01 — Achieve greater stability in your mood and self-esteem.

Many individuals enter therapy due to distressing changes in how they experience themselves and the world around them. Their mood may feel less stable or they may feel more emotionally reactive or triggered in particular situations.  Do you avoid situations due to heightened anxiety, or do your energy levels and drive oscillate between euphoric highs and apathetic lows? It could be that you feel depressed, listless, hopeless and stuck. Or you may feel agitated and are struggling to sleep due to looping or racing thoughts. Deep feelings of irritability and rage may be concealing a more vulnerable sadness or loss.  Therapy offers a space to understand the origins of these emotional experiences and physiological responses and to work at a deeper attachment level to identify and treat the needs and conflicts that may be communicated through your emotional reactivity.  

02 — Confront relationship difficulties and intimacy fears to sustain more meaningful connections.

Concerns relating to the quality of one’s relationships is a common reason for entering therapy. Perhaps you are repeatedly choosing partners who hurt you, or you always push away partners when it feels they have become too close.  Do you perpetually avoid endings or ghost partners? Are you struggling to commit within an established relationship, or are you struggling to establish a gratifying relationship? How do you manage personal boundaries with others? Do you feel you’re always the one looking after others; struggling to say “No” and then feeling resentful of others’ demands? How do you communicate your needs within a  relationship? What are the conversations or situations in your relationships that most activate vulnerability in you? And how do you cope at these times? For many individuals, it is their unhealthy coping responses that act to perpetuate and maintain the relationship outcomes that are most feared.  Therapy provides a repairing attachment experience within which these relationship life traps can be identified and new healthier coping responses can be developed so that the space between self and others can be navigated with greater ease and rather less anxiety. 

03 — Process trauma to live more fully; to stop hurting yourself and those you care most about.

A significant number of adult mental health and relationship difficulties can be conceptualised within a trauma-informed frame. Sometimes our distress and limitations are communicating unprocessed events. And sometimes it is within our closest attachments that these difficulties are most evident.  Do you watch yourself become disproportionately irritable and angry with those closest to you? Do you worry that you’re never present with your partner or your children?  Are you sensitive to growing independence, distance or separateness in those closest to you? And is your fear of separation preventing you from leaving an unfulfilling relationship or job? Are you worried that your explosive reactions, or grumbling irritability is harming your relationships with others?  Therapy provides a space to put words to these feelings and to develop the emotional resources and skills to express feelings and needs differently.

04 — Transform entrepreneurial burnout to pursue healthier relationship & business goals. 

Many established and aspiring founders enter therapy with a range of challenges and therapy goals. Some have already been to see a life coach but still feel anxious and stuck, battling low self-esteem or untreated mood disorders. Or they are procrastinating, struggling to make the connections necessary to increase their visibility in their industry and to advance and scale their business. Some are underselling themselves and fighting with imposter syndrome, doubting their abilities, and stalling in critical decision-making. Others have established highly successful businesses, yet their work environment is toxic, and feelings of distrust are damaging working relationships. Success may have initially felt thrilling, but now success is followed by periods of deflation and loss of drive. Regular therapy ensures that time is ring-fenced to prioritise psychological health so that any underlying psychological needs or sabotaging life traps can be identified and halted early.

05 — Work through self-sufficient distancing and distrust of others to improve your ability to connect and collaborate.

For some, entrepreneurial pursuits function as a retreat to self-sufficiency and a denial of need. These individuals enter therapy because they feel disconnected from others and disillusioned by their life. Working long hours to avoid anxious thoughts and to achieve tight deadlines takes its toll on biological rhythms, and the underlying need for authentic relatedness with others may feel unachievable. Perhaps the foundations of your business are in place but new collaborations are proving difficult to forge. You may have a solid co-founder by your side, and you may have a great team, but at a deeper level you don’t fully trust others or others don’t really trust you. Perhaps an underlying ‘mistrust’ schema developed through an earlier wound is being activated in your relationship with investors, your team or clients, and is leading to anxious and avoidant coping; playing havoc in your business choices. Therapy assists in working through the underlying experiences driving a fear of mistreatment by others, so that you can be more discerning in your business choices rather than making fear-based decisions. Therapy also aims to enhance your healthy adult capacity to connect more fully with others so that you can forge more meaningful relationships and build a healthier and more dynamic team.

06 - Relinquish control and perfectionism, to be more accepting and patient with yourself and others.

Heightened and excessive perfectionism and control is conceptualised within the schema therapy model as an over-compensating coping mode.  Most individuals who develop this coping mode also have a strong inner critic. They are hyper-critical of self, and often others too. Perfectionism is employed in an attempt to fight against vulnerable feelings of anxiety, worthlessness and shame by introducing high levels of order, perfection and control. Do you constantly feel you are making the wrong choice or fear the possibility of making a mistake? Do you feel overwhelmed with panic every time you are being evaluated by others, or collapse into apathy and inertia every time you feel you have failed?  Do you become irritable with those closest to you when they fall short of your expectations? Or are you self-loathing and intolerant of your own perceived imperfections? Therapy offers the opportunity to hear the experience of the vulnerable inner child, to develop healthier expectations for self and others, and to enhance playfulness and spontaneity.