PSYCHOTHERAPY & COUNSELLING, HARMONISING: EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING PROGRAMME, SUPERVISION AND MINDFULNESS MEDITATION GROUPS AND COURSES
ABOUT MY THERAPY PRACTICE
Delia Taylor-Brook, UKCP, BAM Tel: 07899 891992 Email: [email protected] or click on the link below right of this screen
DUE TO COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS I AM CURRENTLY OFFERING AN ONLINE AND TELEPHONE SERVICE
If you’re considering seeking the healing that’s possible through counselling and psychotherapy, it is likely that you are experiencing a level of mental, emotional and spiritual pain. Your inner confusion and despair may also be manifesting physically within your body. My aim is to provide a confidential, supportive and compassionate space in which you feel safe to talk openly about your concerns.
I work collaboratively to help you explore what’s troubling you. Everyone experiences emotional pain and distress at some point and many of us develop survival strategies to help us to cope with and manage the situation. These strategies usually help at first because they provide a defence or protection against the pain but at some point they stop working and leave us feeling lonely, isolated, angry, frustrated, confused, in despair and in grief, anxious and depressed or addicted to numb the pain.
It may be something very concrete that is prompting you to seek therapy. On the other hand, some difficulties do not have a convenient label. Perhaps you just feel unable to cope, or that life is unbearable, or perhaps there may be a past experience that is holding you back from living your life in a more fulfilling and joyful way. Whilst it can be a time for healing emotional pain and coming to a resolution about the past, therapy can also be about understanding your present behaviour and working towards change. Therapy is not prescriptive; it is dependent upon your needs and expectations.
My role is to work empathically with you to encourage greater personal awareness and insight, in order that you can make the life changes that you long for. I work with genuine respect for you and your personal values, whilst offering alternative ways of understanding yourself and your life. The process offers you a therapeutic alliance which facilitates personal and spiritual growth. It also encourages the development of the necessary inner resources and personal qualities which will support you to develop the freedom to live more fully.
The opportunity to talk with someone who listens and offers understanding and who doesn’t have an agenda (unlike your nearest and dearest) is in itself deeply therapeutic.
Therapy is an inner journey in which I aim to help you develop the capacity to reflect on yourself and your life. For some, it is a short journey focusing on a very specific issue and for others it is longer-term. How long it takes is largely up to you. It’s usually influenced by how useful you find the process (which is more of an art than a science); how well we work together, how much of your life you want to explore and how quickly you notice positive changes within yourself and your life. Other practical factors like finances and time availability will also impact this decision. If you engage in therapy with me, there is no expectation that you stay for a particular length of time. This will become clear as the process unfolds and you can decide to stop at any point. It’s also possible to reduce contact when this feels right or necessary in discussion with me.
PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL COUNSELLING & PSYCHOTHERAPY
I began my career in human resources and I noticed that underlying attitudes and habitual behaviours were influencing how people responded to the stresses within the workplace, often in a way that was not helpful to them. I was inspired to retrain in order to help people understand themselves better so that they could choose to make constructive changes in how they presented themselves and related to others at work.
My decision to retrain in the late 1980’s happened when I was also seeking greater meaning and purpose in my life so I decided to train as a Transpersonal Psychotherapist & Counsellor at the Centre for Counselling & Psychotherapy in London. My own spiritual development was supported and inspired by the transpersonal aspect of the training which integrates the heart-mind-body-spiritual aspects of our being.
I started meditating regularly and later on became interested in mindfulness meditation practice and trained with the British Academy of Mindfulness to bring these skills to my client work. I am happy to offer this within our work but it is entirely your choice as to whether you wish to engage in mindfulness or not.
I now offer Mindfulness Skills courses and day workshops and lately have begun to also offer courses and workshops in Mindful Self-Compassion. Research has shown that a regular mindfulness practice can significantly improve mental and emotional well-being and physical health. This is because it is a skill that helps you to be in the present more frequently rather than worrying about the past (which we can’t change) or the future (which hasn’t arrived yet). The Self-Compassion aspect of mindfulness helps quieten the internal judgements that we make about ourselves and others and so gives greater peace of mind. I have noticed how clients who also engage in mindfulness practice, appear to reach a greater sense of healing more quickly as they develop the skills to be here now and stop judging.
EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALING IN NATURE
I have a particular interest in the healing qualities of the natural world. We are of course a part of nature but many have lost sight of this in our comfortable, technologically advanced lifestyles which provides a buffer to the natural world. Consequently, I find that many of my clients, when they start therapy, are very clearly out of rhythm with themselves and totally disconnected from nature. The practicalities of establishing nurturing and supportive routines that meet your physical, emotional and intellectual needs can go a significant way to bringing your system back into balance. Working with the elements is a part of this process.
CREATIVITY AS A MEANS TO GREATER PERSONAL AWARENESS
It can be particularly helpful to call upon our creative capacities to facilitate insight and personal awareness. You may not consider yourself to be particularly creative and indeed you don’t have to have developed this capacity to make use of this potential that we all have. Only if you are open to it, I will suggest that we work creatively in order to work at a deeper level on an issue. This might include for example, a physical symptom that you’re struggling with. Usually, I will suggest that we work with visualization in order to gain more understanding of what the body is trying to express psychologically and spiritually. Sometimes symptoms resolve or lessen through this intervention.
I may also suggest art therapy as an effective way of working. You do not have to have drawing or artistic skills. In fact, it’s better if you don’t as trying to make a beautiful picture can get in the way. It’s not about creating something representational. It’s really about working with shape and colour. Working with images through visualization or art therapy (similarly, working with dreams) gives us more information because our unconscious minds communicate through image – that’s why we dream in images. Sometimes talking and analysing can create a stuckness in the therapeutic journey because the mind can only understand and appreciate part of the picture. There is no obligation to work with these methods if you feel uncomfortable about them but if you would like to try them but don’t know what they involve, I would be happy to explain how I work with these methods. Any issue can be explored through creative means.
MAKING AN APPOINTMENT AND FEES
If you wish to make an appointment please call me on 07899 891992 or email me at [email protected] or click on the link above right of this screen.
