space where one is listened to and understood. A place where difficult and distressing experiences can be expressed and processed safely. A confidential space devoid of judgement.
Self Awareness
Greater insight into how one functions: common defences; individual approaches to challenging, stressful and distressing situations; relationship patterns. Gain better understanding of one’s goals and values and how these have developed or changed over time.
Autonomy & Confidence
The ultimate aim of therapy is to enable individuals to make their own choices and decisions and act upon them. It is a template of learning which transcends the therapy room, highlighting resources which one possesses but cannot see, and building resources which one has but is not able to utilise. Therapy encourages empowerment through building one’s self-esteem.
Trust
Experiencing and internalising a relationship of trust. The therapeutic relationship transcends outside the therapy room. The experience of therapy helps to build healthy relationships by providing insight into one’s role in relationships and in understanding others.
Articles
Depression
An Emotional and Psychoanalytic Approach to Depression What is depression? We all experience depressive states to varying degrees. These can be triggered by internal and external changes or movements which upset our emotional stability. Rather than dominating our...
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THE WORLDS WE LIVE IN Inside our Head & Outside our Body We all have an internal and an external world of which healthy functioning is essential for the development of our minds. How we navigate between these two worlds shapes how we externalise our internal...
Child Development
CHILD DEVELOPMENT IN BRIEF The first emotional and psychological developments occur through the interaction between parent and baby. This article provides a brief insight into how an infant develops emotionally, and the importance of the primary care giver’s role in...
Meet Sophie Barrett MSc, BA (Hons), Dip, CertHE
As a Child and Adult Counselling Psychotherapist I have extensive experience working with a variety of issues and presentations in short and long term therapy.
I work integratively as a therapist, combining elements of different types of therapies depending on the client’s needs and to ensure the most effective approach is chosen. I am analytical in my thinking and integrative in my approach. I adapt to the person as they are presented to me in the room and adjust the therapeutic approach depending on the needs of the client to ensure the time offered continues to be safe and effective.
The therapy works at the pace of the client not the therapist, enabling you to be of optimum mind set and open to new understandings and perspectives.
For more information on how I work and the benefits of therapy please email me at Sophie.barrett@lifestudiobysb.com.