Understanding comes first.
Your experience
We’ll begin with what’s brought you to therapy and how it affects your everyday life. Your experience will help us decide what to focus on.
What keeps it going
CBT helps us look at the connections between thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviour. Together, we’ll notice patterns and explore whether ways of coping are helping you now.
Choosing a focus
What would you like to be different in your daily life? This gives therapy a focus. From there, we can identify beliefs that get in the way and agree manageable steps to try.
Taking it into everyday life
Therapy also involves putting ideas into practice between sessions. These two practices can help:
Dropping Anchor — notice thoughts and feelings, reconnect with the present and make space to choose how you respond.
Try & Discover — try something we agree together, then explore what happened and what you learnt. These experiences help us examine familiar beliefs and discover different ways of responding.
Understanding what
you’re going through.
CBT helps us understand how our thoughts, feelings and actions connect, and notice patterns that may be keeping difficulties going.
The ABC model helps us explore this. Here’s an example: someone asks for a favour when you already have a lot on.
Someone asks me for a favour when I already have a lot on.
“I must not let people down.”
I feel anxious and guilty, notice tension in my body, and say yes when I want to say no.
Saying yes may bring relief, but leaves me overstretched. I miss the chance to learn that I can care about others and still have limits, even when someone is disappointed.
Explore the beliefs behind this
Exploring the beliefs
- Rules
What have I learnt about how things should be?
“I must not let people down.”
- Predicting
What am I expecting might happen?
“If I say no, they’ll think I’m selfish.”
- Meaning
What does this mean to me?
“Putting myself first is selfish.”
- Core beliefs
What do I believe about myself, others or the world?
“I’m not a good person.”
What we might work on
We’ll explore what saying no means to you. This might include feeling you must not let people down, worrying that others will think you’re selfish, or believing their disappointment means you’re a bad person. Together, we’ll explore a more balanced view, such as:
“I’d like to help, but my needs matter too. Someone being disappointed doesn’t mean I’m selfish or a bad person.”
We’ll talk about what makes this difficult to believe and try small changes, such as setting a limit. What you learn can gradually change how you see yourself, how you feel and how you respond.
The approaches
I draw on.
CBT is the foundation of my work. My wider training and professional interests include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), and understanding the nervous system and the body’s responses to stress.
I draw on these approaches where they fit your needs, preferences and what we’re working on together.
Accreditation & training
I’m an Accredited Registrant of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society, MNCPS (Acc.).
View my NCPS register listing ↗- Diploma in CBT/REBT
- Advanced Diploma in CBT/REBT
- Advanced Diploma in Integrative CBT/REBT I
