Psychological Services
Assessment
I can provide a full psychological assessment of your difficulties. Assessment can be helpful to people who know that something is wrong but do not know what or where to start. In addition, assessment can be useful when the source of people’s distress or difficulties are unclear, or not known, and when people’s difficulties are complex, chronic or even chaotic.
Psychological assessment can provide a clearer understanding as to the historical and developmental context of distress. It can lead to a working formulation about how your problems developed and may continue to be a source of difficulty. Assessment can uncover problematic patterns that unknowingly perpetuate distress and how attempted solutions to solve life problems can sometimes lead to further distress.
With a shared understanding about the sources of difficulty, the assessment can help you to decide how your difficulties can be best addressed. We can consider if and how psychotherapy can be of use to you and tailor an approach to suit, if you wish to pursue with treatment.
What if I am still unsure about what I want or need?
If you are still unsure about psychotherapy after your assessment, I can provide a trial therapy to give you an experience of what psychotherapy might be like. We can monitor how things are going session by session where you can decide if you want to continue or change approach.
Individual Psychotherapy (ISTDP)
I specialise in Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). ISTDP is a well researched, highly effective form of individual psychotherapy that is designed to help you get to the heart of the matter quickly, and resolve issues fast. If you are looking for a psychotherapy that will help you to resolve your difficulties in a relatively short amount of time, then ISTDP could be the therapy for you. For more information about the method of attachment based ISTDP that I practice and how ISTDP can specifically be of help to you, please click here.
Integrated psychotherapy approaches:
I specialise in Intensive Short term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), but can offer individually tailored therapy that can be integrated from within the following six therapy modalities:
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Compassionate Mind Therapy (CFT)
Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT)
Solution Focussed and Systemic Therapy (SFT)
If you are interested in an integrated therapy blended with ISTDP, please get in touch.
Clinical Supervision for your practice
I can provide individual or case focussed clinical supervision to clinicians, practitioner, staff teams and support workers working within mental heath and learning disability services in the NHS, private, or voluntary sector. Supervision can provide you with a safe space ‘outside’ to reflect upon what challenges might arise with individual cases and how the work you are doing can impact upon your own wellbeing, health and morale. Supervision is also an appropriate safe, non judgmental place to reflect purposefully about what might be going on for you and your clients, especially when you are working with complex or challenging cases. Clinical supervision may also be a place to explore practice development if you might want to train as a clinical psychologist in the future, or if you might be thinking about setting up and providing a service of your own . If you are interested in finding out more about the benefits of receiving external supervision from a charted clinical psychologist to assist you in many areas of clinical practice and service provision please get in touch.
Individual Case Consultation for organisations
I have extensive experience of providing supportive consultation to mental health practitioners, managers and service providers to those supporting people with learning disabilities, autism and challenging behaviour. I offer solution focussed consultation for individual cases in relation to most behavioural or mental health areas of work. I can provide positive behavioural support interventions, functional analysis of problem behaviour, or work with you to develop safe and effective guidelines to support individuals, staff teams and organisations from within a best practice framework, if you are working with complex clients and challenging cases. Please contact me for more information.
Reflective Practice for individuals or staff groups within organisations
I can provide a containing space for mental health professionals, GP’s and working staff groups within NHS or the private sector. Reflective practice can provide you with a safe space to talk and think freely about the challenges and complexities arising in your work. Reflective practice can be an important individual or group forum to support people to appropriately ‘offload’ or to speak openly about stresses or anxieties in relation to their everyday work without being judged. It can be used as a creative listening and learning forum to enable development and shape innovative practice.
The provision of a reflective practice space can also be a welcome resource to improve staff morale and well-being. Reflective spaces can sometimes uncover something that has been felt and not said, or to generate an understanding that may not yet be formed or spoken about. The space can therefore enable a shared understanding to develop about unconscious processes or difficulties arising in the workplace, how these unfold, and how they might be contributing to stress, job dissatisfaction, or the perpetuation of everyday struggles in relation to client work. Particularly by paying close, careful and compassionate attention to what emotions arise in individuals or within staff teams, or staff cultures, especially when working with complex or challenging presentations .
Where there is complexity, I can help you to think systemically about what might be going on for you, or for your client, or for your staff as well as the organisational system that you are working work in. If you are interested in receiving reflective practice from a chartered clinical psychologist and qualified systemic practitioner, please get in touch.